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- Download Link for Michele’s Robot Double Audiobook
- Crystal Robot voice
- Masterclass on Book Covers in The Creative Academy for Writers
- MurderCon
- Bones
- The Irish word for water is uisce, pronounced kind of like ‘ishka’
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If you could give a name to the first habitable planet outside the solar system what name would you pick?
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Complete Episode Transcripts
This site contains affiliate links to products that we have used and love, and that we think may be of help to you on your authorpreneur journey. We may receive a commission on sales of these products, which is how this podcast stays independent and free of advertising. Thanks for your support! Click here for a full list of recommended tools and resources.
Transcript for Strategic Authorpreneur Episode 023: Harnessing The Power of Your Voice
Crystal: Hey there, strategic entrepreneurs, I’m Crystal Hunt
Michele: And I’m Michele Amitrani. We are here to help you save time, money, and energy as you level up your writing career.
Crystal: Welcome to episode 23 of the strategic authorpreneur podcast on today’s show. We’re going to talk about harnessing the power of your voice. And we don’t mean voice as in how you write, we mean voice as in how you speak.
So we’re going to get outside of our comfort zone, I think most of us are much happier with a pen and pencil in hand or typing on keyboards, but we’re going to talk about actually, speaking and how we can leverage our voice to help us in our author career in a whole variety of ways. But first, what have we been up to, to this week?
What has happened since the last episode?
Michele: It has been a busy week my dear friend, but before diving into what I did, I want to recommend one book as I do every single week. You might be familiar with this bad boy over here. If you are on YouTube, you’re already seeing seeing it, but for people that are listening to us on other medium, it’s called The Emotion Thesaurus: A writer’s guide to characters expression, second edition by two lovely ladies ladies, Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi which is an Italian name. I did not start reading this, but Crystal and a bunch of other writers really recommended it to me. I cannot wait to dive into this lovely book. And why is that? It’s because I have a problem, which is probably one problem that many writers have, especially when they’re beginning.
Which is like my characters do a lot of nodding and scratching their chin and doing that kind of stuff. But hopefully this book is going to give you some alternatives and, you know, will help me do the show, don’t tell kind of thing. So I’m really excited. I know that there are other Thesaurus similar to this one, Crystal, I think you told me about a couple of others. So I think this is going to be one of the best reads, of this year, even though I haven’t started reading it, just because of the potential that this book can do for my writing for leveling up and doing those kinds of things.
I was checking how many books on the craft of writing a book and marketing I read up to now Crystal and ended up with the three books on crafting and five books on book marketing. So I want to balance things out I want to do five if I can. So this is my basically reading challenge for the year.
So that was the book and, regarding, writing. I am continuing writing my eighth story for my 12 by 20 challenges. And I know exactly where I’m going this time, which is something weird because I usually don’t, and I’m very happy about that, I have to admit Crystal. It’s probably going to be an idea how I had before for a story.
I wrote a very, very short story, like 980 words. I want to take that short story and make it a bit bigger, but still keeping it relatively short and I don’t want to necessarily write another novellette or novella this time, or just want to try to keep it short and hopefully meaningful and interesting.
So I’m working on that and also I have been working, revamping my welcome sequence, email, welcome sequence for my Italian newsletter and English newsletter after a couple of suggestion, my good friend Crystal gave me so. So today actually, I spent two hours and a half. Wow. On MailerLite and into SendFox.
The two email providers that I’m using. I had fun, but at the same time, it was something that I was delaying because it’s not like my favorite part of the of the business. The favorite part for me is like engaging with readers and writing, but I really, really needed to do this and hopefully is going to garner results in the end.
Crystal, now it’s your turn.
Crystal: Well, I have been in a teaching mode and then shifting into writing mode. So I was revisiting all kinds of things, if anyone is looking for a master class on book covers, you can dive into the Creative Academy and grab it, that was one of the things that happened over the last little while.
And in addition to the teaching stuff, I’ve been digging back into my writing stuff as well. And so I have two books actually that I’ve been reading around that one is called Do the Work by Steven Pressfield. So it’s a very, it’s an older version of that, but it’s kind of a summary of really high level points, some of which come up in The War of Art as well.
And, it’s really just a quick little book and I’m holding it up to the camera for those on YouTube can actually see it, but you can see it’s, it’s just quotes and the really high level things. So it’s a good reminder of some of those concepts so that I’m reading and also, Daring Greatly by Brene Brown.
I’ve just been digging back into that a little bit and working through it. And it’s really about being vulnerable and opening yourself up. You know, when you get into the writing and releasing phase where you’re about to put a whole bunch of things back out in the world there can be some resistance welling up for those of us who battle with perfectionism issues, putting things out there is really hard because there’s, there is always that feeling of risk and vulnerability that you don’t necessarily like.
