Hey, guys. Welcome to the podcast. My guest today is Matt Berthow, and he's a vocal coach. This company is called Voice by Matt. And this is a really interesting conversation. We talk about how to use your voice as a weapon, but it it definitely was was more than I expected. So I think you guys will enjoy this. Try to listen to the end because it really starts to get good towards the end, and we get into some really deep topics.
Don't forget to follow me on LinkedIn and connect with me if you haven't already, and check us out on MSL talk live, which the announcements come out. It's once a month, typically on the 1st Tuesday of the month. So we'd love to see you there. And as always, thank you for your support and for sharing this show and for being such a loyalist. We really appreciate you. Welcome to MSL talk with Tom Caravella, a podcast specifically designed for MSLs and all things field medical.
Alright, Matt. Welcome to the podcast, buddy. How you making out? Thanks for having me, Tom. Happy Halloween. Yeah. Happy Halloween. Guys, it's Halloween today. And my man, Matt, dressed up full Iron Man attire. Dude, you gotta you gotta get on YouTube to watch this so you could see. My man killed it. I mean, he's handsome just, like, on a normal day, but he's got these glasses and this whole Iron Man thing. He looks phenomenal. Thanks, Tom. I mean, Iron Man's one of my favorite.
And, you know, when your 8 year old asks you, hey, you need to dress up as Iron Man, you better dress up as Iron Man. You do it. You freaking do it. And I didn't dress up, but I'm wearing all black. So I'm almost like You got the James Bond going, man. I got, like, the sleek kinda look. It it's like double black. And and I almost feel like maybe if you're a Harry Potter fan, I'm like a Dementor. No. You're not a Dementor. You you would be one of the the, the professors. Yeah, man. Like, Snape.
I got my full Snape going right now. You go. Without the cape. Snape without the cape. So guys, let me give you a little context. So Matt and I met, through a mutual friend recently, and he and I are both participating, at this, event coming up in March. It's called Evolve. And Evolve is really something more for entrepreneurs, but it's really a growth summit. And and it could be good for personal growth as well as professional growth.
And that's coming up in March, and Matt and I are both leaders at that event. If you're interested in more details on that, just shoot me a private DM on LinkedIn. I can give you more details. But my man, Matt, is gonna be there. He's awesome. I'll let him introduce himself. So, Matt, why don't you do an intro so you could tell everybody who you are and where you're from and all that good stuff? Alright. Tom, thank you so much for having me on your podcast. Already, this is legendary.
This this, this is a great opening, and thank you so much for letting me be a part of this. Yeah. So we're both an Arate Syndicate, and I joined Arate in 2019. I was a public school teacher for 19 years. For 20 years, I've been coaching private voice. Since 2019, I made a transition to start helping business professionals with their craft, which is technique, artistry, storytelling, and performance magic, Harry Potter. Right?
Mhmm. So people feeling what you want them to feel, seeing what we want them to see. I help people find their voice, keep their voice, share their voice, and connect their voice. Lots of my clients, have issues with their clarity, connecting with people, confidence, communicating effectively, and, one of my favorite things, the courage to actually show their soul and let their soul come out and say hello. So I transitioned full time.
It was it was kind of a half time, part time thing for, you know, about 4 years. And May 2nd, I said, alright. No more public school. I'm all in. And it's been a really awesome ride since May 2nd, and I'm excited to talk about The Voice today Yeah. On your show. And I think it's a perfect this is a great message. Message isn't the right word.
This is a this is a great conversation for the community that listens to my show, which mostly everybody that listens to this is in some type of professional customer facing role where your communication skills, style, ability to develop relationships is really, really super important, which you know what? That's important for anybody nowadays. But how you use your voice, I think is not an area that we've covered before, but I think it's really important. So let's just jump into it.
And I wanna I wanna start by asking you, can you talk a little bit about some of the things that you help your clients with as it relates to The Voice? Sure. So, you know, Tom's an athlete. I'm an athlete. I grew up, playing 3 sports. I was a state champion wrestler, 4 time state champion team. I didn't join choir until middle of my junior year because this girl broke my heart. You know, you you date your high school sweetheart. Right? And she broke my heart, and I was depressed.
