Your Voice Is Your Greatest Weapon! Trump Impressionist John Di Domenico Explains

Welcome And Meet Johnny D

Welcome to Vegas Circle Podcast with your hosts, Pocky and Chris. We are people who are passionate about business, success, and culture. And this is our platform to showcase people in our city who are making it happen. And today we got just that, man. Really excited to sit down with this man. You've probably seen him on Jimmy Kimmel, possibly Conan, or maybe even The View. Let's welcome to the Circle, Emmy nominated MC host and speaker, Mr. John D. DeMonico. Thank you. Thank you, guys. You're the master of uh of speaking, so I'm intimidated to actually sit down with you, man, doing my research.

I gotta go through a lot of fire to get to that point.

You've got a very, very interesting story. You grew up with a severe speech impediment. Yes, right? And now you talk around the world speaking on stages and hosting shows and things. You gotta start

From Speech Impediment To Stage

from the beginning. How did this all come about?

Well, before I say that, I've come to the come to the point to realize that your greatest obstacle in life becomes your greatest strength and it redirects your life.

Yeah.

Whatever that obstacle is, there's no way around it. You have to go through it. So when I was born, as my speech started developing, it was a mess. I sounded like Elmer Fudd. That's what I was told. I sounded like Elmer Fudd.

You don't remember.

I I don't remember. I just remember being laughed at, you know, ridiculed and all those types of things. But conversely, at the same time, I was doing impressions. At five years old, I grew up in a row home neighborhood in Ambler, which is right outside of Philly. But the neighbors would sit out, you know, on the warm nights in the spring and summer, and they'd all be sitting around. And this is when kids were seen and not heard. And but I was just such a ham, and I had just seen John Biner on Ed Sullivan. And I was blown away that John Biner was introduced by Ed Sullivan, and Ed Sullivan was standing there, and John Biner was doing his voice. I'm like, wait a minute. John Biner's doing his voice. He was just speaking. And in that moment, I was like, wait, how is that possible? So I started doing impressions around five years old. So I walked up to this group of neighborhood people, you know, everyone's standing there smoking and drinking, especially the pregnant moms. And you remember it's 60, 68, 69, but I walked up and they're all watching me, and I started doing my John Biner, Ed Sullivan impression. Now, right here in our shoe, the fabulous Garbacho brothers and Girl Scout Troop 629 from Brooklyn, New York, girls stand up and show us your cookies.

And you're five.

And I'm five. And the adults, they absolutely loved it. And in that moment, I was like, I want to be a comedian. I want to be a comedian. And because, you know, with your I had a very, really tough childhood. My father was physically and emotionally abusive. And but to get this affirmation from the neighborhood adults meant so much because they were laughing with me and not at me. And I was kind of elevating their night. And so all these things were happening. Even though I was five, I was processing processing it on kind of a much higher level. Within I think that year, I went to first grade and they brought me in and I was diagnosed with a severe speech impediment.

Wow.

And for the next eight years, two times a week, I was in speech therapy. But the bright light that the speech therapist and speech pathologist saw was the fact I was doing impressions. So they saw that I was you know kind of working and changing my voice and changing like the mechanics in my mouth, but not in my normal speech.

Why Impressions Train Your Voice

That's interesting.

Yeah. So over time I you know improved my speech, and one of the first things I learned was you have to hear your voice to change your voice, to fix and improve and get command and control of your voice. Because if you don't have that, you don't have anything. And we as humans have two strikes against this our own head blocks out our voice, and our own brain blocks out our voice. It's called auditory attenuation. Our brain dampens our own voice. And when you hear your voice when you're speaking, you're hearing it through bone and tissue. So it makes it deeper, it makes it richer, sounds more resonant in your head, and then you hear yourself recorded on a tape recorder, and you go. Everyone always says, Is that me? Is that how I sound? Yes, that's you. That is how you sound. The way you think you sound and the way you actually sound are two totally different things. So my mission as someone who went through eight years of speech therapy, who's worked as a professional performer, voiceover artist, especially impressionists, because I have to manipulate my voice all the time. I want people to close that gap. Because your voice is your identity. And if you don't know how you sound, then how can you possibly put your identity out into the world and be a success?

I have never heard anybody put it this way before. I've never thought. I definitely understand it and have experienced it, but I've never thought about it and that and that. Well, but there's like you know, a lot to unpack there. I think there's a few different points that stood out to me. One is, you know, your ability to identify pitch kind of continuation amongst people at such a young age. You know, how do you think that has influenced your ability to emulate the sound experience of other people? Because you know, seeing Ed Sullivan interview somebody else, understanding that they're emulating each other's voice process, I'm sure it's a skill that you probably inherently have, but how do you like how much of an impact has that impacted you?

