So what do you do if you simply do not like the sound of your own voice? I get a lot of criticism for my advice on this topic, but I'm just going to give you the straight advice and those of you who hate me for it fine, you're gonna hate me for it. My advice is essentially, get over it. Your voice isn't that bad. Here's my experience. And I've worked with more than 10,000 clients from six continents for the last 30 years.
Most people don't like the sound of their own voice. Here's why. When you're hearing your voice come back to you through a speaker because you're watching a video of yourself on TV or on a cell phone from a voicemail, you're hearing your voice in a relatively non distorted way. compared to how you normally hear your voice you normally hear your voice distorted through the bones in your skull and in your nasal cavities in your mouth. So you're hearing your voice all day long, in a very distorted way. So when you hear your voice coming through speakers, yeah, there's still some distortion.
But it's actually much closer to how you sound in real life to everyone else. So it's not that your voice is bad are awful. It's just that you're not used to hearing your voice. And it's jarring Imagine if you are used to looking at yourself in the mirror and you always see one face. And now you see somebody on video, that's you and it's a completely different face might not be an ugly face. It's just weird.
That's kind of what it's like. There are basically three types of voices in the world there and I'm making these statistics up. Generally to make a point don't ask for the research, but in my view, less than 0.01% of speakers have voices so great that they can roll out of bed, go do a TV or radio commercial Voiceover get their million dollar check, go home, go back to bed. There's also roughly point oh 1% of voices that are so awful. People hear the voice they want to run out of the room or jump out the window. Everybody else far in excess of 99% have voices that are just voices.
Not so great people are going to pay a bunch of money. Not so awful that it drives people with my voices in that category. Now, some people like my voice, some don't. No one's willing to pay me a ton of money just for my voice. And no one wants to run out of the room simply hearing me say something they might not like what I say but it's not the tone of my voice. Chances are you are exactly like that.
That your voice simply isn't as bad as you think. Now if you truly have some kind of a lisp a speech impediment, you may want to see a speech therapist. If you have a nasal problem where your nasal cavities are clogged, and that's causing certain problems and giving you a nasal trap, maybe you need surgery. But if I were you, I would be far more interested in actually having something interesting to say when you speak. Because that's a problem we can solve. I mean, let's say your voice isn't great.
If you have something truly interesting and memorable to say, when you speak, you're going to be in good shape. Barbara Walters doesn't have a great voice. She's made hundreds of millions of dollars over the years by speaking and yet there are people with great voices who are homeless. So I know that some of you are going to be dissatisfied because you want some magic little tip to make yourself sound like you have this golden voice. And I'm here to tell you, it's probably not your problem at all.