I didn't know I was depressed, but I was depressed at the time. My counselor, Bob Tessman, called me in. He said, Matt, what do you love? And I said, Kylie. And he said, no. What do you love that you're not doing right now? I said, I like to sing, like, in my shower, in my blue truck. And he said, okay. We're gonna enroll you in choir. So imagine, you know, jock boy, middle of my junior year, about this time, I'm gonna enroll in choir the next semester.
Never been in any kind of thing like that in my life. And so what I found was, 1, there are a lot of pretty girls in choir. I like that. That was fun. But, 2, I had no idea how to read music. I had no idea how to use my voice. I was a terrible singer, but I had a lot of heart. I really had a lot of heart. And I fell in love with it. And I joined, and I went to school for it, music education, bachelor bachelor's of, music education in voice. And I got my master's in voice performance.
But a lot of the way that voice was taught, and this is where I'm going with this, was very like puppy dogs and ice cream, like sing like the wind or speak like the wind or make it smooth like butter. Like, it was a lot of alliteration. It wasn't scientifically on point the way that it could be and should be. So about 7 years ago, in 2017, a guy named Brian Winnie, he was a professor here at the college, He said, Matt, you should come to the Estill voice training workshop. And I was like, okay.
Tell me about that. It's the only scientific research model in the world. And I said, okay. So I was you know, I thought I was pretty hot, and, you know, I know everything about the voice, My kids and my I have professionals in the industry. Like, we're killing it. This was pre me coaching business professionals. I go in there for 5 days. I get worked. There's all these gestures and these scopes down their throat, and you're seeing all these structures move.
And the vocal folds, I've never really looked at them before, and they look really crazy weird. And I'm my my brain is on overload. And I get to Friday. It was a 9 to 5, Tom, Monday through Friday. 5 days of this intense. Wow. It it's so scientific. Everything is medically termed in how they talk about the voice, the larynx, all of the the different muscle groups.
I I went home Friday after all of that, and I cried in my bathroom because I realized I was so wrong about everything I taught for, like, you know, 13, 14 years Mhmm. Private voice and in my choir program. And I knew that Monday after spring break, I was gonna have to come back and tell all my clients and all my students, hey. I was wrong, and we're gonna do this new thing. And so the new thing is scientifically researched the Estill voice training model. Alright? It's international.
Basically, what happened in 19 eighties, Jo Estill was an opera singer, and she was around 50 years old. And she went back to school in Pittsburgh, And she didn't go to a speaking track or a singing track. She's actually studied what's going on inside the throat. Nobody ever did that before. So scopes down the throat, she'd make these sounds. And she saw that in her throat, all of these structures were moving to make different qualities, different recipes of sound.
Yep. And she made these gestures with which I'm doing with my hand right now to basically mimic what's happening inside the throat. So an example, your glottis, your glottal glottal onset and offset. So your vocal folds can come together first and then they close, and then they they close together abruptly at the end like this. E, ah, oh. You have, you know, this thing called AES, area epiglottic sphincter. So either your whole voice track can narrow or it can widen. It can be nasal, or wide.
High larynx. Mid. Low larynx. And so there's all these gestures that do these amazing movements in the throat that help us be and this was the term that locked me in, Tom. Kim Steinhauer said, Matt, do you wanna be a voice athlete? You wanna be a vocal athlete? I was like, yeah. Sign me up for that. Because just like yoga gets our bodies stronger, more resilient, more limber, This is like vocal yoga.
And so when I take a client through the 8 sessions with me, the first phase is concentrated on vocal yoga, essentially. So the technique, your posture, your, you know, a lot of people talk about breath. People use too much air when they speak and when they sing. And when you use too much air, you are putting a lot of pressure on the vocal folds, and they will crack or they'll get it'll get tight. You'll hear, like, Tony Robbins or Ed. They get real excited. They start talking like this.
And when you start doing that, you cause a lot of tension in the front of your throat. And so what we wanna do is create a lot of relaxation in the front of our throat and a lot of space, like you heard me do right there, so that our voice can be clear and clean. Since I I started working with the Estill voice model, Tom, I've not lost my voice ever. Interesting. Yep. So let me let me let me jump ahead here real quick because I'm glad we got the background.
