Beyond Voice Over: How Your Voice Can Ruin Opportunity

Hey, there!

I’m hoping that what you learn from me about how to use your voice to create a profitable and satisfying VO career can be used in other areas of your life.

But using your voice incorrectly in everyday life can be devastating. And here’s a prime example.

You may be destroying your chances at business success in life, just by the way you speak.

Fast Company published an article recently, describing 4 different speech patterns you need to get rid of if you want to succeed in business.

And you can thank Kim Kardashian for at least one of them.

The article is geared toward people interviewing for jobs, but don’t think you don’t do that every day when you talk to other members of our performance community.

So, what are these terrible, but fairly common ways of trashing your future by using your voice incorrectly?

One is uptalking. If you’ve ever been to the San Fernando Valley, here in LA, ’nuff said. Stop that.

Another was made famous by Kim Kardashian – it’s called “vocal fry,” and although you might not know that label, you’ll certainly recognize the style. Stop that.

The third is attempting to speak outside your natural pitch range – either trying to sound more feminine by speaking at a higher pitch than normal, or trying to sound more masculine by speaking at too low a pitch for your pipes. Stop that.

The fourth?

Plain old bad grammar. You can choose to continue to make these mistakes, but you’ll suffer for it. Behold:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRMRCeQBAKI

Is any of that part of your vernacular? Stop that.

Stop and fix these things, and your chances of success, and your level of respectability, go way, way up.

Here’s a link to the article. Watch the rest of the videos and listen to the audio samples as well:

4 Speech Habits That Are Undermining Your Job Chances

And of course, your “job” includes talking with casting directors, producers, agents, clients and customers, engineers…you get the picture.

Hope this helps.

David