We all have it. Because I'll do a I'll do a show, a regular comedy show, and people come up after after the show and say to me, gosh, I wish I could do impressions. And I say, You are. We're all doing impressions. You're doing an impression of an impression of an impression. Because during the language acquisition period, you're doing an impression of your parents and the key adults in your life. You're literally inculcating how they speak. And there's two levels of that. It's you consciously trying to sound like everybody else. If you're from New York, everybody from New York's got a very specific accent. But then if you're someone like any in the Northeast United States, there's a high high degree of nasality. So someone like I'm gonna use myself as an example, but in Philadelphia, we're super nasal. And and Joe Pesci's a great thing. You know, Joe Pesci in that famous scene, I don't want to curse on the head, but you know, there's that thing. So when Joe Pesci's doing that voice, what's he doing? He's pushing his voice up through his nose, which a lot of New Yorkers do. But at five and six years old, are you consciously doing that? Your brain is doing that because that's a parasympathetic response. You want to fit in with everybody else. So your brain, your fight or flight response, is figuring out how can I sound like everybody else? I do not want to stick out. I I I want to live. Literally, like those those things. So you're doing it on multiple levels. So that's why people from New York can't hear their accent, or people from Britain can't hear their British accent or the famous Boston accent. Park the car and all the stuff. Yeah, yeah. Right. So your voice is doing all these things subconsciously, and you're doing part of it consciously, but the conscious part you can't hear. So you're in this very interesting thing with your voice because people pick their clothes, they pick their look, they have a personal style, you know, I'm gonna wear this, I'm gonna look great, I'm good and blue and purple, but no one knows how their voice sounds. So I always say, you know, your appearance is your first impression, but your voice is the lasting impression. That's what connects to people. That's why people love Morgan Freeman's voice, that deep, rich voice, or Darth Vader, the guy who does it, James Earl Jones. Certain people have that connectivity with their voice, and it's that deep rich sound. And even when I I looked this up, Morgan Freeman's voice was much higher. If you go back to his older films, his voice was much higher. He's a trained actor, trained in, you know, trained vocally, but he himself went back and lowered his voice a full octave. Really? So by the time you get to him later in his career and he's the voice-overing. He's on everything, he's on every commercial, yeah. Like the last 30 years. Yeah, he had really developed that sound, that kind of deep, rich sound that really connects with people. Because this is this is what we have to connect everybody. I talk about it in the business world because you want to reach out, you're gonna influence, and you're gonna persuade, and you're gonna connect with your voice. But I always have to be clear, it's not just sales, because we're all on sales. Yeah, we're all we're all speaking, more people are speaking now than any other time in history. Was there five million hours of podcast a month or something like that? So everyone's speaking, but no one no one hears their own voice.

Uh in all my years, I'm 46 years old, I never have heard it put this way.

The average person only uses 38% of their vocal range of capacity. So that means everybody else

The Science Of Hearing Yourself

with no vocal training is leaving 62% of their most valuable strategic asset on the table.

So I gotta ask you, so since we're starting there, how what's a tip for somebody that's listening that how do you move up that percentage? You can do eight years of speech therapy.

There's there are easy ways because it's just intentional listening.

Intentional listening?

Intentional listening to your own voice. I always, when I'm in front of a group, I say, who here works out? And these are a lot of peak performers because these are salespeople. And, you know, like 90%, you know, raise their hands. I work out five days a week. And and I always say, and I go through the list, who works out one day a week, who works out three days a week, who works out five days a week, who calls himself active? And you know, most people in those salespeople, they're they're working out, they're looking good. And I say, okay, who spends 15 minutes a week on their voice?

I've never spent 15 minutes a week.

Nobody.

Nobody's got a vocal app that I use.

Oh, good. That's great. That's awesome.

What does it do? I don't know. I don't even use it very often.

But I have sticking in the shower.

Hey, we're all hooked on like the external of how we look. And you know, because everyone's like, yeah, look like that. Because you if you work with a trainer, we're gonna say, okay, think about think about your bicep when you're doing that thing. My whole thing is think about your voice. Literally think about the mechanics of your voice, how this thing works, because technically it shouldn't even work. We're like the hummingbird, the voice, the vocal box, the larynx is almost like the hummingbird of our body. Because if you everyone knows how the human heart works and all the all the different organs, if you look at the simplicity of the larynx, it shouldn't even work. We shouldn't even be able to do what we're doing. That's amazing. And I always say you have a Ferrari in your throat and you're driving it like a Ford Fiesta. This thing is a precision instrument. It can bring you to tears, it can shatter glass, it can bond you to another person. The research on a couple where the the spouse says the other person's name literally can wake them out of a sleep, you know, all of these things about the human voice, and we just we just kind of throw it away. It's not being used to its fullest potential.

That is awesome.

