[00:00:00] so let me tell you something kind of funny. I've sold nearly a hundred million in sales in just nine years. I've coached women through massive income jumps.
I've spoken on stages in front of thousands of people, and yet every single time I hit record on this podcast or went back to watch a video of myself there it was that little cringe.
You know, the one where you're like, is that really what I sound like? And maybe you felt that too. Not necessarily about your voice, but maybe about the way you show up. Maybe you've given a presentation, led a team meeting, jumped on Zoom with a client, or even just recorded a story for Instagram and then you play it back and thought.
Wow, that doesn't sound like the confident, powerful woman. I know I am. For me, it wasn't just about the sound, it was about congruence. My outer world wasn't matching my inner world Inside I felt like a leader. I felt grounded, powerful, ready, but my voice, sometimes it comes across [00:01:00] rush. A little breathless, maybe a little bit sharp, and that disconnect, it started to bug me because if I'm teaching women to build empires, if I'm calling you to refine every part of your identity so that it aligns with your next level, well, shouldn't my voice reflect that too?
Our voice is the first thing people experience when we walk into a room or hit record. It's how our energy gets transmitted. And the crazy thing is it doesn't matter how many strategies you have in your back pocket, if your voice doesn't carry authority, confidence, or warmth. Then you have a problem because that's what people feel.
They hear it. It's like your voice is always selling you before your words even land. So today I wanna take you behind the scenes of why I decided to hire a voice coach, not because I want to sing. Trust me. Nobody wants that, but because I knew if I wanted to step into the next season of my life and business, I had to make sure my voice carried the same weight, power, and residence as the message I've been [00:02:00] given to share.
I'll tell you what was happening before the exact moment I realized I needed help, what the process of hiring the coach looked like. And what I'm hoping to gain from it. And along the way, I think you're going to see yourself in the story because sometimes the upgrades we need aren't big flashy ones.
Sometimes it's the subtle refinements that completely change the way we show up. This episode is so good and by the end, if you agree, hit that follow button for me and leave me a review. It really does help me grow and I really appreciate it. Okay, now let's get into it.
Intro: I am Christina Koki, your host of the Christina Koki Show, born and raised in Silicon Valley. Now, bringing the wisdom, wit, and well-oiled business strategies from my hometown of Brentwood, just outside of Asheville, where the pace is slower, but the revenue, it still runs high with over two decades of building businesses, some wildly successful others, gloriously messy.
Every step has been fueled by my love of real strategy, real results, and [00:03:00] of course. Building an empire that feels effortless. This isn't about side gigs and is definitely not about hustle culture. This is about optimization, about building an empire selectively curated to make your life and your business feel effortless and truly enjoyable with almost a hundred million dollars in sales in just nine years while raising four little ones.
I've curated systems that scale and businesses that fund my lifestyle and not the other way around. From summers in Europe to road trips across the United States, being present with my family is the greatest win. I focus on health and community. From efficiency to effortless income jumps, I'm pulling back the curtain to everything I'm doing in my life and business.
That has moved me into the top 3% of wealth in the United States. This show is for women who already have consistent sales. But are struggling to make more money with the same or less work who want to find happiness, healthy, and true enjoyment of life while their empires build in the background. Every episode [00:04:00] brings sharp strategy, honest insights, and real world tools to help you grow your business and enjoy life in the process.
Join me as I navigate better health, growing my business while linking them all together to build an empire and learning to live the ultimate life of true enjoyment. Nothing is off limits. This is the Christina co show.
Okay. As you're probably listening to this, you're hearing that I am a little nasally today and I have a little bit of crackly voice. It's one of those things that I struggle with, so I wanna really be honest with you. When I did this, it's not just about me liking how my voice sounded on recordings. It was deeper.
It was me realizing that my voice wasn't matching my authority, my presence or the vision. I know I'm here to lead, and I've been struggling with that for years. Ever since I was a kid, I dealt with congestion. My nose was always stuffy, my throat's always scratchy. I'd be the one clearing my throat constantly coughing or needing to stop mid-sentence just to get [00:05:00] some air.
And so. As I got older, that didn't go away. I wish it did, but it didn't. So when I'm giving long presentations, recording my podcast, or even just speaking on stage, my voice dies out, it cracks, it gets tired. I literally have to stop sometimes to take a big breath. And if I have a really big presentation the day before, I have to really be careful how much I use my voice because I could lose my voice before I even start the presentation.