So I think also related to our topic of today, which is putting your voice out there and putting yourself as a human being out there through your voice can also be quite nerve wracking and feel a little bit risky and daring and so, so that also is just an interesting reminder of how do you push through some of those uncomfortable moments and how do you give yourself permission to just be out there and not be perfect and be okay with that. So, yes if any of you out there are struggling with those issues that I struggle with also, that is a great book to kind of walk you through some of the challenges and also some of the solutions that she recommends. I would highly recommend that as a starting place.
So in addition to the stuff that I’ve been reading, I have also been digging into forensics and after watching more seasons of Bones, I’m going to admit to absorb all of the crime scene analysis techniques and the language and get my brain around that, some of my security stories have injury plots, but they also will have murders and there’s bad guys who need to be caught. And so I, I signed up for Murder Con, which, at the time of this going live is what I’m going to be doing in two days so I am really looking forward to that. And in advance of that, I’ve just been doing some plotting around the series arc and what the serial killer might be like and how those things are going to come together so that I know what I really want to focus on to get out of that conference. I find preparing for a conference event like that, knowing what you want from it, and having a few really specific things are going to apply the information to really helps choose from the sessions because you can’t go to everything at any of these events.
And so knowing what you’re trying to do, if it means you can choose the best sessions for you. So that’s what I’ve been focused on is just trying to make sure I’ve got myself in all the right spots and also, you know, swapping notes with a couple of friends who are going as well, so we can see, okay, what are you guys going to, and between us, have we covered off all of the things and then planning to do a bit of an informal gathering, chat about all the things that we learn cause I think it’s a lot easier to remember things and to figure out how to apply them when you can have a bit of discussion around that. So I am super excited to learn from homicide investigation professionals and forensic lab techs and all kinds of interesting people who are going to be teaching those classes.
So I will keep you posted on how that goes. Okay. So when we say public speaking, out there. If you’re one of those people who just immediately freezes up in fear and kind of wants to hurl. I’ll go ahead and raise your hand. So I don’t know about you, Michele, have you always been comfortable with public speaking or how, how has that come about for you?
Relationship with public speaking
Michele: Absolutely not. It has been a path and it’s still, I’m still learning a lot of things. I do know the majority of the writers that I connect with, they are very, very afraid of that side of the fence. And I guess it’s because most of them confess to be shy or reserved or introverted. And I’m definitely an introverted person.
I don’t know if that comes through, I like connecting with people, but I do, I think gave the best when I’m basically alone in my writing cave. So it takes energy out of me to be around other people. But at the same time, I love, I love doing that, but I do know that there are so many other writer there that have the fear and I think this is something that goes back to the caveman and stuff, multiple people staring at you or looking at you and you are in the middle. Like there is a part of your brain it’s like, it’s scared. Something might happen. Maybe they can attack you. So I heard that a few times and it makes sense. It kind of makes sense when there are people at one person that is staring at you for more than six seconds, I think like there is something that starts like popping up in your mind. When you have like 20, 30 people in front of you, like looking at you, it can be daunting.
So I did, I did that now half a dozen times, six, seven times, when I was both online and in person events before COVID-19 and I did have that feeling. The very first time, Crystal, that I was in front of, it was like 25 people, I think in like living scenario, like, with other people breathing in front of me.
I was scared and a part of my body froze. And, usually what happens to me, my hands, my palms start sweating, so I need to, I needed to, hide them. And there another kind of reaction, a couple of reactions that my body does, but something that I’ve noticed that very day, and then I’m going to relate to you now, and that’s because that was my first experience, when I started talking and these people that were people, listened and they were starting not being. And then that, that fear, boom, it just completely evaporated. And I started having more confidence and I started even showing my hand. So like at the bottom was my, on my hands.
I was more myself. And that was a freeing feeling, which I will always remember. So it started like a nightmare with me sweating and not knowing exactly what to do or what this 25 people expected from me. And then me really enjoying it and shaking hands, which were not sweating by the end of the day of the, of my speaking.
What I’m trying to say here is that my first experience with this public speaking world was frightful, especially in the moment that led me to, I was thinking, what if I say something stupid, there was a camera that was recording me. So, you know, Crystal, like when you have all this afterthought and now you’re saying you’re going to screw this up, I don’t know how, but there are a billion ways I can do that wrong.
