Roger Love (00:00)
last thing people are thinking that their lives are not want them to be, that it's the voice's problem. But the truth is, your entire life, your personal life, your business you feel inside, the inner voice that talks to you.

That if you really want to change your life, the greatest, simplest makeover that you can do is change the way you sound. And that changes the way that the world perceives you and the way you perceive yourself. And by changing your voice, that is the greatest gift you can give. Learn how to use your voice.

And then learn how to give it away so that you become the gift to other people. voice is a gift that you learn how to use, and then you give it away. You give it away in conversations.

And then that's what creates the conversations that lead to the relationships that leads to the life that you want. Give yourself the gift a makeover that you never thought of, a voice makeover, and it's probably going to change your life for the positive more than anything else you could think of.

Claudia von Boeselager (00:59)
guest today is Roger Love.

Roger Love is one of the world's leading voice coaches, known for helping some of the most recognizable performers, actors, singers, executives, and public figures unlock the power of their voice.

He has coached major artists and actors for iconic performances, including Bradley Cooper in A Star Is Born, Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon in Walk the Line, his film coaching credits include

His work spans Hollywood, music, leadership, helping people use their voice not only to sing or perform, but to communicate with confidence, authority, emotion, and authenticity. Clearly, I need to

official bio notes that he has vocally produced more than 150 million unit sales worldwide and authored several best-selling voice and communication programs. What makes Roger's work so powerful for this conversation is that the voice is not just a performance tool, it is deeply connected to breath, nervous system regulation, confidence, identity, leadership, emotional expression, and how we connect with others.

Today, we explore how to find your authentic voice, communicate with greater impact, reduce anxiety, build confidence, and understand the deeper connection between voice, well-being, and human potential. Please enjoy.

Claudia von Boeselager (02:22)
welcome to the Longevity and Lifestyle Podcast. It's such an honor and pleasure to have you with us today.

Roger Love (02:26)
Thank you so much.

Claudia von Boeselager (02:27)
So, Roger, voice. This is such an important way for human beings to communicate, to we are trying to say across, but also intonation, connection, all these important things that we know to live well. And think about voice as something that they have, but you take it to a whole nother level of optimization and supporting people with voice. So, where did this first of all come from? Can you share a little about that? And you've had an incredible trajectory in

the work that you do. So I'd love if you could share a bit with my audience today.

Roger Love (02:54)
Sure. I realized early on when I was a little kid that if I wasn't happy, the easiest way to go from not happy to happy was to sing. And so I literally grew up singing.

Every second that I could and studying music and playing instruments. That was my hobby space. I didn't understand the science of why, and that what was happening inside of my body with dopamine being released and all these chemicals that were happening because I was singing, I just loved it. So I was always working on my singing voice. and when I was 13, I convinced my parents to allow me to go audition to be a student for the most famous voice teacher in Los Angeles. And so I

Went and I sang for him, and he took me in as a student, and I started studying again, perfecting the technique of learning how to sing. When I was 16 years old, three years later, he had to go to Canada to teach a master class. And he said to me, Roger, could you come over on Monday after school and teach some of my students? And I said, Teach your students? I'm just trying to be a student myself. I don't know how to teach. He said, Roger.

I'll pay you a hundred dollars an hour. I said I'll be over on Monday after school with business cards. So I show up, never having taught a lesson in my life. And my first student was Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys. And then Luther Vandros, and then Earthwind in Fire, and then the Jacksons, and Stevie Wonder, one after the other. And I looked

Claudia von Boeselager (04:04)
Wow.

Wow.

Roger Love (04:29)
At Brian Wilson, and I said, Brian, what problems are you having with your voice? And he said, Roger, I can sing great the first night of the concert, but on the second night I'm already hoarse, I can't sing. And I knew how to play the exercises. So I just said, Hey, let's work on the warm-ups and let's see what I can do for you. Six months later, of me faking it.

Claudia von Boeselager (04:49)
Mm-hmm.

Roger Love (04:49)
We all

found that I had this ability to listen to people's voices and make them better. When he came back six months later, my teacher made me the junior partner in that whole organization because almost every single one of his students wanted to stay with me. They didn't want to go back to him. Shock, right? That nobody could have predicted this. so at age 16, so at sixteen, I became the number two most

Claudia von Boeselager (05:08)
At age sixteen, also, right?

Roger Love (05:13)
Successful voice coach in the number one voice studio in the world. And I've been working since then to deserve that.

Claudia von Boeselager (05:19)
And where did this passion or this genius, I guess, come from? Like do you think Brian saw in you, Roger, that he's like at age 16, you come and teach the best of the best and you help them and then they kept coming back to you, right? So that client retention was obviously phenomenal. Where do you think you can is it how you're able to hear the voice that he couldn't hear? Where's your genius? What would you say?

Roger Love (05:40)
I would say my genius is being an incredible listener, but also I'm a technique creator.

So I took what my teacher knew, and he didn't create that, he learned it from his teacher in New York. But I took what I got from him, and then I started building techniques around it of what the voice as an instrument was capable of. I say that you're not born with a voice, you're born with an instrument, and you have to learn how to play it. So when I was a little kid making goo goo and gaga noises in the crib, I looked everywhere in the crib for a manual that said, hey, you got

Voice, here's the instruction manual. Here's what to do with it, so that you can actually get fed and tell people when you went to the bathroom, and then you can grow up and be successful. But there wasn't a manual. So I decided that I had to write one. So I've created techniques. The genius is that my techniques are

Are as good as it gets to make transitions from the way you sound to the way you want to sound. Because like I said, you're not born with a voice, you're born with an instrument. If your grandmother unfortunately passes away and the estate says, We'll give you a concert Steinway Grand Piano, which is really long, and you have to make a couple of decisions at that point. You decide.