And AI, because and I end my speech with this AI, which everyone's talking about, but AI is spending not millions, but billions of dollars on AI voices. You've already heard them. You've heard them on LinkedIn and Facebook and Instagram, but they're using real linguists, they're using human speech pathologists, they're using human scientists to do what? To make the voices more uh connective, to make the voices more persuasive, to make the voices more influential. But you already have that ability. They're literally spending billions of dollars to create fake versions of something that eight billion people already have, and they know we're not using it. So that is why I'm like an evangelist for the human voice. You've got this thing, it's already you already have it.

I'm always telling my kids all the time, communication rules everything. Yes. And it's like you always hear it's like media, it's it's finance, right? The communication communicators of the world. And if you can figure that out, it's it's unreal. But I've never heard it heard it put, you know, the way you broke it down. You've obviously studied this.

Oh, yeah. This is this is all I've like the last two years for me have been like a graduate studies program. Because when I decided to really like go from being a comedian and I still do comedy and host meetings, but I really want to wake people up. You just woke us up. We're we're super quiet. You hear pin drop again.

Honestly, you you've you changed the whole perspective. I'm thinking about it as I'm talking to you is because you want to slow down. Hear your own voice.

And going back to what you said about a tip, the easiest tip is we're all texting all the time. And if you can, if you can, these are the two things I I that are the quickest way to do this, if you don't have a podcast. But when you go to text a message, just record it.

Voice, yeah.

Do a voice recording, listen to it back, and start listening to all of them. It's gonna transcribe anyway, they're gonna get a worded, a text version of it in a couple of things.

Oh, I thought you were talking about sending

Intentional Listening And Simple Practice

a voice text. Send it. Yeah, yeah. Send it. I love getting a voice text, to be honest with you. It's so much better.

You can hear the person's voice because we've really gotten away from it. The number but if you do that, you can listen to it. And the number one thing, if you can do it, it's you know, I always say record your phone calls on your iPhone or your Android. Obviously, ask the other person. But if you're on a call for 15, 20 minutes, there's a point where you're gonna stop thinking about the recording and your real voice is. And then it and that's where you're gonna hear where, oh, there's there's oh, I man, my voice is baked. It's oh, I'm saying a lot of ums, I'm this and that. But you're really gonna get a better understanding. Like, oh wow, I say, I don't even put the G on thinking, I'm saying thinking and Gonna and all these. You think of my wife rolling her eyes in the background?

That's just not like our whole conversation at home. Yeah, but you're right.

It goes back to that, like, is that me? So you could because you think you sound one way and you actually sound another way. Interesting. That's very interesting.

As you're seeing people, you know, being an impressionist, being a proponent of changing your voice seems counterintuitive. So as you're kind of getting people going through and but and as you're seeing people through the evolution evolution of their external kind of careers where you've seen their voices change over periods of time, you know, what is that impact that it has on you and your craft to be an impressionist? Because if I'm impersonating somebody for such a long period of time, what I did at the beginning is very different than what it is now. Like, how often do you have to re-hone those

AI Voices And Human Connection

skills?

That's a great question. So I had started doing, and Trump's like what I became really known for and ended up on those, all those late night shows. So I started doing Trump in 2004. I met him in 1990. I was doing a show. 22 years ago? Yeah. I was doing a show at Trump Plaza in Atlantic City. And if you notice, if you look at, if you're on my website and you saw all my characters, I like really big characters, this guy, because I'm loud. But I met him in person, and then I did his 55th birthday party as Ulston Powers baby. So I so I met him a second time, then I did a third event for him, and I was like, this guy's really interesting. And if you were in the Northeast, he was really, he was kind of everywhere, especially when he moved into Atlantic City, and he was wasn't a national character yet, but I thought he'd be really interesting to do. So around 2004, the first season of The Apprentice, I had really started working on his voice because I had heard him and met him in Persian, and his voice is perfect for me, and especially somebody who has to deal with uh, you know, all this, all the things the speech pathologists and therapists put me through because what they had me focus on was hearing my own voice, throat placement, nasal placement, jaw placement, tongue placement, and all of these other little things like speaking through the vocal mask, which everybody should be doing. When you speak, you should be it the sound is coming through the soft palate, the hard palate, the lower part of the nose, obviously the tongue and the chin. And if you're doing it correctly and you're speaking correctly, your voice hits right here. All the elements come together, almost like a reverse megaphone. So your sound is here if you're doing if you're speaking correctly. But going back to Trump, I was I was kind of listening to his voice. And I was thinking, where is this guy? You know, because I need the nasality, because he's from the Northeast. He's a little bit of New York, but not too much. Too much. Just a little bit, just a little bit, you know. You know what I'm talking about, I have to tell you. And, you know, I broke his voice, because anytime I do any impression, I break it down by throw placement, nasal placement. That was my I come up with the eight things that the voice components are. Then I reassemble them and then I do the voice that way. And so now we're years in. I'd done hundreds of appearances as him. This is before he ran for president, because I had came up with a scalable corporate team-building version of The Apprentice. I was also doing roasts because Trump is perfect for roasts. This is the worst C-suite of every people are terrible. If I had so all those great bits, and it was just such a great character for that stuff. So, so then when he announced, I think it was May of 2015, I thought, wow, because my phone was ringing off the hook, because I was one of the few people doing him, full makeup, contacts, wigs, the whole bit. And I thought, you know what? Let me go back, let me fine-tune this because what happens is as an impressionist, this is this is why your question is so great. You end up doing an impression of an impression. You're doing an impression of your own impression. You're not you're not activating the mechanics, you're reproducing the sound. So I went back and I really like really fine-tuned the voice. And I always try to figure out I need

