Web Design Business with Josh Hall

370 - Presenting with Confidence with Smart Passive Income’s Voiceover Guy John Melley

• Josh Hall

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If you’re nervous, anxious, jittery or just plain distraught before sales calls or meetings…you’re not alone. I honestly can’t believe this isn’t talked about more. After all – you pour your heart and soul into building awesome websites and refining your craft but in order to get paid for that hard work…you gotta sell!

Luckily, there are many things you can do to build confidence and calm before a sales meeting. And that’s what we’re diving into today.

I’m pumped to be joined by voiceover professional John Melley who – if you’ve listened to Pat Flynn’s “Smart Passive Income” podcast – you already know…he’s the guy who’s intro’d Pat and done his fun facts for years.

Needless to say, I’ve been listening to John in this form for years. Always wondering…”Is that his real voice?”

You’ll find that out in this wide-ranging convo about:

  • Calming nerves before sales meetings
  • How to speak and present clearly and confidently
  • How to physically change your state if you’re nervous
  • How to save your voice when you talk a lot
  • Posture tips while working


And a whole lot more.

P.S. Be sure to check out his book The Voiceover Athlete (don’t worry, it’s for web designers too!)

Head to the show notes to get all links and resources we mentioned along with a full transcription of this episode at joshhall.co/370

Big thanks to the sponsors for our upcoming Web Designer Pro CON 2025 event! We couldn't make such a top-notch event for my community without their support 🙏

17hats (for proposals, invoicing, contracts and automation)

SiteGround (for website hosting)

Termageddon (for auto-updating privacy po

John Melley:

You're tightening everything up, you're restricting and constricting airflow and there's also a hormonal thing that's taking place. You're getting an adrenaline dump and a cortisol dump in your body because the brain is being informed that, oh, we're under threat Defend, you know. So when you're sitting like this, you're kind of like in threat defensive, you're in a defensive mode, and when you're up like this, just I can just feel it, just feel a difference.

John Melly:

I can just feel. It Just feel a difference. Welcome to the Web Design Business Podcast with your host, Josh Hall.

Josh Hall:

Helping you build a web design business that gives you freedom and a lifestyle you love. Great to have you here, friends. This is a different episode for the podcast here, because we're going to take a deep dive into your voice and your presence, specifically helping you if you get nervous or anxious when presenting web designs or presenting in even a small group. This is something I know all web designers struggle with, Typically. I sure as heck did. I was nervous as heck when I was presenting my networking group, but I learned over the years how to contain that and control that a little bit. And, man, I wish I would have heard this conversation that you're going to hear today prior to that, because I have none other than the voice over man himself of Pat Flynn's podcast smart passive income. So if you've been a fan of that show, you've likely heard this.

John Melly:

Welcome to the smartive Income Podcast, where it's all about working hard now so you can sit back and reap the benefits later.

Josh Hall:

But that's not actually his real voice. In fact, this is what John really sounds like.

John Melly:

And just so you know what I really sound like, this is my real voice.

Josh Hall:

So not only are we going to talk about voice today, presence and how to speak and be confident in sales meetings and group settings, but we're going to talk a lot about how your body as a whole plays into running your business and man, I took a lot away out of this. I want to thank John. What an honor to have him on learned a lot. I think you will as well. We do mention this. He is the author of a new ebook, the voiceover athlete, which I've actually gone through, and it comes with a little mini video course If you'd like to go through it, where he has exercises that we talk about later on. So I'd recommend it. We will have that linked at the show notes for this episode, which can be found at joshhallco slash 370. All right, here's John. John, thank you for taking some time to chat today. I just told you before we hit record I feel like I'm talking to a bit of a rock star. I've been a fan of Pat Flynn's podcast, the Smart Passive Income podcast, for years and subsequently I've heard your voice almost every week for years as you're doing some voiceover work. And first of all, thank you for taking some time to chat today because I feel like my industry of web designers.

Josh Hall:

Some people may think why would we need to dive into voice and voice work? But I've found many a time in my experience in meetings or on calls, that my voice gets weak. And the reason this is really important for me is I remember early in my journey I did a presentation for my mom's Corvette club and I presented their new website that I was about to build for them and I could not stop coughing. I got a little nervous and my voice tensed up and it was like my nose started dripping and then I just was like coughing and thankfully she got me some water, but it was honestly pretty embarrassing and then I realized like I actually need to think more about my voice and how I present. So for all those reasons and more, I'm so excited to chat with you. Yeah, I'm excited to be here. Thanks for inviting me. Excited to chat with you. Yeah, I'm excited to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

John Melley:

Give us, if you would, just a bit of your, just your backstory and what you do in voiceover and voice work. Okay, where do you want the story to start from? My first interests or my career.

Josh Hall:

I guess, yeah, career Like what. If somebody wonders what does a voiceover do, what does that entail? What type of things do you do with your voice?

John Melley:

My primary function is I'm the commercial production director for a radio station in Boston. It's Mix 104.1, wwbx and, speaking of dry throats, I've been in that current capacity since late 2001. Before that, I was at another station, oldies 103. And so I voice, edit and produce radio commercials. It was a CBS-owned and operated station for most of those years. Back in 2017, it merged with a company called Entercom, which is now Odyssey. So you may hear, if you listen to radio there, the radio there.

John Melley:

But growing up I had seen the impact of people having a career. And then, back in the 90s I think, there was a book called who Moved my Cheese? And basically observing life. The worst number in anything is one, one of anything. And if you have one source of income, one data backup, one microphone, if something goes wrong you're kind of stuck.

John Melley:

And so I had studied, taken it upon myself to study marketing, and I said you know, radio is a great business, it's a fun business, but it's still a business and it's about getting ratings and charging advertisers for the access to those that audience. And if they decide, well, this format isn't working, well, then we're going to blow out everybody and hire a new staff and that's back when, you know, there wasn't all this artificial intelligence now with this voice synthesis, um, and so I was learning, first of all, that it's easier to keep a customer than to go out and cheaper to keep a customer than to go out and get a new one. So I was studying marketing and there's a point to all of this and I wanted to create very effective radio commercials for people who had invested in the station, because I wanted them to come back. And sometimes you have to do things a little differently than what is supposed to sound like. And, josh, the longer you and I spend on this thing, the more voices will come out, I promise.

Josh Hall:

Oh, I'm so excited.

John Melley:

And it just happens. At any rate, I was trying to write commercials and get people to see that. You know, if it doesn't just sound like a radio commercial but you notice it and it gets your attention, then it's working. And so I decided I needed to apply that to my business and so I started my own freelance business on the side. A lot of voice folks do so. I've done. I've done so many things. I mentioned it briefly in my conversation with Pat Then.

John Melley:

One of the cool aspects of my gig as a voiceover talent is I get exposed to so many different things. I've done a lot of voiceovers for video games, did some creature sounds for Atari games, a bunch of other smaller video game companies all kinds of different things. I've done a few audio books. Candidly, audio books aren't my jam just because they take so long, so long and talk about stamina vocal stamina you definitely need that. I've done promos. I've done, obviously, a lot of podcast work and I have a couple of my own shows. So anything that has a voice. I call myself the ubiquitous unknown. I'm everywhere but nobody knows who I am. So you know messages on hold, you know all kinds of things, anything that needs a voice. I've done a lot of corporate training, narration, all that kind of good stuff.

Josh Hall:

Well, the multiple voices within the span of an hour.

Josh Hall:

Listen, I'm a dad of three under six.

Josh Hall:

I've got two golden retrievers, so I probably sound like I'm managing multiple personalities with all the different voices that go on in the span of an hour.