I have an understanding of because I wasn't really sure either what a voice coach does and and the the depth of it. But for for our audience, looking at professionals and people that have to use interpersonal communication to influence, to create relationships, to make an impact with their their customer base, whether it's internal, external clients. What types of things can you start to share with these guys about how to use your voice as a tool?
K. A lot of the problems that I deal with or challenges that I deal with with professionals that are business professionals, CEOs, presidents, simply is they're afraid to actually show who they really are. They're afraid to show emotion when they speak, and they're they get caught up in the the black and white, the information. Mhmm. And, you know, Tom and I, we've been to a lot of meetings, a lot of entrepreneur events where people speak, and they just throw a bunch of information out there.
And people are just mad. They're going they're taking all kinds of notes with stuff they don't even know why they're taking notes. And then they get done with the speech, and you sit there and you're like, I have no idea what this What do I do with this? Yeah. What do I do with this? I don't feel anything. This is a bunch of knowledge. You know, for me, the back of my head will hurt when when I when I just get all this information, but I have no context or no feeling attached to why.
Why should what what am I gonna do with this information? And what's the action? What's the thing I'm gonna do? Right? So a lot of my clients, we work through hardships, trauma that they've dealt with in their past because a lot of people get hurt, and then they don't wanna show themselves. Mhmm. They don't want they don't wanna show who they really are. They might be embarrassed. They might think I'm not good enough. I'm not worthy to actually speak my mind.
And you'd be surprised, Tom, there are so many business professionals that I talk to every single day that are just afraid to let their soul come out and say hello. And that's the best part of them. That's the best part. That's the part that we love. That's the part that we all love. And, you know, a lot of people are like, well, how can I show love and I'm talking about this device or this this thing I'm trying to sell or whatever? Right? And so what I do is I help them because I see them.
I feel them. I hear them, and I help them see their gifts. And I I rip them out, and I say, look, Tom. Look what look what you could do. Look what you can do. But a lot of people are just scared to to let it out. So let's let's talk about that. So sounds like you're saying the there's a natural, realness and authenticity to to this. But what if if you could put this into context, what kind of tips and tricks can you share with people to to pull that out?
Reps reps recording yourself every day, you know, on social media, whether it's LinkedIn or Instagram, Facebook, TikTok. Record yourself every day. Do 30 second little clips of just holding your phone up. Hello. My name is Matt Bertho. This is what I'm doing today. This is what it's like outside. It feels like 22 degrees outside today. This is what I'm going through right now. These are the challenges that I'm going through right now. I mean, I'm glad I'm glad you're asking this question.
You know, I think a lot of people get hung up on social media and presenting and talking about, you know, their lives because they're afraid that, you know, they're gonna get fired or someone's gonna say something to them. They're worried about, you know, the backlash of their family, their friends. But one thing that I think will give some relevance to your audience is this, and I'm gonna be talking about this in San Antonio this week.
You know, our legacy, Tom, what's really beautiful about this moment is it's recorded, and it's recorded forever as long as digital media is available. It's recorded for your kids, Tom, to say, you know what? That's my dad. And it's recorded for your kids' kids and their kids and their kids forever. And I say that because think about this. What would you give, Tom, to have a video recording of your great great grandpa talking about how life was wherever he was at a long time ago?
Mhmm. Just a day in the life of great great grandpa. Yep. What what would that be worth? Yeah. I mean, it's it's we we we take that for granted Mhmm. Right now. Yep. Because we're in a different time where everything's recorded. So much is recorded. Back then, nothing was recorded. Mhmm. So you don't have that You don't have that highlight reel.
So when I hear I hear what you're saying when it comes to and getting back into the professional side, because when it comes to my audience, we're talking about people that are communicating peer to peer in a professional setting. Right? So take social media out of it Yeah. For a second and even take the authenticity piece out of it for a second because gotta be careful. This is professional. We can't get too real. We can't get too authentic. We have to be professional.
So let's talk about I know that you work with a lot of entrepreneurs and professionals on how to make an impact and how to create connections with their their voice as a weapon. So I'd love to hear about that. K. So it's funny. You know, Angela, who we talked about, she, she has this amazing gift that that I say business Angela. And she brings this business Angela to the table. Right? And she kills it. Just destroys everything business. Right?
