Optimizing your voice means sounding like your best self – not someone else! Andrea talks with vocal coach and voice actor Claire Fry to understand why you should focus on your unique voiceprint—rather than imitating others—and how to support your voice through techniques like deep breathing and smiling. They also cover practical tips for enhancing your voice and presence in online meetings.

CLAIRE FRY

LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/loudandclaire/
Website – https://www.vocalconfidencetraining.com/
Website – https://www.loudandclaire.com/
Podcast recommendation:
- Think Fast Talk Smart with Matt Abrahams

CONNECT WITH ANDREA

LinkedIn – Andrea: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/
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YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@talkabouttalkyoutube/
Archetypes Quiz: https://talkabouttalk.com/archetypesquiz

TRANSCRIPT

Are you ready?

Welcome to Talk about Talk podcast episode #180 – Optimizing your Voice with Claire Fry.

Claire is a voice actor and a vocal coach. In addition to having a beautiful voice and expertise on the subject, Claire is also witty and fun. Her linkedin posts often make me chuckle. Like the time she had to get her car towed and she took a selfie of her and the tow truck driver. She posted the photo of the two of them in the front seat of the tow truck, and of course, she shared some life lessons. Anyway, I encourage you to follow Claire. You can find her coordinates in the shownotes.

You can find my coordinates there too! In case we haven’t met, my name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki and I’m an executive communication coach at Tak About Talk. Please just call me Andrea. I coach executives like you to improve your communication skills so you can communicate with confidence, establish credibility, and ultimately achieve your career goals. That’s our objective. To learn more about me and what I do, head over to talkabouttalk.com where you can read about my 1:1 private coaching, small group bootcamps, keynote speeches, and corporate workshops. Plus there are a bunch of free resources, including my free communication skills coaching newsletter, and the archetypes quiz.

In case you haven’t taken the archetypes quiz yet, I hope you will. This can help you establish your professional identity. Im a Sage and a Magician. If I had to guess, I’d say Claire is a Citizen or maybe a Caregiver, AND a Jester.

OK – in my conversation with Claire Fry, which you’re about to hear, you’re going to learn how to use your best voice. If youre like many people, you might not think about your voice. But here’s the thing: whether its online, in person or on the phone, your voice says a lot about you.

There are some relatively easy things you can do to optimize the sound of your voice. Yes, of course, there’s the importance of breathing. Breathing is key. But there’s a lot more to your voice than just breathing, as youre about to hear.

At the end, after the interview, I’ll summarize with three important learnings that I want to reinforce for you. And you will probably be surprised about these learnings. Some mindsets and tactics that will definitely help you use your best voice.

Now, let me introduce Claire and then we’ll get right into this.

Claire Fry is a veteran voice actor with over 20 years experience, and a vocal coach with a talent is for connecting, persuading, and demanding attention with her voice. She teaches people and teams to do the same –connect, persuade, and demand attention with their voices.

Through her firm, Vocal Confidence, Claire conducts webinars, workshops, keynotes and 1:1 coaching. She trains teams and leaders across the globe at organizations including Google, HubSpot, Amazon, Apple, McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, Stanford University…and many more.

Her objective is to provide people with the tools to sound amazing and the confidence to sound like themselves. I love it. – the tools to sound amazing and the confidence to sound like themselves! Here’s Claire.

INTERVIEW

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: thank you so much, Claire, for being here today to talk with me and the talk about talk listeners, about our voices.

Claire Fry: Thank you so much for having me, Andrea. I’m so excited to get into it.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Let’s start. Really, General, I’m wondering if you can share with us what you think. Some of the most important things are that we can do to improve the sound of our voices.

Claire Fry: Support, we can support our voices. So this is something that I think is so key, and people come to me because they say I want to sound more confident, or I want to sound more powerful, or I want my voice to sound deeper, and what it actually all comes down to is breath support.

So if I start from a nice deep breath, you can hear how rich and full and supported my voice sounds if I keep talking for a while you’ll hear how it starts to thin out a little bit, and now you’re getting not quite as much of my voice, and if I keep going I’ll end up in my vocal fry down here at the bottom. So that vocal fry is that telltale sign that I don’t have enough breath support for full phonation. You’re not getting my full voice. so I think so many of the things that people associate with having a good voice, a powerful voice, a confident voice. What they really mean is a supported voice. So that’s 1 of the 1st things that I work on with people is. hey? Your voice sounds different when you’ve got some breath behind it. So let’s learn how to do that.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So supporting your voice is is synonymous with putting breath behind it.

Does that just mean taking a deep breath? I’m sure it’s more than that.

Claire Fry: It’s taking a deep breath, but it’s also grounding your voice right? So a lot of the time, especially when we’re nervous. We’re kind of speaking from our throat. You can hear where I’m pushing from my throat. And sometimes when people want to achieve volume, they push from there as well. Right. We get kind of a little bit of a yelling sound, and it’s all coming from the throat versus if I put it down in my belly and use that diaphragm for support.