Josh Hall:

But I think it is interesting. You mentioned a couple of things really interesting there, but what I would love to get to for this is to really dive into how to improve our speaking and our voice, especially for those who are doing extended calls, speaking engagements. I'm getting into that place now where I'm going to be doing a little more speaking and it's new territory for me and I just know I know myself because I'm a talker I can wear my voice out pretty quick and today, for example, after this, I have a coaching call with my web design community and I know by three or four o'clock today I'll probably be up here. So I think the voice is fascinating and you tell me, john, I feel like nowadays there may be more opportunity to stand out when you are well-spoken and when you have a voice that is different than everybody else. Would you agree? Like, do you feel like it's almost a superpower now to have a strong, stamina based voice?

John Melley:

I, you know there's is a concept called presence, you know? And, um sure, here's the thing If you're going to be speaking in public, I know I spent a lot of time alone in a room, but I've done a fair amount of public speaking too. In a past life I used to be a lobbyist and you know you'd go and give presentations on how some piece of legislation was going to impact. I worked in the real estate industry. I was working for them and I'd say, you know, I'd talk about some law that was going to change how they got their licenses or something, and then the regulators would come in and they would say and I would have to go out and give another speech and say you remember everything I said last time I was here. Yes, forget all that, it's now this, and so, anyway, I've done a fair amount of public speaking, and the thing the biggest takeaway I got from when I was learning how to speak in front of an audience was you have to understand that the audience is rooting for you. They want you to do a good job because they they don't want to sit there and go. Oh God, you know, you don't. You don't want to be distracting from the message that you want to give to your, the people who are listening to you, you so anything that you can support that goal.

John Melley:

What's your message? You know you may have, um, for your industry. You may have a new chat tech support chat feature that you can implement, or, uh, those, those pop-ups that validate somebody made a purchase, or something like that. Some new feature, some new widget you may have that. You may have a new coaching program that you want to roll out. You may want to talk about how the new algorithms for Google search are going to impact your search engine optimization, whatever it is. I'm really going out of my depth here by trying to pull in your jargon, but at any rate, um, yeah, you want to. Basically, if you can get up in front of an audience composed, confident and prepared and deliver your message in a way that people can understand what you're trying to accomplish, and then, if there's an action to take, take the action that you, as the presenter, want them to do, then you've succeeded.

Josh Hall:

So, most, most every web designer fears and dreads getting up in front of an audience of any size, and I don't know what number would constitute an audience, but for me, I remember vividly going to what I thought was going to be a one on one or one on two meeting and it was a board of directors for this nonprofit I was building a website for and it was like nine people or something that felt so different than a couple people. I remember feeling nervous and my voice reflected that. What can we do to calm nerves? Before we even dive into like some nitty gritty on like voice stuff, I would love to know what are some of the tips that you have for calming yourself down when you are nervous or even, if it's a good anxious energy. What are some of your recommendations to calm your nerves?

John Melley:

Sure, Okay, there is a little checklist that I go through. So there you know, people a lot of times will have this imposter syndrome thing going on. It's like why am I here? You know who am I to be doing this? First of all, if you've been invited to speak, then obviously the person who's extended the invitation thinks you're qualified to speak on that topic. So reassure yourself that they want you there for a reason. Right, the other thing that it's easier said than done. But why is it you have to ask the question? Why is it you have to ask the question? Why is it different to speak in front of I don't know if you're gonna hear trudy in the background there- puppies are always welcome on the podcast okay, well good, thank you for that it's casual around here

John Melley:

okay, well, it's casual. Here today too, usually I'm like retake, anyway. So you've been asked to speak for a reason, but why is it different mentally If you're just speaking with one or two people versus a room full of people? They're still just people and it's easier said than done, and I totally understand that. And also and which brings me to another point thrive on that energy. You kind of hinted at it. If you're nervous, that's a good thing, because want it means you care, it means you want to do a good job. And you've got to kind of just put out and I'm speaking from experience, I do it too and you just have to shut those voices out and say no, I'm here for a reason, you know. No, I'm here for a reason, you know. I'm here because they want me to share this message, this information. And then there's a real practical tip that you can do, and it's called the power pose.

Josh Hall:

Have you ever heard of that.

John Melley:

There is an actual physical response that you can create by your posture is everything you can. And if you're going to go on stage, I do this, you psych, you got to psych yourself up and I'll give you some concrete examples. And I'll give you some concrete examples. But if you want to literally manifest some physical confidence, you want to stand up and you want to extend your arms out and you want to lengthen yourself and just stand there. It's called the power pose and what happens with that posture? You know body language, boy. We can go into a deep dive here, josh, because I've done a lot of research in this I'm in for it, so let's do it there, your body, regardless of gender.

John Melley:

when you're in this pose, you release testosterone, and testosterone is a confidence booster. It's what gets you ready to hunt, to defend, to fight, if necessary, to run. It's the natural thing that happens when you've got that adrenaline surge. Human body is an amazing thing. I don't know how it works, it's just. There's so many things. Think about all the things that we're doing right now. We're sitting here in our chairs. We're, we're looking at each other through space and time.

Josh Hall:

Did Amazon come Perfect timing Amazon?

John Melley:

UPS, fedex mail carrier Trudy is our guardian, at any rate. Just think about it. We're smelling, we're hearing, we're breathing, we're looking, we're feeling temperature. We're hearing, we're breathing, we're looking, we're feeling temperature. We're processing the food and the drink that we've had already today. We're coming up with ideas. You're listening, you're processing the information. You're also monitoring the sound levels. I'm trying to not get distracted by my dog chasing trucks from outside. You know so. There's so many things that we're doing all at once, and if you just stop it, we're breathing, you know, the heart's beating and we're, you know, we're creating all of these chemical reactions within us, and so posture leads to a physicality, a hormonal cascade that takes place in the body. You know, you can. We are very good at reading humans through years and years of evolution. Um, you can tell when somebody's down just by looking at their posture. Right, you know? Yeah, the slump, the down, slump the downward.

John Melley:

Look the downcast face, the rounded shoulders. It's a defensive posture, it's a threat posture. When you stand up and you expose your, your visceral organs basically, and your arms are out like this and your hands are wide open and you've got great posture, the body responds. There's a confidence there and if you can get yourself for five minutes or so just off by yourself, strike a pose, strike that pose, just prep yourself. You will feel it. I feel it just sitting here doing it with you. I mean, I'm much more animated in my delivery than what I mean. I'm just sitting here, josh, and it's cold here today and all that kind of stuff. But if I was to sit here and talk to you like this, it's a disconnect. It's like his posture isn't matching his voice. Look at how he's rounded down but he's talking.

John Melly:

It almost looks like I'm angry blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

John Melley:

Right, but if I'm like this and I'm talking, look, the smile just happens on my face. I get excited, all of that. So the power pose is a big deal. So if you're going to be speaking in public or you're going to go into a session or you're going to make a presentation or whatever, that's a technique I employ all the time. The other thing is you've got to put this, switch this thing, say you know what? This is my room. I own this room. Right now. This is my time.

John Melley:

They've asked me here and you, you've got to just push yourself there. It's, you know, it's called voice acting, for a reason you know. Assume a virtue if you have it not, you know, interesting, yeah, you've got to do it. If that's what you want to do, even if you you don't want to do it, your audience is rooting for you, am I? So I'll give you a couple of real examples. I was one of the first gigs that I got hired for. I think it was a newspaper Clevelandcom. You're out in Ohio? Yeah, I'm in Columbus. Yeah, not too far, okay. So I did an ad forvelandcom. You're out in ohio? Yeah, I'm in columbus. Yeah, not too far, okay.

John Melly:

So I did an ad for clevelandcom and they hired me for this guy, this voice here, which is almost pat flynn, but not quite, and so anyhow, I'm in there and I'm in the booth.