But what I urge you to consider are all the things that you can do right. Because once you get past that point, and I guess for every single person is going to be different, you are going to end in a new planet of possibilities. And I really want to, I would like if you can share Crystal, if you can remember that your first is experienced public speaking or the first that you remember very well, because I would like the listeners to have like a comparison between the two of us, and I want them to relate with you and you to relate this experience. How was it like?
Crystal: Well, we have to go back pretty far. I was, particularly shy. I mean, I’ve been outgoing with my friends and I learned through, my parents owned a hotel, and so there was always new kids coming every day. There was a campground and a playground where we lived on site. And so there was always new kids and, you know, if I wanted to play with somebody, I would have to go up and talk to them.
And so my mom said, oh, well just go try talking to somebody. Like the worst they can say is: no, I don’t want to talk to you. And so I sort of practiced talking to people that I didn’t really know. So that was, I mean, that’s one kind of reaching out, which is sort of making those one on one connection. So that’s sort of like the conversation you have in the audience at an event, or while you’re waiting to go and do your thing.
In terms of actually what I think of as performing, which is really when you are the center of the attention, and you are the teacher or the author who is presenting your work or whatever. I really do go back to my dance training. Cause I actually took dance classes from the time I was about three years old.
And so that is terrifying to get up on a stage and dance in front of an audience without an actual spotlight on you is very, very scary. And so I think I kind of worked up to the public speaking part and I don’t remember the actual first public speaking times, but I know that all through school, I did have to do that and I have a handful that really stuck out in my memory.
So I’m going to tell you a couple of the most traumatic ones, because I think that those are the best learning moments. And so, one of my jobs as part of student council and eventually. As a student council president was he had to go around to the classrooms before each school dance in high school and tell everybody they weren’t allowed to drink or do drugs, or we wouldn’t let them into the dance.
And, you know, teenagers being what they are hard enough to be standing in front of your peers that’s perhaps the most terrifying thing as a teenager and as somebody who is pasty ghost of a person, but goes brilliant red colors when embarrassed or worked up or upset, or really any kind of emotion at all will trigger like a full body blush.
That is brutal just fire engine red. And there’s no way to hide that. It’s no, there’s no way to hide how uncomfortable you are when that’s the case. And so that was most of my high school experience was me working my way around from classroom to classroom, like making these awkward speeches, which no one appreciated and did not win me any friends. Let me tell you.
And I do remember a couple of distinct times of like having to get up in front of the entire school, actually to do a speech and to have to ask people to vote for me to be the school president. And, you know, some people being really mean and horrible, and I have distinct memories of like sobbing outside my high school afterwards and, you know, people just, aren’t always very nice.
And I think that’s always what the little person inside of me is afraid of. When I go to do public speaking, you can always imagine we’re writers, we have great imaginations. We can always imagine that there are some main kid from school who was going to say something horrible to us because we dared to open our mouth.
And so I think that is really important to remember is that we’ve come a long way in terms of we’re not in high school anymore, we are grownups. We are people who write books. If we are to the point of public speaking, it is because we have made a success of this. We have a book to talk about. We have a poem to share.
We have been brave enough to get up and risk sharing a piece of our creative selves with the world. And I think that is the first hurdle. Is to get past and recognize we are not the scared little kid that’s inside saying we can’t do this psychologist. He knows that public speaking is actually higher on the fear scale, it’s second only I think, to dying by fire. And it’s actually comes ahead of dying for most people when they talk about things they’re afraid of. And so that is really important to acknowledge because it is, you know, we think we should just get over it, but it is actually a really scary thing to put yourself out.
The way that you get past that is only by doing it and surviving it. There is no quick and easy, push a button and take a pill, whatever and it’ll just all be fine. It is very much, something that you learn to do, and you kind of desensitize yourself by having more positive experiences than negative experiences.
And the only way to make that tally grow is by doing it over and over again. And I mean, I have, I have definitely got past the point of the paralytic fear and I can usually keep my base color under control in terms of not going that bright, bright red anymore, but I still get butterflies, even when I’m just going to teach a class online with people that I know, in an environment that is my own classroom, I am still nervous.
And when I get up to do a speech at a conference, or when I’m in a public venue doing a reading of my work or whatever, I am just as terrified inside as I ever was. But I have learned to push through that and kind of harness the energy. And when you, when you talk to people who are really excellent public speakers or really great onstage, you’ll often find out that they are some of the most nervous people prior to going on, because if you don’t have those nerves, if you don’t feel those butterflies.
You tend to come across as completely flat when you get out there and deliver your material. It’s actually that energy, the flutter, the like uncomfortable feeling keeps you just on edge enough to make sure you’re doing a good job. And I don’t know if that makes sense, but, but the, as soon as you don’t feel nervous, it’s because you don’t care about the outcome and then you shouldn’t be doing that anymore.