This is the kind of volume and power you can get from there. But it’s a much freer, more open sound. So it’s definitely about taking that time to fill up with breath beforehand. But it’s also about moving that center of gravity down into the belly, so that we’re not all up here in our throat or breathing from our chest, but everything’s sort of down and grounded and powerful.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So I’m just going to take a second and say to the listeners, if you’re not watching us on Youtube. I suggest you switch over to Youtube. So you can see what Claire’s doing. She’s pointing to her throat. She’s pointing to her chest and her lungs right.

Just if you could coach us just for a minute, because, as you’re going through this, I’m thinking, well, maybe you can coach me on this right like, how do I think about my diaphragm.

Claire Fry: Let’s do it together. You want to take a few seconds. Yeah. So one hand on your belly and one hand on the small of your back, Andrea, and what we’re going to do is we’re going to breathe in, and we’re going to try and move both of those hands outward.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay.

Claire Fry: So I’m gonna be vulnerable and show you my tummy for a second. Just so you can see what I’m talking about.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I love this.

Claire Fry: Hand on the belly, hand on the back. We’re breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth. and you can see how both of those hands are moving as we do it, right.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yep.

Claire Fry: So now let’s kind of connect that to speech, Andrea. If I told you you’re walking along the street, and you see a friend across the street. You see me across the street, and you recognize me, and you just yell to get my attention, you might say, Oh, hey, Claire. give that a try. Just do that out loud.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Hey! Claire.

Claire Fry: Yeah, yeah. So where did you feel that when you just did it.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Well, I think because I was conscious of my belly, I felt my belly expand, and then I definitely felt it up here.

Claire Fry: So even just. And I’m so glad you said that, because even just doing this once, just taking the breath in gives us that consciousness of oh, wait! I’ve got all that support down there. I’ve got all that capacity down there. So when we yell, we tend to go here we tend to go, hey, Claire? So I’m going to have you do it again. But this time really focus on you can even use your hands like you’re squeezing an accordion.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay.

Claire Fry: Pushing the breath from below. So it’s more like, Hey, Claire.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Hey! Claire.

Claire Fry: Oh, nice Andrea! Nice! Did you feel that difference in how you’re using your instrument? There.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I definitely did. I was pushing my abdomen in and my back in at the same time with my 2 hands. I also felt like I might have cheated a little bit, and tried to make it sound deeper.

Claire Fry: Did you catch? I did catch that. And that’s a very, very common thing to do, especially for women who, I think, are conditioned, socialized to think of deeper voices as being associated with authority. So if you think about the voice that we put on when someone says, Oh, I want you to sound really serious, like, okay, this is my serious voice, right? Like we associate deeper voices. And and so does everybody. That’s what the studies show. Right. We associate deeper voices with authority, credibility all these things.

Claire Fry: So I’m so glad you brought that up because one of the things I work on with women is. I don’t want to pick on her specifically, but not pulling in Elizabeth Holmes right? Not doing that thing where we do like a fake deep voice to sound a little more like a dude, but instead, to keep our voice at the pitch where it wants to be, but have more support behind it right, have more of that grounding, have more of that power behind it, so that we are supporting our voice in its natural placement, and not squashing it down.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So just to paraphrase, would you agree that we can maintain our natural pitch. but improve the credibility of the sound of our voice by being more supported by thinking about about our diaphragm. and and what and what else do I need to do to to?

It’s not coming from my throat. Right? It’s coming from my abdomen.

Claire Fry: Yeah. And it doesn’t have to be about doing it in the moment. I don’t want people trying to do their job and also thinking about their diaphragm at the same time. That’s that’s a pretty heavy lift. But even just getting in the habit of taking that deep breath into the belly before the meeting. so I always say, do it on the transitions, do it before the podcast interview, do it before you press, join on the zoom, call before you step out on stage. That’s your moment to okay, right? That’s where my breath is. That’s where my voice is. And then.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Let it.

Claire Fry: Go. But we’ll kind of automatically make that adjustment.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay, so this is a 1. i’m going to move my camera back up to my face and not my abdomen. This is a wonderful, I think habit for us all to acquire and adopt. before every important meeting, before I press record to record a podcast before I go into a keynote speech or a workshop, even a coaching session. Wherever you’re going into, maybe a high stakes meeting or presentation.

I already encourage people to do slow, deep breathing, and I say, particularly on the exhale. This is what the research that I’ve been hearing is inhale completely and then slow exhale. And now I will just add to that, put your hands on your belly and your lower back, and feel the expansion as you’re inhaling, and then lengthen your exhale and research shows that this actually changes your blood chemistry. Right? It makes you less fight flight, or freeze before these high stakes moments. So I’m going to try that. And I’m going to encourage everyone to do that, too.

I have another question that’s really a bit tactical, but it’s something that I, speaking of, you know, when I’m recording a podcast. I’ve heard that if you smile when you’re talking. even though it might seem silly, I’m talking into a microphone and and recording a podcast episode by myself. There’s no one else in the room that it changes the sound of your voice is that true.

