Ep. 288 YOUR VOICE WITH MILLIAN QUINTEROS

Hey there, Mark Brown. We haven't talked about this in a long time. In fact, I think we only have one podcast about it in our 288 episodes. But hey, it's time again to talk about your voice, your instrument, your tool. What happens if you get that huge speech and you wake up and you got no voice?

What do you do?

That's a good question. To find out, let's ask today's guest. Brilliant Quinteros.

Anyone can give a presentation. Few deliver unforgettable presentations. What's the difference? You're about to find out. Welcome to the unforgettable presentations podcast with your hosts, world champion speakers and coaches, Mark Brown.

Mark Brown, your life tells a story and there's someone out there who needs to hear it.

And Darren Lacroix.

Darren Lacroix.

Stage time. Stage time, Stage time.

Ready for some powerful presentation, AHAs, let's dive right in.

All right, Mark, so I want to dive right into the story. Let's get to this. And want to thank Cherie for recommending Million to us. It's just such an important tool that we have. And I was looking a little background research on you. I was impressed with the story. Well, not impressed with the story, but, you know, great stories come from great challenges. It began as a seemingly common cold and a bout of laryngitis that was a life changing ordeal for you. Okay, I gotta know. We gotta hear the story.

Well, if you are in a situation where you're someone that uses your voice, where you're, you know, speaker, a coach, a presenter, pastor, anything like that, and you wake up one day and you don't have that voice anymore, the question becomes, now what? And so, well, that's what I've unfortunately had to figure out. But fortunately, because now I've sort of parlayed that into, into helping others that to avoid, you know, what I had to go through. So it was around the time of June of 23 where it really got bad. Now we can trace it back a couple years with a couple things which I have theories on, but I don't have full, you know, confirmation on it. So starting at about June into May, June of 2023, I started to have a situation where when I would go somewhere, like to a store or to anywhere, and I would try to have a conversation, anything above like an average speaking volume, my throat would start to get really fatigued and not sore, but it would just hurt. And I was like, okay, I work a lot, I speak a lot, could be anything. So as it started to progress What I was noticing was I went through, like, regular cold, all the symptoms and everything. And then as June was coming on, it was getting worse and worse, and it was getting to the point where I could barely work. So as I was getting scripts and things to record, I really had to force it out as much as I could. And if you were to listen to anything I recorded around that time, you can hear it. But a lot of production, lot of software, a lot of, you know, bulking up of things. Eq, we gotta do what we gotta do here. And so the culmination of it came, and especially for people here in Vegas, when our Golden Knights won the Stanley cup, which I'm a huge hockey fan, so it was a big deal for me. And they won it on my birthday, which was even better.

Nice, great gift.