John Melley:

The agency's there, the recording engineer is there. I'm in this little booth, the ad agency owner's there, the agency rep's there. It's like this conference room. You talk about a conference room, they're all sitting there. Then they've got the client on speaker phone. I'm in the booth, they've got the speaker monitor out in the conference room and they're listening. And so the guy I'm from Boston, so what I'm about to share. I was like this guy only knew what an insult he's like. He sounds like he's from New York. I'm like heresy, heresy.

John Melley:

Anyway. So, but you know you talk about it, they call you back, call you back in and they say they got it. And you know. So in my production gig studio it's like you know there's there are a lot of spots coming through. You know might have to deal with 15, 20 different commercials during the day, commercials during the day, these. So I'm in there for like an hour hour and a half reading a 30 second commercial and I'm hearing the engineer go clevelandcom, take 29. Oh God, 35, take 43.

John Melley:

And I'm going um, so during a break I walk out to the recording engineer and I say and I'm having this freak out moment in the studio, right, because they're saying maybe take it this way, maybe take it that way, and they're rewriting a script and they're scratching out stuff and my sheet, my script, is just. You know, I need a map to get through it. I'm going, wow, how am I? But at that point I'd almost memorized the script. Um, and so I walk out to the engineer and go so, like how many of these sessions do you do a day? And he goes two, maybe three.

John Melley:

I went okay, I know what's going on here and I share this with you for a couple of reasons. One, understand the context in which you're working in. You know there's there's a backstory to any environment you're in and if you don't kind of do the research on that, what you think is normal for you is not the norm for them, you know. So here I am thinking, oh my God, they got to do 20 of these things or so today and I'm sucking up all their time.

John Melley:

And he's like yeah, we got maybe another one. No, we don't have anything after you today. And this is like at one o'clock in the afternoon and I'm still in there banging on this script. And so there's the context. It's like, okay, totally different frame of reference. Here's the client saying you know, we've paid for four hours of studio time. We better get the most out of that studio time, let's. You know, let's work this guy and I'm fine with that, I'll have fun with it. But you know, let's work this guy, and I'm fine with that, I'll have fun with it. But you know, in the meantime I'm going oh, I'm never going to get hired again, I'm going to get blacklisted. This is it, this is like my.

John Melley:

I mean, that was a short ride. Oh God, I'm totally psyching myself out. And then I went no, shut up In my head. Shut up, you're here for a reason. They hired you, they, they did, they wanted to write a first refusal. That's how badly they wanted you. And you start you've got to put that in your head. And lo and behold, not only did they run that commercial, but they renewed it twice. So I'd come home or check my mail and there'd be another royalty check in and I'd be like wow, I guess they really did like that.

Josh Hall:

Yeah, I'll talk for four hours for that Heck. Yeah, oh yeah.

John Melley:

I mean, it didn't take that long, but man it was a stressful environment for me because I didn't know the context initially. But once I understood that, that took a lot of the pressure off of me. I was like oh, okay, okay, I'm not screwing this up, this is what they want, this is the process. So understand the context and the power pose is a big thing. Does that help you?

Josh Hall:

Oh, absolutely Absolutely. Both of those points are great, especially for web designers who don't know what they're going into. Often, like I said, I thought I was meeting you know one or two people and it was like a boardroom and I was like next to a projector. It's a whole different feeling than sitting at Panera in a car, like in a booth, you know. It's a whole different vibe. And obviously just sitting and standing is a whole different vibe. I'm actually a lot more comfortable sitting with someone, just because I did so many meetings for years at a coffee shop or at a restaurant where when I stand up, I really had to work on that. I was in a networking group that was hugely helpful for that, with standing and speaking and doing like a presentation every couple months. I was in a Toastmasters group, which was really helpful, which was really helpful, really really helpful. I would recommend it for everyone just to be a better speaker and be a better communicator. But those are great tips there.

Josh Hall:

I am curious about the voice itself. What happens when we get nervous? What is happening with our voice? For somebody like me, I just really haven't thought too much about the anatomy of what is in our voice. But uh, what's what happens when we get nervous?

John Melley:

well, I alluded to it earlier with the power pose versus the mind, and the mind informs the body. That's just neurology. There's also this there are your brain has these things called mirror neurons, and what they do. How deep you want to go here, Josh?

Josh Hall:

As deep as you want, let's go.

John Melley:

Here's the thing I I'm a very much a person that believes in nature and, and that the body has everything that it needs, and that a lot of this other stuff that we're in now doesn't really match up with how the human body and brain have evolved over millennia. And you know these computers and these wonderful gadgets called smartphones, they're like decades old. You know, in the grand scheme of things it's just a in time, um and so, but we're spending a lot of our time accommodating to using these things, um, and that takes a toll. And so if we spend a lot of time at our desks and computer me I do this Think about what happens here. Right, you're rounding your shoulders, you're looking at your neck. There's a picture in my book I'll show it to you here in the voiceover athlete About I go into a great deal about posture.

Josh Hall:

Oh, it's huge website. We call it code neck, code neck.

John Melley:

Yeah, it's another four computers. It was called caveman posture. So here's the picture, gotcha. Yeah, before computers, it was called caveman posture. So here's the picture, gotcha. Yeah, so those arrows represent airflow. Okay. So if you're sitting like this and you're breathing in, you're tightening your throat. Just crane your neck forward and feel the difference. You're also pinching the nerves right where your brainstem is.

Josh Hall:

Is this why side note so many radio people have the mic up high where they kind of talk into it upwards a little bit?

John Melley:

Yeah, or they'll stand. A lot of folks stand.

Josh Hall:

If I'm recording, uh a spot, I'm typically standing because now look at that yeah, this is a great challenge, because I always tend to have my mic below and I kind of lean it over and into it. But now I'm feeling like I may experiment with keeping it up and, uh, talking like forcing myself to just get a little bit straighter.

John Melley:

Yeah yeah, um the the other. So here's. Have you ever heard of the threat posture? No, I mean, I assume it's uh imagine, imagine somebody's got like is standing five feet away from you and they've got a baseball and they just whip it at you. What are you going to do?

Josh Hall:

Yeah, crouch, you're going to go like curl, uh-huh.

John Melley:

Well, look how close this is to that. Right, and you're sitting there like this versus. It's not that different. The only thing different is I've got my hands up, but if you're sitting like this with a, mouse and a keyboard or you're reading stuff. That's posture. So when I say the mind informs the body and the body informs the mind, when the brain senses this posture, what do you think is happening chemically in your brain?

Josh Hall:

Everything's probably tightening up through here too, literally.

John Melley:

You're tightening everything up, you're restricting and constricting airflow and there's also a hormonal thing that's taking place. You're getting an adrenaline dump and a cortisol dump in your body because the brain is being informed that, oh, we're under threat, defend, you know. Um. So when you're sitting like this, you're kind of like in threat, defensive, you're in a defensive mode, and when you're up like this, just I can just feel it, just feel a difference in in that. So there's there was. Here's where we're going to go deep.

John Melley:

Pbs did a whole series on the brain, the human brain, and they did this experiment faces of people, and the face was on the screen, flashed on the screen for maybe two seconds, three seconds, and the person seeing the images had to say what emotion the expression on the person's face was demonstrating. You know, happy, sad, angry, frustrated. It got very, very specific happy, sad, angry, frustrated. It got very, very specific. And you know there were very nuanced emotions and they did it for, like I don't know how many pictures, but let's just say 30 different expressions. You know, calm versus anxious, and there's so much to this. And then what they did was they had people who had Botox done and they put the same set of images in front of the folks that hadn't had Botox versus the group that had had Botox done, and you know, like the people who hadn't had any Botox got like 95% or more accuracy on what the expressions were. The people who had Botox scored much lower.