Claire Fry: Yes, it’s true. You can hear it right? You can hear it on the phone with your mom, or talking to your partner from the other room like you can hear smile in the voice. It it’s the the way that the muscles engage changes the way that the voice interacts right and expresses itself so. Yes, we can hear smile where I always think we want to be careful. Especially working with women in the workplace. Is this idea of smile more. If you want people to like you to listen to you, to engage with you. Right? So smile shows up in voice. It’s not, however, the only way to in voice over we’d call it warming up your voice right? So it’s not the only way to warm up your voice. It doesn’t have to be a giant smile on your face. Some of this can be even just the vocabulary we use. We can warm up our vocabulary if we don’t feel like having a giant smile plastered on our face all the time. and it’s very easy to over index on smile really easy. So this is something I discovered Andrea when I 1st started doing voiceover because one of my 1st voiceover classes I was there in the studio and there was a group of us, and we were all doing a pampers. Commercial and person after person would get in the booth, and the director would say, Okay, now do it and smile right. This is a pampers. We need more smile great. So that’s my turn, and I get in the booth. And I put on this giant smile, and I’m like when your baby needs the best care. And it was way too much. because my voice already has smile in it. Even when I’m not smiling. That’s just part of my voice print. My voice is warm, it does have smile that’s not good or bad. There’s no value judgment there, that’s just a descriptor of what my voice has in it. So I have to be careful about not over indexing on smile, because it can get to be way too much. Really fast, right? If I add, smile on top of smiles like putting a hat on a hat. Yeah.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: It’s actually part of your personal brand is not just the fact that you’re a voice coach, but that your voice sounds happy, and you are generally a positive and happy person, so we’ll get into the personal branding. But I want to go back. You said the word warm up, and I wanted to clarify. You don’t mean warm up, as in preparing or warming up, you mean warm up as in sounding warm.

Claire Fry: That’s exactly what I mean. So like a painter would add a little bit of orange or red to warm up the tones in a painting locally. I’m talking about the things that we do, and we don’t need to get too down the rabbit hole. But there are various muscles that we use. Some of it could just be crinkling, the eyes, crinkling our eyes up creates a warmth as well as smile as well as different ways. We use it. So God, we’re talking about creating warmth in the voice.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay, okay. so you were talking about the impact. That smiling, turning, literally turning, or physically, I suppose, turning up the corners of your mouth affects how your, how your voice sounds, of course, because it changes the physical structure of where your voice is coming through. That’s the non technical way of.

Claire Fry: No, this is perfect. That’s exactly it. Okay.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So I want to talk about the difference between how your voice may show up, and we could get into equipment. We could get into all sorts of things online versus in person.

Claire Fry: And the smiling thing really, really made me think about this.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I watched a video of me being interviewed by someone a couple years ago, and I was like, I really don’t look very friendly.When I looked at myself really carefully, when I slowed it down, and really looked at myself carefully, which, by the way, is very painful. I was like, it’s not that I’m scowling, but I’m not smiling. And then I had this conversation with a couple of other people online. There’s the the. It’s almost like the camera reduces the the happiness of of your appearance. It makes you. It downgrades your emotional tone visually so. And I was talking to a senior executive a couple weeks ago, and he told me that his communication team told him, when you’re on camera, even when you’re not speaking. You need to be ear to ear, smiling, because otherwise you look like you’re not happy. And I said, That’s what I noticed of myself on screen as well. So I mean, that’s more of a physical appearance. Difference between on person in person versus virtually. But what about our voices in person versus virtually.

Claire Fry: No, I think that’s a direct analog. I love that. It’s a flattening medium. right? So it’s flattening in terms of visual presentation. And it’s flattening in terms of vocal presentation as well, especially if people are using second 3rd rate equipment, which is not picking up all of the tones and gradations in voice, the way that we would be able to do if we were in the room together.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay.

Claire Fry: Absolutely. I want to come back to the looking at yourself on screen thing in one second. But I’ll say for voice. people can be so much louder than they think they can. So part of that is that any piece of video software you’re using, whether that’s zoom Google meet teams, any of it all has built in limiters. which is just a way of saying it’s automatically bringing down the peaks of your voice right? So you can get so much louder than you think. It’s often louder than you would if you were in the room with these people. And the way it translates over video is as energy.

It translates as passion, engagement, excitement, right? Like all these positive things. So we feel like we’re being way, too. I feel like I’m being way too loud right now. I bet it doesn’t sound.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Not allowed no.

Claire Fry: You.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: No, it sounds like you’re excited and enthusiastic. Yes.

Claire Fry: So the software is bringing it all down. So I think people really need to understand that because I think it feels so vulnerable in some ways.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: When we’re in video calls and people just.

Claire Fry: Shrink everything about themselves right to be as neutral as possible because it does feel so vulnerable. But actually, we need to get bigger. We need to use more notes, more melody, more.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: He does.