It was a beautiful. One of the beautiful gifts I got. One of the not so good gifts I got was losing my voice. And I'm like, okay, this is. This is weird. I was trying to. You know, we were in our house watching. I was trying to cheer and scream, and I just couldn't. Like, nothing was coming out. I was like, good. So, you know, let it ride for a little bit. And then I. My son and I, we went down to the parade downtown. That was crazy. And I wanted to scream and cheer and be rowdy, but I had to stay quiet the whole time because nothing was coming. It was literally air coming out. And I'm like, okay, this is not good, but maybe a whisper just to communicate, but it was that, and it was hurting, and it was just like a throbbing ache that was just always there. And so when that was all done and I got kind of back into work, I went over to one of the urgent cares and I said, look, I need some steroids. I need a shot of something. And, you know, for singers and stuff like that, there's a big performance community here, so they're very accustomed to that. So people get shots of what's called dexamethasone. I got some of that. I got the cortisone pills, the whole dealy, and it was coming back a little bit, but it was just such a harshness, such a. Just a chore to try to get anything out. And it lingered forever. And I'm like, oh, this is not good. So over the course of the next few months, I finally went to. I go to the ENT once a year. I get that scope where they look at your vocal cords and all that stuff. And by the time I finally started figuring out what was going on. It was maybe a year or so later. And after all the tests, we did CT scans and we did scopes and we. We did all this stuff. He says, well, I think it's something muscular. And I'm like, okay, that doesn't tell me anything. I mean, now, on the good side of it, it wasn't anything, like, detrimental or life threatening, you know, that's. That's the good part of it. Now what? And I'm like, okay. So over the course of that year, year and a half, as I was trying to just recoup, I was doing voice rest and all the usual stuff, you know, tea with lemon, like they tell you to do, which we discuss that. But it finally got to a situation where I asked my ent. I said, what else can we do? And he says, well, let me send you to voice therapy. And I'm like, I never even heard of that. I didn't know that was a thing. And I'm like, okay. So I went to voice therapy and I had an incredible therapist that was showing me, like, exercises and techniques. Now, I've been singing since I'm 18 years old. I'm 48 now, so I got three decades of this stuff. And I started learning stuff that I actually never even knew existed. I was like, this is kind of cool. And as I started to do it, it's one of those things, you know, you want an instant fix, but in those cases, you just can't get it. So I was starting this therapy, and the therapist says to me, she goes, oh, yeah, your doctor diagnosed you. I'm like, you didn't tell me that. What? And she prints out this paper and hands it to me, and she goes, yeah, you have something called mtd. I'm like, what? Mtd, Muscle tension dysphonia. Now, dysphonia is a condition where it's like a strain on the voice that causes, like, a chronic form of an irritation or a dysfunction in your vocal cords, your throat, whatever. Muscle tension, meaning it was muscular related. Because that's what he said. He just didn't clarify to me what it meant. And it's. What the concept is, is that when your voice kind of goes out, you know, you force it, trying to get it to work. Well, when there's tension and you force more tension on it, it just creates more and more trouble. And so when you do that too much, it sort of becomes, at that point, a chronic situation. It's sort of like if you have an injury and you get a spasm that never goes away, like those kind of things. So it was something muscular, something related to that, which we couldn't figure out. But it wasn't until I started the voice therapy that not only I learned I had a diagnosis, which was great. But then I also started learning techniques that were very common to what I was doing in, like, voice training and singing over the years, but then a whole new series of things that I never knew before. And so I've been implementing those, and I've been just trying to be good about it and just stay on it. And the best way I could put it is, is that my voice is probably back about maybe 80%. It's. I'm certainly not at 100. I'm certainly not where I want to be. I mean, I'm talking now. I'm getting, like, a little tightness right in this area here. It's. It's kind of bugging me a little bit. But, you know, I've learned how to manage it. I know what it feels like. I know my limits. And so it just got to the point where once I started figuring all this, I said, you know, I can't be the only person dealing with this. And in my work that I do, I deal with podcasters because I do audio editing, I'm a producer, I do voiceover stuff. And as I was doing this, I said, I can't be the only one that deals with this. And I know a lot of speakers and coaches, podcasters, so on and so forth, including our friend Shuri. And I said to myself, okay, what happens? You know, you do all this work, especially as coaches and speakers, you know, this. You talk to people all the time. You're doing these zoom calls. You get up on stage or, you know, you wake up that morning to get on the stage to give your TED Talk, and you can't even talk. Now what? You know, now we're back to that. And so I said, okay, what I want to do is, like, a lot of people that go through things, I wanted to make sure that I can show people what to do so that you don't have to go through what I did. It's always one of those cases where you say, well, it's not going to happen to me. It's ridiculous. But guess what? It happened to me. I was like, okay. And you always hear people say that. Well, there's my example of that. So. And you don't realize your voice is a huge part of your identity. It's a huge part of your personality. And one of the topics or I Guess slogans or mottos that I've sort of adopted, that I've heard before is that the voice is the symphony of the heart. And what that means is, is that when you listen to someone speak, there's about 10, 12 different layers of stuff that you can actually hear within the voice. Whether it's tone, pitch, the words they're using, the strength, the projection. There's so many different things. And when you listen to someone long enough, you can sort of get like, almost like a discernment about who they are, what they are, what's going on. You could start to read a person by hearing what they have to say. And it's kind of fascinating once you start listening to it. So I train people on not so much like, I don't teach you to sing or speak. You know, you have a measure of how to do that already. I teach you how to care for your voice so you don't have to go through what I went through, and you don't have to deal with pain and discomfort. And that when you speak, you have that authority, that projection. You know, there's. There's techniques to draw people in. There's all these different things you can do in combination with training and maintenance. Yeah, so what I teach people is how to not so much speak or sing or, you know, I can teach you that, but that's not what I do. What my thing is. I want you to take your voice, that your money maker. I want to protect that for you. I want to make sure that you do not lose it. You do not go through what I go through. And you don't have those kind of struggles and pain and discomfort and wondering, where do I go from here? So that's kind of what I teach as far as coaching. And so I've circled the airport a couple times, but that's the landing thing for you.