So there is, there is that interesting idea we have that other people just don’t feel what we’re feeling, that they just aren’t nervous about doing the public speaking, but really that’s not the case at all. We’re just good at hiding it and pushing through because we know that that’s the only way to kind of get past it is to just get through it for sure.
What kinds of public speaking, let’s talk about a few of the different venues that you can get some practice in and that things that might be beneficial for your author career. So where, where have you spoken? What kinds of things have you done?
Places you can use your voice to help you author career
Michele: Yeah, so I think for writers that are listening, to us now. I really want to say there are several different venues that you can use. You don’t necessarily have to go and speak with 2,500 people on your first time that you’d try. So what I did, me, myself, one thing that I realized I really like, and this was from, earlier time that I like to admit, but my father and my mother, they are both teachers and something of that side of their life, somehow was transferred to me.
I like to teach, when there is something that I know that I didn’t say that was the reason why now four or five years ago, I created a YouTube channel, in my Italian language. And in this YouTube channel, what I did and what I’m doing still now is I create videos where I share my experience with self-publishing, book marketing and writing, and I started an experiment actually a year ago.
To release a live where I speak live to the people that are connected in Italy at that moment about something that is self-publishing or writing, related. And I’ve been doing that for 52 weeks actually did that like one year for all of these things. I wanted to do that because I knew this was a kind of a gym like where I can learn and be trained to speak with an audience.
I can see those people, but YouTube, when there is a live is going to show you the number of the people that are watching you at that moment. And I had moment in which I had several people that were listening to me putting like maybe like, or commenting that’s kind of public, public speaking. But I call that the soft public speaking, because it’s like, it’s a way for you to showcase what you’ve got in a safer environment in this case, in my home or in your home.
This is something that I will say you can consider. One of the venues you can use. It’s like a platform like YouTube. And it’s really weird if you look at my old videos in my most recent videos, I don’t talk or move like I was four years ago, or even when I started the video series, the live series.
And that’s because I’ve learned stuff by doing this consistently for 52 weeks, every single week, at least an hour, 30 minutes to on hour, connecting with my audience and having actually to talk. Like you can’t stop. You need to talk and say something meaningful. That I found that it’s a good starting point.
You can also do that, if you don’t like YouTube or making new YouTube videos, even only, uh, talking with a couple of friends of yours about something that really excites you, when there is something you are interested in, I find is easier for you to find the words, the problem, the difficult part is, your mind thinking what other people, what are going to make of the words that I use, or the message that I convey.
And that’s why the practice is important because practice helps you shutting off at some time that voice, it’s almost impossible to completely turn it off, but you can lower down the volume if you will. And again, this is something that I tried, this is data we like saying data and we, we, we like to provide our own experience.
I did that. I can tell you it’s real. It’s true. The more you do this thing, the more you develop the muscle of public speaking. Now I am my own person and I have a very specific set of characteristics. Crystal has hers. I don’t know what kind of person you are. But if there is something that I do believe is that by practicing, by making this intentional and by making
If your why, the reason why you’re doing this is sustainable I do believe you can and improve over time, and over time is the key, Crystal, because it’s something that is not going to happen in a couple of weeks. You were relating your experience of public speaking when you were talking at school. I can’t even imagine more than 200 people.
And you were doing that when you were a teenager, but what I’m saying is even though, it was difficult. So you, now you have a benchmark and your brain is trained to think as wow, if I did that with people, there are 20 in front of me now you’re kind of desensitized. Now that doesn’t mean again, that you can shut that voice completely off.
But I think that it’s a starting point for you and I think you should, you should give yourself permission to explore this venue at least. You write stories, you are a writer, there are other ways you can convey your stories with voice. And I think this episode is also important because public speaking is important for you and for your career, because it’s going to give you other options.
But I also believe that it’s something that you can use to make yourself a better writer, because that’s the real life experience. And once again, I was relating the episode in which I was doing my first public speaking and, one thing that happened, that time that I’m going to tell you now is because I felt like that I was a bit nervous at the beginning of that conversation I was like, I told my audience. Folks just so you know, it’s 25 of you and, I’m nervous. But then immediately after that, I said, my writing, my writing part came out and said, but if there’s something that I can use out of all this situation, it is that I’m learning how a person feels when there are so many people in front of him and I can use that in my writing.
So the next time that I have to describe the character, the needs to do a public speaking, you bet I know I want to nail that down. And I said that actually do the audience. And they were relating with that because I told them a story. So I put aside actually the business person and I show them the, the writing Michele Amitrani.