John Melley:

Because what Botox does is it prevents certain nerves from firing and we interpret emotions by so. Like when a person's smiling you're, you tend to smile back. If people are angry, you kind of get a little defensive looking, you know. So there's messaging that's going on from the brain to the muscles and the nerves, but there's also messaging going from the nerves, like if I've got a frown, back to the brain and so if you're I mentioned mirror neurons before. If you're not able to make the expression, to mirror the expression that the person you're conversing with, if you're not able to do it, you're not able to interpret the message that the person in front of you is giving you. The message that the person in front of you is giving you, your ability to interpret conversation in context is diminished because you've impaired the messaging that your brain is receiving from your facial expressions. How baked is that? So that's. This is one of the reasons why it's like you ever have somebody who was like, oh, that person's had botox, yeah, how. How is it, though? How do we know?

Josh Hall:

we know. I mean it's, it's just like seeing cg and being like that looks really real, but I just know it's not. I can just tell you know, like we're just such. We just know every little bit of faces and expression. What's interesting about this too, though, even before the voice, it's like. I remember when I started my business I was going around to local um businesses and, uh, I used to be in a band, so I went into the recording studio we used to to go to and the producer there. I remember walking in and just being like I'm starting web design, I'm doing website design and graphic design, and you know, anytime you need help with the website, I would love to be a help for you. And he said I remember vividly. He said I can see it in your face, like I see it in your eyes how excited you are about this, like I see it in your eyes how excited you are about this. And that just goes to show you how far just a little subtle change in posture and excitement facial expressions can go.

Josh Hall:

That translate right into business, by the way, because a client can know how you're really feeling, based off expressions, for sure.

John Melley:

And just to step out 30 feet from where you and I are right now. Look what's happening here. You're talking and you're excited about it and I'm sitting here smiling and I'm going yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is all part of it. If we were having this, oh, josh, you know, before long you're going to be like oh yes, you're going to be mirroring what I'm doing. So there's this great book. It's called the gift of Fear by Gavin DeBecker, and it's it was written, I think, in the nineties. It's a great read for everybody.

John Melley:

You know, I think a lot of things. You know, there's so much social pressure now to conform to different things that we kind of discount that gut reaction or suppress it. And he gave and this is what really came hit. This home for me was he gives this example have you ever been driving in your car, josh, and you just know that the person in front of you or the person coming up alongside of you is just going to cut in front of you and you just know that's what they're going to do, and then they do it.

John Melley:

Think about the scenario that you've made, that assumption, a prediction. Now, the brain does two things it protects and it predicts, and it protects you based on what it predicts will happen, based on past experience. Now, a lot of this stuff is just hardwired into the brain. So think about this You're on a highway, traveling in a metal box at 60 miles an hour, maybe you're all by yourself, and then there's this other person in their own metal box, traveling along the highway at maybe 70 miles an hour, and they're just cruising along and somehow, without maybe even making eye contact, you're predicting accurately that they're going to cut right in front of you, and so you start making adjustments. How do you think that happens? We're really good at reading other people, and so this whole thing about the power pose. And then, boy, this went so far away from voiceover, but I mean, but it all.

Josh Hall:

I know this is directly. I mean, what's interesting about this is we could have, you could have, you know, went right into vocal techniques, but it's a great foundation that I feel like. What's probably more important is the body as a whole, because I imagine there's no sense of talking about your throat if you're hunched over and not feeling a strong presence.

John Melley:

You in my book I talk about a couple of principles that I've learned through my own self-discovery, and in my book I explain why I went through this process. Because I was doing very well. I was making a lot of money, I had my own, I had my full-time gig of the radio Thankfully still do and I had a lot of freelance business coming in. I was making more money than I ever had in my life and I wound up with kidney stones. I was making more money than I ever had in my life and I got wound up with kidney stones and I was like this is stupid.

John Melley:

Why am I? You know, I can make all the money in the world, but if I'm not healthy, what's the point I'm going to be going on? I mean, I've, we've all seen it. There's enough people going to the hospital and medical tests and prescriptions and all that kind of stuff, and I'm like I don't want to do that, you know, but I still love what I do, and so I did this deep dive and stuff, and so one of the things is there's this principle called the arthrokinetic reflex, and what that means is that your body, your brain, has a map of your body. I'll give you an example. So it's a concept called proprioception. Your brain knows where your body is in space. If I were to say to you Josh, take your right pinky, extend it and touch the center of the back of your head, you can just do it, right? Yeah, because you know where it is. Your brain has a map of where everything is. It's not like touch the you know, assuming that you have the ability.

John Melley:

I'm not like oh, that was my eye yeah, exactly, yeah we've seen things where people kind of know if they're blindfolded or they've had their. They went to the dentist and they had the Novocaine and they're going like this with the fork. You know it's like well, what are you doing? Why is that? Well, your map is shut off because you've numbed it for a while and thankfully it wears off and you get it back again. Well, if we're not moving or if we have jammed joints, do you know that a jammed joint in anywhere in your body will reduce your strength? What do you mean by? I don't have good joint function because you've sat for eight hours at a computer and you get up and you're like oh, things are snap, crackling and popping like a rice krispie cereal.

John Melley:

Yeah, exactly your feet, um, your hands, think about how many joints are in your wrist and your fingers and in your feet. And I was, you know well, the first person who taught me this stuff. He was like, you know, you got to get bigger shoes and I'm like, why, well, can you curl your toes? And I'm like, why would I need to do that? Well, because your toes do have joints and you know, the concept of use it or lose it applies. Well, what happens is if you, literally if you don't use it, you lose it. And there's this thing called sensory motor amnesia, and so it's like, if you ever feel like, oh, I can't feel that, or you know this space in your body where it's just kind of like this void, you're supposed to be able to feel it, void, you're supposed to be able to feel it. So my point in talking about all this is and you mentioned it is that you know, if your throat's now, if you're hunched over your body's not optimal.

John Melley:

You know, one of the taglines foods inflammation is basically the body's defense system. So if you've got an infection, inflammation is good because it's fighting it off. But if you've got, let's just use the extreme. Let's say you've got a nut allergy and you eat nuts, that inflammatory response creates, you know, asphyxiation and it will kill you, you know.

John Melley:

But there's, there's a gradation. It's not. There's not one extreme or the other. There's like a whole spectrum of inflammation in between. And if you're eating food that is inflaming your body, you might not feel it on a day-to-day basis, but over time that's your immune system working and eventually, if it doesn't get a rest like anything else, it gets tired and it stops and then it manifests itself in any myriad of diseases. Um, that if you do things to minimize the inflammation in your body, that you're going, you're going to feel better instantly, you know. And when people go through these anti-inflammatory processes and they lose weight, they say, well, yeah, but at most I'm just like peeing a bunch of water. Well, yeah, because you've been retaining all that water to cool the inflammation that's in your body. And what happens when you retain water? You swell up, you get arthritis, you can't move as well, and all that kind of stuff.

Josh Hall:

So it all matters and it'd be an interesting case study to hear voices when somebody's like very obese and when they lose weight, and what the voice? How different the voice sounds. I'm going to pay attention to that, like when you see celebrities lose a bunch of weight or something.

Josh Hall:

I'm going to pay attention to to what they sound like afterwards, because you can tell yeah sometimes when you listen to somebody I mean even just the very active breathing you can tell like this person's probably like very overweight. I listen to some podcasts. I'm like I'm a hockey guy, so listen to some hockey podcasts and you can tell like they just they don't sound like they sound like they just walked up a bunch of steps to get here, versus, yeah, somebody who's more fit and it's a lot easier. It just sounds easier to breathe. Obviously, getting into a whole different aspect of this, you want to give yourself every advantage.