Interesting. I got a question for you, Million, because you're talking about caring for our voices. Have you found there is a common denominator of what speakers, preachers, singers, performers, voiceover artists do? That's bad for our voices, but we don't realize we're doing it tons.

I could go on all day about it. But you have to understand, if you're going to be a professional, you have to do professional things. If you're going to be a professional speaker, you have to be a professional at it. And what I mean by that is, if you are a professional athlete, you would have to go to practice, you would have to go to the gym, you would have to eat properly, you would have to take care of yourself. There's a whole series of things you have to do to be a professional and maintain that level. Well, all these people that you had just mentioned, nobody does warmups, nobody does cool downs, nobody does off air maintenance. Nobody does in between. Like, let's say you take a commercial break on your podcast. No one is sitting there with like, like, I have a metal straw here, which we do called straw phonation. We do phonation exercises. It's like a back pressure that takes pressure off your vocal cords and your. Nobody's doing that is what I'm saying. So that's a common thing. Nobody is treating the professional voice as professional as they probably could, which is hoping to change for people. You know, this, this is going to be your job, your career, your, you know, legacy you leave behind. Make sure you're keeping it. And then there's other things. You know, there's a lot of environmental stuff. The, you know, here in Vegas, we have a lot of dust in the air. There's allergies that can get ahold of you. You know, there's ways of treating that. You do sinus flushes. You could take medications for that. Depending on what your doctor tells you. Drinking alcohol is huge. Alcohol will tear up your vocal cords if caffeine will tear up your vocal cords. Everybody loves their coffee these days, myself included. And I'm not saying you can't do it. I'm saying that there's ways that I teach you to kind of offset it. If you're going to have some drinks, if you're going to have some coffee, there's a way to offset that. So it's just daily habits that could be integrated that will fix that problem. But there are so many different things. But right off the top of my head, those are probably the two main ones I would say.

And if I were to say there was one massive, major mistake we talk about in our Speaking, the top 10 mistakes for speakers. Is there a number one big mistake presenters make with regard to their voice in terms of are we too strident? Do we try to yell too much, do we push too hard, do we speak out of our throat? Or is there one particular common activity that you say, I can tell you're.

Doing that usually because I've become so in tune to muscle issues because of the condition I was dealing with. Muscle positioning and posture would probably be the first thing I would look at.

Posture.

Oh, wow. Because that, you have to understand there's about a hundred muscles involved in generating a voice to get your voice out, you get about a hundred things top to bottom going on. And it's like a chain. You get one link in that chain that starts going a little wonky. Everything gets out of, out of alignment. When things are out of alignment and you start pushing and forcing and doing projection like you're talking about, you're running a risk of having something go wrong. And it's like, can you get away with it? Sure, you do it all the time, but you know what happens when your number comes up? You never know. So it's always best to err on the side of getting into good habits. With posture, positioning, breathing, which is a big part of what I teach, and using all that, it becomes muscle memory after a while, once that muscle memory locks in, then, you know, it starts becoming more second nature to you. And then that way you start to avoid more of those issues than if you're just kind of, you know, going out there guns blazing, so to speak.

Well, I'll give you one follow up question before Darren asks this question. It's this regarding posture, some individuals as presenters, we were in the virtual world for several years thanks to, no, thanks to Covid. We got used to sitting and some people would still stand. And is there any particular different advice for those who stand to present or those who spend their whole day at a desk doing podcasting?

Regarding posture, the general consensus is that you lose about 20% of your power when you sit, so you a little more power standing up. Okay, now if you are a singer, now if you read my, my bio and all that, when I was 18 years old, I started training as a heavy metal singer from the 80s 90s. Okay, so all those super high screamy notes that you've heard people do, that's. I wanted to learn how to do that and I learned how to do it. Would I ever sit down and do those notes? Not a chance. I stand up for those. Otherwise it's just not coming out. When you're podcasting and when you're speaking, you have some dynamics at play here. And what I mean by that is you have a microphone here. You don't necessarily have to project. And what I mean is, is that if you don't feel like projecting, you just get up nice and close on.

