Success and The Power of the Voice � Part One
Transcription of interview with Roger Love November 14, 2011:
Douglas Goldstein, CFP�, Financial Planner & Investment Advisor
Roger Love is recognized as one of the leading authorities on voice. He has produced more
than a hundred million CD sales worldwide and written three top-selling books. He is
the most successful and most important coach to the stars. He has coached people like Jeff
Bridges, Colin Farrell, Suze Orman, and Dr. Laura Schlessinger.
Douglas Goldstein, financial planner & investment advisor, interviewed Love on Arutz Sheva Radio.
Douglas Goldstein: Why should I interview a voice coach on a business show?
Roger Love: Let�s start by saying that my whole world has been about sound and the sounds
that people make since I was about 16 years old. When I was 16, I was the voice coach
for the Beach Boys, the Jacksons, Stevie Wonder, and other mega superstars. Literally, as a
singing voice coach, my job was to help get whatever sound they needed out of their mouths
and to their audiences, on the records, CDs, or in performances. Those people might be
performing to 15,000 or 20,000 people, maybe millions of people with their art of singing.
I really stayed true to being a singing teacher for many years, but very famous speakers started
coming to me. They said they were having problems with their voices, they were losing their
voices, and they didn�t feel like they were communicating well with their audiences in
the best, most effective way. I then started a journey to take everything that I was teaching
my famous singers and to teach people how to speak, using all of those techniques. When
a singer gets up on stage, their job is to basically take control over the audience and
to move an audience emotionally. If I�m a singer and there�s my audience, I might
want to get them up to dance or I might want to get them thinking about the first time
they had their heart broken. I have some control over their perceptions and their actions like
clapping, standing, dancing, but most importantly I�m trying to influence them. I�m trying
to take them on a journey that I�ve pre-decided to take them on.
The same thing is actually true with speakers, and what happens is if you think of speakers,
if you think of financial planners, if you think of doctors, lawyers and teachers as
performers because when they open up their mouths, their audience of one, two, 10 or
50 is their audience and they are public speakers. They are actually performers because it�s
still sound coming out and they are talking to people. If your dog is your audience, he�s
your audience. If your client is your audience, they�re your audience and you are responsible
for the sounds that are coming out and for what people are thinking about you based on
those sounds.
There have been incredible statistics since the late 60s about when you and I have communication,
and what makes you believe the things that I say. The statistics say that only about
7% of the words that I use influence you to believe what I say as true, but that 38% of
whether you believe anything I say has to do with the tonality of my voice. The pitch,
the phase, the tone, and the melody of my voice is making you almost 40% believe or
not believe everything that I�m saying.
When you�re talking to a client or listeners on your show, 40% of whether or not they have
any interest at all in what you�re saying, whether or not you�re influencing them or
whether or not they believe you, has to do with tonality. And who�s great at tonality?
Singers. So why shouldn�t we learn everything that singers know about tonality so that when
I open my mouth, when you open your mouth, and when your listeners open their mouths,
they have so much more control over what people are thinking?
When I speak and you don�t know me, you�re immediately making value judgments about me.
You�re saying, �Is he intelligent? Is he someone that I want to spend time with?
How much money does he have in the bank? Is he married? What�s his portfolio like? Should
I be his financial advisor? Do I not want to be his financial advisor because he spends
all his money on sushi?� There are a million things you�re thinking about and you�re
making judgments about me and you don�t know me. It is to my interest to be in control
as much as I can of making you decide things about me that I�m in control of.
If I want to make you think that I�m the funniest guy in the world and I can do it,
more power to me. If I want you to think that I�m the most financially successful guy
in the world and you should listen to my advice, more power to me. I create tools to help speakers
learn what sounds are influencing people positively and what sounds they�re making are influencing
them negatively, and they need to get those out of their sound vocabulary.
Douglas Goldstein: A lot of times, when people tell you that you have
to be a good speaker, the critical thing is having a good speech writer or having a good
microphone. Isn�t that really more important?
