S. 1 Ep. 35 – The Four Ds Of Vocal Health

Taylorr: Welcome to another episode of Technically Speaking. We’re your hosts, Taylor and Austin, and today we’re talking about a slightly different topic than you normally hear us talk about here at Speaker Flow. It’s because we believe it’s deeply important to the work all of you do as experts. We’re talking about vocal health and today we’re bringing in Greg Offner. Now Greg has been a longtime friend of ours at Speaker Flow, and he got a speaking career started just a couple of years ago. Greg was a professional sales person by day and a dueling pianist at night, both taking a tremendous toll on his vocal cords. He was told that if he didn’t have surgery to repair his vocal cords, he’d never sing again. And since, Greg has been on a warpath helping get the word out there to other voice professions, looking at you guys, speakers, coaches, consultants, podcasters about vocal health. Listen in as we talk about the journey since recovering and getting into professional speaking and what you can do to protect your moneymaker. As always stay tuned till the end for some awesome resources and we really hope you liked this one. All right, we are live Greg. Welcome to the show.

Greg: Hello. Hello. 

Taylorr: It is awesome to have you, my friend.

Greg: It’s a pleasure to be here. I was debating, do I open up with the same opener when we started talking?

Taylorr: Please don’t.

Austin: We’d have to put that little red E symbol next to the podcast title and I don’t know if that’s going to turn people off or not. 

Greg: That’s a NSFW opener there. [Cross-talk 01:46].

Austin: Eventually we’ll have Speaker Flow after dark and then yeah.

Taylorr: Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. For our more intensive audience. So, Greg, we always like to start off the show with your background. How did you get into the world of speaking in the first place and what led you down the path of where you’re at today? 

Greg: Yeah, it’s weird. I’m the man with the million-dollar voice and like a lot of your listeners or I should say, unlike a lot of your listeners, it’s not because I made a million dollars with my voice. It’s because I’ve spent nearly a million dollars on multiple surgeries to repair, rebuild and restore my vocal folds. The way I got into speaking, was I had a career in sales during the day, and I had a career as a professional dueling pianist at night. Very heavy vocal load, a lot of voice use in both of those professions. And I did a very poor job of taking care of my voice so I found myself in 2015 at the doctor’s office being, told if I didn’t have surgery within two weeks, I would lose the ability to sing forever and within two months I would lose my voice speaking, singing permanently.

There’s no way to restore that once it’s gone, they don’t do vocal cord transplants. So, I was put in this very serious position where my income really, my day job provided the income that I lived on was tremendously in jeopardy. And my passion what kind of helped me get through my nine to five, because I really didn’t enjoy being an insurance broker, didn’t really stimulate the creative juices, but my passion was also in jeopardy. So, I had to do something. And so, like many people, I went to a Tony Robbins seminar.

Taylorr: That is a great way to break the seriousness. 

Greg: Maybe not what everybody’s path would be. But while I was there, I met someone. I met a woman who had incredible backstory and while we were chatting over a coffee, she asked me to share my backstory. I didn’t want to tell her, I guess hers was so doggone impressive, really. But she said, do it anyway. And after I did, she looked at me and she goes, you don’t see it, do you? Because I had been lamenting, I didn’t know where my life was going. I’d built up my personal worth, who I felt I was as a person around what I could do with my voice around the money that it made me during the day and around how happy it made me at night. And she goes, you don’t see it. Do you? I said what? She goes, all of these things you see as disparate parts of your life, the piano, selling, your interest in psychology, your love of entertainment, all of those that look at the guy on stage. That could be you. Why not? And I just thought, damn you know what? I think she’s right. And so, I started interviewing other speakers.

Who were living their life full-Time as workshop facilitators, coaches within organizations, leadership development coaches within large corporations and I kind of asked them, how did you get here? What are the falls that I might encounter if I decide to pursue a career like this? What do I need to be good at? And the thing most of them said was if you can’t get clients, it doesn’t matter how good a speaker you are.

Taylorr: Amen.