So do you know how frustrating that feels when you're in the middle of a pouring out your heart in a presentation, delivering a powerful moment, and suddenly your own voice betrays you? You go from flow and fire to squeaky and weak, and then there's the sound itself. People tell me I have a nice voice, a trustworthy voice.
They say I sound authentic, that they believe me when I speak. And while I love that, because trust is, everything is work. There's another side because [00:06:00] nice and trustworthy wasn't enough for me anymore. I wanted my voice to carry weight. I wanted it to command a room the way a preacher does when they give a sermon.
It doesn't matter what religion you are or if you believe in it at all. When someone like that speaks, you feel it. It vibrates in your body. It wakes you up. It pulls something out of you and me. I felt like my voice was fine. Not bad, not great. Just fine. And that's the worst place to be when you're building an empire.
Because fine doesn't move people, fine doesn't get someone to say yes to their next level. Fine doesn't create the kind of ripple effect I know I'm here to make. And the truth is, the longer I ignored it. The more it spiraled, I'd record a podcast and feel frustrated. Listening back, I'd watch my YouTube videos and feel like my delivery didn't land with the punch I wanted.
Even my kids would laugh [00:07:00] when my voice went squeaky after I raised it too loud, and each time it chipped away at me just a little until I started wondering What if my message really is powerful, but people can't hear it because of the way I deliver it. What if I'm losing people before I even get to the good part?
What if my own instrument, my voice, is the thing that's holding me back? I look around at other podcasters and YouTubers and I could feel it. The ones who did really well weren't just sharing great content. They had a rhythm, they had pacing, they had tone. They had that thing in their voice that made you want to keep listening even if you didn't care about the topic and me.
I knew my content was strong. I knew my experience and wisdom were proven, but if I'm really honest, I felt like my voice was working against me. And when you're trying to build something this big, something that's supposed to outlive you, you can't afford to ignore that. For two years, I thought about it.
I thought about hiring Roger, [00:08:00] love the voice coach of all coaches. I wanted to work with him personally, but he doesn't take on private clients anymore, so I just let the thoughts sit there in the back of my mind until I couldn't ignore it anymore. Because at some point you get to the place where the pain of staying the same is greater than the fear of changing.
And I know if I didn't do something about this now. I'd keep hitting the same wall, the one where my voice wasn't strong enough to carry the empire I was building. So here I am two years into thinking about it, two years of telling myself I'll figure it out on my own. I'll warm up better, I'll drink more water.
I'll try not to push so hard or be so loud or rest the night before, and yet nothing really changed. I keep running into the same issues, the same dryness, the same squeakiness, the same feeling that my voice just wasn't carrying the weight of my message. Then one day. Recently I was listening to a podcast and guess who's on?
Roger, love [00:09:00] the exact coach I've been thinking about for years, and as I'm listening to him talk about the voice, how it's not just sound, but vibration, how it connects the body, the mind, the soul, and how it's our instrument to the soul. I literally felt my whole system light up. It was like something inside me say, this is it.
This is what you've been avoiding. This is the piece you've been missing. And in that moment, I couldn't ignore it anymore. I remember thinking, Christina. How long are you gonna put this off? How long are you going to let something this simple keep you from the impact you are supposed to have? Because, let's be real, if Beyonce still trains her voice before every tour.
If professional speakers and actors and leaders are constantly refining their instruments. Then why did I think I could just wing it forever? It wasn't just about sounding better on a podcast. It wasn't even about saving my throat from getting dry. This was about alignment. It was about my outer expression.
Finally matching [00:10:00] my inner identity and the fire behind it, and my voice carrying the same strength as the empire I'm building about having the courage to refine even the most basic part of myself, my voice, so I could lead at the level I know I'm called to leave. So that day I said, enough.
I hired a voice coach. No more putting it off. No more making excuses. No more letting this be the thing that holds me back. And that decision, it felt like a line in the sand. Like the moment you finally decide to stop circling the same mountain. Yes. Really. And actually start climbing it. It's like, we don't need to figure it out anymore.
We just need to take action and do it. Now, here's the thing, making the decision is one thing. Actually stepping into the work is another. And when I tell you what I've discovered about my voice so far, it's wild because what I thought was going to be about fixing squeakiness or sounding less nasally, has actually opened up something much deeper.
And [00:11:00] that's what I wanna share next. Look, I could keep trying to figure out on my own. I could read every book. Binge YouTube tutorials, download free exercise. And honestly, that's what I've been doing for a while. I told myself, just breathe deeper. Just slow down. Everybody tells me, just slow down, right?