John Melley:

You know, I mean, and if it's there for you to take, why wouldn't you? You know, it's not costing anybody else anything. You know, it's not like you have to stomp on anybody or clear them out of the way. It's like to do it. You just, you know, take care of yourself and all of that. I mean. Am I perfect on this? By no means, but it's definitely a level of awareness.

John Melley:

So, to get back to your thing about what happens to the voice when you're tense long way around, you know it's when you're hunched over, there's. I mean, I'm not doing anything to my voice, but you can hear a difference? Yeah, for sure, you know. And I drop my shoulder blades back and down. I've opened up and you're going to sound better too, because people always say, oh, I hate the way my voice sounds. That's because you hear your voice in a way no one ever else will or could. Two things One, you're hearing it as it travels through you. You're also hearing it slightly behind your mouth, right, but you're in front of me. But they're also not hearing it as it travels through my skull and my chest and everywhere. You know, if I feel in my arms, you know. So you hear your voice differently. But if you, if you, if you, if you're here and you're hunched over, versus here and open, you've got more resonance available. Does that make sense?

Josh Hall:

Yeah, absolutely. And one thing I wanted to ask you about as a voiceover artist yourself, you've mentioned you've done a lot of different types of voices and types of sounds. I have always been fascinated by voiceover work. I think in another life I would love to be in some area of the industry, but I have learned more about and you've hit you hit on this in your conversation with Pat about how you can literally move your voice into different places in your body.

Josh Hall:

This may be a perfect opportunity for you to show us your range. But how does that work? Because I would love to sit here and say I could probably figure that out, but I just I feel like my voice sits nicely nestled halfway up my throat, headed back towards my nose, and I would love to talk deeper and have a more commanding presence, the Josh of Josh, yeah, the, the, you know, the deep King Josh voice, but I just end up. The more I talk, the more my I feel like my voice ends up just going up and back. So I would love to use some time here that we have left for almost a bit of coaching for me, which I know is going to help everyone else. Yeah, how do we move our voice, and where can it go? Well, big.

John Melley:

Thing.

John Melly:

It can go any way you want to put it.

Josh Hall:

I have to ask you let's limbo this how low can you go, John, I can go way down here, but you know I have to.

John Melley:

Your voice is muscle, man. I mean, it's like so. Did you hear how my voice just changed after going down here? This is up here and now I'm talking in my regular voice. So the this, this is hours and hours of misspent youth finally paying off.

Josh Hall:

Um, anyway, uh it is impressive, that's incredible, to be able to go that high and that low yeah thank you very much. I appreciate it um it's uh yeah I mean is it more diaphragm and and breathing air?

John Melley:

all yeah, well yeah, there's all of that. You know I, I mean kind of did some stuff with pad because he was asking me how I make different voices and you, you kind of led into it. But you know, the biggest thing for you, for you, do you want to develop more of a more resonant sound Relaxation? Do you ever notice that in your morning, when you wake up, you got morning voice? That's for a couple of reasons.

Josh Hall:

One, there's some right, I was just going to say I do the power washer. When I wake up, sometimes my kids I'll be like it's, like it's terrible now, but in in the morning it gets really low and gurgly and so I do the power washer and they love it because I literally sound like a power washer, starting up and running.

Josh Hall:

oh, like the air compressor yeah yeah, you know like a water power washer that I would be spraying off the house with, you know it'll. It runs like that motor runs, but when it starts up it's like low and Uh. I could do that first thing in the morning because my voice is just so low and relaxed yeah.

John Melley:

It's relaxed. You just hit on it, it's be your. Your body has given itself a chance to heal and so it's relaxed, and that's the thing. It's, it's breathing technique. So so there's there's a couple of breathing techniques I can share with you.

John Melley:

Um, I actually have a metronome on my phone and I set it to slightly under minute. I think it's 59 or 58 beats per second, and there's research that shows if you can breathe in and breathe out maybe seven times a minute, that's a very relaxed pace. I believe I'm getting that right. But what you can do, what I do, if you really want to relax out, is you you inhale for a count and then you exhale for double that count. So what typically happens for me when I do this practice is I get settled. I usually sit in my armchair over here and I get the metronome and it's on very, very low and it's in terms of volume, and I do a count of three to start, so it'll be one, two, three, and then exhale for six, four, five, six, so there's a total count of nine, right, three and six, and then inhale again, and then what happens is, as I've settled down, because you know you're moving around and your heart rate's up just a little bit and you're breathing and all that, and then, once you settle down, you're going to find that that initial count will be able to lengthen from three to maybe four, maybe six sometimes, and then you can, it'll get. Your body will tell you if you listen to it, you're not ready for that number yet. So by the time you're so, I've gotten it all the way up to like 10 and then 20. So then I'm doing two full breath cycles per minute. But you know, it's just as simple as like. If you're doing and the double the duration on the exhale for two cycles is it takes so two breath cycles of three and then six.

John Melley:

What the body does is it switches from a sympathetic nervous system to a parasympathetic nervous system. And the way that I remember it for myself is in parasympathetic nervous system, that's when healing and digestion and relaxation kicks in. And so if you want to turn on that system by inhaling for a count of three and then doubling the exhale for six, for a minimum of at least two cycles, it switches the nervous system over to the parasympathetic nervous system. And a way I remember the difference between the two is the sympathetic it's sympathy, and when you have sympathy, that means something bad has happened. And so when you have sympathy for something, so if you're not digesting your food, you're not, your body's not healing itself and repairing itself.

John Melley:

So when you can turn on those things, there's that. So what I do is I just start at three and then six, and then I kind of increase it out from two, four and eight, five and 10. Sometimes I push it out to seven and 14, and then I go I'm struggling on that 14 exhale, so I'll back it down, you know. And sometimes three is too long to inhale. Sometimes I'm like I'm good at two, but the more I practice that I'm good at two, but the more I practice that, the longer those things can be. And I'll do that for like 20 minutes.

Josh Hall:

And man you come out of that. You could record a Western, you could narrate a Western after that. Oh my God.

John Melley:

It just it's so amazing.

Josh Hall:

It's got to feel good too, right Like I can feel when my voice is strained and it sounds like it's up in my throat. Yeah Well, think how close that is to your brain.

John Melley:

Think about how much stuff is going on really close to your brain. The reason it's so close to your brain is because it's really important. You know, our eyes are basically external portions of our brain. We take 70% of the information. You know, assuming you're sighted, 70% of the input comes through our vision system. Then you're hearing, you know, then your nose taste. All these things are really important and that's why it's so close. We're really beautifully designed and so I just you got to take care of it. The pills aren't going to, they're just going to mask stuff. So if I could give two I'm not a doctor, hear me now, acknowledge, I'm not a doctor or medical professional. But I will tell you two things. Refined vegetable oils get them out of your life. If you can stay away from the sunflower, safflower, canola oil, rapeseed oil, sesame oil vegetable oils those aren't really vegetables. It's not like they're taking carrots and celery and squeezing them and extruding the oil out of them.

John Melley:

Yeah, that's definitely happened and they've taken the seeds from those plants and putting them under extreme heat and pressure and then they got to bleach it because the product, initial product, is just horrible and the brain, the body's immune system, goes, goes. What the heck is this stuff? And it's in everything. It's in everything avocado oil, olive oil and butter. That's what I use. Um, and because avocado and olive that's they're getting the oil from the actual fruit, not the seed.

Josh Hall:

I wanted to ask you about, like some practical preparations for a big presentation or or when you know you're going to be speaking for a while. I real quick, though. I wanted to just hit on the importance of the breath work. I'm so glad you mentioned that because, as I've looked back at some of the times I presented the problem, my biggest problem was breathing and being terrified of a pause. I feel like most people.

