Nobody is born good on camera

This is the first one of these, and here is the deal: one idea a week, one thing worth reading, one thing you can use before the weekend. Five minutes.

Nobody is born good on camera. Live television scared me, and none of what made me better was courage showing up one day. It was small mechanical things.

A vocal coach handed me a straw years ago and told me to make sound through it before I spoke, and I still do it before every talk and before meetings that matter. It is not a nerve trick. It gives me a steadier, stronger voice from the first word instead of the third minute.

Comfort in front of people is trainable. Most of what people call presence is mechanics you can practice: where your eyes go, how fast you talk, whether your voice is warm before you use it or cold. People treat it like a personality they either got or did not, so they try to fix it by posting more or by caring less, and neither one touches the problem. Once you see it as mechanics, you can work on it the way you worked on everything else you are good at.

Why the straw works, from a speech therapy clinic, written for people who use their voice at work and not just for singers: The power of straw phonation. It is the clearest short explanation of what is actually happening in your throat when you do it.

Before the next call that counts, find a straw. Breathe through it a few times with no sound, then hum through it for a minute or two, sliding up and down in pitch. Then say your first sentence out loud. What you are listening for is not a better or different voice, just a stronger, more confident one. It is your voice sounding the way it usually sounds 10 minutes in.

Hit reply and tell me the next thing you have coming where people will be watching. I read every one of these, and they decide what I write next.

Grant

This is also my day job. If something big is coming and you want a second read on how you will come across, the first step is a free 30 minute Visibility Audit: galxndr.com/book