Building A Trump Impression For Real

to anchor the voice in something, any of the impressions that I do. So I thought, it's, you know, let me who does Trump sound like, or who sounds like Trump? Well, he's from Queens. Who else is from Queens? Who else is oh well? Christopher Walken is from Queens. Wow. So I was listening to Christopher Walken and noticing he too has that staccato style. So it's easy to roll him in to Trump. So that's like a sub that's like a substructure to the impression. And the other person I used to do as a kid was Groucho, who was born on the Upper East Side, but that's where Trump lived. He, you know, he came from Queens, but he lived on the Upper East Side. And I noticed he had a very sing-song-y Groucho was sing-song because he was very musical, but he knows, hello, I must be going. I came to say, I cannot say, I must be going. And then Trump does that too, because Trump does that thing where he talks way up, and then, well, I have to tell you, well, excuse me, excuse me. So there's all these things that he does, shut up, be quiet, Biggie. Be quiet, Biggie. You know, and then it's taking off the physical. That's crazy. Then you take the thing, because if I'm doing all this in powers, baby, it's all you know, it's all right here, man. Yeah.

Does any does anybody get pissed off when you do their impressions in front of them? Like an Austin Powers or I've tried to, I've met Trump more than I've met Mike Myers.

I cannot get in front of Mike Myers. Because you're good. Yeah. I have to tell you an interesting story though. I've been doing Gaffieri since Kat came on the scene, man. Love piece of taco, baby. You know that, man. I'm driving to bust a flavor town. So I've been doing another big character, and I really I think he's great. And I just realized I've been floating. I'm like, Dr. Nick. I thought I was part of UND. I was scene from the first one. I was like, you know, Scotch, you're just not evil enough. Um but it turns out there was a guy who looks like, there's a look alike of Guy Fieri. I've never known. Do this, yeah. And that guy was getting free meals, he was getting into baseball games, he was getting into clubs, and guy Fieri found out about it. He's furious. He was like, I don't like impersonators. I was like, Well, you're gonna hate me. And as it turned out, I have been in multiple places where he has been, either at a trade show here in Vegas at the Diplomat Hotel, because he was shooting something there, and I was there hosting a national sales meeting. And each time I ran into somebody from his team and they said, just so you know, guy hates impersonators. And I'm like, I I'm not doing this for free food. I'm a professional. He's like, what I do for a living. He's like, he doesn't care.

He wants to fight you. So you go outside, step outside. Kind of go back a little bit to the whole like sub-situation. Do you think because obviously that's a huge different dynamic from going from a businessman perspective and a personality to being the president of the United States of America? Yeah,

When Politics Changed The Booking Game

huge, huge change. And I think personality words, I'm sure I'm assuming I haven't followed as closely, but there has been some impact in changing that dynamic. Do you think that that move has helped or hurt you as you've kind of you have a history of 20 years of impersonating somebody who just now got thrust into more of a national dynamics?

2016 was incredible. I was literally just going around the world. I mean, I appeared on that this morning in in the UK six times. I was on the Today Show in Australia 12 times. I had meetings at Netflix, I had meetings with because they were just, it was just, I was the right place, right time. Because I had been doing him for so long, longer than anybody else. Yeah. I was thinking it was 14 then. So it was just like it was just so incredible. And it was just certain things in life just crossed. And everything took off, but nothing ever went to the like the next level. I was very lucky. I got on the cover of Los Angeles magazine. They did an amazing story on me. And all these things are like oh, you're so close, you're so close, you're so, but never nothing broke out to like that. I never got a series, did a couple of movies, but it never got like to that next level. And then when he got in the first time, I've read I know this guy pretty well before he even got in. And I knew what he was gonna do, and he did pretty much everything I thought he was gonna do. And then when he was in my work kind of declined, especially after the Muslim band, because the first thing he did was the Muslim band. So corporations, publicly held corporations, which that which is really where I make my living.

Because you speak around the world, yeah, yeah.

They they backed off, which I totally understand. So my agents who handled me for Trump, they went to like pro-Trump independent owners of companies, and that kind of carried me through. And then when he was out of office, my work went back up.