Josh Hall:

If you're not used to presenting in some sort of fashion, the pause during a presentation is terrible because silence just is expanded in time when you're in front of people. One second of silence in front of people feels like 10 when you're in front of them. I have to remind myself with my calls and my live streams and the Q and A's that I do that. I don't have to be making a noise every freaking second of the entire call. I can take a breath and I can breathe and I can come back to it, and even that felt like three seconds. I bet that was like half a second, yeah, yeah it's time compression and that happens under stress and threat.

John Melley:

So if you're up there on stage I'm sure you've experienced this you get up there and you're nervous and all that kind of stuff, but then, once you're in, you settle down right.

Josh Hall:

Well, and going back to my roots as a drummer in a rock band, I was going to ask you what you played the drums, yeah, right up there. So yeah, uh, that's, I got my Neil Peart back here.

John Melly:

Oh nice.

John Melley:

Hey, I saw one of Neil's last concerts when Russ was in Columbus, so oh, I was in um Portland Oregon when I saw one of their they were they had like three shows left. It was Portland Oregon when.

Josh Hall:

I saw one of their. They had like three shows left. It was a wow. The 40 tour, the 40 tour, yeah, yeah, okay, we were. We saw the same cycle. That's awesome.

John Melley:

When they went from like the most modern stage all the way up to like the, the mirror ball and the gymnasium set.

Josh Hall:

It was super cool. My father-in-law is a diehard rush guy so I took him after. I took his daughter away from him when I got married, but I took him to. I figured that was a nice trade-off, you know, but I took him to that show. Yeah, it was really cool to see the stage.

John Melley:

Yeah, you got the better end of that deal for sure.

Josh Hall:

Jacques. That's what he said. I know I did. What is interesting about that, though, is that's when I learned about the whole time compression thing as a drummer. Obviously, everything in a live show revolves around the drummer. Hate to break it to everyone else. We are the most important. So the songs were super fast.

Josh Hall:

Now, in my mind, the songs felt the exact same tempo and speed that we had always done them, but when I'm in front of a few hundred people or, in some cases, thousands of people people, the nerves of excitement. It wasn't like scared nervousness, it was just amped up excitement. I had to really learn that when I'm performing live this song, you're going to have to play like it feels slow for it to be the actual, the right time. So same thing when you're speaking to you, you may feel like you're speaking at a normal pace, but to everyone else sometimes it's like and I listened back to some of my presentations earlier on and I was like, oh my God, I didn't breathe at all. I don't think I breathed, I don't think I had any breaths in like half an hour or so.

John Melley:

Yeah, and then, of course, that's going to get your voice tired.

Josh Hall:

Yes.

John Melley:

Really Diaphragmatic breathing is very important. Do you know what that is? I don't.

Josh Hall:

I wondered if that was kind of. I mean, I know I'm familiar. You know your diaphragm is what everything is connected to, right through here where the air goes through. So I imagine I would imagine that your voice is. It's all about the diaphragm. I imagine it also goes back to the power pose you open up your lungs, you open up your chest, so it goes back to the power pose you open up your lungs, you open up your chest.

John Melley:

So the diaphragm is this muscle that basically sits at the base of your lungs and basically separates your lungs and heart from your visceral organs and it acts like a bellows. You know what a bellows is? It's really amazing. When it's not firing correctly, you get the hiccups, and so that's what. When it's not firing correctly, you get the hiccups, and so that's what that is.

John Melley:

And but basically a lot of people, when they're sitting like this at the computer, they're tense and they're breathing up in their chest and their neck and in their shoulders.

John Melley:

And if you're breathing up here, like up in here, it's not a deep breath, it's a shallow breath. Again, threat, your brain is going oh, we're under threat. Shallow breaths. You want to calm yourself right down that diaphragmatic breathing. And, if you want to, for your viewers and listeners, if you take your hands like this and put them over the crest of your hip bones when you take a diaphragmatic breath, you want to visualize breathing down in a way, so that your finger and your thumb move and your lungs are bigger than you think they are. They go down in the back and we are very frontally focused visually, because that's where our eyes are and we focus a lot of our concentration, particularly if you're working on a computer, everything is directed forward a lot, and what I would encourage your audience to do is visualize your back when you're breathing. Take a breath and just right now, focus on your back. Feels different, right.

Josh Hall:

Yeah, it's a whole you do. You do just think about lungs, like right here.

John Melley:

But not, yeah, you're just like well, it's close. You know, this is where my hands can go. It's harder to put them up and around, but, um, you know. But if you visualize and now just like, visualize breathing, but down by your lower ribs on your back Totally different experience, right, it just feels different. And so you know, it's not just front, it's all around. So that's the proprioception that I'm talking about.

Josh Hall:

Side note, it's one reason I did go through your, your your course recently. Uh, that was accompanied by your book and it was cool to see, like, how many different stretches and things you can do around the voice. It was a good reminder of this conversation too. That voice is just what is coming out is, uh, a reaction and the result of everything else that's going on, which I think is your key point to all this about thinking about your body as a whole.

John Melley:

Have those practical example. If you're in pain or if somebody's in pain, how do they talk?

Josh Hall:

Yeah, the voice is ah, it's up, it's like as high as it could go, it's exactly. Nobody's like my toe.

John Melley:

A brick hit my toe and it hurts it really hurts and people don't believe that because it's out of context, right, yeah, you're like, oh yeah, right, you're being funny now, josh. And then your big toe doesn't hurt you at all. It's like, oh my God, that's a brick hit my toe. And, uh, you know so, if you're, your brain is like distracted because it's trying to protect you. You ever twist your ankle and then you're kind of like walking on it, but then all of a sudden, maybe two days later, the rest of your body hurts because you're favoring the foot, so you're putting more work on this other leg, and so then your knee starts to hurt and then your hip starts to hurt and your back starts to hurt.

John Melley:

It's all connected. So, like, if you're distracted by discomfort, even if you're not aware of it, um, if you're not moving, well, I guarantee you that you're not performing at the highest level you can, and it's all connected, it all matters. Everything impacts everything else. That's why you know not to get off on it. But these specialists that say, oh, I focus on the second knuckle of your pinky, that's the kind of doctor I am. I'm a pinky doctor. Well, it's kind of ridiculous, right? You know, if you there, I don't have as many. I think there are more videos on the hands in in the videos than our book.

Josh Hall:

I know that yeah, a lot of hands and a lot of, uh like, neck and chat, yeah chest yeah, think about.

John Melley:

Do you know what a homunculus is?

John Melley:

no, sounds like a mediterranean appetizer yeah, have that, I'll have the homunculus Anyway. No, homunculus is. It's a depiction of the human body scaled to the amount of brain resources that are devoted to it. So if it basically exaggerates, it's a weird looking thing. But basically, if you were to, if your body was built in proportion to the amount of brain work, then you would have hands that would be about five feet big, you'd be about this tall, your lips would be gigantic and your feet would be enormous, because that's and your eyes would bug out because that's where the brain allocates it's.

John Melley:

Really, think about what your fingers do. It can sense temperature, texture, pressure, it can manipulate things, it can grab things and all these joints take up a lot of space to fire them. I mean, think about all that stuff that they can do. There's a high, there's a direct correlation in lack of hand function and death. If you can't grab things, if you can't feed yourself.

John Melley:

I mean it gets to a point I've seen people who've got like have to grab their you know their coffee cup like this And's shaking. I mean it's sad, but you, the amount of information that your hands convey, you know they'll tell you when something's slipping out of your hand and so you grab it, just all the all these little things and so um, the amount of release that you can get in your body by mobilizing your hands. It's incredible, josh. If somebody hadn't shown this to me, I would have said, oh, you're crazy. But I've literally sat and worked different drills on my hands for 15 minutes or so and I stand up my shoulder, think about it. Minutes or so and I stand up my shoulder, think about it. All those nerves have to travel from your neck all the way down your arms. You know, and and all that information If you're, if you're jamming them up and you're only using them to type or click. Imagine if you did a push up every time you clicked your mouse.

