Sound Hot & Smart
The Halo Effect
Attractive people experience less friction when they want something. This is known as "The Halo Effect."
People pursue every lever to increase their halo effect: height alterations, plastic surgeries, compression clothing, Photoshop, cologne, clothes, hair extensions, mewing, and bonesmashing.
Training your voice is how you amplify your halo effect at the speed of sound.
Voice is the last frontier, the last lever, of looksmaxxing and aesthetics, and the ultimate proof of human authenticity in the age of AI.
No one has an ugly voice
You can fix being ugly. Achieve a low body fat, build sufficient muscle mass, hydrate adequately, sleep well, and get enough sunlight. Get quality clothes that fit. Get a good haircut, trim your nails. Look like you smell good.
You can sound like you smell good, too. Similarly, you can fix an unattractive voice. Speak at your natural, authentic pitch - don't shove your voice into the basement to achieve a desired effect. Pronounce words correctly (expresso vs espresso). Make sure your words, and each syllable inside of them, sound like they belong to the same "font class".
End your sentences as strongly as you start them, and keep that energy consistent throughout.
People won't hang on your every word unless they believe it benefits them.
Claim your space
When the floor is yours, own it. Don't second-guess yourself, or your message. There is a difference between confidence and arrogance. Walking this line when speaking is similar.
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Be transcribable in your punctuation - a statement should sound like a statement, which ends with, at the very least, a period. A non-rhetorical statement shouldn't have listeners thinking you asked a question. Know what you're saying, and why your audience should care. "How does this benefit them?" If you can't get your idea across in one sentence, you aren't clear enough on it to open your mouth. Start with this idea, and then add your explanations, stories, and context after.
Be present
Make sure that when you speak, it's because you want your audience to win, not because you want validation.
When you try to be funny or try to ask a "smart" question, you stop listening. You start thinking about yourself. While you're concocting something overcomplicated that will probably just confuse your audience, you're also likely to miss information that makes your question redundant. Just listen. Ask what's obvious. Funny comes from truth + surprise. A question that prompts someone to go deeper and reach a new level of thinking is born in the same way. This is how you build trust in conversation while also elevating your perception.
To listen, you must not speak. Leave space for additional thoughts to surface from your conversation partner. This means embracing a pause, not filling it with your nervous dribble and filler words. You are providing a container, they are moving within. This is adding value through restraint.
Slow down
Our outputs reflect our inputs. If you speed through videos, podcasts, and audiobooks at 2x speed, you're likely replicating that to some degree in your speech. Imagine that you are speaking at 0.9x speed.
This does a few things:
- allows you to be precise in the coordination of your voice (resonance through every syllable and consonant, ending as strongly as you start)
- keeps you intentional and reduces filler words,
- calms your nervous system
- helps your audience comprehend what you're saying
This helps you embody calm and groundedness... because you are calm and grounded.
People will break their bones to be more attractive. Almost no one trains the instrument that actually moves people.
Voice is the last lever. Pull it.
Michael! Dude, what a great article. Thank you for sharing this. I am guilty of listening to podcasts and audio at fast-forward speed and then thinking that I need to talk faster to sound more like what I've been listening to. Just recently I started listening to things at normal speed partly also because I want to emulate great speakers, and if I'm going fast I miss some of the emotion and resonance, just like you're talking about. If someone wants to speed it up, they can always do that on their end if they're listening to a recording of me, but I don't need to speed up my normal voice. Brilliant. Love it. Thank you, Michael.