The mic and you can be proximity, right? Get real close.

Or if you, if you got a shout and you want to, you have to get away from mike so you, by using mic technique, you can offset some of that. So you can, you can lose 20% of power because you're not belting out crazy high notes singing. You're just speaking, which is fine. And so we're just having conversation volumes. Conversation levels. Yeah. I mean, I personally don't feel it makes that big of a difference. When I do voiceover work, I do sit down myself. There are times where if I have to do something kind of crazy, I will stand up, but for the most part, I sit. Because that 20% is not enough to throw off the product. If. So, it's. You just kind of have to gauge what you're. What you're trying to do and, you know, just 20%. Wow. About 20 to 30%, depending on who you ask.

And did you ever learn what caused your condition? Like, were there things you were doing that were wrong? Did you smoke a pack a day followed by a case of beer a day? Like, did you ever discover that?

Well, we're gonna get into some crazy territory here, and I'll tell you a funny story about it. In 2019, I became very, very sick. And it was for about a month. I'm not kidding. It was probably the worst sick I've ever been in my life. I had to take care of one of my sons, and we were places. I don't even remember how I drove home. It was just. I didn't have a fever. I was just completely whacked out for some reason, I didn't know. And in 2019, they were calling it the Vegas flu. And it was from the trade shows. There were people coming from all over the. All the world to the convention centers and all that, and everybody was going home sick as dogs. Well, turns out that as that came along, that started to become known as Covid. I was like, oh. So that first wave that came in, I apparently got hit with that. When that happened, I noticed that after that, my voice was never quite the same, and I couldn't quite pinpoint what it was. There was something. I couldn't figure it out. Anytime I went for my ent, Annual visits, nothing. Everything good, healthy. And I'm like, just something. And so as time went on, every time subsequent to that, that I got sick, it would always go right to my vocal cords, which it never used to do. So what my theory is, just my opinion, was that that particular strain of COVID attacked the vocal cord area, for whatever reason, made it a little vulnerable. And as time went on, whenever I would get into those states, because it's been my whole life, if it ever. If I ever had voice problems, I would just kind of work through Them well, over that couple years, as I was working through them and during that pandemic time, as you were saying, I had more work than I knew what to do with because everybody was home writing books and writing YouTube videos and stuff and they were sending them to me to narrate and I was like.

You'Re the guy who business picked up for. You're the one guy.

Was the one guy. Yeah, that was my best like year ever. I was like, let's do this. And I'm an introvert, I never leave the house anyway, so it's like double, you know, it was working out for me. So anyway, as I was figuring this out, it's, it's sort of like Steve Jobs says, you know how you can't connect the dots looking forward, you always got to kind of like look back at them. And as I'm looking back, connecting these dots, I, I personally think that played a role in it. I don't, I can't say for sure. I can't get confirmation. You can't get a straight answer from anybody on anything it seems. But if I had to guess there was a factor of that and then subsequently as it would get sick, as I would get sick, I would work through it and then, you know, you just reach a critical mass where it, you know, it just gives in. And here we are. So that was very uncomfortable. Year and a half and I'm still again, not fully back yet, but we're coming up on maybe a two year period whenever, you know, June 23rd till now. We're, we're coming up on it. So here we are, here we are.

And what are some of the exercises that you recommend? I know if you're listening to this and you want some specific help, please, we'll give his website later, millions million speaks.com but for now, what's a couple of tips that you could give us that could be helpful to warm up our voice? Me, me, me, me, me. Because that's who me or you all speakers. It's about me me me me me indeed.

Yeah, those are common exercises, but they do different things. That, that sort of, that staccato burst, that ba ba ba ba ba me me me me that thing.

Yeah.

It has a different function than what I would start you with, which is always a gentle hum. So when you wake up in the morning, wherever it's natural, wherever it easily falls and don't push it, don't go too high, too low, just. And you pair that with what's called diaphragmatic breathing. Which is what we were alluding to earlier. Diaphragmatic breathing is low, deep breaths in the belly as opposed to up in the upper chest area. There's a couple different, what they call voice placements and ear placements you can do. Like you can fill the air in the diaphragmatic area. You can fill it along the sides of the lungs, which is called the intercostal area. You can go in the upper chest area. You get the most power and support from diaphragmatic belly breathing. So it's sort of an inhale into that area, gives you the support through the mouth always. And then. And you want to hum in such a way where your entire nose, mouth, everything is buzzing and vibrating.