Josh Hall:

You'd be freaking jacked right. Web designers would be ripped You'd be ripped.

John Melley:

Click, click, click. How many times? Just for a thing. I was editing some weather forecasts. I do some. They're not even weather forecasts, they're updates. They're three seconds long, but I do them for a number of markets, and so for each one of those little three-second snippets, I counted 21 mouse clicks and drags for one three-second thing.

Josh Hall:

Oh, I can't even imagine what we're doing building websites and video work. I do a lot of post-production stuff, so my gosh, I mean it's going to sound self-serving.

John Melley:

But folks, I mean, if you want to really open your hands up and reverse you, will you work on your hands? Yeah, you think I'm crazy. People are like, oh, dude, what are you talking about? Think about how many joints are in your fingers, in your hands and your wrist. And I, you know it's this. There's multiple parts to your hand. You know there are fingers, palm, back of palm and wrist. And you're like, yeah, dude, again it was a big deal. It matters, you know. And if you're sitting in this posture, there's the other thing in the book that I talk about. It's called the SED principle, s-a-i-d, and it says it stands for specific adaptation to imposed demand. And in the book I give a couple of examples. But have you ever seen a professional tennis player's forearm? Oh, right, yeah, you know what that looks like versus. You know their racket hand versus their non-racket hand. This is like.

John Melley:

I mean, it's like muscles you know all that kind of stuff. If you drive a car, I would invite you to look at your. If you drive um, you know just a regular automatic car. I bet you dollars to donuts that your right calf muscle is a lot more defined than your left one. Have you ever seen a?

Josh Hall:

picture of nadal the what nadal the tennis player. Have you ever seen a picture of him? No, look after this, or whatever you fancy his left arm. He's a lefty. His left arm is like massive. Yeah, it's kind of a joke that, uh, like he only lifts weights on his on his left. I remember um gosh, this was years ago I had a physical like in school days and they were like, do you carry your bag on your right shoulder? And I was like yep, and they were like you could literally see it. It's like a little bit lower than your in your other shoulder.

John Melley:

I was like, ah, think about that and you're compensating, yeah, um, yeah. And, and you know you're saying talk about posture when you're sitting. Sitting is you're, you're practicing sitting. So you're literally imagine if your your muscles just shut off, you're going to fall out of the chair. You're sitting in that chair holding yourself up for hours a day. That's basically an isometric hold. You know, otherwise you'd fall out of the chair.

John Melley:

So you're getting I don't mean this in any way in a derogatory sense. This is the truth. You're getting really good at sitting and you're getting strong sitting, and so what happens is the body adapts to that demand, and so your hip flexor muscles are going to contract and your lower back muscles are going to extend around your backside to the bottom of your leg, and so you're going to get this contraction on one side and this extension on the other side, and what happens is that people walk around with their butt sticking out, and then what happens is that their lumbar compensates for it. So you get this curve in your lower back yeah, and you can tell.

Josh Hall:

I feel like you can tell. Obviously this is the most common with older people. You can tell when somebody has a chair, like has a recliner. You know, I told my wife recently, very timely, I was like I'm never going to get, I'm never going to have an old guy chair, because I know exactly where that leads.

John Melley:

Yeah.

Josh Hall:

It's just like the slow decline, maybe a quick decline in some cases. Yeah.

John Melley:

Well, there's this posture here. It's called kyphosis, kyphotic posture, and think about what that's doing. It's compressing your lungs and your heart and it's pressing down on your digestive system and your liver and all of that.

John Melley:

It matters. So I'm not saying give up the computer, I can't. This is how we make our living now, make our living now. But what I am saying and what you can do with this book is you can counteract, you can offset, you can. The body has an amazing capacity to heal and it's the only one you've got and it's the place you're going to live for your entire life. I I don't know who said that. I think it might've been Jim Rohn, probably Abraham.

Josh Hall:

Lincoln. That's where all the quotes go back to Somebody a lot smarter than I.

John Melley:

But when you think about it, it's true, it's with you all the time, and so it's like you have to ask yourself why am I? And I'm guilty. You know, man, I like me some buffalo wings and blue cheese. You know it tastes good, blue cheese. You know it tastes good, but you know it's fried and um in in vegetable oils with anti-foaming agents put in. Have you ever seen what goes into front deep frying oil?

Josh Hall:

I kind of view that like hot dogs. Like you know, I'm going to be every once in a while. I don't want to know, but I don't want to know what makes the sausage or the hot dogs in this case. But uh, uh, yeah, this is a great reminder about how one little aspect of like speaking well and having presence is a reflection of everything else going on. And as web designers, I don't think, or even just on entrepreneurs and business owners, there's never a bad time to be reminded to get up, to stretch and work on those habits that definitely affect everything else. And I did want to give you a chance, john, while we wrap this up. Uh, your book, it's voiceover ours, but there's a lot more to it than that. It's kind of like, uh, um, yeah, if you would tell us about that. One final question for.

John Melley:

I want to make sure we get to. But, but, yeah, tell us about your book and where everyone can connect here with you. Thank you for that opportunity and I, I I know I've kind of been all over the place here, but the core message to all of this is that your body, it matters, it's so. The book is called the voiceover athlete. Athlete, I'm sorry, yeah, athlete. Oh, that's okay. Uh, and the reason because it's called the voiceover athlete is if you use your body to do your job which I do and you do and everybody watching us and listening to us does because if you don't have a body, you're unable to do this or run or all the things that you do require your body. And I say the healthy body means a healthy voice. It also means healthy everything else.

John Melley:

So this book I kind of alluded to how this all happened. I tell you my story. I was very active when I was younger and then you know, I got away from all of that and what this is. There's 170 different pictures. I don't know if this is reversed. It looks bass-ackwards on me, looks good on my end, looks good on your end. That's that matters. Um and um, there's over 170 different photos um where I take you through all of these different mobility exercises, and it goes from the jaw all the way through the neck, shoulders, elbows, wrists, hands, spine, thoracic cavity, and it changed my life.

Josh Hall:

It's awesome. Like I said, I went through it. I know you have a video course that accompanies it. It was very cool to actually do that. It's awesome. I definitely like I said I went through it.

John Melley:

I know you have a video course that accompanies it and, um, it was very cool to actually do that. I would love your feedback. What was most impactful for you?

Josh Hall:

There were a couple of the exercises about stretching your neck in particular, I think, because I do often sit and get tight through through the chest and stuff. It was a good reminder about how much is actually going on in the neck in context, particularly of of a voice, like how much strain, basically how much strain is happening in your voice because of everything else that's connected and around to it. So it was just such a great reminder. Uh, and even just the breath work and even, yeah, for some of the exercises with the uh, with the stretching in the neck, I remember doing and being like, oh my gosh, I didn't even think about that. Yeah, the jaw too. The one with the jaw I specifically remember because I have a pretty weak jawline. I remember going through that and being like, oh my gosh, I wish I would have done this 10 years ago. I wish I would have started this. The trachea is one.

Josh Hall:

Never too late. The trachea, yeah yeah, the, the moving that I was like. Oh my gosh, I didn't think about that, unless you're. You know you have a sibling who's choking you. You don't even think about moving your voice around.

John Melley:

Yeah, it's um. So anyway, I know you wanted to ask me about vocal placement, but I think we touched on that with relaxation and breathing.