But there's a part that we love about her that's fun and playful and just joyous and, like you said, happy, positive. Right? Well, my job is to let those 2 come together. Alright? You know, when you look at Tony Robbins, it's Tony Robbins. When you look at Ed Mylett, it's Ed Mylett. I look at Tom, it's Tom. Right? And so my goal is to let business and personal come together so that we can actually feel you. And I know in the professional world, it's hard.
But the people that show themselves, that that feel deeply. And I'm talking about this product or I'm I I come to you, and we're gonna talk about this business plan. We're gonna talk about this thing. Well, if I'm passionate about it and you feel it and you feel how excited I am, like, that trigger, I'm excited. I am whole. I am love. I am joy. I am bliss. And I'm talking about this deal that we're gonna do. You're gonna feel it, and this is where we get fun.
You're gonna feel it because you felt it, Tom. I saw you. I felt it. And you're gonna see the vision. You're gonna see the vision that I'm trying to cast in my brain. And that is based on DeSpinza's research, Becoming Supernatural. Energy is frequency. Frequency carries information. That's the magic part. That's the energy part. Every time Tony Robbins or Ed Mylett gets up because they're 2 of the best in the world. You wanna talk about impact?
Those 2 have impact, and they're professional, and they're passionate, and they get excited about what they do. And because they get excited about it, we buy it. Mhmm. I remember in, Saint Louis, 2019, Ed was giving a speech, and he talked about playing golf with his son in this tournament. And they were in dead last, and they're getting their butts kicked. And Ed got down on the ground on his knee, and he started pretending like he was talking to Max, his son.
And I'll never forget that moment because I was like, dude, he gets it. Because we saw the pen. We saw the color of the pen. We saw the green. We saw the the weather that day because he was there. And so for business professionals that want to do amazing things and get people to connect with them, you've got to feel first and I say this all the time. Feel first love. Feel first wholeness. Feel first joy. Feel first a positive emotion. Right?
Feel first one of those emotions, visualize what is the thing that we're trying to do, and then do the talk, jump on the podcast, send the text, send the email. Because just like if you go to a restaurant and the chef is pissed off and angry and sad and depressed, they bring the food out to you. You're gonna eat that depressed, sad, ugly food. Right? It's It's the same thing when you show up in real life.
If you tried if you show up in front of me or if you show up in front of Tom, because I know Tom's the same, and you are sad and you're depressed and you come in and you try to talk to us about a deal, we're gonna feel that you're sad and depressed, and it's not gonna hit very well. It just won't. On the same token, if you're fake and you don't feel anything, it's not gonna hit at all. Not at all. We're we won't remember you at all. How many times do you see The Voice or speakers?
They have these speaker competitions. Right? When people are not attached to what they're talking about emotionally, you forget it. You forget it. You'll you'll forget it forever. So what I do, and I know this is taboo in the professional world, I help business professionals attach wholeness, joy, love, bliss to whatever they're presenting, whatever they're talking about, whatever they're texting, whatever, you know, email they're sending.
Because everything that we put out in the world, especially when we're feeling very deeply, is literally energetically connected to us. Have you ever been in the Sistine Chapel, Tom? No. Have you And I do need to get there. So have you been to Stonehenge? No. Okay. Yeah. You're just getting wrong. I'm a Jersey guy. I haven't been to too enough places. Well okay.
So people that have been to any kind of work of art, alright, that that was created by somebody, that was inspired, you're gonna feel that emotion when you get close to that piece of art. So when I walked into the Sistine Chapel, I felt the presence of something in that room. When you look at the Mona Lisa by Leonardo, you feel something looking at that piece of art. How is that possible? Well, Michelangelo, Leonardo, they were inspired. They felt deeply about what they were doing.
Love, whole, passion, excited. And in their bodies, they have a pen or a a paintbrush, and that energy goes into that paintbrush, into that paint, and onto that concrete or that canvas. And it's there for 1000 of years, And we feel it still today because it's not just I I love what you're saying. I love the you know me. I'm I'm big on the emotional aspects of all this stuff and energy and and how you leave people with energy and bring energy to people.