Greg: And I thought well damn, I just spent the last 15 years in a really tough sales environment in the corporate world. I did pretty good at that. If all this is selling myself, I better be at least twice as good as I am at selling insurance as selling myself and I also hired a coach. And that coach helped me put the systems and the marketing materials and sort of the thought process in place that allow me to develop a six-figure business in my first eight months in the gig. And then COVID hit and through working with folks like you, quite frankly, with Speaker Flow and other people that I’ve met through the NSA community and just through being out and about, and kind of throwing good, energy good, good juju out there, I’ve developed a lot of resources that have helped me, but the one thing I think I still do see being talked about enough in our community, are resources around vocal health. How to help the people that have been doing this for a living or that want to do this more for a living, keep one of their most important assets, their voice.

Austin: Think that comes from a place of, I don’t want to say ignorance a negative sense, but do you think that people just don’t understand how important it is? Do you think that it’s just not high enough priority? I’m hearing you talk and I’m just trying to figure out why this topic isn’t talked about more often when this community specifically makes their living by talking.

Greg: Yeah, well listen. When Adele had to go under voice surgery, who did she tell about it afterwards? How could she talk about how depressed she felt for the first several weeks when she was completely and totally silent while her vocal cords healed? Nobody. When you break your leg, you walk around with a set of crutches and a cast and it’s obvious what happened. When you heard your voice, there’s no external signs. This scar that I have is recent, this is one of the last surgeries. Of the 15 surgeries I’ve had 14 of them left, no scars that are visible. They didn’t have any crutches, they didn’t have any casts, there aren’t any to get well card. Sorry, you broke your voice to get well soon. And there really should be, because you can’t talk to other people so at least they could give you a card so you could write something back to them. 

For months, this was my way of communicating with people. If I wanted to go to a party, I had to write down my thoughts on a whiteboard and sort of like point and go look at this and when you’re trying to write something funny, you know, timing is everything, the moment passes. I think number one, people don’t talk about it because it’s so invisible, I think number two, people don’t talk about it because if they’ve had the issue, they can’t talk about it, but then I think also number three is that we grow up in a culture where your voice, you lose it from time to time. You go to a concert, maybe you have a little too much tequila while you’re at that concert and you’re screaming along to all your favorite songs and the next day you’re a horse and people ha must’ve had a good time. 

You must mess yourself up pretty good. How that happens is a vocal hemorrhage. Your voice is so swollen that they can’t vibrate properly. That’s a real problem, especially if you’re a vocal professional, because if you go back out on the road in two or three days, thinking it’s healed and it’s not, if you’re not regularly going to an ENT to get checked by a doctor to see what your vocal cords look like, there’s a good chance you could be building damage on top of damage. The way they described my injuries to me was they said, imagine Greg, because I said, how did it get this bad? I’ve been singing for years. They said imagine that you cut your finger, a little paper cut and then at night you put it in lemon juice. And then in the morning you wake up and you cut it again at night, you put it in lemon juice. Cut it again, lemon juice. Cut it again, lemon juice. Cut it again, lemon juice. We don’t know how many years you’ve been cutting your finger and sleeping with an in-lemon juice, but you’ve been building damage on damage. Now part of that is from, an acid reflux issue, which is one of the four Ds of vocal health that also I’ll share with you but when you go out and sing or speak on damaged pipes, that creates more damage. 

Austin: Yeah, that makes sense. I think that it’s probably insidious in some ways too where it’s happening without you even really recognizing it. Because as you said, we have these instances in life where we get hoarse or something occasionally, and its no big deal because it happens occasionally and you wait a couple of days and you probably don’t sound the same so you probably don’t even notice it. But I mean, for somebody that speaks professionally and especially standing on a big stage and probably having to speak louder and with more power than they would normally if it was just a normal conversation at a coffee shop or something, that that damage probably can compound without us even knowing about it. In fact, I don’t know, this is a visualization that I have in my head and you can tell me whether or not this actually aligns with reality, Greg.

But I heard this story of a friend of mine who had ran a marathon and a buddy of his ran the marathon with him. And at some point, he got a little tiny pebble in his shoe and it was obnoxious, but not so much that he was going to stop and take his shoe off and loses momentum and so on so he just kept running with it. And although that little tiny pebble was just a mere annoyance while he was running, when the marathon was over, took off his shoe and that pebble was embedded into his foot and he had to go get it surgically removed. So, small annoyance compounded over time, turned into a massive problem. Is that a similar scenario here? Or do you find that like it takes a recognizable amount of damage for it to become a real problem?

Greg: Yes. The answer to both is yes. I don’t know if I can share my screen with you, but I want to show you if that’s okay.