Josh Hall:

Yeah no, that's huge. Yeah, and, like I said, even everything we've covered up to this point with your presence and everything leading up to that, I mean just the breath, work, relaxation, that alone is going to drop a voice and make it sound more commanding, I imagine.

John Melley:

Yeah, and I think also the mindset you know it's like. Remember they've asked you for a reason. It's the authority thing and the imposter syndrome. One quick story on that I remember I was out in LA at Buzzy's recording studio. I was taking a workshop with a guy by the name of Pat Fraley who has been a wonderful mentor for me. Pat's done thousands of animated characters. He was on Teenage Mutant Ninja, turtles, krang, um, and he's all kinds of things anyway, brilliant, brilliant talent, um, and I remember being out there in la and in this studio and all these june foray who did um, uh, the voice for rocky the Flying Squirrel and Rocky and Bullwinkle I'm dating myself but James Earl Jones, who did this to CNN. You know that. You know all these names, these famous people. You know autographing the walls and I'm standing in this studio and it was so cool. You walk into this room and it's dead silent. Oh my God, it was amazing.

John Melley:

You know, and I'm standing in there going. What the heck am I doing here? Who am I to be? Standing in a room with like 10 or 11 other voice talent from all over, and I'm going?

John Melly:

oh man.

John Melley:

But then I was like, no, make the most of this moment. Man, You're here. I flew all the way from Boston to LA. God, love those poor folks out there. God, I mean it's just awful what's happening. But yeah, it was. But yeah, you gotta just you gotta shut that critic out. You know, take valuable criticism from people, but remember people are rooting for you and they, um, they want you to do a good job, Um, but, um, yeah. So the the uh, I'm glad you liked book and there are videos that go along with it. Actually, the pictures in the book, oh, from the videos, right, yeah, yeah, there's screen captures of the video. And yeah, there's a lot of stuff with the tracheal mobility, Yep, the swallowing and practicing, all of that.

Josh Hall:

I recommend it. Look for my entire audience. Every web designer is going to be in a meeting, going to be on a long call, sometimes stacked up back to back, unexpected. Whatever the situation is, I definitely recommend, john, your book. Thank you. Even if somebody doesn't want to be a voiceover artist, I like the term athlete just for that reason because it is a physical thing. So a lot of this has been great reminders. I have one selfish last question for you, but we'll have your website and the book linked in the show notes. For this one I don't think there'll be a copyright infringement and Pat's a friend of mine, so I think I can ask this. But I've always wanted to hear the Pat Flynn Smart Passive Income Podcast voice say you've been listening to the Web Design Business podcast with Josh Hall.

John Melly:

Can.

Josh Hall:

I request that you do that for me live just to hear what that would sound like.

John Melly:

You've been listening to the Web Design Business podcast with your host, josh Hall. That's great. Yes, he's in the 614.

Josh Hall:

I was hoping you'd add handsome or something in there, but hey, we can work on that. Here we go, ready.

John Melly:

Take two You've been listening to the Web Design Business Podcast with your handsome host and father of three, Josh Hall.

Josh Hall:

My day is made, my week is my year, year is made and we just kicked off 2025.

John Melly:

So did you? I get the right number of kids. You got it. You got it, you nailed it I was paying attention.

Josh Hall:

I'm gonna send this to pat and be like hey, uh, I know, you know, uh, john's not doing any voiceover for for the podcast currently, so I stole him from you, but I'm taking his voice. We're going to keep it going.

John Melly:

There you go, man, I appreciate that you know Pat's been.

John Melley:

Pat has been wonderful to work with. Finished up our conversation I said, pat, this has been a real trip to watch this whole thing take off for you, from the very beginning to then, watching how you grew this audience and your podcast and your business and all that kind of stuff. I said to him, I mentioned to my wife that I was going to be doing this and I said just kind of offhandedly, if I had known what this was going to turn in turn into, I would have negotiated a royalty deal with him.

John Melley:

Right, I don't think I'm talking out of school, because he paused and he said back then I probably would have agreed to that.

Josh Hall:

Sure, you can take 1%. No, I can't tell you.

John Melley:

It's been a real trip. I mean people, it's been brought people in business to me. But more than that it's been kind of a weird experience because I'd be at different conferences and then somebody would find out that you're the Pat Flynn guy. You're that guy, do the voice and I'm like come on, man.

Josh Hall:

Is that your biggest claim to fame, or do you have a bigger claim to fame than being the smart passive income guy?

John Melley:

Do I have a bigger claim to fame? That's a pretty good one. I've done a lot of neat things. I was on an exhibit at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library I don't know if it's still there, but it was for United Technologies. I've done stuff for Atari. Like I said, I've been working for CBS. I worked for CBS Radio for many years and now it's Odyssey. I have been a very lucky guy career-wise. I had goals and I've had an opportunity to use some talents and put myself in situations where opportunities would open up. But I have been very, very fortunate. I really I just celebrated my 30th year in radio last year and I'm still going, and I think a lot of that has to do with not being cocky but confident. I get overwhelmed at times where I can have like six or seven different production orders coming at me and of course they want it now and the client needs to approve it before they go away for the long weekend. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, yeah, get in line.

Josh Hall:

Everybody else wants that too, you know it sounds like the life of a web designer too. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Melley:

You know we're all running there that game and it's just. But I think a lot of it has to do with coming to the realization that I got to take care of this, you know, because if this isn't working, I'm not working. Yeah.

Josh Hall:

And again, a lot of this convo was a great reminder of just how important our body as a whole is. We may type with our fingers, but it's connected to everything else. So a lot of good challenges in this one. John, I really appreciate your time and your challenging nature of just health first, and I know you've been through a lot and have really done a lot in that area. To continue on.

John Melley:

I've been really lucky, done a lot in that area. To continue on, I've been really lucky. You know it's. You know I had I had kidney stones and all that kind of stuff, but I have been very, very lucky health wise I've. I have family members who haven't been as fortunate and you know you have this, for I get very passionate about this. You really, we need to take care of ourselves, the people out there. There's a healthcare industry out there, but we need to own our own health to a great extent before we go looking elsewhere for it. So but I appreciate you, josh, for asking me on the show and giving me an opportunity to share all of these sub passions that I have, aside from voiceover, and to promote the book and all of that kind of stuff, and so thank you.

Josh Hall:

Heck, yeah, man. Well, thanks for your time. John Really appreciate it and I got some work to do here. I'm excited to improve my voice and improve everything that it's connected to, so I appreciate it. You are very welcome. What fun. I hope you enjoyed this one. It was so awesome to talk to John. I hope you got some takeaways. You can share with John and I some of your favorite takeaways from this chat by leaving a comment at the show notes for this episode, which are going to be found at joshhallco slash three, seven, zero. Again.

Josh Hall:

John does have a new ebook out called the Voice Over Athlete. I would recommend checking that out. That will be on the show notes page as well. And if you're like me and you want to actually see some of the exercises that John talked about a little bit in this chat and actually go through his little mini course that is like a video walkthrough of how to do literal exercises before you speak, particularly in a group, I would recommend doing what I did and just picking up the free course. It's not free, it's a low cost I think it's like 50 bucks, something like that the voiceover course that comes with the book if you want it. So I highly recommend it.

Josh Hall:

I learned a lot from it and I think you will too. I mean, this is the matter of sales happening for you or not Sometimes, when you're presenting confidently and talking clearly, not mumbling and muttering like I do sometimes on the show. Thank you for bearing with me, so I recommend checking it out. Josh hallco, slash three 70 to get all the show notes, links, resources, et cetera. And again a big thanks to John for taking some time and sharing a lot with us in this one right. Awesome. Go hit them up, say thanks, let them know you had some fun today listening to them and a big thanks, so I'll see you on the next episode. Stay subscribed, because we got some other big ones ahead.