Should I move all of the furniture out in my house? Because the only thing I have could put in the entire living room is that piano, so nobody's ever gonna sit in there. So I decide I'm gonna bring it in. It's so beautiful. I'm gonna put it in the living room. People can stand. And then I have an even more important decision to make. Am I gonna learn to play it or is it gonna be a frame holder? And most people use their voice as a frame holder.

They think that their voice is nasal and they're stuck with it. They think their voice is weak and they're stuck with it. They think their voice is airy and they're stuck with it. And that's why most people hate the sound of their own voice when they listen back. But I help people love the sounds they make. And then when they speak, other people love them. And it changes lives.

Claudia von Boeselager (07:41)
It's such a powerful tool and it's so beautiful how you speak. I can tell the intonation is going up and down, you take pauses, et cetera. Can you talk through some of the techniques for let's say the average person? But then obviously you work with the best of the best of the industry and training them, et cetera. So what would be your starter toolkit that you would implore everyone to think about in terms of their voice and using that as leverage?

Roger Love (08:02)
I love it.

Okay, I love it. First of all, I was a singing teacher for 17 years. And then speakers started coming to me. Tony Robbins, John Gray, who had just written Men A From Mars and Women A From Venus. And actors. And actors started coming to me and they wanted me to work on their speaking voice. And originally I turned them away. And then they kept coming back.

Claudia von Boeselager (08:16)
He's been on a few times, yeah.

Roger Love (08:25)
then when I started working with speakers, I realized something. I thought I would have to start from scratch. I had already created all the great techniques for teaching singers, and I was one of the, if not the number one voice singing teacher in the world, but I hadn't focused on the speaking voice. So then I studied and I studied and I learned and I learned, and I came full circle to realize that singing and speaking are almost exactly.

The same thing when you break them down into five variables that I want to talk to you guys about: pitch, pace, tone, melody, and volume. Okay, let's talk about it. When you go to sing a song, the pitch, which is how high or how low should you go? Does the song down here, like Barry White, You'll Never Find, or Lou Rawl?

Claudia von Boeselager (08:56)
Okay, mm-hmm.

piece put on in

Roger Love (09:12)
Down here because it's kind of sexy, is the pitch down there? Or is it hi like Michael Jackson used to sing? So in a song it's all written, but when you go to speak, you still have to pay attention. Are you speaking too low in the range like that? Are you speaking too high in the range? And when should you be low? And when should you be high? So pitch, pace. Pace when in music is sort of written. There's a tempo marking on music. It says to go go this beats per minute.

This beats per second. But nobody tells you how fast or slow to go when you speak. So I teach people when they should be fast and when they should be slow. Pitch, pace, tone.

Claudia von Boeselager (09:39)
Mm.

Can I ask a question on that one? how does one know when to be fast versus slow? Obviously, for film or for you know music, it's obviously different, but in day-to-day life, and I'm asking because I used to speak super fast, trying to slow it down the work that I do What are some of the tools around that part if I can intersect and ask?

Roger Love (09:50)
Sure.

Perfect.

First of all, you the way you know how to do it is because you're connecting sounds to emotions. You're not just thinking, I gotta get faster and slower. You're thinking, what emotion are you showcasing? So for example, let's say I'm angry. Well, the sounds of angry are fast paced.

Because when you're angry, you've been holding it inside of you. So the words happen really fast and you're angry. But there's also two important sounds of angry, hot anger, and that is monotone. There's no melody in anger because you're just spitting all the words out and you don't have time for melody. So you have extra volume, no melody, your monotone, and you go really fast. So really fast, really loud, and no melody. So if you have all three of those sounds, you're showcasing hot anger.

But if you only go fast, but you have melody, and nobody would think I'm angry with melody, even if I had monotone, nobody would still think I was angry as long as I didn't speed up. I'm not angry. So what I've done is when you speak, it's about showcasing how you feel to people. People don't remember the words you say, they remember how you make them feel.

Claudia von Boeselager (11:12)
Mm.

Yes.

Roger Love (11:18)
So, communication is flawed the way it's taught and learned. We think that if we had the right words to say, we could create conversations that would lead to relationships and business and a great life. But that's not how the brain processes communication. When I speak to you, the first part of the brain that that sound goes into is the amygdala.

And the language of the amygdala is emotion, specifically sounds. So if I come to talk to you and I say, I love my wife, I hate my wife, I love chocolate, I hate chocolate, I love strawberries, I hate strawberries, the amygdala says, We don't know you, we don't know how you feel about your wife or chocolate or strawberries, and the conversation is over. If I attach sounds to it,

Pitch-pace tone melody and volume sounds, and I say, I love my wife. I don't love golf. I love chocolate and chocolate and strawberries. I love all of that. Then the amygdala says, this is emotional, and it passes that information to the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that processes it and it decides how it feels.

About what you just said and connects it to memories or puts it into memory and takes action on it. So I've spent my life helping people figure out what sounds they make to attach to the words so that they would have the deepest, authentic, emotional connections with everyone that they're speaking to. So the right emotions tell me how fast or slow.

Claudia von Boeselager (12:57)
Mm-hmm.

Roger Love (12:57)
And then I picked

the words.

Claudia von Boeselager (12:59)
And I absolutely love this, but this is really a science because you need to first pre-meditate what is the emotion you want to trigger, then what is the tone of voice, and then selecting the words. It's almost reverse engineering how you want to land. So I mean it's like another science of communication that you have to rewire yourself to do, I guess. And that's what you work with, is it?

Roger Love (13:17)
Well, actually, yes, but actually you

are wired for it. Because we are wired to feel something and then say how we feel. It's actually more difficult to feel something and not be able to show anyone how you really feel. Whether you love them or hate them, or you're empathetic, or you or it's loathing, it's so unhuman.

Claudia von Boeselager (13:22)
Okay.

