Saturday 17 August 2019

HOW DOES YOUR VOICE HELP YOU?

Recently I have taken an interest in Theranos and it's rise and fall.

Theranos was established in 2003 by 19 year old Elizabeth Holmes. Theranos' USP was that they were able to take a small amount of blood and then use that to do a large number of tests.

Many high-profile people from the United States of America made investments in Theranos and over a ten year period they raised almost a billion US dollars. At one stage Theranos was valued at about US$9 billion while Elizabeth Holmes' net worth was valued at about half that at US$4.5 billion.

In 2015, an exposé by a writer from the Wall Street Journal questioned Theranos' technology and it all went down from there.

Both Holmes and the company president Sunny Balwani were charged with fraud and I heard that the trial will go ahead in August 2020.

This whole story has many angles. There is the scientific/technology angle. There is the financial angle and also the sociological angle.

Judging from what I have read and what I have watched in documentaries and news articles, I don't believe that Elizabeth Holmes went out to defraud investors of their money and hence become rich because of it. I believe that she really believed in her technology and in her idea and even down to the last minute she still believed that she could turn it around and that it could be on every street corner. Also, apparently she didn't profit in a huge way from 15 years of operations.

One of the interesting aspects of this story for a lot of people was Holmes's voice. She had a very deep voice that may or may not have been put on or not her actual, real voice. Personally, I find this aspect of the story very, very interesting.



My friend and I were discussing this the other day, our voice plays a big role in how people perceive us in society. For men, if you have a small or even feminine voice, it can be a problem for you in the future. Of course if you have a loud voice, that can create irritation throughout the groups of people that you interact with as well

Personally, my voice around people who I don't know can be quite low. I know here in Japan that people at places like convenience stores have to ask me again to say something. When I say that I don't need a plastic bag or chopsticks, sometimes I have to repeat myself or the shop assistant will give me those because:

a. they didn't hear me
b. they heard me but didn't understand it
c. they heard me, understood me but didn't believe that I had said anything.

There is a lot of resources on the Internet about how to increase the strength of your voice and how to project it better. I would suggest you check them out.

Deepening your voice can make you seem more authoritative. If you are a guy, a deep voice can make you seem more sexy and masculine to women and overall it just makes you seem more trustworthy and strong.

Personally, I think that a good strong voice is part of the trifecta:

1. Good posture

2. Good eye contact

3. Deep, strong voice

Work on these and you should start to feel confident, you may even start to feel better generally. Lets work on these things together and see how it goes.

It can't hurt, right?

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