Just pace yourself. But after years of doing it, I realized if it hasn't changed by now, it's not going to change by itself. And that's when it hit me. At some point, you need someone outside of yourself. Someone who can actually hear you. Someone who catches the little things you're missing, the way you hold your breath, your standing or sitting, the tension in your body when you speak, because when you're inside of it.
You can't always see it yourself clearly, and that's where the right coaching changes everything. It's funny because that is exactly what I teach in my business. There's only so long you can keep saying, I'll figure it out [00:12:00] only so long. You keep trying to patch things together on your own.
At some point, if you want to go faster, smoother, and lighter, you need someone who's already walked the same road. Someone who can shorten the gap between where you are and where you wanna be. And for me, in this season, that meant swallowing my pride, admitting I couldn't hack this on my own anymore and hiring a voice coach.
So I did it. I reached out, invested, and signed up. And let me tell you just saying that, just hitting the payment button, it felt like a weight lifted because here's what I know, I wasn't just buying a lesson. I was buying access to someone who could hear me differently, who could literally tune my instrument.
So it finally matched the song I was trying to sing with my life and business. And once I stepped in, the first thing I realized was this. What I thought I was hiring him for wasn't actually the breakthrough I was about to get. I thought it was here to fix squeakiness, to soundless nasally, to have more stamina.
But the deeper I [00:13:00] got, the more I realized this was about something bigger. It was about embodiment. It was about power. It was about finally owning the sound of a leader I've always been becoming. So when I say I hired a voice coach, what I'm really saying is I'm preparing my voice to be the carrier of a movement.
And this movement, it's bigger than me, it's bigger than my podcast. It's bigger than any single offer or program. I see a wait list with thousands of women raising their hands saying, I'm ready to do this differently. I see stages where I am being asked to speak, not because I've mastered a clever strategy, but because the message of the House of Cortes is alive and it resonates, and I see the women inside.
Not just listening, not just watching, but stepping into their own voices, their own power, becoming carriers of this movement alongside me. Because a true movement isn't about one voice, it's about amplifying many. And [00:14:00] maybe as you've been listening to this, something in you've been stirring, maybe felt that same desire to stop holding back, to stop sounding small,
and to finely embody the leader. You know, you are. That's why I created the House of Cortes A. It's not just a membership, it's not just coaching. It's a movement of women building lighter, more powerful empires. And right now the movement is already alive. The doors are open, the community is gathering, and the energy is building.
If you know it's time to step into this kind of room, the first step is simple. Add your name to the wait list because this movement is growing fast, and you'll want to be inside before the first open house takes place. That's where everything shifts. I'll put the link below in the show notes if you're interested.
My voice may be in training, but the movement is already alive, and if you're listening right now, it's because you were meant to hear it. So here's my invitation. Don't just hear this movement. Be the movement. Add your [00:15:00] voice to ours because together. We don't just speak, we shift the world. So here I am just at the beginning of this journey with my voice coach, and I'll be honest, I don't know exactly where it's going to lead, but I do know this. I'm committed. I'm showing up. I'm inviting you to come along for the ride. As I keep working through this process, I'll bring you behind the scenes. I'll share what I'm learning, what's changing, and what breakthroughs I'm having.
And here's the fun part. You'll even get to hear it yourself. You'll be able to tell me, Christina, I hear the shift. Your voice is stronger, richer, more powerful. Or maybe you'll notice the subtleties that I can't even notice. Either way, you'll be part of this experiment with me. Because at the end of the day, this isn't about me just having a better podcast voice.
It's about building a voice of a movement. A movement that's for you. Every refinement I make, every upgrade I lead into is so I can serve you better, hold space for [00:16:00] you more powerfully and empower you to claim your own voice in the season of your life and business. So make sure to hit that follow button.
Leave me a comment and share your thoughts because this isn't just my journey. It's hours. So I'll be creating more episodes where I will let you in on what's shifting, what's working, and maybe even give you a taste of how my voice is transforming, because this is what it's all about. Not just being heard, but being felt.
Not just speaking, but sparking a movement together. You're already here, you're already listening, so don't dip in and disappear. Hit that follow button right now so you don't miss the next episode. And if you believe in this movement, help me amplify it.
Leave a five star review so more women can find us and send this episode to one person you know who is ready to rise. That's how we grow. That's how we build a movement together, and that's how we change the game together.
This is Christina Cocal and this is the voice of a new movement. Welcome home.