So I was using that experience to make myself a better writer. So I don’t want to go too much, far away, but this is all to say that it doesn’t really matter where you decide to try and where you decide to try. I think the most important thing is the why you’re doing it and probably the owl is like a following second, second the spot thing.
So we are asking ourselves why we do that. My answer will be to be a better speaker yes, but also to be a better storyteller because every single time you’re talking, you’re telling a story in a shape or another, and I want to know Crystal, I basically told the audience why I’m doing it, but why is Crystal Hunt doing that?
Crystal: It depends a little bit on the context because I do a lot of speaking in different kinds of scenarios. So it might mean going into a classroom and teaching some kids about being a writer and what’s involved in that and how you make stories that are interesting for people to read. And the why of that is because when I was little, I was in a small town and I never met an author. I didn’t know that that was a career I could pick. And you know, I didn’t ever have that experience of someone saying, Oh, well this, yes, I’m a real person. And these are my books. And this, these are the steps I took to get there and doing that also reminds me that there is a little kid inside whose dream was to be a writer and that I get to do that.
And so seeing the kids light up when they realize that it is possible to do that and the questions that they ask, because kids will ask you anything. They have no filter, is really, really fun and interesting and I think it, it puts me in touch with a different part of my writer journey that I sometimes forget when we get deep down in the business and the strategy and when you’ve been doing it for 20 years or 25 years and, you know, everything it’s just what you do you forget some of the magic. And so, you know, the why of doing those, I make sure I still, whether it’s via Skype or Zoom or in a real life classroom, when that’s possible, I make sure that I’m interacting with groups of kids in some way, because they will ask the questions no grownups will ask you and they will share their own ideas and it’s a really different kind of experience and so I really that’s the why of those is I need to get re-inspired and I need to remember why I got into this in the first place, when it comes to teaching workshops and conferences for adults, it’s actually not so different.
A lot of it is just, I really like breaking things down in a way that people can understand and sharing that for me, it’s about connecting with other writers who are doing the same thing and hopefully because I like to do things the hard way and usually, you know, getting on the ground level of learning things when they’re still being figured out and.
So that’s fun for me, but I know that’s not fun for everybody. And so trying to remove some barriers for other people is also a really important part of just giving back to the community. When I was learning, I was finding articles by other people and reading books that people have written that taught people how to do it.
I was interviewing people and sending emails and asking, okay, how did you do this? I saw your book and I really liked how it was done and, and how did that work? And people took the time to answer that. And so that’s also partly paying back into the cosmic point system, just to make sure that I am contributing what I can to making sure that other people can learn from what’s going on now and understand that they really can do what they want to do.
And I think, you know, our podcasts is about that as well. And it’s also about, challenging myself to show up and be prepared and to think about things in a different way on a weekly basis, which I think is really important as well. So each of these venues has a really different reason actually behind it.
The skills are the same, the ability to show up and talk and get past the scary little butterfly feeling, which I still get even now after. I’ve done thousands of presentations in the last 20 years to, you know, all different groups from preschoolers to retirees and literally every combination of people, the scary giant gym that’s full of, you know, 500 kids, to really a room of four people.
And, and it, it really, they’re all part of connecting with people. It’s the same reason you do all of that. And I think if you can focus on one person that you’re talking to in the audience or one person that you can imagine in your mind, if you’re doing a Facebook live and you can’t see who those people are, you have to just prop one photo up besides your computer and talk to that one person it will help you connect in a way that works for you. And we talked a little bit about there’s like presenting at conferences and teaching workshops ,there’s doing an author reading event, which could be right now, a lot of it is virtual, but it could be, in real life to any kind of size group. You could record YouTube videos.
So recording is a little bit different than doing live events. I have to say, if you go back to the Creative Women’s Summit, which was three years ago, I think three and a half years ago, but Donna Barker and I put on and you should see the video we recorded of us. Oh my God. We were so uncomfortable and we’re terrible on screen.
Everything is so awkward. And that was the first time I’d ever like seen myself on video in that kind of a context. And I hated it. I have been avoiding video my whole life as far as mediums go. But once we got past that really awkward and then editing yourself is also really interesting. And we’ll talk about that in a minute and what that feedback loop does, but, you know, it was, it was really, the fear was bigger than the doing, you know, no matter how awkward and uncomfortable it is to like, watch yourself doing that stuff it’s worse, imagining what it’s going to be like than it is just doing it and then getting past it. So I think those things they’re like monsters in our closets and they get bigger and bigger and bigger the more we think about them. Um, and you just have to open that closet door and shine the light in there, and then it turns out it’s like mostly mice size monster.