Claire Fry: And what blessing that will be to the people who are listening to us.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Ok, so back to the point that you made before about you can always go too far. Right? You can go too far in trying to make your voice deeper in whatever we’re recommending here. That said, I. Just want to say, Claire, this insight is huge.

Thank you. So the fact that the screen and in virtual meetings, basically every way that you’re communicating, which is, I guess, auditory and visual things are flattened. So your facial expression is flattened. So smile more.

I’ve even heard that if you’re on screen you should wear more makeup than you would if right, I’m I’m seeing you nod. Okay. So, whatever whatever you normally do, you need to amplify and in terms of your voice. So this is, I guess, a segue into some recommendations that you can give to us. I’ve heard that to optimize the sound of our voice, one of the things that we can seek is variation, variation in pitch, in tone in cadence, and so on. And and I would hypothesize that you would suggest that we should do that even more. So when we’re virtual or online as opposed to when we’re in person.

Claire Fry: Absolutely cadence, intonation, just the number of notes that we are using. And again, our 1st instinct seems to be to shrink. All of that when you ask people, or when more accurately, when someone is telling themselves in their mental script, I need to sound professional. The 1st thing to go is the notes.

The 1st thing they start doing is using fewer notes and saying, This is my professional voice. This is my buttoned down, giving it to you straight. Kind of what? Right? Because it’s safe. You’re safe there. You feel safe there. But actually, it’s such a barrier to people being able to hear you follow you and engage with you because you’re not giving all those verbal signals that roadmap that helps people to follow you when you’re speaking. So we flatten it out. And it’s the worst thing that we could do. and we over. So I’m sure this is something that you’ve come across as well. This idea of negativity bias in communication.

So when we hear someone speaking and we’re not getting clues from them. From their tone of voice.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: We don’t know.

Claire Fry: They’re happy. We don’t know if they’re sad. We don’t know if they’re excited, we automatically assign negative qualities. We go. Oh, well, they’re mad at me. Oh, they’re frustrated! Oh, they’re bored, or they’re whatever right. So we need to be sending that really strong signal all the time. And I think that’s true for face as well.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay.

Claire Fry: That we need to be sending that signal all the time.

There was an interesting study that came out last year. I don’t know if you came across this that we over attribute emotionality to our own neutral face when we see ourselves on screen. Yeah, I’ve memorized that that because I wanted to get it exactly.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Say it again, say it again we.

Claire Fry: When we yeah. So when we see our own face on screen, when we’re looking at our own face, we over attribute emotionality to our own neutral face. So even when our face is actually neutral in expression we read it as emotional and usually negative.

So this is that thing where we go. Oh, why do I look like I’m mad, or why do I look like right? Right? But it’s it’s it’s a little bit in our heads, because we always have this negativity bias when it comes.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: And it might be amplified, or the effect might be exaggerated. If it’s online. Right? Was the research virtual.

Claire Fry: Yes, exactly. It was entirely virtual. And it’s why I always tell people. If they’re speaking, they should have their self view off online always.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: That’s a big tip. That’s a big one, Claire.

Claire Fry: Always, always, always. Because if you see your own face 1st of all, it’s the most distracting thing you could possibly have on your screen. I don’t care what your relationship is with your face. It doesn’t matter. You’re always looking at it right? You’re flicking over. You’re checking in. That’s taking you out of connection with your audience, which is where that attention should be. And we’re judging ourselves. We’re doing this over attributing of emotionality. We’re doing all these things, and it makes us feel like we’re on stage. It lights up the same part of your brain as if you were performing. So these are all impediments to communication. Yeah, I think.

Turn off the self view. Take you don’t need it. You’ve never walked into a conference room, sat down, pulled out a mirror, and stared at yourself.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: True. True. So so, Claire, I always adjust my, the, you know the Zoom screen or the Microsoft teams screen, whatever it is. so that I’m on the bottom, and the people the other people are at the top closer to the camera, and I and I don’t look at myself. But you’re saying, take it to the next level and just remove yourself from your view. Okay.

Claire Fry: It’s easy to do. It’s just a click of a button, and everyone can see you. But you can’t see yourself but what you’re doing. Andrea is so smart when you always want to put your audience as close to that camera as possible. Right? So we get that eye contact.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah. Your face right now is right below the camera.

Claire Fry: This, too. It’s almost like we thought about this check.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: That’s amazing. Okay, I’d love to dig a little bit more into gender differences. You mentioned that women in particular may try to make their voices sound deeper. I would guess men probably do too, like you said. We all hear this anecdotally in society, and it’s reinforced that we attribute deep voices to power, status, authority, all of those leadership qualities.

Right? What? What gender differences do you come across in your work with your clients that you might want to mention here.

Claire Fry: Hmm, interesting. Yeah, it’s not. It’s not a crazy thing to do right. Which is why I said before, I don’t. There’s plenty of reasons to rag on Elizabeth Holmes, but lowering her voice, is not one of them that’s completely understandable, especially if you’re working in a male dominated field because it’s true people prefer, I think, in the last 20 Presidential races we’ve elected the person with the deeper voice every time. But one or something like that, right like this is just a thing. This is a thing that we do.