The mask, the whole mess.

Exactly, yeah. After a while you start scratching and all that stuff. But that's what you want to do. That's how you want to start that. So a gentle hum is always good. If in the morning you're getting ready and you take in a hot shower and there's a lot of steam, that is the best place to do it because you're just covered by steam, humidity. And you don't have to take any extra time to practice because you're already in the shower, washing, doing what you got to do. There's no real effort adding a measure, you know, scrubbing your hair and whatnot. So that's a real easy one. The steam helps. The heat will loosen things up. It'll just add to it. So the humming is always an easy. And if you're driving along, just hum to your favorite song on the radio. If you're getting ready to do a speech or a TED Talk or a presentation or whatever, just, just comfortable wherever you are, just move things around right out of the mask for you.

What about this idea of hydrating with water? Room temperature, warm water. I know in China they don't drink ice. There's no ice in China. You're going to ask for it. And they normally have warm water. Is there any thought regarding how the voice responds to room temp, warm water, cool water, or none of the above?

Absolutely. What I always recommend is room temperature water all the time as your go to. When we talked earlier about alcohol, when we talked about coffee, caffeine, all those things, what I generally tell people. There you go. See, I'm proud of you already, man. This is, this is one. My job here is done. Room temperature is your go to now. Just like in sports injuries, for instance, there's a time that you ice. There's a time that you Heat. There's a time you do all these things. Room temperature is what you want because your body's always trying to reach that equilibrium. Like with a room temperature, you know, whether you get there or not is another story. But it's always striving for it. And so you want to make it as easy on your vocal cords as possible. Room temperature, relatively inert. It's not going to move the needle either way, but it is going to give you the hydration, which is what you want. Hydration is the key to everything, especially if you lose your voice. If you have a speed or something coming up and your voice is getting a little rough, just start pounding. Room temperature water as much as you can. Palate. Hot water is hot is soothing. And what that means is if you have a sore throat and things are burning and it's that. That's when you use the hot liquids because. And not even really hot, like just above warm, because you don't want to burn your throat either. So warm is soothing. So if you're having those kind of problems, you know, it's kind of cool. If you're ever in a situation where like. Like, let's say I got like a. I get a cold or something and my throat is on fire from just being sick, it's pretty clear I'm not going to be speaking and working and all that stuff. I'll just be on voice rest. What I might do is have somebody bring me home like a Slurpee or a Slushy or an Icee or something like that. And that ice cold will take some of the edge off of that burn. It's sort of like if, when, you know, you first get injured and there's a little bit of swelling, you put ice on it. If it's a chronic injury and it needs to loosen up, you put heat on it. If you're just working out, you just warm up, you know, you just stretch and move around. So you kind of think of it in that regard. It depends what you're trying to treat. If it's general maintenance, always room temp is my suggestion for it.

And what do you think of now? Obviously, we want you here. You're the pro. We want your transparent, honest, authentic opinion. What is your take on, like, enter the entertainer's secret, like the spray.

Love it. I've been using that since I started training. Since I'm 18 years old. I have. I use that. I actually I was. I did a radio project about 15, 20 years ago, and the owner of the company at the time I reached out to him and he actually sponsored us for a while, so. Oh, wow. So was I told him, I said, I've been using your product my whole singing career and all that stuff. So entertain called Entertainer's Secret.

Yeah, I've heard of Slippery Elm. I've heard of different kinds of sprays, but you like Entertainers Secret. You use a phrase earlier, but voice rest. And I recall going to an event here in Macon, Georgia, where I am, and they had brought in this, these three singers from Las Vegas for Valentine's Ball. And the lead singer, who came in hours early, he chose to communicate with notes the whole day. He would not speak until it was showtime. I'd not seen that before. And to me, that's voice rest at a high level on game day. Any thoughts on what we can do after traveling, particularly being in an airplane for seven or eight hours, getting on the ground, different time zone, different location, different elevation? What do we do after flying for a keynote? Are there any tips that we should follow immediately to make sure we're on at showtime?