It’s not actually so bad. But that really is, I think thinking about okay for you, what is manageable? So what seems like a manageable size monster to take on, is it the sitting in front of your computer, just recording an audio track of you reading a little bit of your story that you can send out to your readers, right?
That’s one way to use your voice. Maybe you write nonfiction and you recording one, one story or one article as an audio track is something that you can commit to. Maybe it is recording a few podcast episodes or going on someone else’s podcast as a guest is a great way to promote your work and to get your voice out there and to become a person because your voice is very personable, right? It’s very personal. It’s a way to heal emotion and connect with somebody in a really different way. So that’s, that’s an interesting thing, to think about that brings us right back around, right? To the point of all this, the why is to connect with them, other people, whether it’s your readers or your fellow authors in some way. So if connection is your goal and you just boil it down to having a conversation with someone else about a topic you’re passionate about, then that hopefully helps bring it back into a bit of a manageable kind of a sphere. Now we talked about how voices are personal right? Now, we have both participated in a little bit of an experiment, way back when I heard a podcast and Joanna Penn was talking about, she made some toss away comment about how, you know, AI was coming to audio book narration, and she had like got herself.
She was participating in some sort of beta test to get a robot voice, basically that she had given up a bunch of samples of her voice so that she could get a robot, voice double. And I was immediately like, I want to end on that. Where do I get me? One of those and started Googling. And so I, I found the company that she had been talking about, send them an email and said, okay, how do I get it on this?
And they sent me an email back and said, Oh, if you’re in, send us these files and we will create you a robot, voice double. Which I did. And then I told Michele about it and he got himself one also. So this has been a really interesting experiment I think, to work with. So can you tell us a little bit about what that was like and what you have done with your voice double?
Michele: Oh man, now it starts the funny part of the episode.
So yeah, what Crystal said, it was like, when she sent me the message, I thought she was on drugs because like I never had like, even thought that we had reached the technology to do such a thing. So basically kind of clone your voice or yourself and being able to create a starting from text can be paragraph or an entire short story.
You can recreate yourself narrating that basically of course the voice is a bit robotic, kind of, this is something that is brand new, as Crystal was mentioning, but there are a couple of things that I want to say about this experiment. One of the things is that I actually did went, and ask the founder how could I use this? And he basically told me like, it’s very simple, you have to do this, this and this. And then I was like, Oh, so if I’m writing short stories and, you can do this for a transcript or for example, of a podcast episode, but you can do that also for a story. So I was like, what happens if I try to put the entire text or one of my short into this transcript?
Into the software and actually did that it took some times because maybe platform is not exactly designed for that. But once I did that, Crystal and I created the file of actually the first, 12 by 20 challenge story Glass Into Steel it was fun. Like it was me with my weird Italian accent, and some weird pauses in the middle, but it was me and it was, you could understand what I was saying.
So I told the, the founder and the founder was interested and he asked: can I actually use this file and show it to my team? Because I don’t think anybody has ever done that before. So it was interesting. I gave him the permission, but the point is, it was fun, but at the same time, it gives you the understanding of one new resource that is coming now in the 21st century.
Now bear with me, the recording of myself wasn’t perfect. And you have to consider that English is my second language. So the software actually had to do the extra mile. But I do believe if Crystal does something like that for her, it’s going to be something that is way more understandable, and even though there is that you can kind of guess there is a robot, but guess what? When I gave the file to my father, he was just saying, you spoke very fast here, but I didn’t tell him that it was a robot. And I was like, dad that it wasn’t me. It was like a clone. And he was like, blown away was like, no, that’s not possible. That’s you. Now again, it was in English and, my father doesn’t really speak that language, but he was fooled into believing that. So there are, definitely a lot of other stories like this that I can tell you, but it’s one of the things that I want to address before that Crystal mentioned the importance of the public speaking and the importance of doing stuff and then recording it and watching it.
I think that point, it needs to be explored a bit more. Once again, I want to use this podcast as an example. I invite you to watch one of the very first episode of this podcast and look and listen to me and now go back to one of the latest episode and listen to me now, I’ve learned a number of things while we were re-watching these videos and these episodes. One of the things you will notice, is that the compared to before I tried to speak weighs more slowly. And the other thing that I do compare it to, the first, videos is that I try to finish a sentence because before I wasn’t doing that, I was starting something and then my mind was going left or right and I just go to the tangent and go talking about something else. If you’re doing the transcript of that, that’s living hell and you don’t want that to happen again.
