About the Voice of Influence Podcast with Andrea Joy Wenburg

In this episode you’ll learn about the premise of the Voice of Influence podcast and what you can expect.

Do you want to know that you belong somewhere and your voice can make an impact?

Maybe you know your voice matters, but you want to make it matter more.

Why my creativity, sensitivity and intensity is both a blessing and a struggle.

Andrea connects her experience as a vocal student at Belmont University and the University of Nebraska – Kearney with the idea of developing a Voice of Influence.

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Transcript

Hey, hey!  It’s Andrea Wenburg, welcome to Episode 00, the About Episode of the Voice of Influence podcast.  In this episode, I’m going to share with you just a little bit about myself and _____ of the podcast and what you can expect.

So I am Andrea Joy Wenburg, author of Unfrozen: Stop Holding Back and Release the Real You.  So I grew up in Central Nebraska.  I spent all of my growing up years in Holdrege, Nebraska, loved it!  I loved my experience there.  I had lots of great friendships, amazing teachers, and opportunities for me to learn and grow and really what happened there was that I found out that I could sing.

And now this podcast is not about the singing voice but it relates, so give me just a minute to tie it altogether for you.  So I found out that I could sing when I was growing up and it was something that I really love to do.  I would get up in front of an audience and I would sing and I felt like I could really connect with the audience.  I felt like they were hearing my message when I was particularly in it in the zone if you will, feeling my message whatever I’m singing the song and then looking out in the audience and I could really connect with them.

And that was really important to me and I thought “You know what I wanna do this for the rest of my life.  I want to connect with an audience like that.”  And so I ended up going to school in Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, because I thought “You know what, I wanna be a recording artist.  I wanna make a big difference in the world as a singer who’s up on stage connecting with the audience.”  Well, it didn’t take me too long to realize that I actually don’t have the drive to do what it takes to pursue that dream.

Though I wanted to be the next whom ever, well for me it was Sandi Patty which was a gospel singer at the time and I really wanted to be the next Sandi Patty.  Well, I got down there and found out that there were about four other girls down there that wanted to be the next Sandi Patty as well.  So it became evident that I didn’t have the star quality that’s really necessary to get off the ground and I didn’t have that drive to really pursue the dream that I thought I did.

So I sort of redirected my focus onto helping other people find and use their voices.  I went back to school in Nebraska to become a music teacher.  And what was interesting is that I refused to even apply to the school when I was, you know, in high school I thought “I gotta get of Nebraska.  I’m not gonna really be able to stretch my wings here.”

Well, when I got back to University of Nebraska at Kearney, my experience with the vocal instructor there went above and beyond anything that I experienced in Nashville, which is interesting.  It was really surprising to me.  So I stepped in to Dr. Foradori’s office and she asked me “So Andrea, do you understand this; do you know about that?”  She kind of assumed that I would understand some things and I was like “Yeah, I get all this.”  And we got going in lessons and she realized that I actually didn’t know as much as I thought I did.

And at point she said to me “Now, Andrea, once you really understand what it means to connect your breath then you’re gonna carry with you a foundation for singing that’s gonna come with you no matter what you sing.  Once you understand this one concept that really clicked inside of you and if you can really get that and it becomes a part of who you are, it’s gonna be absolutely transform the way that you sing everything else.”

Eventually, I did get that one concept, this idea of connecting the breath and it really did.  All of a sudden, I had more power in a different kind of way and I did have that support underneath of me with breath and what it took to be able to sing like I wanted to sing.  Now, I see all this because I have since then focused more on what it means to find and develop a voice of influence, a voice of influence in the world because there’s something else that I really care about.

I really think that I’m somebody and I think there are a lot of people out there who might also feel the same way, perhaps everybody that we kind of want to know that we have seed at the table.  And when I say seed at the table, what I’m talking about is like when you walk into a room and there’s a bunch of people sitting around, maybe it’s like a cafeteria and you’re wondering, “Which table do I fit at?   Where do I fit?”

This is something that I really struggled with in my life and wondered “You know, where does my voice really fit?  Where do I fit?”  Well, it’s to have somebody say, turn around and say “Hey you know, Andrea, why don’t you go over here and sit down at our table.  We want you to be here.”  That feels great because then you feel like you belong and you’re accepted and that sort of thing so you can be connected with other people.

The thing that I really realized though was that it was not the only thing I want.  I also want to know that when I say something, my voice makes a difference.  So if you’re sitting at that table and you’re thinking “Gosh you know, I don’t really feel like these people are listening to what I have to say,” or you start to speak up and somebody says “Hmmm, that’s stupid,” and you know they moved on or they write you off or they say, it doesn’t matter or whatever.

They don’t have a respect for what you have to say for your voice.  That’s a really hard place to be in because then it feels a little bit more like you’re being used, not like “I belong and I’m making a difference.”  “They invited me to sit here but I’m not actually getting to have an impact on the dialogue,” which is different than saying, I want to have all of my ideas taken and everybody believes everything that I say and the bucks stops here kind of thing.  I’m not saying that.  I’m saying that “I think that we want to have our voice matter in the dialogue of life.”