That's interesting.

Yeah, how does the intersection so you see this ebbs and flow, but obviously he's a very polarizing person. Oh, yeah. And uh, you know, but how does that being you and maybe uh you do or do not necessarily follow the ideals, but you're just an entertainer, right?

And but everybody just I would assume thinks that you're everyone makes that everybody makes very because I'm doing him, they assume I'm pro him. And I've done MAGA events.

That's hilarious.

Yeah, I did Ken Paxton is in the news. I did his wife's congressional run, big fundraiser. I was at an event where Trump was supposed, this was a small event, 30 people, $25,000 a plate. Trump was supposed to be there. He couldn't be there.

So he got held up.

So Lee Greenwood opened for me because it was supposed to be Lee Greenwood, the real Trump, Tommy Tubberville, Senator Tommy Tubberville, and then it was going to be Carrie Lake, because when Carrie Lake was either running for governor or senator or something like that. So I came in and did 20 minutes. Which I'm and there were moments where I'm like, this is so surreal. This is so surreal. All of these people know Trump personally. And I'm up here doing an act. Hello, everybody, look at this. I can see I love all these people. These are great people. Gary's gonna be an incredible senator, I have to tell you. You know that. You know that. I don't even have to say it. And I don't want to talk about myself, but I'm so incredible. I've done such a fantastic job. So it was it was wild. But but people will come up to me and say, unbelievable things.

That was my next part. You sound just like I would assume you've had like a lot of negative comments.

Yeah, shocked. And they think they're saying politics pissed a lot of people off.

I would just kind of caught that crossfire of being actually.

Yeah, because I'll just, you know, whatever it is, I always, you know, I stay in character. But interestingly, during the first during his first run, I was doing a podcast called the Trump Cast, which was which was in partnership with Salon Magazine and the New York Times. So I was working with the the New York Times political team, and I would read his tweets every few days. I think they did three shows a week. So I'd go into the studio and read the lines and send the send it to them. And then I would do live appearances on the show. But I was talking to Jacob Weisberg, who was the head of politics for the New York Times and had a nice relationship with him, and I was doing events all over the country. I mean, all over the country. And I was seeing things, I spent a year as an intern to a United States Senator. So I've always been interested in politics, but I was seeing things that were politically counterintuitive. And I would report back to them and say, I think your reporting's off because what I'm seeing frontline is different. I have people, I would literally do like a trade show or a corporate event, and people would come up to me and put their arm around me during the photo and go, I'm voting for you. Not I'm voting for Trump, I'm voting for you. And they say, My wife doesn't even know I'm voting for you. And I'm thinking, Oh, these are the secret Trump voters.

This is hilarious.

So I would, I would, you know, at one point I I had said, like, I I think there's a bigger groundswell for him than you're really capturing in New York with your reporting. And he says, John, everything you're saying is anecdotal. And I'm saying, I know it's anecdotal, but when you're crisscrossing the country and you're getting the same data points in five different cities, it doesn't make sense. I would come out of my room, I was at the Grand Hyatt in San Diego, and I came out of the room with my secret service, and the no joke, and this happened in multiple cities, where the housekeeping team would come up to me and go, Meatatram, meet the drum, I love you, Mr. Trum, I love you. And I would say, You love me? You love me? And they go, I love you, Mr. Trump, build a wall, build the wall. I'm like, you want me to build the wall? And to me, I was like, that's kind of counterintuitive. And I would hear I I heard that in Chicago, I heard that in Dallas, I heard it in Orlando, I heard it in New York. So I'm thinking like, oh, these people, they think, they think they're not voting for him. They're voting for him. And I don't know if it was Muy S Macho or you know what I mean, something like that. But I was really surprised. And I had I had one of my drivers, I had a show in Atlantic City and I landed in Philly, and my driver was named like Muhammad Abdul, whatever it is, and he started talking to me, super nice guy, but he he he he was he was kept asking me like what I do, and I didn't want to tell him I'm a Trump impersonator.

But he is that's your main, that's that's your main kind of I don't want to say gig. Well, it was during that time.

