In this concise 7‑minute interview, Professor Pete Alexander talks with Anthony Lee, founder of the Heroic Voice Academy and an executive communications coach. Lee explains that his firm prepares global impact leaders for high‑stakes speaking engagements—keynotes, TED talks, town halls, board meetings, and investor conversations. He shares the joy of seeing clients deliver confident, passionate presentations that earn standing ovations and post‑event engagement. Lee highlights the LinkedIn Emerging Jobs Report, noting that oral communication remains the biggest skill gap year after year, and argues that leaders who master speaking are best positioned for the future of work. He advises treating speaking like a competitive sport, training a "heroic voice" in a presentation gym, and measuring success through a Presentation ROI framework that tracks money (revenue, investment, grants), support (partnerships, policy influence), and reputation (media coverage, word‑of‑mouth). Lee recommends two speakers he admires: Dan Roam, who teaches visual storytelling through simple drawings, and T. Harv Eker, whose passionate, precise delivery exemplifies daily practice. He recounts his first job at a marine‑themed amusement park, where he learned an edutainment approach—combining education and entertainment—to make learning memorable, a principle he now applies at Heroic Voice Academy. He also mentions an early IBM internship. The episode closes with Lee’s website, www.heroicvoice.com, for listeners to learn more.
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This is Professor Pete Alexander with the Winning at Business and Life podcast, where C-suite executives share their insights. It is 6 questions in 7 minutes because successful business leaders are busy and rarely have more time to spare. So let's get to it. Question number 1: In a few sentences, please tell me who you are and what you do.
Thanks, Pete. Well, I'm an executive communications coach, and we at the Heroic Voice Academy We help global impact leaders prepare for their high-stakes speaking opportunities. Now these look like presentations, industry keynotes, TED Talks, company town halls, and board meetings. And it also includes conversations with investors, clients, journalists, and analysts.
Mm, Anthony, it's so great to have you on the show. Question number 2, what's the best thing about working in your industry?
Oh, there's a moment I love celebrating. So with the client, we put in hours and hours and hours of rehearsal. So of course they'll show up at an event, they're gonna deliver with confidence and precision and passion. And then the moment comes, they get that standing ovation, they walk off stage, and then there's crowd members that rush up to the stage wanting to continue that conversation. Ah, that's my impact, and I love seeing that over and over.
Oh, and I can feel it in your words, the passion you have, and it resonated with me too, the excitement about having a crowd crowd go wild. So question number 3: I have a book with all the answers for business. What chapter would you think most companies should read?
Pete, this chapter is being written every year by LinkedIn. They call it their Emerging Jobs Report, and in the report they cite, you know, what are the future jobs that are coming up, and they also cite the biggest skill gap. So year after year, the biggest skill gap is oral communication. So what that tells me is leaders who invest time to up-level and master oral communications, they're the best ones prepared for the future of work.
Mm, that's very insightful. Thank you for that. Question number 4: Other than the generic work harder, have a great attitude, and care for your customers, what advice or insight would you give to other business leaders?
Well, Pete, you and I, we love sports. So I would say consider treating speaking like a competitive sport, one where you can work and train as hard as a professional athlete. Now, it's interesting. When athletes get in the gym every day, one thing gets revealed— their abs. When you get into the gym every day— this is a presentation gym— one thing gets revealed. It's your heroic voice. This is a voice that has the power to create global impact. So that's the first thing, really, is speaking is a competitive sport. The second thing is a concept we call presentation ROI. Now often when I meet executives for the first time, I'll say, "How did your last presentation go?" And they'll give me a generic answer like, "Oh, I think I did great." But they really don't know how to detail that. And I say, that's a problem. You need to measure anything in order to get better. So for me, presentation ROI means, did you come back? Did you bring assets back to your company in the form of money, support, or reputation? And if I broke those down, money can come in the form of revenue, investment, grants, donation. We talk about support. There could be people raising their hands and say, can I join your company? Or partners, sponsors. Even these days, government officials who can write policy that paves the way for your product. That's support. And lastly, another RI item is reputation. So these are media members who write an article about you. These could be conference attendees who spread word of mouth. Oh, this person is such an amazing speaker, or impact, uh, leader, get them into your room or have a conversation. So when you come back with any one of those three elements, I say that you did a great job.
I couldn't agree with you more. And I especially like how you mentioned about the word of mouth, because when somebody refers you to another one of their peers, they've done the selling for you.
Absolutely.
Question number 5: What other executives like yourself would you like to acknowledge as a leader and invite to be on my podcast?
Mm, there's two that come to mind. One is Dan Roam, and he heads up something called the Napkin Academy. He wrote the book Back of the Napkin, and he is a gold medal teacher. And what he does is he teaches people how to teach and communicate just with simple drawings, stick figures and shapes. And that's something where a lot of that has gone missing in just our leadership, our presentations, where you see slides filled with words where it could be explained with a simple picture. So Dan Roam is one. Second one is T. Harv Eker. He is a gold medal speaker. When I saw him speak for the first time, he blew me away just in the passion, the connection, the precision. And I can watch his presentations over and over and over. There's so many good practices that he puts in every single time. He's someone that gets in the gym every day, and I love just watching his work over and over.
I think those are two great recommendations. Thank you so much. I'll reach out to them. And question number 6: please tell me about your first job.
When I was 16 years old, I worked at this amusement park. It's called Marine World Africa USA, and the one thing I learned there was there's a teaching strategy. We combine education and entertainment in one vehicle, then everything that day is memorable, right? You take it with you and you learn and you integrate, you apply it in your life. So Pete, I've been in your classrooms. You do this. You do this thing called edutainment, and that's something that we at the Heroic Voices Academy, we strive to do as well. In order for us to teach well, we need to incorporate this concept of edutainment.
And I think it's great that at 16 years old you got an opportunity to experience that firsthand.
Yeah, the, the other job would be where you and I met, which was our college internship, IBM, where we, we learned a lot of lessons and we caused a lot of shenanigans. Great times.
We don't have enough time on the show to, you know, to go back to that. So, Anthony, thank you so much for being on the show. How can people find you?
Very easy. Go to our website, www.heroicvoice.com.
Excellent. This is Professor Pete Alexander with the Winning at Business and Life podcast. For more insights and ideas, please go to LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, or iTunes and search for the Winning at Business and Life podcast. Thanks for listening.