So I learned from those things. And even though I know my English is not perfect by slowing it down like 15 to 20% and actually spelling the words a bit better, even though I still have the strong Italian accent I know the software is going to understand me better, which means since I am the guy doing the transcript, I’m going to be saving time, to myself. So you see, I have learned a number of things while I was re-watching these episodes. And I know Crystal learned a bunch of things that I wanted to share with us.
Things we have learned about public speaking by watching ourselves
Crystal: Yes. So I get to do the editing of the episodes and cutting everything together, which means I re-watched all of the interviews and all of our recorded conversation and pull out all the pieces and clip out the blooper reels to put at the end to give you guys something funny if you stick around past the credits and it is really interesting.
So that’s my first chance to review everything as we go and like Michele, I’m looking to make my job a little bit easier. So the first step is always looking at what makes it easy or difficult to cut things together? And there are a few tips that I’m going to share with you. So if you are going to be recording voice stuff, or if you are going to be recording podcast or video, there are a few tricks to keep in mind.
If you are cutting video together, now we both talk with our hands a lot, which is the editor’s worst nightmare when it comes to actually chopping things and putting them together because if you are halfway through a gesture and then you say something that needs to be cut out. Where you forget what you were going to say, where you say the wrong episode number, hypothetically speaking.
It’s not that I would ever do anything like that, but if you do, you can’t just clip it together without it being really noticeable. So you’ll notice a lot of people who have been doing this for a long time will not really move around very much. So keep their body pretty still. They won’t be gesturing like I do all over the place.
They will not be Italian hand talking. They will just be very much same position looking at the camera and giving themselves a lot of options and outs if they want to cut things. Another thing you might notice is pausing between thoughts or transitions. So if I was going to talk about the robot voice levels for a minute, then I might stop if I’m going to talk about something else and have a little bit of a gap, because when you’re editing voice together, you want those pausing points to be at the end of a sentence, you can tell folks who haven’t done any audio editing, because when they are a guest on a podcast or doing an interview with somebody, they don’t pause, there are no pauses.
So that is really challenging to edit together. So that’s definitely something that you notice. We all have vocal ticks or things that come up. So, so, so would be one of them. But, all of those things are things that we do when our brain is thinking about what we’re going to say next. And that’s our way of pausing to give ourselves a second to think.
But when you go to listen to audio and when you go to edit audio, that can be very challenging. So there are groups like Toastmasters that you can join that have you practice public speaking. You can also just record your zoom calls with a friend or family member, and then watch them after and see it is a little bit tricky, I have to say, like, it’s really hard to sit down and watch yourself on camera and watch yourself after being recorded. It is excellent desensitization training for feeling more comfortable on camera. And I think if anything good is going to come out of this worldwide pandemic for us authors and our public speaking, our ability to deliver a talk to a group of people or to do a book launch is really similar, whether it’s a family members that you’re talking to on a zoom call, or if it’s a group of readers that you’re talking to on a zoom call. So being forced to learn this technology it’s going to be extremely helpful for everybody I think going forward, which personally I’m quite excited about, and that we’ve mentioned a couple of times the transcription function it’s the same company and software that we actually use to do the primary transcription process that we use to do our voice doubles. So there’s the company is called descript and you can go to descript.com, it’s in the show notes.
And there are also Overdub is the company that handles the voices or that’s the service because originally the idea was if we recorded a podcast episode and we had errors in our podcast, maybe we forgot to put a sentence at the end, or maybe we had used the wrong name for someone, as an author of one of the books that we were recommending or we forget a word or something you can actually use your voice devil to insert those words in the podcast. And that was where that came from but of course, as authors, we were immediately thinking, Ooh, could we read ourselves a story? That would be amazing.
And I had a really similar experience I sent, the company sent me a demo reel that had about 23 different samples of my robot, voice reading, the same kind of phrases over and over and reading different phrases and part of the feedback process, because we were in beta. So in development was that we would say, okay, this one, I don’t think is as good.
This one is great. You know, number seven is like a little bit weird on the timing, and then they would make changes based on that. So I was pretty excited, listened to this whole reel and was like, this is crazy. So I shared it with a handful of friends and family and the comments that I got back, or, Oh my goodness.
Like, which ones are you? And which ones are the robot? It was like no, they’re all the robot. So that was really interesting. Yeah, I thought that was quite fantastic, but it is when we think of as an author, how can we put this to work for us? If you go on medium.com and you write articles and publish articles on there, you can really improve the amount of people that are seeing and reading your articles.
If you have an audio version available and they have AI voices that you can activate that will read your articles. But you could also do that with your own AI voice. And then if you’re looking to make that connection with your readers and to help them feel like you are familiar and your voice is familiar, and maybe you have a podcast that you’re wanting them to come listen to as well.