First and foremost, if possible, get there maybe an extra day early if you can, as much time as you can for a variety of reasons. When you first get up to go travel, you know as well as I do that getting to the airport, getting through tsa, get it waiting is ridiculous. And you know the stress that causes. I mean, let's start there. Stress. What's. What is stress going to do? What does stress do on a human voice? You can tell. You can hear when someone's upset. You can hear exactly someone. Tension, tension. It tenses up. Excuse me. And again, like my condition, muscle tension dysfunction, I'm very acutely aware of that kind of stuff. So the stress of traveling and getting around is going to be step one, number two, you get on an airplane, the air that's in an airplane is that recycled air, which is super dry. So that is going to just dry everything out for you. So number two, third, you have no clue, the other couple hundred people on that plane, what's flying in the air between them. You don't know who is, who is sick, who has allergies, who was smoking something before you got there. You don't know. There's things in the air, okay, Altitude. That altitude is going to change. It's going to change the air. It's going to change some of the pressure. You feel the pressure in your ears, ear, nose, throats, all connected. Pressure is going to change things. You got a lot of factors here. And if you try to tell the stewardess. Yes, I'll take a Dr. Pepper please. You have to speak over the droning of those engines which you got to project in those conditions. So now you got a whole nother thing working against you. You, if you're going to sit up there drinking alcohol like I said earlier, couple that with everything else. Now we got more dehydration coming on top of it. A lot of people when from the pressure, you know, especially longer flights, people get like weird conditions from that. You got to stretch and move around, you got to keep blood flow. If the blood flow is not as nice as you like to that area, you're going to have more problems. Especially if it's a long flight. The more hours you're up there, the more these things compound. Then you get down on the ground and you go for from let's say you're used to somewhere humid like Florida for instance, and you end up in Denver, you know, a mile high up now it's hard to breathe, number one, which breathing is key to support everything. If the air is different, the oxygen level is different, that factors in. You have to acclimate to your area first before you do that. When you get into your hotel, if there's a hot tub, I would get in that thing. I'd be in that steam and that bubble and everything. Let the body warm up, you know, relax down, pound in that room temperature water all day long. I would stay away from alcohol. Coffee if you can. I little bit of a hypocrite because I wouldn't. But maybe you can. I don't know, maybe you're better than me at that. But if you have to. For every cup of coffee, one cup of room temperature water, go one for one. Oh wow. Hydrated at that. So. And for every one ounce of alcohol you decide to drink just one eight ounce cup of room temp water just to offset it and then acclimate the voice rest as you were saying earlier. Yes. Don't talk if you don't have to. It's very much again you're a professional, much like a professional athlete. Every athlete has like their own quirks of how they do things. You know, they have rituals, they have superstitions, they have just ways that they're used to doing things. If you do voice rest and you literally don't speak for a day or two, I've done it, you know, I tend to talk a lot so it's hard for me but I've done it. Or even in a pinch, a couple hours of not speaking again, sitting in that hot tub, or if you're in a hotel, draw a hot bath and just sit in there, run the shower, get the room steamy, just do that kind of stuff. If you have a humidifier, bring it, breathe that in there. Whatever you can do. All these different things are going to just make it better for you. So that's what I would recommend. Get there early. Try to acclimate wherever the location is. If you can get to your location where you're going to be speaking, see what the air quality is like in there, because there's catering in a restaurant, there's going to be fumes in the air, there's going to be food smells, there's going to be things, you know, it's just stuff, just the things you may not think about. So preparation, you know, proper preparation prevents poor performance. The five p's, they always say. So that's. That's part of it. Again, you're going to be a pro. You've got to do pro things. And that's, you know, maybe a little, I don't know, maybe a little over the top. Maybe a little bit of a kind of prima donna ish. But that's, you know, why these people become the elite, because they do this kind of stuff.

One last bit on temperatures. Because we have different hotel room temperatures. You might walk in, it's set to 68 degrees Fahrenheit and you like it cold, or you wanted 75. Do you make any recommendations? Going to hotels about a median temperature, that can be helpful to our voices and prevent us from being, you know, harmed. Harmed by that.