Taylorr: Go ahead.

 Greg: I want to show you…

Austin: For the listeners, we’ll try to describe as best we can what he’s showing us.

Greg: Yeah. Well, I think since you’re talking about a stone, I think this is just a good visual for you to see real quick. So that is literally what you’re looking at right there, that is what tanked my voice and for the listeners, it is smaller than the head of an eraser. Significantly smaller than a head of an eraser. It is so imperceptible the initial signs of vocal damage so that if we’re not consistently checking in with our voice, [inaudible 11:05] feel so free for me to say that. Check in with your voice. But it is sort of like this living and breathing thing, that if you’re not constantly just checking in doing a couple of things in the morning, middle of the day, at the end of the day, you can really get yourself in a bind without ever even noticing.

Austin: Yeah.

Taylorr: I’m curious as you’re talking, one question that comes to mind is I don’t even have a box for vocal health. We’re on calls all day, on podcasts like this creating content, we talk all day. Any expert who’s creating content, getting on stage, doing presentations, regardless of it’s virtual, they’re talking all day, salespeople and so on. And so, I think this applies to a lot of people, but I don’t think a lot of people have a box to put vocal health into, meaning they don’t even know when they’re making the mistakes that they’re making. What are some of the ways just going about our days, if we’re not aware of vocal health, what are some of the mistakes that we’re making?

Greg: That’s a really good question. I break it down into these four categories, the four D’s of vocal health. One is diet. The first D is diet. Acid is the enemy, for me a big problem was acid reflux, and now some people say, well, I don’t have a problem with reflux. I didn’t have a problem with reflux. I would eat a chicken cheese steak with buffalo sauce and think nothing of it. The challenge is something called LPR, laryngeal pharyngeal reflux. They call it the silent killer because it happens at night, we don’t notice it because our vocal cords don’t have nerve endings on them so they don’t feel pain, but we wake up and your mouth might taste a bit metallic your mouth might seem a bit drier than usual, that could be a sign of LPR. 

And so just going and getting checked, the first thing you want to talk about a box, the first thing any vocal professional can do is go see an ENT and your nose and throat doctor once a year, just for a checkup. They should have a videostroboscopy done. It’s not very comfortable. They stick a flexible tube up your nose and down your throat and they look at your vocal folds. They numb you first, it takes about, half hour, but it can save you years. It’s taken me five years to get my voice to this point and there’s still a long road ahead of me. There are still many things I can’t do that I used to do. But when we talk about diet, a mistake I see a lot of speakers make is that they go out and they eat the chicken dinner, and then they go up on stage and they talk. Speaking or singing on a full stomach is a recipe for reflux while you’re performing.

And while you’re performing, your voice is undergoing microscopic tears because of the speed and impact of the vocal cords rubbing together, that’s what creates your voice. Like the double reed instrument for any musicians that are listening. If you can speak on an empty stomach, that’s generally preferable or at least eat the lowest acid thing you can. So, I always tell people that some couscous or some white rice an hour and a half, two hours before you go on stage and speak, not a bad idea if you’re really hungry, but wait till after. Have some food afterwards. Especially speakers are traveling so they get in late at night. You’re given the 8:00 AM keynote, you get in on the late flight at 12 midnight, and you go, you know what? I’m going to head down to the lobby, grab something to eat real quick and go to bed.

There’s a good chance you’re going to reflux all night long. You won’t even feel it, but it’ll hear it the next day. So, diet is super…

Taylorr: Talk about the silent killer huh?

Greg: Yeah, diet is super important. Something I do not, everyone will enjoy this, but something I do is take a shot of wheat grass every morning. Wheat grass has a very alkaline substance and so it helps neutralize the acidity of your body. I’m not a doctor, I don’t pretend to be, but for me it works. There’s a noticeable difference and I checked my pH, my body’s acidity a couple of times a day, because for me, reflux is a huge issue. And in fact, of those 15 surgeries two were to rebuild and repair a valve in my stomach. It’s a one-way door that lets in, but doesn’t let acid back out, at least it’s not supposed to, my door was broken. So even if I ate three hours before bed, while I was lying down at night, acid. I never felt that I never knew if I hadn’t lost my voice, I never would have gotten it checked out and that is what leads to esophageal cancer. So, there are all these knock-on effects of poor diet, poor vocal health that are really severe for our life that most of us just don’t even think about.