So what’s a woman to do right? And you know, as you said, there are certainly men with higher pitched voices who, I’m sure, are as aware of this. But I’m going to talk specifically about people who are assigned female at birth. and therefore have smaller larynxes, smaller voice boxes. and voices that are higher pitched. So, generally speaking, there’s a little less of a resonating chamber. so we the voices don’t have quite as much power to them. We don’t have quite as much resonance to them, and we have that that slightly higher pitch. So I’m I don’t want to be boring, but I have to go back to the breath part right? Because here’s the thing. It’s it’s understandable to want to lower your voice, but it doesn’t.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: We’re.

Claire Fry: Because it’s just not how your instrument is put together. It’s trying to make flute sound like an oboe right? Like it’s it’s just not the way that it’s constructed so ultimately the thing that is going to best serve us in terms of getting heard, in taking up space with our voices, and having a level playing field with the men. is putting a little more energy behind it, a little more breath behind it. And hey, maybe get a really good microphone.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah.

Claire Fry: Right, because your virtual meetings, if you have a good microphone that’s gonna automatically bring your voice higher in the mix. So now it’s going to be more present in people’s ears? And why not take every advantage you possibly can?

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah.

Claire Fry: Yeah, in voice over, we call it cut through that quality of making people sit up and pay attention when you speak. So let’s let’s use everything like everything in our arsenal.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah, I’ve been in plenty of meetings where you know I there say, there’s 5 people in the meeting and 3 people talk. And then the 4th person speaks for the 1st time, and you’re like what your brain you you just sit up and pay attention right like snap to it because. And then you say, they’re the one that has the professional. Whatever podcasting equipment, it doesn’t have to be professional podcasting equipment like, you can get a little microphone that sits on your desk on a tiny little tripod, right? And and it’ll make all the difference in the world. So that’s a great point. Yeah. so true. And I don’t think it’s as much of investment as people think right. I’m using.

Claire Fry: This is an audio technica 2020. It’s $79, and it plugs directly into the USB port of my computer, right? This is not some gigantic and no one’s dropping thousands of dollars on a Neumann professional microphone right? Like.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah.

Claire Fry: Just something simple, something.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: It’s a little thing that can make a big difference.

Claire Fry: It really does, and then it cuts down on the amount of echo in your room. Because I think this is the other thing people don’t realize it’s not about the microphone just boosting your voice. It’s about directionality. So when people are using the microphones that are built into their laptops that microphone is picking up your voice, but it’s also picking up every reflection. every echo of your voice, as it bounces around your room, and it makes it sound like we’re underwater a little bit, you know, because you work in audio as well right know exactly what I’m talking about. I’m sure you’ve had guests where you had to deal with that to some extent or another, because people don’t realize how those reflections build up so something closer to your mouth just eliminates that whole issue.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So I want to shift now to personal branding, and you made the comment that your voice sounds. I think you said as if you’re smiling, it’s warm because it sounds like you’re smiling. You have a natural smile in your voice. So do you want to talk a little bit about the unique sounds of our voices, how they can reinforce our personal brand and vice versa. If we think about our personal brand and then reverse engineer.

You know the process that I take my clients through step one is articulating or creating their personal brand. So coming up with 12 to 15 themes that really resonate with them their expertise, their passions, all different types of of themes. but that are positive and unique to them. And then we shift to communication, and I talk about virtually and in person, directly and indirectly, we are constantly reinforcing, or maybe contradicting these elements of our personal brand that we’ve identified. So maybe we’ll start there. Imagine that you’ve created this brand, and you want to be seen as a strong people leader. And you have a real growth mindset. And you’re also encouraging that in others. and then you’re and then I say, well, there, there’s direct or explicit ways that you can reinforce, that when you’re introducing yourself when you’re talking about your strengths. There’s also implicit ways like your voice. Right? So how can we think about this.

Claire Fry: I think what we’re talking about here is tone. So I’ll ask you if it’s okay. I’ll ask you a question, because this will come back around, I promise.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay.

Claire Fry: One of the things that I think people think of when they think of personal brand, among other things is their visual presentation of self things like their wardrobe, and what they wear right.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: We call this, how you show up.

How you show up.

Claire Fry: I love that we need a verbal equivalent of that. How you, how you sound up, how you hear! We’ll figure.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Somebody sent me an article today that they said, What is your verbal brand? And I was like, that’s just the implicit communication that we talk about in my boot camps, and coaching all the time related to your voice.