I mean, at one point I would do national sales meetings and be five different characters, and and one of them might be Trump. And then once he started running, everybody else just dropped him. But I'm so I'm in the car and he's like, So what do you do? What do you do? And I said, Oh, I'm I'm a comedian, I'm an impersonator. He's like, Who do you impersonate? And I was like, Austin Powers, Dr. Evil, Dr. Phil, Donald Trump. And he's like, Oh, you and I and he said, You you do Donald Trump? You do Donald Trump? And I was like, Yeah, yeah. And he was like, I love Donald Trump. I love Donald Trump. And I moved up on my seat because just to me, I was just really curious. And I said, You love Donald Trump? And he goes, Yes. And I said, Why do you love Donald Trump? And he said, he said, because he is going to draw the line. He's going to draw the line between me and the terrorist because I love America. And I thought, this is really fascinating. And again, it's counterintuitive. So I just, and I would report that back to them, and I kind of would just put it in my personal files because the thing I learned, and this goes to voice and speech and all these other things. But if you looked at Trump in the 1980s when he did his early, his early interviews, they were much more, his lexicon was much bigger. He he said so much more. And when he first spoke at CPAC, he got literally laughed off the stage. But his subsequent visits, the CPAP, where he CPAC, where he started shrinking his vocabulary and focusing down to three points. It was build the wall, this thing, and this thing. All of a sudden, and if you watch his speeches, if you've ever, and I've had to read his speeches. We I did it for Esquire magazine. He never completes a thought.

So he's always just enrapped. It's always open-ended, it's always a determination or thought, or where you make your own conclusion.

That's what I realized in that moment. That guy was hearing what he was hearing. Those housekeepers were hearing what they were hearing. Everybody was finishing the sentences themselves, and they were filling in. And I thought this is probably one of the most brilliant.

That's a great technique.

It's incredible technique.

Because you're saying a lot of people on your side, but yeah, because you're reading it and it's all literally incoherent.

Because this is what we've got to do. This is the thing. It's so important. We've got to be very strong about this.

Have you noticed anybody else that's done that? Like as far as far as I can see.

No one has left it open-ended. And it's and it's totally different from the way he started. He always had complete sentences, complete thoughts. But somewhere along the line, he found he found not completing the thought. And maybe having emotion behind it. That's that completed the thought for other people. And that was the filling in part. That's interesting.

Commanding A Room With Presence

What do you think makes somebody like instantly command a room? Because you speak everywhere, and you see that it a lot of times with people where they can just come in and the command room might be the body language or whatever it is, but from your perspective, because you've studied it.

I've seen so many CEOs and so many big things.

But some people do it wrong, though.

Oh, of course. Yeah, totally. But you know what it is? It's that fine, it's being deft at presence.

Deft at presence. Right.

It's coming into a room and knowing it goes back to being an actor because this is what I because this is the thing they taught you being an actor. Well, you learn. People come into the room and they're not in character yet. And okay, let me get into character. These people are in character. They are in character. They are on and they're the boss when from the moment they park the car before you get in the building. You're on. You know what you have to do. You're totally intentional.

So you think it's somebody that's in the moment? It's intentional. Is the one who commands the room better?

But it's intentional. Nothing is by accident. Those people who come on stage and command that stage, they've already been on the stage. They've already done the speech. It's already a success.

Comedians are some of my favorite public speakers. Right. Like we've had TK Kirkland, who's a friend of the show, like he's been on. He can command everybody in the room. Somebody's getting up to go use the restroom. He's stopping them to go use the restroom. You know what I mean? Just that is just that's an art. Like, I don't know. It is an artist.

And that's why there's so few people, you know, there's a lot of TikTok comedians and they get booked into a comedy.

Yeah.

Yeah. And they they bomb because it's the guys who are on the front lines who stand-up is not like anything else. I did stand up for, I'm not gonna make it out like I'm a stand-up comedian.

I I I but you commander, I've seen you. I've seen you. You commander room, yeah.

But that was those years from doing stand-up, because I I the work that it takes to do stand, it's like five, six nights a week. And it's the only thing you can be a vocalist and you can be in your house and you can practice and you sound great, and it's great. Stand-up comedy. And there's so many things. Stand up comedy is the only thing that you have to be in front of an audience. You can have the greatest material you get in front of an audience New York, Chicago, it doesn't matter where it is. There is a group think in that audience. You could have the most diverse group of people in that audience, they have groupthink. And they're gonna give you seven seconds to lock them in. Yeah, seven seconds. And your your persona, whatever your stand-up persona is, that is on long before you step on stage. It has to be because that or you will lose that audience. And you've seen, I know you've been a comedy club and the guy comes up.

That's my favorite thing to do. I love going to comedy shows.

And people like have shot down this comedian before he's opened his mouth. You know, and he could have the greatest, he could have the greatest material. And and and also that goes back to voice too, because it it you could have the greatest message, but if your voice is crap to make it extreme, no one's gonna hear your messages.

Yeah, I agree. You're a great communicator. So, like with us being, you know, culture and business and and how people make an impact, I'm very curious because people hire you to come in and speak to them to make that impact. And like we've talked about AI and all these different things. What are you saying to the groups, like these little nuggets of how do you change in this type of you know, thing that we're in now, this AI society or TikTok society, social media society? What are you teaching them about how to transition to the future?

Well,

Voice Control For Business And Life

uh the the most important thing is, and AI is affecting every everybody for sure. But it's also one of the messages I want to get to people. Your humanity is your voice, your identity is your voice. This is the thing that can't be taken away. They're gonna mimic it. You're seeing it already with the videos. But this is what's going to connect you to people in business, in relationships, in sales, and everything else. That's why it has to be developed.