Roger Love (13:40)
To not be able to showcase feelings. But let me tell you a story. When I was little, it was all about IQ, intelligence quotient. If you were born a genius, you had a chance in life. You could be successful and wealthy, and people would think you were so smart. But unfortunately, that's such a small amount of the population that is a genius-level IQ, and the rest of us, what? It's hopeless?

we should just drown ourselves? No. And then years later, all of a sudden people said, you know what? It's not about IQ. You don't have to be a genius. What you need is EQ, emotional intelligence. And that's that is, if I could know how you felt actually, when you were talking to me, and if I could show you how I felt when I was talking to you, boom.

Claudia von Boeselager (14:04)
Nope.

Roger Love (14:26)
That's all that matters, you'd be successful. It's about EQ. And the problem with EQ was nobody knew how to learn it and nobody knew how to teach it. There wasn't a system. So then I came around and I said, you know what? It's not about IQ. It's not about EQ. It's about VQ, vocal intelligence. There's a set of sounds that the most successful people make. And when you attach it,

To the right words, you sound like you're a genius. And when you attach it to the right words, you sound authentic and emotional. So having a genius level vocal intelligence makes you genius level at IQ and EQ. And VQ is easy to learn. I've been teaching it for years and years and years.

Claudia von Boeselager (15:13)
Yes.

Roger Love (15:13)
pitch,

how high or low. Pace, how fast or slow? Tone. Do you speak airy because you think more air means you care more? Or do you speak edgy like this, like a squeaky hinge, like a door that doesn't have any WD4D because you heard it on the Kardashians and everybody talks like this in reality TV. Hello, hello. So

what's the tone of your voice? Airy or edgy? And when should you be airy? And when should you be edgy? Pitch-pace tone melody. Melody's amazing. Most people, when they speak, they're like one note on a piano. This is my note. It's my Roger note. I'm gonna talk about this, try to get as much out of my Roger note as possible. Every so often I get bored with the My Roger note, and I'm thinking, well, I gotta go someplace else. I'll go here, and then I'll go right back to my Roger note. That's called monotone.

And most of the population speaks in monotone or only a few little notes that are close to the same note. But when you speak in monotone, you are literally boring the heck out of everyone you talk to because after about five seconds, they think they know what you're going to sound like. And when they think they know what you're going to sound like, they think they know what you're going to say. And then they tune you out because there's no surprises. And they also know how you're going make them feel. So are you monotone?

Or are you almost as worse, almost as bad, descending scales? I'm talking to you and I get to a comma and I go down. I'm talking to you and I get to a period and I go down. Which is what we were taught in elementary school. When you get to a comma, you go down, down in volume, and down in melody. But what does a descending scale tell us from music? You sound sad. It's my birthday. Nobody got me any.

Claudia von Boeselager (16:46)
Mm-hmm.

Roger Love (16:53)
Presence.

Claudia von Boeselager (16:53)
I don't know.

Roger Love (16:54)
It's okay. I really like you. so we're a world of descending scale speakers. And we're making everyone sad. And we sound so depressed. My gosh, there's enough depression in the world. The sounds of depression and anger are the two most prevalent sounds in the world. Why do you want to sound depressed? You don't want to fit in with that crowd. You want to sound happy. So I don't let people do descending scales.

Claudia von Boeselager (17:17)
Right.

Yeah.

Roger Love (17:22)
People

are even sound like they hate their own names. If you ask anyone to say their name, they say, My name is Roger Love. And they go down. And you say, What state are you from? I'm from California. So what I'm apologizing for having that being born with the name Love, and I'm apologizing for this state and it makes me sad, my name makes me sad. How do you feel about it? No. So we're destroying the language with what we're doing. Pitch, paste, tone, melody, and are

Claudia von Boeselager (17:47)
can I ask

a question for you, Roger, on that So I've lived in different countries. I have a very funny accent and part of where I've lived and grew up, I'm part Irish. And so I have a tendency actually to go up at the end. So it almost sounds I'm always asking a question. what would you say about that? Is that a negative Like you wanna always mix it up or is it better to be up than down? What would you say?

Roger Love (18:05)
Okay. The

reason that people think that's a negative is because there were a bunch of really stupid articles over the years talking about a thing called up talk. And they were saying, well, if you go up at the end of a sentence, that you'll sound like it's a question and nobody'll take you seriously. So if everybody spoke like that, then nobody would sound like they're an expert and nobody would have any influence. So they scared people. But if you told any great composer,

If you told Mozart or Elton John that he could only go up on a musical phrase when it was a question, he'd tell you to go to heck. He'd say, I'm gonna go up when the emotion shows me I should go up. So what you learn from music is that the whole idea of only going up with when it's a question is ridiculous. And what happens is

That's the reason people are sounding depressed, I already explained. That's also the reason that people are getting interrupted. Every time you go down, the people that you're listening to think you're done. And it's their time to speak. Which is why interruptoritis is a huge problem. But you're doing it to yourself, people who go down. I love people that go up. Check this out.

Claudia von Boeselager (19:12)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Roger Love (19:23)
When I go up in music, it's called a leading tone. Like I'm not done, and the melody's gonna go someplace else. So I speak and I get to a comma. And then I speak and I get to another comma. And what I did with my melody made you realize that I wasn't done. So you'd never think of interrupting me, even if I waited.

A second or more? Or a few seconds? So like music, I'm telling you that I'm not finished until I am finished. And then when I'm finished, I still might not go down. I still might just do the same note and then just go to silence.

Claudia von Boeselager (19:58)
It's absolutely brilliant. Just by you doing that you're almost like on the edge of your seats waiting for you to continue.

Roger Love (20:02)
Edge. That's

because what do we have as great speakers? The ability to move people emotionally. And an emotion that you move them to is when you speak, you want them to wonder what you're gonna say next. Be excited about what you're gonna see next. Be surprised by what you're gonna say next. And the sounds all do that. The pitch-pace tone, melody, and volume. People are afraid of being loud, by the way, because they're afraid of being angry.