Wherever you're going to speak. And this kind of goes back to what I was saying about trying to get there early and trying to acclimate to the location. If it's a temperature you're not really comfortable with and you have no control over it, you're gonna have to get there early and start doing your adaptation to it. And this is where, like, I'll. In my courses, I'll teach the breathing part of it, you know, you will do your. You may have heard the term box breathing. I teach a variation of that called triangle breath, which is for doing these exercises. And you'll do your exercises, you'll do your warmups, you'll do that like backstage in the green room, wherever you might be in that environment. Because while it may not be what you want, at least it's going to acclimate you as much as you possibly can get to that environment. You know, you want to. Your body's always Pulling towards that homeostasis. And you want to get into that as early, as soon and as effectively as possible. So get in the game. You know that it's like when. It's like when they talk about sports. Sports is like, oh, he's the first one at the arena. He's the last one. You got to be that person. That's the way it is.

Yeah. Mark, the room temperature at a hotel room may depend on if your partner or spouse is with you.

Oh, yeah.

Well, not only that, also in the meeting room. I should have clarified that in the meeting room because sometimes you walk in, it's freezing in here. Oh, it's hot in here. And you find out a half hour before you speak. And if you can get there early enough as. As Million says to activate, that's really, really helpful. Thank you. Thank you so much, Million. I mean, it's advice is. Is just eye opening, and I really appreciate it, man.

And all these years, I thought I was an introvert.

Turns out you're on voice rest, my man. Right there. Get your own little deck of cards made. You just say anything you need and deal. Just deal them out, whatever you want. We're in Vegas, right? Just deal out the cards.

There you go. If you're listening to the podcast, that is held up a sign. I'm on voice rest. I always thought I was an introvert. No, I'm just on voice rest. So there you go.

See, the nice part about that is I get to have an excuse now to be an introvert because I'm like.

Oh, I'm using it.

I'm blowing for voice rest. Sorry.

Million said, I'd love to go to the Social, but I'm on voice rest.

I can't.

Sorry.

I got a big speech coming up. I got a podcast. Got a thing.

I'm sorry, Mark, any final questions as we wind it down?

Yes.

No. You have to always have the key question to ask. I'm going to compile my notes while you ask the key question.

So as Mark compiles his notes, so little slightly different question from you, Million, because your expertise lies in a different area than the average speaker we have on here. But it's critical. And thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for being here. For sure. You're sitting down with somebody for coffee. They have a speech that day. They lost their voice. It's a huge speech with their biggest paycheck of their career. What do you tell them?

Oh, boy. How long till the speech is the first question.

They just woke up that morning it's after lunch. How's that?

Oh, boy. Okay, we got. We got some work to do. First thing I'm doing is getting that coffee out of their hand, because that's not going to help. What? Yeah, I'm sorry. You're gonna make. You got everything in life is a trade off. You got to make this.

There you go. There's consequences.

Trade that one off. So I get rid of that coffee. I'm gonna get you on your room temperature water, first and foremost. Now, a secret little trick, and I teach this. I sort of have two courses. And first off, let me just say again, thank you for letting me come spend time and talking with you. I definitely appreciate that. I have one course. I call it the initial Vocal assessment and training. Now, anybody that's listening, you guys, everybody's welcome to do it. It's a free course. It's 30 minutes. All you got to do is sign up and we just meet on Zoom and I show you stuff. If that works out for you and you like it and you want to kind of go to this next level like we're talking about, then I have an advanced vocal care session. And in that session, I teach a whole series of, like, warm ups and mid range stuff and cooldowns and all that stuff. And one of the things I teach is called straw phonation. And here I have this metal drinking straw. I don't know if you can see it. So bought a pack of these straws and they're, you know, about the size of a standard straw. The one that's. There you go. And the one that's not like, you know, the one you drink boba tea that's like this big. Don't use that.

Yeah, yeah, stir.

That's a little more narrow. Maybe that's better. Since we're in a coffee shop having coffee, I'm gonna probably grab a coffee stirrer. And then what you would do is you would take the straw just like you would. You're gonna take a nice deep diaphragmatic breath, and you're gonna breathe out air in such a way where it starts creating pressure in the cheeks like you're playing a trumpet, right? Force that air out just with no sound. Okay. Just like that for those on the video part. Then once you have sort of that back pressure is going to start taking. Relaxing the vocal cords. That's what straw formation is in part for. Then what I'm going to have you do is that same exercise, but now adding the hum in there.

Okay.

