Your voice is unique to you. It grows as you grow. It changes as you change. If you’re curious about the relationship between your voice and your body, your heart and your mind, welcome. My name is Michèle Voillequé and I can’t wait to hear you. 

Earlier this summer, I thought, “You know, it’s been a couple years. I should probably do a ‘how’s it going with podcasting’ episode,” on the off-chance that any of you are interested.

You probably know that there are a bajillion podcasts in the world now.

Everybody and their brother has a podcast. It’s become something of a joke to have a podcast, I know.

So I imagine there are some of you who are interested in like the ins and outs and maybe you wanna do this yourself. That would be totally cool from my perspective. I think all the people using their voice for love and justice and health and happiness in the world, we need them. And if you wanna be one of those people, you’ve got my full support.

So anyway, earlier this summer, I thought, “it’s been a couple of years,” and then I checked my calendar and it’s actually been three years now. More than three years, and I’m feeling a little, where does the time go??

The episode previous to this one in your feed is actually my one-year assessment of podcasting from 2024, and I reran that episode in part because I think it might be interesting to hear these two moments in time, side by side.

And also because last week I had the wicked head cold. I didn’t have the COVID, but going around the Bay Area there is a wicked head cold, and I didn’t have enough brain power to put two sentences together. So, dual purpose, it’s interesting and it saved me the trouble in a week that I really needed to save me the trouble.

I’m actually really proud that that’s the first rerun that I’ve done. And the first episode that I’ve put off, I think, in the whole time of doing the podcast. I think I’ve pretty much put out an episode every other week for more than three years. So that feels good.

If you know anything about getting better at anything, consistency is important. That’s one of the hardest things about practicing, I think, is being kind to ourselves, actually, when we are not consistent, when it’s not the same every week or every day, when we’re not able to get to the same feeling or the same place. Some days feel great and others, it’s just a slog.

And so being able to look back and see, indeed I have been consistent.

Have all the episodes been the same length? No.

Have they all been equally good? I’m sure not.

Am I glad I recorded them? Absolutely.

Do I think there’s something in each of them that could help another person feel better about themselves? feel more able to use their voice effectively in the world? inspired to work on their voice so that they can use it more effectively in the world? Yes, I do.

Forgive me if this sounds like a bunch of self-congratulation, but that’s what it’s like to be self-employed. You have to congratulate your employee. So here we’re doing that, shamelessly on air.

Even longer ago than earlier this summer – t was earlier this year, I think –  I was out with a friend and he said, “Have you ever looked yourself up on AI?” And I said, “No, I haven’t. I, no, that hadn’t occurred to me.”

And he said, “You know, I looked myself up on AI and it was totally wrong. It made up all kinds of stuff about who I was and what my research was about and what I had done in my career. Everything.” He said it was just the most amazing amount of BS he could ever have imagined.

And I thought, well, could it be that it’s about somebody else with your same name? And the chances of that were really low.

So, remembering that conversation, I decided, well, let’s ask Google what it thinks of my podcast, and here’s what it came up with.

It said, “The episode titles for Can’t Wait to Hear You are straightforward, conversational, and highly practical, avoiding any vague click bait or confusing industry jargon, and they broadly group into a few distinct thematic styles.”

This is when you know it’s ChatGPT, because it’s not a “thematic style,” it’s a “theme.”

Anyway, “direct practical solutions, performance psychology and mindset and communication and philosophy.”

And I thought, “You know, that’s right.”

And it gave some examples of episodes in each of those categories. So, “direct practical solutions,”

The Cure for Pitchiness (is not an app)

Sounding Consistently Good

Why It’s All About the Breath and

Why YouTube Warmups Might Not Work For You.

That’s true. Those are direct, practical solutions. And interestingly, my most downloaded episode, after the very first one – the intro that’s like, I dunno, five minutes long – my next most frequently downloaded episode is Vocal Remedies that Really Work.

I don’t know, maybe the Google doesn’t have access to that data, but that makes me so happy, though, learning that Vocal Remedies that Really Work is my most downloaded episode, because it’s so important. It’s like, “Yes! Hooray!” I had something useful to say, and people are finding it. That is so exciting, so rewarding.

Okay, so under the category of “performance, psychology and mindset” are the episodes,

Afraid of Doing it Wrong

Managing the Anxiety that Comes with Growth

Pretty is a Matter of Opinion and

Practicing Thoughts.

And I think that’s all true, too. And again, one of my most downloaded episodes that’s not on the list is called Me and Performance Anxiety, where I’m talking about me and performance anxiety. And again, so good, I think.

Now we don’t know, just because an episode was downloaded to a device, doesn’t mean that anybody actually listened to it, but I’ll take the win. One of the things that I’m really working toward here with this medium is to normalize what it’s like to have a voice and be human.

The voice is an incredibly emotional instrument, and I think when we can accept that and respect that, we have a lot better chance of managing it. It’s not that our voice is never gonna crack or we’re gonna forget what we wanted to say, or that our voice is gonna shake, right, or feel wavery.

That’s all going to happen in the course of a human life, and that’s all normal. And I think the more we can understand and allow our emotions and how they affect our voice, the less likely we are to freak out about it when it happens in the moment.

Because it’s often not the phlegm pocket or the badly taken breath that leads to a wavery tone that’s the main problem. That’s one thing in time. You can take another breath, you can swallow, you can get over that and move on.

The real problem is what we make that human foible mean in the moment and how we can beat up on ourselves or, decide it’s time to stop talking when really all that’s happened is, you were a human.