Taylorr: You mentioned those four D’s and I’m assuming these are four different ways that we can improve our vocal health. Can you expand more on some of those?

Greg: Yeah. So, the first is diet, the second is duration. There are some marathoners out there who say, I’ll come into your company, we’ll do an eight-hour workshop. That is not what your voice was intended to do. Bruce Springsteen does five-hour concerts, he is an anomaly. Most of the people that I played at dueling piano bars with have all wrecked our voices because we would do five hour shows. And we weren’t speaking the whole five hours or singing. It was 45 minutes on 15 minutes off. Five hours is too long. So, I would encourage every professional speaker to work into their contract for every hour to hour and 15 minutes that I’m speaking, I need a half hour break. And during that break, you don’t go mingle with the other people in the room. You go off, you be quiet for five, 10 minutes. Before you start speaking again to a gentle lip trill to warm your voice back up, and then go out on stage. 

Because if your voice is your moneymaker, you don’t want to lose it so the duration is incredibly important. The third D is decibel, and this is one that I don’t think anybody takes seriously enough. The decibel level that most of us spend our lives in pre pandemic is absurd. It’s insane. Most restaurants are tantamount to having a conversation standing next to a subway car driving by that the noise level in restaurants is way too much, the noise level in airplanes, where a lot of speakers use to fly to their gigs and talk to people the whole way there, that is dangerous for vocal health. So being aware of the decibel level in which we’re conducting our life, especially before and after an engagement can really help. One of the tricks that I’ve started using there is I take those little fungible, those small little rubber ear noise reducers that you see like construction sites.

So, I cut one in half, so it’s not poking out of my ear, and I just put it in one ear if I’m going out to a restaurant or to a bar or a social event, like a networking event. What it does, if you even just, you guys have over the ear headphones in right now, but if you were to just stick your finger in your ear, you’re going to notice that you hear yourself in that ear where your finger is, it’s called bone conduction hearing. So, what I’m doing is in an environment where I normally wouldn’t be able to actually hear my voice because it’s too loud around me, I’m creating bone conduction hearing so that I’m not screaming over a loud bar, a loud restaurant. And if you’re in a place where when you’re talking at that comfortable level, people are going, I’m sorry, what? I can’t hear you, that’s probably not a healthy place for you vocally. 

Now that’s an extreme, a lot of people are listening to this going, Greg, you had me up until that. You telling me not to go to restaurants and bars like, dude, come on. I get it. It’s not a problem for everyone, for me after 15 surgeries, it’s a major, major concern. 

Taylorr: Sure. 

Taylorr: The last one goes back to the first thing I mentioned, the diaphragm. Understanding how to use our breath, how to speak on the breath. I see a lot of speakers that get really caught up, they get really excited and then they start talking for like this and they get 15 paragraphs and they don’t think about that. That last sentence or two has just been just pressure of the vocal folds being artificially pressed together because there’s no air to help them make sound, that is incredibly damaging. So, if you’re one of those vocal marathoners, who’s doing that on a six-hour workshop on a longer stage on, if it’s a three-program day, there’s a really good chance you’re doing yourself some damage. So, learning some breathing exercises, understanding that it’s not just the diaphragm, there’s more to it that can help a singer or sorry, a speaker and a singer, not just with longevity, but with actual clarity when they’re speaking. And this isn’t just for pro speakers, it’s for attorney teachers, anyone who uses their voice to make a living, this is important stuff. 

Austin: Wow, those really great tips. I’m listening to them like, wow, I need to like fix myself because…

Taylorr: You’re right.

Austin: I don’t speak as often, and probably in as aggressively, let’s say as somebody who’s standing on stage, but I do talk a lot and I know something that I’m horrible at is that last point the diaphragm piece where all of a sudden you start talking really fast and you try to squeeze out a couple of sentences before you take a breath, I have a real problem with doing that. And it’s usually because I’m just excited about whatever it is that I’m talking about. But even outside of vocal health, I think that’s a bad idea. If you can speak more slowly more intentionally, I think your ideas end up coming across more clearly as well so I think that tip is [cross-talk 20:06]

Greg: This is such a valuable tip Austin to speak more slowly so I’m glad you brought that up because on zoom, people need just a bit slower pace to be able to follow. I’m based in Philadelphia so here on the East coast, we are fast talkers, but on zoom, that’s a real liability, even on stage that can be a liability slowing that rate of speech down allows you to phonate better, let your voice be more resonant and lets you use your breath better. Good [Cross-talk 20:37].