And through the courses, I'm going to teach you how to open the larynx up. I'm going to teach you how to place the diaphragmatic breath. I'm going to teach you how to keep the muscles calm. And then what we're probably going to do is start getting into more warm liquids because we want some soothing. Like if you're having, like a sore throat, for instance, I'm going to get you on. And people say, well, tea with lemon, just warm water, it's all you need. Because we don't know if you. We don't know the tea blend that they have. You might have a little allergy somewhere. You don't know. And they got a whole bunch of mucus coming out of you. You don't want that. You don't want to put milk in that because milk can cause issues if you're one of those people that are sensitive to it. Artificial sweeteners, I love them. But if your throat hurts, they're not always the best thing. So I would just give you warm water. I would just have you do the straw exercises. I'd have you do the gentle humming things like that. And then psychologically, what I'd have you do, if you have your speech, like, written out or prepared or whatever, instead of having you go on stage and doing this big energetic thing, we're going to make it more dramatic. We're going to get up on the microphone because I may not be able to project with the throat condition that we're discussing here, but with what I do have, we're going to make it work. So we may get up real close on the mic and we may be real dramatic about what we're talking about. And maybe since we're starting to get a little hoarse, we're going to use vocal fry and we're going to really make sense up with this and we're gonna hit this one, you know, stuff like that. So I would have you do some mic technique. I'd have you do some voice placement changes. I'd have you do the straw phonation. I'd have. We'd have a busy morning is all I'm saying. From the time that coffee is served until you walk on stage, we're doing stuff, you know, so desperate times call for desperate measures. And this is the speech of your life. We got it. We gotta. We gotta do it.

Yeah. One of my first thoughts just on. Based on what you said would be to ask, don't use a lapel mic. Don't use a handheld. Go for the countryman. And get it right up on your lips. Might be something that's super helpful in line with that.

Yeah, I'm not a personal fan of lav mics that much because, you know, down here where it's kind of resonating out of your throat, you're get, you're missing a lot of quality up here with the, you know, the boom mics, they're a little better. My personal preference is always like a mic on a stand because, you know, can really get up close on it or you can project back here and you know, so I'm being like a podcaster and voiceover. I'm big on, you know, mic techniques, so that's my personal thing. But all those options that you mentioned, they can all, they can all have their place.

And if you're taking a listen to this, you want to know more. You want to check out his free program, Million Speaks. M I L L I A N speaks dot com. That's his one sheet and here's his website, millionspeaks dot com. So, Mark Brown, what do we got for keepers here?

You do it Millions way. It's, it's M I double L I A N, right?

Yes.

And it's at Million Speaks on social media as well. We found out from Million that the voice is the symphony of the heart. How's that sound? Pretty good.

I love it. Beautiful. One more time. Nice deep breath. Open the throat like you're about to yawn. Give me the nice, good. One more time.

The voice is the symphony of the heart.

There it is.

He likes it. Okay, here you go.

The difference now. Nice and easy.

Yes, yes. And he also told us in different words that the voice can tell people who you are. We must treat our voices as professionals do. We must do warm ups and cool downs. Avoid alcohol and caffeine. Adopt proper posture because we lose 20% of our power when we're seated. If possible, stand as often as possible. Use breathing techniques, particularly what we call diaphragmatic breathing. Many of us tend to breathe from our chest. From our diaphragm will be helpful. A gentle hum first thing in the morning is always helpful. And there's power in a steamy shower. That's my paraphrase. Like it?

I like it. I like it.

Yeah. Million recommends drink room temperature water because hydration is key for anyone whose voice is their instrument. Use super warm liquids to soothe the voice. And when traveling, arrive a day early to acclimate. Be aware of the concerns of airports and individuals on planes who have viruses and other concerns. If you have to have coffee. Darren, balance one cup of water for one cup of coffee. Use traw phonation to soothe the voice when under stress. But take care of your voice. Be professional because your voice needs to be heard. That's what I got from Million today. Thank you, Melian, thank you.

I appreciate it.

Million, thanks for being here. If you're listening to this, we hope you join us for Game Changers in Las Vegas, April 4th and 5th. Coming up, the one time we bring our whole faculty into town, we'll have to have you stop by Million. We love what we get to do, but if you're on stage and you have no voice, you'll be unforgettable but for the wrong reason. Mark Brown, take us home.

Thanks again, Million. Your voice is your instrument. And friends, if you treat your voice well, you're on your way to being unforgettable. We'll see you next week.

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