Claire Fry: oh, I love that. I love that. So if someone were to come, to you with you know they’d, they’d gone through and created a collage of this visual style that really resonated for them. And it was extremely sleek Japanese inspired minimalist. But it wasn’t a good fit for their body type. for example, right? So there’s the brand we want. And then there’s sort of the raw material that we’re working with. I’m curious. What what advice would you give under those circumstances.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So I would have gone back a step, and I would have said, You know, what are the themes? Right? So it it can include your geography. It it can include your, you know. As I said, your strengths and your passions, so I can’t imagine that you would end up identifying themes that are inconsistent with your physicality. Actually. So. So, by the way, your very question directly illustrates one of the biggest mistakes that I see people making, and it’s trying to communicate their brand before they’ve done the work of articulating it. And right they they go. They’re basically, if if you’re coming to me with your brand style guide. and you haven’t done the work of identifying what your what your brand is. You’re going to end up in trouble

right? Because it may be like you, said an aspirational visual aesthetic. That really is just something that you think is beautiful, but it has nothing to do with your unique brand.

Claire Fry: Oh, that is so cool! What a cool pro! I wanna go through that process with.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah, let’s do it.

Claire Fry: Quiet. Let’s do it. Let’s do it. Let’s do it at some point that sounds amazing.

So I think, similarly. what I think the equivalent here is that sometimes people come to me and they send me Youtube videos of Ceos. Ted speakers and say, I want to sound like that.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Hmm.

Claire Fry: Well. that belongs to them. That’s their verbal style. We cannot take that and transplant that on yours, because there are. There’s your instrument. There are physical limitations. There are all of these parts of our voice print right, and that might be things something like natural smile, or directness, or softness, or breathiness that could be an accent that could be the depth of your voice, the height of your voice, right like. There are all of these things about your voice. So rather than trying to make your voice do something like you, I always go back to the source which is the intention behind it.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Beautiful.

Claire Fry: Because what we find is that when you’re asking the right questions questions about who is my audience?

Who am I talking to? What’s my relationship to them. And what’s the main message I want to get across.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah.

Claire Fry: Your tone will follow every single time. So it’s not about creating some tone right to your point. This sort of external focused. This is what I want to sound like. It’s this is how I serve this message for these people.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yes.

Claire Fry: That’s going to be the most effective way every time. So we want to work from the inside out, not the outside in.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yes.

Claire Fry: Yeah, which I think resonates very much with what you were.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Very much, very much, Claire. I think you and I need to collaborate on this. There’s so much opportunity here. I feel like the sound of your voice, of your you keep saying instrument, the sound of your instrument as a voice could actually be, input to step one which is creating your brand. But then it also is part of step 2, right? Which is the communication. So it’s step one and step 2. I love that. That’s a that’s a big insight. There are probably other elements of your brand that are that way, too. Yeah, wow. So for example, your physical stature, right?

It is an input to your brand themes. But it also is then how you can reinforce and communicate your brand theme. So okay.

Claire Fry: And I think this speaks so much to this idea of authenticity that I think we’re always circling around in communication because people say, what’s okay? Well, what’s my authentic voice? Is that how I sound with my best girlfriends when we’re hanging out drinking wine together, and your authentic voice is not your lowest energy voice.

Do you know what I mean? Like those are not the same thing. So the metaphor I always use with people is, imagine your wardrobe so ideally. Everything in your wardrobe is something chosen by you that reflects to use your language that reflects your brand. But you’re going to pick different things for different occasions. So if you know you’re giving a keynote, you’re picking a different outfit than if you’re spending a day at the beach or going out to a concert with friends. Those are different outfits, but they come from the same wardrobe.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Beautiful.

Claire Fry: Same with voice. Right? We are using different aspects of voice that are suitable for different occasions. But it’s not inauthentic, right? That doesn’t make it fake that we’re switching our voice, depending on the context. That’s just picking the best tool for the job.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I love this metaphor. I have to be honest with you, Claire. It’s the second time I’ve heard the metaphor from a guest that I respected very much. The 1st time I heard this was from Ron Tite the author of this book think, do, say, and and other books as well. He brought that up when we were talking about personal branding. I love it in the context of using your voice.

Claire Fry: I love it well, 1st of all, I need to listen to that episode because I love it right like that means there’s something true. There, if a few of us are running around and have independently come to this idea because I’m a voice actor, I use the word modulated. So it’s modulating your voice for different.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Notifications.

Claire Fry: One example would be in voiceover, we treat radio scripts really differently from TV scripts. because in television or any visual medium. our voice is there to support the visuals? We are not the main attraction, but if it’s a radio spot. our voice is the whole shebang right? Like it’s the entirety of the delivery mechanism for the message. So the way you modulate your voice is really different for those 2 media.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay, before we get to the 3 rapid fire questions, I just want to conclude here by asking what I’m guessing a lot of people would would ask you in a coaching session, which is what’s the best way to prepare for a high stakes

event where I’m going to be on stage. I’m saying this in in air quotes it could be literally on stage behind a podium with a mic, or it might just be standing up in front of a group. Or it might even be. you know, when you’re called on in a really important meeting with important stakeholders around. what can we do to improve or optimize the sound of our voice when we’re in particular feeling nervous and anxious.