Taylorr: It sounds like a lot of the vocal health techniques that you employ also can contribute directly to how effective your speech can be. Regardless of if it’s virtual. Just talking slow and allowing for breath, you can almost use that as a tool to be more intentful.

Greg: Yeah. This new platform Clubhouse, I’m fascinated by some of the rooms I find myself in because it’s almost as if, this may be a dated reference, but the micro machine guy from back in like the eighties, the fast-talking dude, he did the FedEx commercial too, I think, or UPS or something, they talk so damn fast and it’s hard to follow the conversation. And as any professional speaker knows, the pause has power. And so, by using that, it’s not only better for your vocal health, it’s better for the audience.

Austin: Yeah, I love that. That makes a ton of sense. On that note, you’ve been talking about breath quite a bit as well. Do you have any breathing exercises or things that you try to be mindful of, let’s say has your, either doing the dueling pianos that you do or speaking on stage, like what are some practical tips that we can use in that department to sort of alleviate that?

Greg: That’s a really good question and it’s a little issue that I’m still working on with my vocal team. One of the things that I noticed I was guilty of doing was that I would anticipate the phrase or the song and I would do this and you may not notice it, but I’ll try to make it really perceptible for the listeners. So, I would do, the one we want, so there’s that breath in and then there’s just a bit of a pause, almost like a setting up and then the expulsion of air. What that actually does is force your vocal folds together to create that initial onset. So, what I’ve been working very hard with my team on is taking the breath and then immediately using it. So, I’m pushing it out, I’m trying to do it deliberately so you can maybe hear it over the microphone and I’m doing it very deliberately.

And that means I’m always speaking on the breath. So, I’m minimizing the chance at that initial onset of my vocal fold smashing together and creating more damage than is necessary. And so, I think just being cognizant of that, and something that I do throughout the day, especially in the morning is I use a little straw, just a regular straw and I breathe through it a couple of times just to start centering where the breath is coming from, that’s very helpful. When I was in sales, one of my colleagues would always rag on me because he could tell that I had just woken up for our conference call. I was not that salesperson who was up and at them at five in the morning and ready to go, I was just rolling out of bed at nine. And he was like, Greg, I can hear your morning voice and I said, well, what do you think I should do about that CJ? And he said, well, I just scream into a pillow. And I thought, okay, I’ll give that a try. Folks, don’t do that. Don’t be a CJ.

Taylorr: It’s damaging.

Greg: That is a horrible idea. Just starting the day, even before you, you know, you’re on your own grade, if you have a partner or kids, before you say anything to them, just a couple of simple lip trills, just to get your voice warmed up, even just to talk is really, really helpful for your vocal health and it clears away that sort of morning voice pretty effectively, much better than the pillow scream. 

Austin: Wow. That’s simple and actionable. I love that. We call them horse lips in our family. 

Taylorr: That’s funny.

Austin: My wife works with horses it’s and very similar, but I like the trill. I think that sounds a little bit better than horse lips.

Greg: It does. Yeah. 

Taylorr: One thing that came to mind earlier in the conversation is this kind of silent killer, you kind of just don’t know what’s going on until either get checked up on it like once a year. But are there like any physical signs that you maybe just looking back, realize like that was an indicator that your vocal health was declining? Are there any ways that we can catch that our vocal health is declining just in the day-to-day?

Greg: Yeah. So, there’s one and I will be honest again, I’m not a doctor. So, I think the first thing that folks should go out and do is schedule an appointment with an ENT. Every professional vocal user should see one. But there is a video online. If you look up happy birthday vocal or voice swelling, there’s a video of a doctor based in the Chicago land area who talks about singing the song happy birthday, but without using P using B. So, it’d be happy birthday do-do, and you try to do it in a falsetto. So, my voice is still swollen from the last procedure, but so be happy birthday do-do and you hear at the top there how it breaks a little bit, that’s a good sign that my voice is a bit more swollen than it should be. It’s not really crystal clear. So that’s a really simple sort of self-diagnostic technique. 