But let's let's talk about because there was only one Michelangelo. Right? Yeah. How do we get the normal Joe, the normal Ah, this is good. Jane Doe that's listening to this podcast and help her to find a level of emotion to be able to make an impact on her next meeting. Wow. Okay. Well, I mean, this is what I do. This is why it takes 8 sessions because there's a lot of unpacking to do. I take people through what I call pillars, and everybody has their own kinds of things as coaches. Right?
So for me, it's it's an idea that if we were high on a chart of mental, physical, spiritual, emotional, and abundance, out of 1 to 10, if I was high on those categories, how am I gonna show up every day? I'm gonna show up whole. Now Tom there's only one Tom in the universe. That's it. And Tom only has one set of vocal cords that's only his that no one can duplicate for the the rest of the history of the world. Alright?
So why wouldn't you want to use that instrument to the best it possibly can be? And so with with the physical training, with the with the the the the basic foundation, right, with artistry storytelling and with magic, we get people comfortable to a point to where making these silly sounds, to where unpacking some of the things that they were embarrassed about that is actually their superpower Mhmm.
Pulls them into owning themselves so that when they do show up in front of people, they're able to actually show this is who I am, this is what I stand for, and have the courage to use those tiny little vocal folds to show, you know, this is my creation in the world when I'm speaking right now. So, like, the canvas, the paint to the canvas, our vocal folds, when when when we speak, this sound comes out of our mouth and, really, is there for eternity. It it it it lasts.
But to get a person from point a to point b, it's work, and it's uncomfortable. But the biggest influence, the biggest impactors of the world, they have emotion attached to their words. All of them. Got it. The best actors in the world have emotion attached to their words. Could you imagine watching a movie with just people spouting information with nothing attached, no emotion attached? You wouldn't watch it. It would be the most boring thing you've ever seen in your life.
You know, you look at nature. Right? The weather. It feels like there's so many emotion attached to that sometimes. And I think that that's that's where it becomes a challenge to blend this in in the business world because I think a lot of people don't think it's okay to attach emotion to a presentation, let's just say, or a business meeting. And that emotion doesn't have to be this, like you said, either fake or contrived. It's what do you want the outcome to be?
So if you want the outcome to be success, positivity, collaboration. That's the emotion. I'm gonna present this deck to this key opinion leader, to this external client. And the emotion that I want to get out of it is that I want to feel that sense of and it doesn't have to be commitment, but maybe just collaboration. Maybe it's understanding. Maybe it's wisdom.
Maybe it's the the ability to share in that moment and share in that knowledge and create an experience where, okay, now we are on the same page. So that to me, I think, is something that I don't think we've ever really talked about on this podcast before was the literally, the importance of pouring emotion into your work, into your communication style, into your presentation, and, into your day job.
But I guess the question that I have for you is how do you reverse engineer the ability to without getting because I know you said you keep saying that, you know, it takes 8 sessions and it takes a lot of work.
For the purpose of this next couple of minutes that we have, what are some practical things that people could do when they're preparing for a business meeting, when they're preparing for a presentation that they can put into it to to know that it's going to be really good and to make an impact. Okay. Well, if if you're doing a meeting that day, you need to take time that morning to have gratitude about what's going on during your day. Alright? Gratitude for your life, what's going on.
That gratitude is is a really good, primer for the day. I like to do Wim Hof breathing. I do 3 rounds of that every freaking morning to oxidize my bloodstream, to get, my my my mind clear. And then I do at least a minimum 5 minute meditation, those three things. I would, before the meeting, before you have to get on the call, do, like, a 10 minute visualization meditation on what do you want them to feel from you. Do you want them to feel sad, depressed? Hell no. No. You want them to feel anger?
No. Do you want them to feel frustrated? Nope. You don't. You want them to feel whole. You want them to feel love. You want them to feel joy. You want them to feel bliss. You want them to feel excited. You must feel those emotions in order for them to feel it. If you don't feel those emotions, they're not going to magically feel it from you. Alright? So you feel that in your meditation for 10 minutes. Visualize the scene. Is it inside? Is it outside? Is it day? Is it night? Who's in the room?
Who are you talking to? Visualize it. Mhmm. See see what are they wearing? What are are they smiling at you? Are they are they are they accepting this information from you? Are they smiling? Do they feel love from you? Can you can you visualize them feeling that emotion from you? And you go through the whole scenario. You give yourself high fives. You're like, we did it. This is amazing. Everybody's happy. And then you open your eyes, and then you actually walk into the meeting.