I agree.

And there's a and and just one thing I it's just drive me crazy because I want people to wake up to the voice, wake up to your voice and the power that it has. But it takes time. It takes time, like with working out, and takes discipline, eating the right foods. You have to work your voice, you have to hear your voice. And I think back in to baseball in the late 50s and early 60s, and they wouldn't let the guys work out. We don't want your muscle bound. They didn't first started with. Yeah, you were. Yeah, they didn't even know. They literally didn't even know.

Even golf, like when Tiger Liston doctor was like, for God's sake.

And this is how little it's one of these things where we keep waking up to the obvious in our lifetimes. I have I have obstructive sleep apnea.

Okay.

So I have to sleep with a CPAP. But most of the research on sleep, something we spend a third of our lives on, is from the 80s. We weren't even looking at sleep. People are like, oh, it's sleep. It's like, oh, it's your voice. It's like, wake up. We have everything we need.

Yeah.

It is right in front of us. Yeah. People are doing all of these different things for you know to have yes, you need training in sales, but your voice. That's what's giving you the confidence, is what I'm getting out of this.

Yeah. Yes. It's giving you the confidence of, like you were saying earlier, I wasn't thinking about that, but like listening to the recordings, listen to the course. Listening to your telephone calls, that's going to give you the confidence of, hey, maybe this next person that I'm speaking to, I may be able to tweak it and be more confident here, or where am I don't feel as confident breakdowns at, right?

If I'm sitting here trying to have a conversation with you and I keep saying, I lack confidence in my ability.

And you may have a tick you don't even know about the ooms and the ahs, but there may be some other things too. And I have a theory, and it's only it's applicable to me, but I've I've talked to some other people about it. Because people say, Well, what about there's a guy online, Vin. He's a he's a uh vo, he's not a voice person, he's a speech person. Speech and diction. You've probably seen him. Yep. And somebody said, Oh, you're doing like what Vin's doing. And I said, Vin is here, I'm here. I'm going back to like the basics. Because my theory is if you work on your voice, your diction will automatically improve because it is like playing an instrument. That's why I keep coming back to a precision instrument. And everybody, you guys have read Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss, the FBI agent.

No, I don't read that.

It's a great, it's a great book, and he lives here, which is really cool. And they interview him. You should get him on. He he's fascinating. So this guy dealt with terrorists, he dealt with kidnappers, he was a hostage negotiator, he's an FBI company. I think I know who this person.

I think I've probably seen him.

You've seen him, he's kind of everywhere recently. And the thing is, he even talks about the voice and how he used his voice differently, and he had to become much more aware of his voice because people's lives were at stake.

And because he's talking them literally off the ledge. Right. Yeah, that's a good point.

And if you're going to do a hot a terrorist and they they hear something in your voice, it's about to piss them off.

Set them off.

Because if you don't have command and control of your voice, you don't have anything. So having that, and I'm using that as an extreme example, but command and control of your voice is so important because communication style, people, you know, if you have people who are very honest with you who can give you real feedback, sometimes you you'll hear people say, like, you're a little aggressive in there in the in the meeting. And and you're like, Me? I was aggressive? You know, but if you heard your voice. Right. If you heard your voice, you're like, oh my god, why is that guy so pissed off?

Yeah.

And and that's and that goes back to the intentional listening, hearing how you actually speak. But the root is your voice. And what is voice? Voice is breath. You can't do it. So do you sing? Do you yeah? I'm a trained technical.

Oh, no wonder why. Okay, yeah. Okay.

But it goes back to you know, breathing and your the airflow going through it, it's the vocal folds. We call them vocal cords. Everyone uses vocal cords. And one of the things that I always start off with, I always mention the fact that Mariah Carey has a five-octave range, literally multiple octaves. So she can sing very, very high. She's I think we all know she's an absolute singer.

Beautiful. We know every Christmas that how good she is playing. Every year, yeah.

Cha-ching, ch-ching. But there's the there's a guy who has a 10-octave range.

Oh, wow.

So he can literally go so high you can't hear him. It can be recorded, but you know what I mean? It's like that, like dogs hear it. And glass starts shattering. And but so he's a and I say and I set it up with that, and I say, so how many vocal folds, how many vocal cords do we have as humans?

I have no clue. I have no idea.

I hear everything for like six, ten, fifteen.

Now you said ten, I was thinking fifteen.

Yeah. We each have two. Oh, wow. Every human has two vocal folds. That creates all the sound.

So anybody can be trained to expand their voice. Are you trying to tell me that I can come out with a Grammy right now, man? Yeah.

All you need is a good Christmas scene.

Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. This is this is really interesting. Oh, yeah. Bad, I can't sing at all, bad. You know, I wanted to ask you, just kind of finishing up as far as like the communication styles. Yeah. How can somebody be better in business to kind of connect with maybe their team, maybe their personal assistant, like you were mentioning? Yeah. I feel like I've already answered it from listening to you as far as maybe listening to their voice and understanding how they're reacting to certain things. But is there one tip that you maybe can help? Well, you said it being present. Present.

Okay, because you know, we're in a time where everybody's in a rush and everyone's listening to the place where they can get in and say what they have to say. You know, I I even interrupted you. I broke one of my own. I've interrupt everybody, so that's me all day. The thing is, when you're really listening, truly listen. Yeah. And if and if you're willing to do that, that goes so far with someone else. And it's the it's really the little things that we do that are the communication cues for someone else. somebody else. Those micro facial expressions, again, command and control, but this is with your face. Because if you're listening to somebody, let's say it's an assistant and and it's something personal. Right? Yeah. But the thing is when you're in a rela when you make a pact to be in a relationship, boss, employee, two associates, relate uh husband and wife, whatever it is. The least you can do is listen as openly as possible.

That's everything.

Yeah. And it goes and and I had said it before, but it's it's that in just do everything with intention.

I would stop all the fights with marriage. Yeah. Just listening for a second. Yeah. That's solid. That's solid, John. For business and just life advice.

Discipline Systems And Entrepreneur Advice

What's something you could leave out on, you know, just far as somebody being an entrepreneur, maybe they've got, you know, a dream that they're they want to accomplish and maybe they want to, you know, put that on, they've probably had it on paper. Right. What's something that you would share with them that maybe can help them if they wanted to build their own business.

If you want to build your own business and this is what I've learned you just have to be consistent. Tenacious and disciplined. If you can do all of those things because I was like a big motivation guy. You gotta be motivated, you gotta be motivated. And then the research proves there's no such thing as motivation. We've had so many athletes on yeah you know and athletes are the perfect thing and I don't know I don't know if it was uh LeBron James if he said it oh no no I one of the other basketball players but this goes to everybody. Any great athlete any great singer any great performer any great comedian it's the 90% that you don't see. It is talking about the shit about how you learn to love the boring shit because that's what's going to separate you. It is sitting in the office reading a book cover to cover it is taking notes learning something it is putting the time in and it's never too late but you and you've got to have and this is another thing is an another I'm an atomic habits guy but you can have goals but if you have goals without systems you are wasting your time you will only be disappointed before you build the goal build the system to get to the goal otherwise you're just gonna keep running into the same wall that's true in this transitioning now man I love food we always ask everybody especially you living in all the amazing cities you're just coming back with with your wife from I think you said Ireland and all over Europe.

Vegas Favorites Book Plans And Farewell

But what's your favorite restaurant in Vegas I have to say I like steak.

Okay okay and I love Echo and Rig.

It's in our backyard in Henderson Echo and Rig is amazing.

And they got a great brunch I love the butcher shop I just have it as the quality in general in here is like there is good. You said they have one in Henderson? They have one in Henderson and one in Summerlin they just went to Henderson like three four years ago?

Yeah. Okay I've never been to them I was going to one in Summerlin in Twoli Tovoli village.

Yeah I know the owners but even without knowing them it the the the meat is fantastic. They cook it perfectly and they don't hit you over the head a lot of times like the regular steak prices are a lot of other people that's the other thing they're very reasonably priced and it's the same steak on the strip and I don't need six coked up servers delivering my steak in a Louis Vuitton bag. You know what I mean?

Poppy so I'm like what are we paying for what else is in your horizon man? Anything that we've got to ask you that you want to leave us out on?

Well I'm starting to to do the work a book. Okay good for you. So in and try to like take everything I've been speaking about and get it to people so they can understand it and have a workable way to have the exercises so they can kind of go through what I went through but in a truncated version. You know you you need to do a voice book Yeah probably yeah that's gonna be an audience I was I've come I've got so many names yeah so I don't want to you know because it's like something to do with well the the title of my keynote is the winning voice. So that would probably be the title of the book. So it's unleash your winning voice. Looking forward to reading that or hearing that I I would want to listen to you so there'll probably be a program before there's a book.

There you go. There you go.

Well good stuff John I appreciate hanging out what's your social handles we can reach out here you can just go to the johnnydshow.com or on TikTok it's the Johnny D show and it's pretty much Johnny D show everything.

That's how you brand it's good for you how you brand it yeah good stuff man well appreciate you hanging out with us and uh thank you for having me on this is great you I learned a lot in this man you I didn't even get the chance to to uh break anything down I just wanted to listen to stop you so coming back yeah I appreciate we have to yeah we have to man so thank you man definitely check us out at thevegascircle comes with us and uh appreciate you guys listening thank you thank you yeah that was awesome