But so then we're a world of soft speakers because we don't want to sound like we're angry if we get loud or everybody thinks we're mad at them. But that now that you know that if you had melody and you didn't go fast with the words, you could have all the volume in the world and be the nicest person on the block. So I teach people how to access control over pitch-based tone, melody, and volume. And then we change the way that they sound.

The person that sounds sad all the time and depressed, I give them more ascending scales. The person that sounds less confident, I give them more volume, more edge in the voice instead of air. I create the sounds of the emotions that bring out the best of who they are. Here's an interesting thing you should know because the podcast is longevity. There was like a 60-year, or might have been 80 years, but

Multi-decade study at Harvard as to try as to try to figure out who's living longer and better lives. And it turns out that above exercise, above what you eat, that longevity is based on your ability to communicate and have relationships, that it's about having people to talk.

Claudia von Boeselager (21:20)
Nineteen thirty eight. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Eighty eight years.

Roger Love (21:44)
Two. As you get older, that is what keeps you young. So I've said forever that I'm just a voice coach who's working to save the world one voice at a time. I didn't realize I was a longevity expert, but that study proved it, along with plenty of other studies that say if you sang for X number of minutes a day.

It would increase your life expectancy by eight years. Well, all of my speakers are singing. The sounds coming out of their mouths, the pitch, the pace, the tone, the melody, and volume, the airflow, the volumes, the melody. It's the same thing as singing. So the brain, my whole day, the brain thinks, Roger is so sing songgy, we're gonna give him another eight years to live. And then later, ⁓ he's still sing songgy, we're gonna give him another eight years.

I may just live forever by every sound that comes out of my mouth sounding like it's musical.

Claudia von Boeselager (22:37)
Ha ha.

This is absolutely amazing. This is a longevity hack. Everyone hopefully starts singing their way through their day, which also triggers happiness, right? A connection and makes other people smile at you. Yeah.

Roger Love (22:49)
Exactly right. And they don't even have to sing. They don't

have to sing. They just have to add the musicality to their speaking voice. Their musical. I've spent my life trying to figure out and figuring out what voice can do, what voice can fix that can't be fixable. So for example, one of my latest projects, I have a documentary that's having its world premiere in 10 days.

Claudia von Boeselager (22:57)
So we need

Roger Love (23:14)
Actually, less than 10 days, June 24th, at the iconic Chinese theater in Hollywood, which is one of the most iconic theaters in the world. And it's my film called Find Your Voice. And it's part of the Dances with Films Festival in LA, which is the number one film festival in LA. So I have a documentary, a short documentary that that debuts on the 24th. In this documentary, we follow a gentleman named Alex.

Claudia von Boeselager (23:23)
Congratulations. Mm-hmm.

Very exciting.

Roger Love (23:41)
Who has stuttered his entire life and has not been able to have the life he wants because of the stuttering? He doesn't have the relationship he wants. He doesn't have the business acumen, the communication to make great business. So he becomes an IT guy and he doesn't talk to anybody. He only works on his computer his whole life. So he meets me, and his dream is he wants to be a realtor. But you really need to be able to talk.

You have to be a good communicator. If you can't sell you, you can't sell the house. If you can't speak, you can't sell anything. So in a less than an hour, I turn his voice completely around after 30-something years of being a severe stutterer. And he follows his path to being a realtor. And it's so inspirational. And I made this documentary to show millions of people around the world.

Claudia von Boeselager (24:21)
Wow.

Roger Love (24:30)
That they don't have to stutter, that the stutter doesn't mean their voice is broken. I realized when I was a kid, I was watching this TV show late at night. I should not have been up. My parents should have turned the TV off, but there I was up watching a TV show, and this comedian got on and he was a stutterer. And he did this comedy routine and he stuttered. And instead of millions of people laughing at him, they laughed with him. And that became his superpower. He was a stutterer.

But he wasn't apologizing for it. And then he was funny. And after that comedy routine, he sang. And when he sang, he was like an angel. I mean, he was sounded beautiful, fluent. every part of the singing flowed out. It was gorgeous. He didn't stutter at all. And I remembered that. So years later, when I was a voice coach and people came to me for problems like stuttering, I reverse engineered the idea.

Claudia von Boeselager (25:20)
Mm-hmm.

Roger Love (25:23)
Of solid airflow, because solid airflow happens when you sing. And when you speak, it's just little bursts of air attached to certain syllables, even if you don't stutter. It's not solid airflow. So I taught the stuttering people solid airflow so that the words would ride out on a solid stream. And I eliminated stuttering with every single person I've ever worked with.

Claudia von Boeselager (25:49)
Incredible.

Roger Love (25:49)
So,

medical community says that's not possible. And the psychological community says that's not possible. And even when I post on my socials before's and afters of just five minutes, they were like, it's not an airflow problem. It's a psychological problem. It's not a psychological problem. It's a medical problem. Okay, let's not get tied up with words.

Claudia von Boeselager (26:02)
Wow.

Roger Love (26:12)
Did this person stop stuttering when I changed their airflow? Yes. Thousands of people have done this with. So I'm really excited about that and getting the word out that if you stutter or someone in your family stutters, because million hundreds of millions of people stutter in the world. Kids. And some of them grow out of it and some of them don't. But like I said, they're not broken. So, you know, years ago when I was the first one to be using singing therapy for patients who had strokes.

And then had aphasia and they couldn't speak. And I was teaching my mother had a stroke and she couldn't speak. So I taught her how to speak again with singing. Because singing occupies a different part of the brain. Nowadays, singing therapy is one of the top things for aphasia patients after strokes. I was doing this thirty years ago, and people were saying that's ridiculous.

Claudia von Boeselager (26:48)
Wow.