OK, so when I think about that and I think about the voice of influence and how that relates to what it means to have a voice, I realized that there’s something really special about this idea, the connecting of breath on the one side and how that applies to the way that we connect with other people with our voice of influence.  When we have certain things and when we change certain things about the way that we speak about our message, the way that we’re communicating, when we have changed those certain things or we really get those things then our voice no matter where we go, whether it’d be a relationships, at home, work, and world and wherever audience you’re trying to speak to when you really carry with you that voice of influence, you’re going to connect better with everybody everywhere you go.

And your voice, your message has a better shot of actually making a transformational difference in the person that you’re speaking with.  Because when we really do have that voice of influence, it’s not just about saying “This is what you should do, this is what I want” that sort of thing.  It’s not necessarily that because we _____ people into doing what we want them to do.  But that’s not the kind of person that I think you are.  I think you’re the kind of person who really wants to make a difference in the heart of a person because you know that when somebody changes on the inside, it’s going to come out in so many different ways on the outside.  And that is way more powerful than just changing an outward thing.

So this podcast is about voice of influence.  It’s about developing that voice, understanding where it comes from, why we are the way that we are, who we are, what we really want to say, and how we can say it in a way that is truly a transformational kind of message.  So that is the basic promise of the podcast.  And I want to mention that just last year, I wrote a book, I published a book called Unfrozen: Stop Holding Back and Release the Real You, and that book is actually my story about me and my voice.

So if you’re ever interested in listening or reading that book – I’m currently working on the audio version and it would hopefully be out very soon, so if you’re listening to this and in the near future even, it’s probably out.  So you can look it up in Amazon and you can find it there if you’re interested.  It’s my story, about me in trying to understand what my voice is like coming to grips with the fact that I’m super creative but also really sensitive and that being creative and sensitive and having a lot of intensity, those things altogether really I think in some ways became both a great power but also a real struggle and something that could get in the way of me actually using my voice and connecting with other people.

So that is what is the book is about and I would encourage you to check that out if you’re interested.  But the rest of what I want to talk about is the podcast and the things of what you can expect from this podcast.  We are going to be doing our regular sort of rhythm of having an interview which will be 35 to maybe 45 minutes long and then after that having an after show kind of episode where I’ll be speaking for maybe five minutes kind of reflecting on something that came up in the episode before that and going into a little bit more detail.

So the interviews will be interviews with experts, leaders, thought leaders, or people who really have a well-developed voice of influence or have something that they can really speak to that would really be helpful for you or interesting to you.  And then after episode would be just a short segment.  It’s really important to me that you don’t just listen to the interviews and then kind of forget them.  So I want to offer this other little episodes that could be some really bite-size thing that you could listen to on the way to work or whatever, where you’d be able to kind of reflect and chew on something from that episode and then turn it into something that’s really going to make your voice matter more.

So that’s the basic rhythm is that will be having an interview and then a short segment.  And for April, we’ll be doing an interview and a short segment two times each week.  But we’re going to be doing a lot of those episodes here in April 2007, and then after that we’re going to settle into a rhythm most likely of an interview and then a short segment each week.  So an interview will be on Monday and then the short segment will come out on Thursdays.

So that is the basic promise, the basic what you can expect from this podcast and I also want to let you know that I’ve open up a Voice of Influence community Facebook group.  So if you’re interested in connecting with other people who really want to develop that voice of influence and discuss different things that come up on the podcast then that would be a great place for you, I’d love to have you.

And the final thing I want to mention to you is that in every beginning and ending of the podcast, the intro and the out-tro, one of the things that is said is your voice matter but you can make it matter more.  And what I mean by that is that I believe that inherently because you are a human being and I believe you’re created by God your voice, your feelings, your thoughts, and how you express them that matters.

So no matter what anybody tells you, I believe that you matter and your voice does matter; however, I do think that there are some people that are able to develop that voice in such a way that we can make it matter more, meaning make a bigger difference.  So although you really can’t matter anymore or less in one sense, in another sense a sense of how much impact you actually have in the world in relationships and things like that, you can make your voice matter more and you do that by developing it.  You do that by using it.

It’s just like when I was in Dr. Foradori’s voice studio and she would have me sing and if I sing something and it didn’t come out right, she would help me.  She would give me the tools that I needed.  She would suggest that maybe I mimic her or she would suggest that I would try something new and feel something different in my mouth that sort of thing.  And she would also help me find the right music for my voice, which I think is also meaning like finding the right message for your voice.

So there are so many different correlations that I’ll probably be making or referencing every once in a while here on the podcast.  But my point in the end is that I really hope that you will take the time to develop your voice of influence rather than just, you know, some people just maybe sing every once in a while in a car and they don’t want anybody else to hear them.

If you’re listening to this podcast, it’s because you don’t want to just sing in the car.  It’s because you want your voice to matter beyond the immediate where you’re at right now.  You want it to matter in your relationships, you want it to matter at work wherever work is for you, and you want it to matter in the world.  So that’s what we’re here for.  I’m so glad that you are and I do hope that you’ll join me in that Voice of Influence Facebook group.  I’m going to link to that to my website or you can find it by just searching for it in Facebook.

So thank you so much for being here on this About Me Episode, truly honored that you have given me few minutes of your time today and that anytime that you come back, man, I’m really truly honored that you would take the time to be with us.  So thank you!  Your voice matters, now let’s make it matter more!

 

END