Roger Love: No, because if you go with statistics, and I just mentioned this, the words you use
only count for 7% approximately of whether or not anyone believes you, wants to listen
to you, or gives you any attention.
Douglas Goldstein: Let�s say I�m sitting with a client to do a financial plan, and
I say, �I think that you should have 30% of your money in stocks and 70% of your money
in bonds.� Are you suggesting that those words are just kind of passing through, but
he�s more interested in how I�m presenting the idea to determine whether to actually
do it?
Roger Love: Exactly right. How you say, �I want you to have this much in stocks,� how
you say the word �stocks,� how that sentence sounds to that person immediately makes that
person think ,�Why would I do stocks?� or �Yes, stocks sound like a fantastic idea.�
Bonds, how I present what bonds sound like, what bonds sound like to me, and how the sentence
is constructed sound-wise that has the word �bond� in it, will convince you that it�s
a negative or a positive thing based on the sounds that I�m making. I know that sounds
far-fetched.
Don�t you have favorite singers that suddenly become really attractive when they are singing,
but if you saw them outside at the supermarket, you might not really want to kiss them on
the mouth, but something happens when they�re singing and they�re on stage and the lights
are on them and there�s an energy that transforms them. With some of the most famous actors
in the world, the most famous leading men, why don�t all of them look like Brad Pitt?
How did Tom Hanks make it through the cracks? How did Mickey Rooney make it through the
cracks? Because when they�re performing there is an energy that they create that makes
them appealing, and I�m an expert at helping people find those sounds to make, to find
the way of presenting who they are, what they are, and what they�re selling in a way that
makes them more appealing.
Douglas Goldstein: There�s this study that says that over 90% of the CEOs of Fortune
500 companies are over 6 feet tall. The point is that being very tall may be an indicator
of someone who�ll be successful. What you�re suggesting is that if someone could improve
his voice that somehow the voice has a magic to it, this allows the person to be more believable
and potentially more successful. Is that where we�re going?
Roger Love: I am 100%, and the heads of the companies, the CEOs that are tall, play into
the other statistic that I didn�t mention - 55% of whether or not someone perceives
you as believable is physiology, so they look at someone who is tall and without them saying
a word, they are immediately addressing in their own mind that that person might be strong,
that person is powerful, that person is bigger than life. But how many tall people, athletes
and strong people, have the puniest voices? The soccer player who talks like Michael Jackson
and you�re like, �Whoa!� and he is married to an ex-Spice Girl, or Mike Tyson, the boxer
and he talks like this and everybody is like, �How could you win any fights if you talk
like this?� I knew his career. His career only had a limited time frame because of his
voice. Who wants to listen to him talk? When he finished punching, he had no future in
the world of advertising.
Douglas Goldstein: Who is your favorite voice out there?
Roger Love: I have so many. I try not to have a favorite voice. I try to just deal with
the voice that I�m speaking to at this moment, and then listen so intently that I can figure
out what I can say to make it better.
Douglas Goldstein, CFP�, is the director of Profile Investment Services and the host
of the Goldstein on Gelt radio show (Monday nights at 7:00 PM on www.israelnationalradio.com.
He is a licensed financial professional both in the U.S. and Israel. Securities offered
through Portfolio Resources Group, Inc., Member FINRA, SIPC, MSRB, NFA, SIFMA. Accounts carried
by National Financial Services LLC. Member NYSE/SIPC, a Fidelity Investments company.
His book Building Wealth in Israel is available in bookstores, on the web, or can be ordered
at: www.profile-financial.com (02) 624-2788 or (03) 524-0942.
Disclaimer: This document is a transcription and/or an educational article. While it is
believed to be current and accurate, divergence from the original is to be expected. The original
podcast can be heard at https://sites.google.com/site/goldsteinradioshows/. All information on this website is purely
information and should not be used as the sole basis for making financial decisions.
The opinions rendered herein are those of the guests, and not necessarily those of Douglas
Goldstein, Profile Investment Services, Ltd., or Israel National News. Readers should consult
with a professional financial advisor before making any financial decisions. Please see
the complete disclaimer at https://sites.google.com/site/goldsteinradioshows/.