You're such a pioneer.

Wow. I absolutely love it, Roger. That is really phenomenal. And what a gift you are giving this person and this man. I'm excited about the documentary and congratulations on that. I can't wait to check it out. But quality of life you can have because as unjust as our society is, if you cannot communicate in a certain way, I think people are very dismissive. They assume it's IQ, as you were saying, or whatever else, other assumptions that

Roger Love (27:09)
Thank

Claudia von Boeselager (27:23)
a lot of people make and I think that by in under an hour you were able to have them speak normally. I mean that is absolutely phenomenal. So a huge feat in five minutes. Wow.

Roger Love (27:32)
In five minutes sometimes.

you very much. The reason that people are so afraid to speak that speaking in public is the number one fear in America and number one and number two in all other parts of the world. in Australia I think it's heights, and then fear of speaking in public. But what are people so afraid of? They're afraid of being judged harshly. That if I speak to you, you won't like me. You won't like what I say, you won't agree with me.

That'll make me feel bad, less confident. So we're afraid of being judged. So what I help people understand is when you have found your voice, the emotions to showcase, the musicality to showcase, then you're able to.

immediately give people the right perception of you, the best of you. And if you know you're good at showcasing the best of you, how much you care, how funny you are, how much you love, that you get better at showcasing your authentic feelings, nobody judges you harshly.

No, they love listening to you. People, want to talk to you. So it's a loop that builds confidence. You can't find your confidence and then speak confidently. You have to speak with the sounds of confidence, and people react to you and they say, Roger, you're so confident. And then you start to believe it.

Claudia von Boeselager (28:52)
The sound creates the reality. I love that. And before we get to the VQ point, because I really want to unpack that, let's talk about the voice longevity. And so my mother had, as you can hear, I'm a little bit hoarse. I speak from my throat. I've done singing in the past. I'm definitely not a you're supposed to speak from your diaphragm, et cetera. So I guess it's a mixture of.

bad habit, but what would you recommend? Because it's such an essential organ. And if you're singing regularly and adding eight years onto your life potentially every day, right? then you want to make sure you can communicate. Every eight years. Okay. Every eight years. Yeah. We'll see you in a hundred years, Roger. We'll see in a hundred years. but what would you say in terms of voice hygiene?

Roger Love (29:21)
Every period of time. Maybe every eight years.

Claudia von Boeselager (29:32)
Or skills that people should be adjusting in order to maintain voice. I mean, Tony Robbins obviously you can tell he's lost his voice a lot over time. He speaks a a lot more than most people.

Roger Love (29:40)
Well, look, I've managed to keep Tony Robbins on stage for over thirty years. He can speak his voice is unique because there's a reason that people don't understand that he speaks like that. It's because when he had that giant growth spurt, everything grew really fast, really suddenly overnight, and he was suddenly fifty feet tall and sixty feet wide, and his voice drew up like

Claudia von Boeselager (29:44)
Amazing.

Mm-hmm.

Roger Love (30:02)
His Adam's apple and the vocal cords grew so big they could barely fit into his larynx. So there's a lot of physical things in there that make Tony Robbins sound like that. that's not that he's hurting himself because he can speak now all the time. But let's talk about you and let's talk about what other people. Do you know we just over the last three months I've been doing a lot of data analysis of what do people want?

Claudia von Boeselager (30:08)
Wow.

Okay.

Roger Love (30:25)
And what problems are they looking to solve that voice could solve it? And one of the major things that people are really looking for voice and worried about their voice is the aging of their voice. It's on the top of the list. As people get older, they're afraid that their voice ages and then they sound old and then they start to lose their voice. But the human voice is set up.

To speak or sing 24 hours a day for your entire life. And when we do certain things, and I'll tell you what they are, and I'll tell you what you're doing, then we age the voice because the voice is part muscle too. There's muscles and tissues, and there's lots of muscles that need to stay in shape. So we make sounds that allow the voice to sort of atrophy.

Claudia von Boeselager (30:57)
Mm-hmm.

Roger Love (31:13)
as in the muscles and get lazy just like we never go to the gym. Okay. Here's some things that you do and here's some things that other people do. Okay. When you speak, you're holding your breath. You're not actually speaking with any breath because

Claudia von Boeselager (31:20)
Okay, let's hear.

Roger Love (31:29)
That's why you kind of fall into that place down here where you're like, I'm a little hoarse today. It's because you don't have breath control, even as a public speaker. I'll tell you why. And you'll laugh because it's so simple. When you breathe, take a big breath. And you raise your chest and shoulders and then you lower your chest and shoulders, right? That's called accessory breathing. But the lungs are not here.

Claudia von Boeselager (31:52)
Mm-hmm.

They're down here.

Roger Love (31:54)
Okay,

you mentioned the phrase diaphragmatic breathing and you wanted to sing utilizing your diaphragm. Well what that means is you're supposed to breathe in through your nose, not your mouth. You breathed in through your nose, so that's one step forward, all right? Thank you.

Claudia von Boeselager (32:08)
What the point?

Roger Love (32:11)
Okay, so

most people breathe into their mouths, but when they breathe in through their mouths, they're drying out their throat instantly and drying out their vocal cords. So mouth breathers, voices get older faster because their throats are always dry and the cords are dry. So if your voice is aging, stop breathing in through your mouth. Take a big breath into your mouth like this, go.

Feel the dryness? Now take a breath in with your lips closed. And not so loud, no gulping. Silently. Any dryness? No. That's because there are filters in the nose called turbinates. And when you gently and silently breathe in through your nose, the air passes through those turbinates, filters, and it becomes moist air. So that when it goes to the throat, it lubricates the vocal cords.

Claudia von Boeselager (32:31)
can super dry. Super dry.

Yep. Sure.