Claire Fry: Take a deep breath.

No, I know I no, I know like trying to find. I need to go to the Thesaurus and find other ways to say, Take but take a deep. It’s that especially so. I’m going to say this. I’m going to say there’s 2 different things here. One is that if it’s something that you’re preparing for, if you are going out on, if you’re giving a presentation, warm up your voice. do a voice Warmup, do some lip trills.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Hey!

Claire Fry: Do some yawns because you’ve got your content. You’ve got your slides. It does not benefit you to keep going over it over and over again. So take a break from all of that, and just do something to get in your body and get in your voice and know you’re doing something that’s going to help you sound better.

How great is that? That’s that’s like a that’s doing 2 for the price of one when we are on the spot when we’re asked a question. You know this fight flight or freeze right? The 1st thing that happens is we feel pressure to start talking right away. And what we have to learn to do is to fight that impulse.

Hmm, okay. we feel like, Oh, someone just asked me a question. And now I have to start talking right away, or I’m gonna look like I don’t know what I’m talking about, and we end up using more words with less impact instead of taking that beat and waiting to start talking until we feel ready. So yeah, taking the beat, taking the breath and warming up your voice whenever you have a chance to do so.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I love that. Okay? So take a deep breath. Trills yawns. You didn’t say, take a sip of water. I’m going to guess you assumed we were already well hydrated.

Claire Fry: I’m making that assumption. Yes.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay? And then when we when we’re in the moment, the power of pausing. And you know, I talked with someone about this recently, I said, there’s you know, this. This idea of the power pausing has become sort of a like a common thing that that people are sharing because we race to fill the silence. As you said, right, someone. All eyes are on you, and you feel like you need to fill that silence right away. Otherwise people are going to make assumptions that you don’t know what you’re saying. Blah blah! Right?

Actually, you will appear more confident if you nod and take a moment, and then people will like lean in. What is she going to say? Right.

Claire Fry: That’s the power move it really is. And then pausing at the end in voiceover we call it letting the dust settle. You know what that is, because you’ve heard it a million times. There are some things money can’t buy for everything else.

There’s mastercard right, and you give up. It’s the moment. Right? It’s that moment. And it’s so effective. And yeah, just give giving your words the weight that they deserve.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay, my friends at Mastercard are going to love that. You shared that, Claire. Amazing? All right, I’m going to move on to the 5 rapid fire questions. Now, are you ready?

Claire Fry: I’m ready.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Question number one, are you an introvert or an extrovert?

Claire Fry: Oh, I’m such an extrovert, but I’m an extrovert who doesn’t love talking about myself. I’m just endlessly curious about other people, so my husband will tell you I’m a nightmare to bring to a cocktail party, because I will. Just. My favorite place is a cocktail party, where I don’t know a single person there. I just walk up to people, and I just start asking questions. It’s it’s my favorite.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay. So, Claire, I’m also an extrovert. And and most people on the podcast usually tell me that they are an introvert, but they have become more extroverted that it’s this whole thing, anyway. I love that you are. I am an extrovert.

You also, I think, have a superpower based on what you just shared, because there’s research that shows that introverts are better listeners. But you shared that. You have this innate curiosity about people. So if you’re an extrovert. You’re you’re socially comfortable. You’re getting energized by being around people, and you’re probably asking them questions and listening. Amazing.

Claire Fry: I like that framing. I’ll take that.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Tell your husband, you have a superpower. Okay.

Claire Fry: Ha! Ha! It’s true, honey, I’m not a nightmare to bring to cocktail party.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: You can never.

Claire Fry: Get me out of there right? That’s the problem.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah, that’s awesome. Okay? Question number 2, what are your communication? Pet? Peeves?

Claire Fry: I really do not like it when people read something that has been written and they throw it away. So I, for example, if you. You would never do this. But if someone gave you their introduction to read, and you’re like. so Claire Fry is a communications coach who has worked with executives from lots of right. That reedy tone of voice, instead of putting in that little extra effort to bring it to life to make it sound like your words. Yeah, it drives me crazy when people don’t put in the effort to do that and just throw it away like it’s that Yada Yada kind of cadence.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So, Claire, you’re reminding me of a question that I get a lot that I have an opinion about. But I’d love to hear yours. It’s a little bit off topic from your voice per se. But what do you say about cue cards generally.

Claire Fry: I always encourage people to work off bullet points and not word for word scripts, and this is because I am a trained professional who has been doing this for 20 years, and it’s still hard for me to make a written script sound like a real person talking. That is a hard thing to do. so I encourage people to set themselves up for a scenario where they can stay on track where they have guidance, but they can use their own words and their own attunement to the audience to deliver the message the way it’s going to best be heard.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: You have no idea how happy that makes me, because that is exactly the answer that I say to the goal is not to get rid of the cue card. It’s to have the outline in front of you that you can reference if you need to. Yes, okay, okay. That wasn’t very rapid fire. But I’m really glad we went there. The 3rd and last rapid fire question, is there a book or a podcast or maybe both, that you find yourself recommending lately.