Again, it’s not a substitute for seeing an actual medical professional, but it’s something that we can do just as a daily check-in to see where we are if we should take a period of 15, 20 minutes of vocal rest. Just 15, 20 minutes can be incredibly helpful. Something I’ll add, it’s not a D but drinking enough water and especially folks who stay in hotels, getting a portable humidifier. It is so incredibly important for vocal health. Looking back at a physical sign, I think there was the ability to tell whether or not my voice was swollen internally. So Taylorr, may be going to a vocal professional more often, had I been going to one over those 12 years while I was performing, maybe I wouldn’t be in this position. The other thing that we can do is we can check in with what we call the SCM muscle, the sternocleidomastoid muscle. It’s the muscle that goes along the side of your neck.

It’s the one that if you’re typing at a keyboard all day, it’s very, you might be feeling like you want to stretch your head to the left and to the right sort of stretch out. So, for the listeners that they won’t be able to see what you’re seeing, but what you can do is take your right hand, put it on your chin and then look over your left shoulder. And as you look over your left shoulder, try to actually look over your shoulder and see if you can see your butt. That’s what you want to try to do, that’s the motion you want. And so, you don’t want to force your neck with your right hand, but you just want to sort of push it just a tiny bit and you’ll feel a stretch. Doing that stretch is really good and if that’s a painful thing to do, there’s a good sign that you’ve got some muscle tension dysphonia that could be occurring that’s contributing to maybe a tired voice, a sore voice or raspy voice. And again, that’s a great sign to go see a vocal professional.

Taylorr: Got you. Those are awesome tips. Thanks for sharing those. So, Greg, as you know, we’re all about creating value for our listeners. You provide an immense amount of value on this show. I feel like I just learned so much. I think I’m just going to have to go schedule that appointment just because I’m interested. Wait, what are some of the things that you’re working on right now that our listeners can benefit from?

Greg: So, part of my switch to virtual has been helping individuals that are vocal professionals use their voice more effectively, more healthily, and to make more money while they’re in this new virtual world. So, if anyone wants to reach out, I’m happy to spend 15 minutes with anyone, just answering some questions on how they use their voice, how they can use their voice more healthily and if it’s something that I’m qualified to help with such as coaching, creating a workshop I’m happy to do that. But I think I’m also a great person to speak with. If someone is on the fence about, hey, there may be an issue, I don’t want to jump the gun and spend the money. Maybe they don’t have insurance and they don’t want to spend the $1,200 is about what it costs to go get a videostroboscopy done at an ENT, maybe they don’t want to spend that.

I’m happy to chat with anyone about their voice, give them my perspective. I’ve had several NSA members reach out to me and I’ve said, hey, my doctor recommended that I go in for a surgery. What do you think? What should I expect? If someone is dealing with this issue and just wants to talk about the mental side of it. Because for all of us as vocal professionals, not being able to communicate really feels like we’re being robbed of an important part of who we are, and that can get really eerie and get really scary. And especially now, when we’re isolated, you can feel more alone. If anyone wants to talk, I’m happy to love to make new friends. If there’s something I offer, like one-on-one coaching the workshop that can help you, I’m happy to be a resource there, but I’m just thrilled that you gave me this opportunity to have a few moments to speak about this topic because I am passionate about it. I want other people to not have to go through what I had to go through over the last five years. When you have a doctor who’s taken care of Neil Diamond, Tony Bennett, Shania Twain, when you have that doctor look at you and go, whoa, I mean that’s some serious stuff right there.

Taylorr: Scary for sure. Well, thank you so much again, Greg, for being on the show and educating us on the importance of this topic. Listeners out there, if you found this episode valuable, don’t forget to like subscribe and if you want more awesome resources like this, go to speaker flow.com/resources. Thank you so much for chiming in. I just wanted to take a second to thank our sponsor Auxbus. Auxbus is the all-in-one suite of tools you need to run your podcast and it’s actually what we run here at Speaker Flow for Technically Speaking. It makes planning podcast simple; it makes recording podcasts simple; it even makes publishing podcasts to the masses simple and quite honestly, Technically Speaking, wouldn’t be up as soon as it is without Auxbus. Thank you so much Auxbus. And if you are interested in checking Auxbus out, whether you’re starting a podcast or you have one currently get our special offer auxbus.com/speaker flow, or click the link below in our show notes.