Roger Love (32:55)
So number one, stop breathing in through your mouth. Only bring in breathe in through your nose. Number two, when you breathe in through your nose, pretend that you have a balloon in your tummy, not in your shoulders. Put your hand on your belly button. And when you br when you breathe in, let your stomach come forward. As if you had swallowed a balloon. Fill up the balloon.

Claudia von Boeselager (33:09)
I'm trying. Yeah.

is it like really bad training that I mean, maybe my ribs are like so used to being so tight, like I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but I have trouble inflating feelings. Okay.

Roger Love (33:26)
No, that's because you have tension in your stomach. So you have

created so much tension in your stomach, thinking like, okay, but I look great on the beach, you know? this is my bikini stomach and guys are thinking the same thing. I'm looking good on the beach, so it's not just a female thing. Bottom line is

Claudia von Boeselager (33:35)
Yeah.

I just can't breathe. Okay.

Roger Love (33:43)
Bottom

line is, you don't have to let your stomach come out three inches and feel like you're a beach ball. What you have to do is you have to pretend that you just let your stomach come out a little, just a tiny bit. Because that's what is necessary to do the most important part of diaphragmatic breathing. Check this out. I take a breath, my stomach comes forward now.

Claudia von Boeselager (33:50)
Yeah.

Roger Love (34:07)
I only speak while my stomach is coming back in, like an accordion.

Claudia von Boeselager (34:13)
I'm gonna try this right now.

Roger Love (34:13)
You have to learn to only speak

while your stomach is coming in. That's diaphragmatic breathing. If your stomach's not coming in, guess what? You're holding your breath the whole time you speak. You're an accordion stuck in the out position. You have to, that is you. You have to pretend, you have to practice this. And I'll give you other ways to practice it. Lay down on the ground, and now gravity helps.

Claudia von Boeselager (34:28)
This is me. Okay.

Yes. Mm-hmm.

Roger Love (34:40)
And you take a book and you put it on your stomach. And then you take a breath and you try to make the book rise. And then you try to let the book come down. So the book comes up when you inhale and the book comes down. And you have your hands on the book. So you feel it. And then you practice that standing up. But the goal is to fix all of that horse stuff that you're doing in the bottom. It's simply that you have to send more air through.

But you can't send more air through unless your stomach is slowly coming in. It'll relieve all the tension you feel in your stomach. It'll really give you diaphragmatic breathing. You'll be able to speak longer and have more volume and more resonance. All of that. So that's one thing. Two things actually. Breathe in through the nose, stop breathing into your mouth. Second thing, let your stomach come a little bit forward, not like you're.

Claudia von Boeselager (35:22)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Roger Love (35:30)
Taking one breath that's gonna last for six years. You just take a little tiny breath, your tummy comes a little forward, and then you learn to let your stomach deflate. Here's why science says you have to do that. The lungs are like balloons. Okay? When air goes into the lungs, the lungs get really big. Are they happy at that point or not happy? Not happy. The lungs are miserable when they're filled with air because they feel like they're gonna explode.

Claudia von Boeselager (35:33)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

yeah. Mm-hmm.

Roger Love (35:56)
So let's

say you take a big breath, we'll jump in the pool.

Now what do you want to do? You don't want to breathe right away. What do you really want to do? You want to blow out a little air. Because the lungs are so miserable being full of air that you have to go so that they don't pop.

Also, there's carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide when you breathe in. There means there's a small amount of poison. Okay? So carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide are parts of air, and when you breathe it in, the body says, got to get rid of the poison parts. So it wants that poison part out.

You are helping the air get out of the lungs efficiently when you bring your stomach in. Because as you bring your stomach in slowly, the words ride out on that solid air, which is how I fix stuttering. Unless your stomach comes in evenly, you can't create a solid airflow.

Claudia von Boeselager (36:38)
Mm-hmm.

So Roger, I'm going to practice this while speaking with you now

Roger Love (36:47)
That's right. And also shorter sentences. You see how you had all this air, and then you decided you were going to add another few words, like you were getting paid by the word. But great speakers speak in short phrases, sound bites, two or three words, and then a comma, and another few words, and a period. You know why? This is really interesting.

Claudia von Boeselager (36:58)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Roger Love (37:09)
When I speak to you, I talk to you about how the sound goes into the amygdala. Let me show you this. Think of when I speak to you, there's a box inside of your brain called the gather box. And when I speak to you, in that gather box, you're trying to remember all the words that I say. But the problem with the gather box is there's a big hole in the bottom of it. So the more words I say, the gather box is small. So the words keep falling out, and you can't remember what I said. So

Claudia von Boeselager (37:31)
We can.

Roger Love (37:33)
The only time the brain sends words from the gather box to the process box is when it doesn't have to gather anymore. In silence. So unless I say less words and I get to a comma.

The information that is in the box doesn't go to be processed the process box. So people don't think of what you're saying and feel anything you're saying while you're saying it. They think about it in the silent spots.

Claudia von Boeselager (37:52)
To the prefrontal cortex.

Ooh, I love that.

Roger Love (38:02)
They process what you said

you're not making any sound. But people are so afraid of the silence and losing other people's attention that they fill all the silent gaps. They fill it with ums and uhs and like, like, like, like, like, and they talk too many words. So they add fillers and they add longer sentences, thinking that, well, the average attention span of the human being is somewhere between 10.

In 12 seconds, well, between eight and twelve seconds, actually. So you're like, and getting worse every so many years. So you're speaking, and you're so afraid of losing that person's attention that you speak too many phrases, too many words, too many words connected, no silent, not enough silence. So then they don't remember anything you say because they're only remembering and processing it in the silence. So you have to speak less long sentences.

Claudia von Boeselager (38:29)
And getting worse probably.