Claire Fry: Oh, that’s funny. People ask me this all the time, because everything everyone thinks I should not should have a podcast. But it’s strange that I don’t given that my medium is audio, and I do coaching. But I say, Matt, Abrahams is already making the podcast that I would make if I were to make one. So I just send people to him. So yes, the Matt Abrahams. I think it’s talk. Think fast, talk smart, yeah. fast talk smart. I just think there’s a i don’t agree with everyone he has on. I don’t even agree with everything that he says, but I just think it’s such an interesting and eclectic group of people talking about communication.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I got to get him on my podcast.

Okay, amazing.

And before I let you go, I just want to ask Claire, is there anything else you want to share with the talk about talk listeners, about optimizing the sounds of their voices.

Claire Fry: You know less about optimizing the sound of their voices, and more just an exhortation for people to sound like themselves. Hmm! Feel like that is the thing that I learned from doing voiceover training that inspired me to start this coaching practice. To begin with, which is your voice, is enough. It’s enough it is. You have everything that you need for it to do the job. You need it to do. So get out of your head. Stop worrying about what you’re supposed to sound like or what you think. Someone with this expertise should sound like and sound like yourself. but supported and strong and intentional.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Beautiful. Thank you so much, Claire. I learned a lot, and I had fun. Thank you.

Claire Fry: Oh, thank you so much for having me, Andrea. This was such a delight.

CLOSING

Isn’t Claire great? I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did.

OK – let me summarize now by reinforcing three main learnings that I hope you’ll take away with you from our conversation.

The first is the point that your best voice is YOUR best voice. (Not someone else’s)

Think about your voice print – the unique elements of your voice. Your voiceprint includes your pitch, your accent, your natural smile, your directness, your softness, your breathiness, the depth of your voice, the height of your voice, and a lot more.

(Claire talked about how her voice print has a natural smile in her voice)

When it comes to our voice, we want to work from the inside out, not the outside in.

Instead of trying to sound like someone else, we should focus on sounding like our best self. Hmm. Sounds familiar. This is exactly what I tell my clients when we’re working on their unique personal brand. Instead of copying others, focus on identifying YOUR unique strengths and passions.

SO for example, when it comes to your voice, If you’re a small person, your voice will sound different than someone with a barrel chest.

As Claire says: consider your instrument – don’t try to make a flute sound like an oboe.

So that’s the first thing – instead of trying to sound like someone else, we should seek to optimize our own best voice.

How do you do that? This is the second point.

Claire talked a lot about SUPPORTING our voice.

This, of course, is attained through our breathe. Deep breathing.

Using your diaphragm.

And depending on the context, also by smiling. People can hear your smile.

You can warm up your voice with a smile.

But of course, be careful you dont go too far.

Claire talked about how you can over-index on things – there’s a happy medium.

As an aside – that goes for just about all the communication skills advice you’ll hear

Sometimes it’s easy to over-index.

So that’s the second point – supporting your voice, primarily through breathe, and with other things like smiling.

The third and last point I want to reinforce is about optimizing your voice and your presence online. This was probably my favorite insight from my conversation with Claire. We discussed several things you can do to warm up, to optimize your voice when youre in an online meeting.

The main thing to consider here is that online is a flattening medium. When we’re online,things look and sound flat. Mediocre. Audio software brings down the peaks. In other words, it makes us monotone – and that goes for both audio and video. So – what should you do? You should amplify everything youre saying or doing online. For example:

use your voice – talk louder. Increase your personal volume.
outside the context of your voice, there’s also your facial expression – Online, we sometimes read neutral facial expression as as negative. SO what do we do? Replace your neutral face with a smile. That’s an easy fix!!!

We also referenced a few other online meeting hacks for you:

Invest in a microphone – the mic will pickup the nuance in your voice and help filter out all the other sounds around you. This is about optimizing the sound of your voice.
turn off our self-view – I LOVE Claire’s point here. Your self-view is distracting and not necessary. When’s the last time you walked into a meeting room and pulled out a mirror so you could watch yourself talk? Never. Exactly. SO turn of self-view. Focus on others.
When youre in an online meeting, put the audience (or speaker) as close to the camera as possible. If youre on a laptop, cenre the other person or the speak\er right below the camera light on your screen., That way it looks more like youre maintaining eye contact. Another easy fix!

And that is everything for this episode! Thanks again to Claire Fry. You can find all of Claire’s coordinates in the shownotes for this episode. And my coordinates are there too!

I’d love to hear from you. Please connect with me on LinkedIn and send me a DM there. Or you can conta0ct me through my website – talkabouttalk,com.

If you enjoyed this Talk About Talk podcast, please make sure you subscribe. And don’t forget – you can also WATCH Talk About Talk on our YouTube channel – yes, you can WATCH the Talk about Talk podcast!

Whether youre watching or listening, I want to say thank you for being here.

Talk soon!

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