If they’ve already gotten to know you a little bit, then that is an option. Maybe you make explainer videos. So right now, what I’ve been playing with is making a little explainer video that has my robot self and my robot voice self also, um, together, just as like a fun, almost a cartoon version of me to explain things about writing. And so I have not yet perfected that, but hopefully one of those will make it your way before, too long. But for now, if you want to hear what the robot voices sounds like, because now you know what we really sound like since you’ve had I don’t know, 24 episodes of the podcast or 23 episodes of the podcast to listen to, you can check out the show notes.
We will link from under the video and the audio so that you can actually hear the story that Michele has and also I’ll put a sample of mine in there as well so you can hear our robot selves reading each of our stories and see what that is like, because I think that is very fun. One, I think more really important point just to note is that Google has started indexing audio content.
So podcast episodes are now searchable and also will show up in search results. Very high. They actually audio and video get ranked very, very well. So if you are looking at, sharing content as an author, as a way to help people find you should think about how to work audio and video into your plan for connecting with your readers.
If you could give a name to the first habitable planet outside the solar system, what name would you pick?
It is really, really important. Okay. So now robots are not the only thing you’re curious about. I’m sure. So we are going to bust out our curious jar and I am going to stick my arm in and shuffle around. We have a whole lot of questions, so say stop,
Michele: now stop
Crystal: A blue one. If you could give a name to the first habitable planet outside the solar system, what name would you pick?
Michele: That’d an amazing question. And I feel like since I write science fiction I should have the answer just like that, right?
Crystal: Yeah.
Michele: Okay. I have the answer. Now, because my culture is the Western culture, so Greek and Roman kind of stuff. There is one word that I always liked and the word is Apeiron. And it’s a Greek word, which if I’m not mistaken means like something that is Infinite I guess, in infinitum.
So I always liked that word and I would probably use it for that planet. It just because it both, sounds fancy, but at the same time sounds cool, it’s like Hyperion, but this is Apeiron. And, probably that would be the answer to my question, which I’m reading it from four from Google now.” Apeiron is a Greek word, meaning that, which is unlimited. So I nailed it. Boundless, infinite.
Crystal: Can you spell that?
Michele: Yeah, A P E I R O N Apeiron. I love like the sound of it. So it’s like, it’s a Greek word, meaning that, which is unlimited boundless, infinite. And I always liked that word and I was thinking of that while the question popped out.
So that’s my answer now. It’s your turn. Give me your best science fiction fictionist.
Crystal: Yeah, that is a really, really great question. My first instinct is to look up the Celtic word for water.
Why water? Because water is life. We can’t survive without it. Also air. So there’s that, but I feel like. I feel like we can manufacture oxygen, but we haven’t found a replacement for hydration. So if there’s going to be a planet that sustains life, that is going to be, a very central thing here. So let’s see Celtic word or water.
Oh, right. It’s basically like whiskey. I forgot about that. Yeah. It’s the same. It has some of the same source sources. The Scottish word for that.
Michele: What’s better than a planet called whiskey my dear?
Crystal: My, my initial instinct was actually to call it heaven because then lots of people could go to heaven and that would be a good place, but it seems very cheesy. Very cheesy. So maybe that’s okay.
Michele: No, no. It’s the whiskey planet now, my dear, you can’t change it. Whiskey it is.
Crystal: Yup. It’s a, and I know I’ll, link to that in the show notes, I’ll put the spelling and see if I can find a pronunciation guide of it.
Um, but yeah, it’s, it’s a combination of water and life.
Michele: Yeah. Alpha Whiskey number one. I think your answer won this week. You won it!
Crystal: Yeah. All about the whiskey planet. All right. So we want to know if you got to name the first habitable planet, what would it be? So below the show, we’re on YouTube. You can drop it in the comments.
If you are listening on whatever podcast platform, come visit us at thestrategicentrepreneur.com on episode 23. And you can leave us a note in the comments to say, or what you would call your planet and why. And we would also be grateful while you’re poking around. If you could leave a review, you know, how important they are in the book world, and they are equally important in the podcast world.
So we will be forever grateful. If you leave a comment and a ranking on whatever platform you are on.
Michele: For show notes and links to resources that we mentioned, and also for coupons and discounts on the tools that we love please visit us at the strategiceauthorpreneur.com.
Crystal: Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss out. On our next episode, we are going to be talking about water. We’re going to be talking about the fire hose approach to author success with Angela Pepper, who is a USA today, bestselling author. So we will see you next week. Bye bye.
Michele: See you. Making Crystal’s life, a living hell by asking her stupid questions that I don’t know the answer.