Roger Love (38:52)
Breathe in through your nose, give them more time, and then jump back into the sentence. Breathe in through your nose. So, this whole concept of breathing and the difference between making sound and silence is so important. ⁓ Every great composer spends just as much time writing the rests in the music as they do the notes. But humans don't spend hardly any time figuring when they should be silent. They're too busy coming up with

Claudia von Boeselager (39:11)
bit.

Mm-hmm.

Roger Love (39:17)
Words that are not even being processed and they don't have good sounds attached to them, so nobody cares anyways.

Claudia von Boeselager (39:24)
So question on that, Roger. And I absolutely love it. I need to practice my breathing at the same time. So my brain is like trying to figure out multiple things here. With the silences, does the brain need to be rewired to speak differently? Or is it just slowing everything down and taking pauses?

Roger Love (39:41)
No.

Well you slowing down doesn't help because you could still say all the words, but if you have too much words, you're the people are gonna still not remember some of the words that you said. So it's not about slowing down. Basically the people that speak too fast are thinking, Maybe I have to slow down the words. But it's not even that true. What you have to do is you have to have less words and then silence so that the people catch up.

I can speak really fast, but as long as I gave a little silence, me speaking fast doesn't stop you ever from understanding what I just said.

So it's about less words, longer silent spots, no fillers. I say ⁓ is duh All fillers are ridiculous. I say is dumb because there is no way to sound both intelligent and like an idiot at the same time. Except if you add fillers.

So let me give you an example. I, as a rocket scientist, I have discovered incredible things. And today I'm going to solve the mysteries of the universe and like it's like matter.

Claudia von Boeselager (40:33)
Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Credibility

has gone down. You've lost the credibility, Roger.

Roger Love (40:50)
You can't

sound like an idiot and like a genius. Fillers make you sound like and you're an idiot no matter what. let's talk about fillers for a second, because I brought it in. People think there's a good reason for fillers. They think that when they're about to say something and they want to think about what they're gonna say, they say, and then they speak.

Claudia von Boeselager (40:58)
Yeah, let's talk about them. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Roger Love (41:08)
Or they get to the end of a sentence and then while they're thinking about what they might say in the next sentence, they say, as if that helped the brain give them an extra second or two to come up with what they might say next. That is not scientifically true. When you get to the end of a sentence or start a sentence and you say, your brain's not thinking about what you're gonna say next. Your brain is listening to you say, ⁓ and it is processing. What does ⁓ mean?

It in no way helps you trigger what you're gonna say next. It's a wasted placeholder. So it's disrespectful to the listener because it's getting in of their processing and it makes you sound less intelligent. So fillers don't help you come up with words. Fillers make you sound like you have no idea what you're going to say next.

Claudia von Boeselager (41:51)
How do people learn to not use fillers, which some people are not even aware of that they use, right?

Roger Love (41:56)
Uh-huh. Yes,

okay. Here's the good news. The easiest fillers to fix are the ones I call location-specific fillers. always happens at the same place, out of silence. So you say, Roger, were you really born with the name Roger Love? Now it's silent, and I have to say something. And I say, ⁓ yes, my father's name was Leon Love.

And then I get to a sentence and I end the sentence and now it's silent again. And before I say the next sentence, I might often say, ⁓ okay, let's talk about so um happens from silence right before you say something. Well, knowing where it lives, it's easier to fix. It's like a pothole that you have in front of your garage at home. You're gonna break your tire once.

Claudia von Boeselager (42:39)
Mm-hmm.

Roger Love (42:45)
And if you break your tire more than once, you are stupid. Right? If you if you haven't learned after you've already paid for a new tire, that you should drive around that pothole until it or fix it. But if you can't fix it, at least drive around it, right? Then that's on you, babe. Okay. So knowing where it is, here's the easy fix. You close your lips when you breathe, because nobody's gonna be a mouth breather anymore.

Claudia von Boeselager (42:48)
Yeah.

Or fix it.

Mm-hmm. And there's by the way, mouth tape, right? So for people who sleep with their mouth open, we've had some breathing experts on. Mouth tape.

Roger Love (43:10)
And by the way, every bait mouth tape. Yeah. Yeah. Mouth tape. Yeah,

because then they're breathing into the mouth all night and they're drying their cords out in the morning and the whole rest of the day their vocal cords are dry and their throats dry because of they're sleeping with their mouth open. So

Claudia von Boeselager (43:26)
Yeah. And sleep apnea

and causing dementia and all these other medical issues that come with it Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Roger Love (43:29)
All that. Absolutely.

and by the way, speaking correctly and singing the way we do it reduces sleep apnea and all of those things because it opens up the back part of the throat more. So and you're and reduces snoring, because you have control the larynx is lower. So now the airflow is easier in and out, the body gets used to that.

Claudia von Boeselager (43:39)
Ooh, and reduces snoring.

Mm.

Roger Love (43:50)
You start breathing in through your nose instead of in through your mouth. There's so many effects. It helps with storing, helps with all kinds of things. Anyways, because I'm training you and everyone that's listening to stop breathing into their mouth, their mouth isn't open unless they're speaking. So when I start a conversation, my lips are closed. I breathe in through my nose, and I don't open my lips until I have an actual word.

Then I have a word and I get to a comma and as soon as I get to a comma I close my lips.

I breathe into my nose again. And I don't open my lips until I know what word I'm gonna say next. I don't care how long it takes me, but I'm not gonna open my lips until I have a real word. And then I'm gonna do it. And that's how you practice. Get to a comma and do this. When you have a word to say, do this. Okay, I'm gonna say a word again. And this sounds like

Claudia von Boeselager (44:28)
Sure.

So

Okay.

Maybe practice at home.

Practice at home first.

Roger Love (44:42)
You literally practice like this. And then you

practice recording yourself. And then you count how many fillers, ums and uhs and likes, and by the way, there's hidden fillers. So is the filler and is a filler. How many fillers are you using? Well, record yourself and then be brutally honest with yourself without the brutal. And then do it again. Talk about the same things and try to do less, and then record yourself, and then listen again, and then do it again. So

Claudia von Boeselager (44:47)
Mm-hmm.