Then you actually get on the Zoom call. Then you actually make the call or the text or send the email. I think it's great. I I think that that's that's something that gets missed. Intention. I do in the morning. I I have this very intentional, morning routine that I do. As a matter of fact, I talked about it on this podcast, podcast episode 86, if anyone's interested in checking it out. But I have a morning routine that's very, very similar.
And it works for me, but I like the idea of being more specific. So you have a specific event, a presentation, a meeting, and you get yourself fully emotionally. Yep. Prepared and visualize how you want that to go. Yeah. What emotion you want to communicate and share in that meeting. And then that brings it. So to to kind of wrap up a little bit, you know, when we first when I first started thinking about this concept of this podcast in this episode, knowing what you did, I'll be honest.
I thought it was gonna be more mechanical where it was gonna be like, hey. How do you use your voice as a weapon? The inflection of your voice, the energy of your voice. And that's part of it, but that's black and white. Right. Right. Emotion the emotion multiplies the impact. The emotion is spirit. The emotion is the the like, 0 to 5000 kilohertz on a spectrogram. Right? There's a way to get to 3 to 4000 kilohertz by doing more AES, by narrowing this right here. Alright?
By also narrowing that frequency and you have that punch in your voice like I do right now, more can be attached if you add emotion based on Dispenza's research. Wholeness, at the top of his pyramid there, is the highest potent frequency. Holy, wholeness, joy, bliss, love. Alright? If you have that feeling with the craft, which the blueprint, and you're you know, it's like I I Patrick Mahomesy played terrible on Sunday against the Broncos. But, anyway, he is a master of craft.
He knows the playbook. That's the artistry. And when he plays with emotion, Tom, what happens? He's unstoppable. Yeah. Magic. Jordan was the same way. Yep. And so all I'm doing is teaching my clients ultimate craft. They master the craft. It's always stuff that we're gonna work on. Here is the playbook of how you speak and and what you're gonna talk about. You know, we got the hook. We got this light story, the short story, and then, you know, the clothes. But then you do it.
You let go of thinking about craft and your story. You let go to the emotion, and you serve, like we're supposed to, the people, right, with your gift. And then that's when the magic happens. That's when people feel what we want them to feel and see what we want them to see, and that's when great impact happens. I love it, man. I'm I'm I'm in. I got I'm in. I I I, it took me a while to get it, and I I definitely agree.
And I love the analogies that you use because, you know, like there are certain people that they just, they feed energy to those around them because of the emotion that they bring into a situation, whatever it is. And when you don't have it, it's noticeable. Like, Patrick Mahomes had a bad game. Maybe he went into the game in the wrong frame of mind. Maybe he had a fight with his wife. Who knows? Sick. He was sick. What right? Everybody goes through it.
So that's a great example, but I think it's a really good reminder for everyone that's listening to this podcast today is to try to get in touch with those positive emotions, and bring those into your day. Bring them into your interactions. Bring them into your conversations, your presentations, your meetings, because people are gonna feel it. So I agree. I wholeheartedly agree. Thank you, Matt. This was awesome.
Thank you, Tom. Yeah. Well, before we close out, if anyone's interested, where can they find you? Where can they follow you? Are you on Instagram? Or Yeah. So matt@voicebymatt.com. That's my email. Mhmm. Or you can do voice by matt@gmail.com, either one. At voice by matt is Instagram, mattberto on LinkedIn, mattberto on Facebook, voice by matt on Facebook. I do have a podcast also that Tom's gonna be on eventually called Voice by Matt, and, it's where we talk about how people found their voice.
But yeah. And real quick, Matt spells his last name. It's b e r t h o t. Correct. The t is silent. Awesome. Matt, you're the man, brother. Thank you for coming on, sharing your wisdom, and, we appreciate you. We'll we'll have to have you back, and we'll see you again soon. Yeah. Thanks, Tom. Alright, man. Thanks, everyone. Thank you so much for listening to the show.
And if you enjoyed it, please subscribe so that you don't miss an episode in the future, and feel free to leave a rating or a review or a comment. Thanks again, and we look forward to seeing you soon.