Roger Love (45:08)
recording and listening, recording, listening, it make it a bit like a game.

Claudia von Boeselager (45:12)
And it's pretty brutal because obviously with the podcast and then going and looking at the transcript sometimes, I'm just like, How am I communicating? So dear audience, thank you for sticking with me over these years of me not speaking perfectly and having such a beautiful voice like Roger ⁓

Roger Love (45:23)
Ha ha.

I think they love you and your voice is beautiful.

Everyone's voice is different and your voice is beautiful.

Claudia von Boeselager (45:31)
Thank you. Well, now I have a few new tips and things to practice and learn and speak from the the Excel. Roger, first of all, you're so entertaining. So it's such a pleasure to to speak with you. And you've worked with so many A-list performers and major film studios and studio sessions and musicians, et cetera. And what would you say is the biggest differentiator between people who do a good job in what they're doing and people who really are extraordinary at mastering these skills?

Roger Love (45:57)
First of all, of all the famous people in the world that I've worked with, and I took Joaquin Phoenix and turned him into Johnny Cash and Reese Witherspoon and turned him into sort of a June Carter Cash, but it she didn't have to sound like June Carter. And she won the Academy Award. I took Jeff Bridges and he couldn't sing and for the movie Crazy Heart and he won the Academy Award. I took

Bradley Cooper and he was never singing and I turned him into a singer so he could do it with Lady Gaga and no matter how many famous people, the truth is that nobody just because they're a good actor or because they're famous for something else doesn't mean that they can sing. it's a skill set. Yeah.

Claudia von Boeselager (46:31)
Skill. It's a skill.

Roger Love (46:32)
just because there are drills and drill bits doesn't mean I'm a handyman. I gotta go get a drill, I gotta learn how to use put the bit in, I gotta learn when to screw what, where. it's a learnable skill. And what I've learned by working with some of the most famous voices in history is the how hard they work to achieve the skill set that they're passionate about.

Claudia von Boeselager (46:46)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Roger Love (46:57)
So when a young singer says to me, please teach me how to sing, I'm like, why do you want to sing? They're like, I to be famous. I'm like, that's the worst reason ever. You know, John Mayer, my student for years and years and years, why did he want to be a musical artist? Because he wanted to play the guitar. He had music in him. he had songs he needed to write. He had things he needed to say.

Think emotions he needed to share. He wanted to sing for people. And that's what it's about. It's about finding the passion and realizing that if you don't like your voice, I mean I can fix a stutterer in less than five minutes or 15 minutes, certainly less than an hour. So somebody who just

Claudia von Boeselager (47:29)
Yeah.

Roger Love (47:34)
Is too nasal or too bassy or too squeaky hinge or too naily talk like this. And they're living their lives like that, not realizing it's a simple tweak on a technique they didn't know. nobody's stuck with the voice that they have. Whoever you've imitated all your life is the voice that you're at at right now. And you can choose to imitate other people. You can choose to be

A chef who makes original recipes instead of just what your mom cooked.

Claudia von Boeselager (48:00)
and mix it up Roger, for people who want to learn to speak more like you, where can they learn more about your work? Follow what you're up to? I know your documentary's coming out, really, really exciting. Where would you send people to get more of a taste of what they can do with their voice?

Roger Love (48:14)
I

there's so many free videos and content on my Instagram, @theofficiallogerlove, on Instagram. And there's so many free videos and things to learn on my website, Rogerlove.com. And if you're having a specific stuttering problem, go to speak.voiceplace.com.

So the official Roger Love on Instagram, RogerLove.com or speak.voiceplace.com for stuttering. And there's so much content if you want to go more seriously in it. There's affordable programs that cost like three trips to Starbucks and you have a new voice.

Claudia von Boeselager (48:55)
I'm gonna dig into them also a little bit deeper I have so so many questions that I didn't even get to. So maybe at one point we could do a round two when I'm speaking much better and more sounding a little bit more like solid airflow. Yes.

Roger Love (49:05)
Just I just want solid airflow from you. I just want

your tummy to come in when the sound is coming out. And you can do that. You're a pro.

Claudia von Boeselager (49:14)
Okay. I will definitely

be practicing this. I don't know if I'm a pro, but I will practice. it's like learning a new skill, really. So I have to think about it first, but I will work on it, I promise, after you're taking the generous time to come on today. Do you have any and I'm gonna do this on the outbreath? Do you have any parting thoughts or message for my audience today, Roger?

Roger Love (49:37)
The last thing that people are thinking they need to make over is their voice. The last thing people are thinking is that their lives are not where they want them to be, it's the voice's problem. But the truth is, your entire life, your personal life, your business life, how you feel inside, the inner voice that talks to you.

That if you really want to change your life, the greatest, simplest makeover that you can do is change the way you sound. And that changes the way that the world perceives you and the way you perceive yourself. And by changing your voice, that is the greatest gift you can give. Learn how to use your voice.

And then learn how to give it away so that you become the gift to other people. Your voice is a gift that you learn how to use, and then you give it away. You give it away in conversations.

And then that's what creates the conversations that lead to the relationships that leads to the life that you want. Give yourself the gift a makeover that you never thought of, a voice makeover, and it's probably going to change your life for the positive more than anything else you could think of.

Claudia von Boeselager (50:46)
So, so beautiful, Roger. Thank you so much for this gift that you have given us of your voice and your knowledge and wisdom and education and all the things that you are doing Thank you so much for taking the time to come on today and thank you, dear audience, for tuning in. Such a pleasure. Thank you so much, Roger. Such a pleasure to be too and amazing work that you're doing.

Roger Love (50:59)
Thank you so much. Bye bye now. Of course, you were a delight.