So I guess what I want you to take away is that the stakes are never as high as we think they are. At least that’s what I found in my life.

Sometimes the stakes are very high – that does happen. What we say, how we say it, it matters. It’s important, but are the stakes so high as to be life or death? The answer’s no. But so often it feels life or death, and that’s where we’re just making it really hard on ourselves to live and communicate.

Okay, and under the third category of “communication and philosophy,” it lists

Leading When You’re not in Charge

The Value in Slowing Down

Who is Singing For and

How to Hear Yourself.

And I would say that only two of those are actually “communication and philosophy” podcasts. I think The Value in Slowing Down and How to Hear Yourself belong better under “direct, practical solutions.”

But whatever. The computer’s doing the best it can with the information it’s got and it doesn’t need to be right, for me anyway.

When I started my podcast in June of 2023 it was with the unbelievable, absolutely necessary and fabulous help of Natalie Miller and K.O. Myers. Natalie Miller was a coach that I worked with to help me get this off the ground. You can hear more about that in the episode, Committing to a Year that I recorded a year into this project. And K.O. Myers is my producer and his company is linked up in the show notes. This wouldn’t be happening without his help. Absolutely.

So when I mentioned that I, I know how the episodes are doing, I know that information because I can go to my podcast hosting platform, which is Captivate.fm. And I can look at all of the episodes and see how they’re performing over time. All time performance and then any date range that I want.

And I can even compare one episode against another and just go down an amazing rabbit hole if I wanted to. And even though I’m a data geek and I love me a good data rabbit hole, I kept it to about, I don’t know, 45 minutes to prepare this episode.

So beginning in June of 2023, in all of twenty three, 690 people, that is from June to December, 690 people listened to my podcast.

There’s a category called Unique Listeners, and for 2023 it was 690.  And then for 2024, it stayed basically flat. For all of 2024, I had 890 listeners, and then in 2025 that went up to 1,181. And so far in 2026, I am at 1,365. I’m recording this on August 24th.

So it’s not a ton more people that I’m reaching every year, but I am reaching more people year over year and that feels good. In all, 4,024 people have listened to my podcast.

Or, it’s been, actually what we know is it’s been downloaded 4,024 times to unique devices, the industry calls it unique listeners, but it’s the device that they can track, not the people in range of the speakers of the device.

So for downloads, my all time downloads are 6,384. In 2023, there were 1,152. Barely more – 1,212 – in 2024. 500 more than that in 2025, so 1,712 in all of 2025. And so far in 2026, the episode downloads are at 2,308.

So the listeners I have who are sticking with me are listening to more, are downloading more episodes, is what I can conclude.

I have in the back of my mind a goal to reach a thousand people a year, and I’m reaching a thousand people a year.

I would love to reach a thousand people a year with my direct teaching. I mean, that’s kind of a big, crazy goal. Right now with my direct teaching I’m reaching, you know, 75 people a year, maybe a hundred? This year I’m enrolling more groups and going forward I will be enrolling more groups, so that’s obviously how to get that number higher. 

Do I have any idea what teaching 1,000 people a year, practically, would look like? Not really. I mean, it would be an online group for sure, but do I know how I’m gonna do that? I don’t.

But I can hold the vision of that in my mind, carefully. My mind isn’t rejecting it, my mind isn’t running for from it. I feel excited when I think about reaching a thousand people a year with my teaching rather than, oh no, I’m running the other way.

And I can tell you, I think I would’ve run the other way five years ago. That number would feel way too big. But that number feels, like I can, I can handle it, at least in my imagination.

Again, do I have the path to that yet? Not yet, but at least I can see it, right. I can see that, I wanna say in the distance. But it doesn’t feel very distant. It’s just in sort of a dreamy, but connected to my heart, beautiful place in my imagination, and I think that’s a great place for goals to live.

One of the questions I ask my students when we’re getting to know each other is to make three lists of songs. On one list are songs that you like to sing that are easy for you.

On the second list are songs that you love to sing, and they’ve got some kind of problem with them, like the chorus is too high, or the bridge is too weird. Or you can’t hold the long note at the end for as long as you’d like. Or you can never remember how it starts, but you can remember, you know, you can come in on the second line, but you can’t sing the first line. Something like that.

And then the third list of songs are songs that you think, “If I could sing that, then I would be a real singer.” And that’s the kind of dreamy, aspirational space that I’m talking about in my mind. You can see it, you can hear it, you don’t know the path to it, but you know that it could be for you.

What those three lists are for, for me as a teacher is that they tell me what you’re good at, what you enjoy, and what you’re willing to work on, even though it’s not going well, and also who you imagine yourself to be. Like, who do you dream of being? And that helps me help you develop your voice and use it in the way that you’d like to be using it.

Okay, so another thing that the Captivate statistics tell me is that I get about 20 downloads within a week of publishing an episode. It puts me below the top 50% of all podcasts. 25 to 30 downloads is the industry statistic for being in the top 50% of all podcasts.

Now, what does that mean? Who’s in charge of that? Where does that industry standard come from?

So, I got my numbers from Riverside, which is a big podcasting platform, and also Listen Notes, which is a podcast search engine.

Riverside says, and this has been, this is verified also by Apple Podcasts and Spotify, there are about 3.8 million podcasts in the world, and that’s a lot more than there were five years ago. I don’t have that number, but it’s incredible.

And the United States produces 65% of all of those. Over here in the America, we just seem to love it. And Brazil is in second place with 5.6%. Mind blowing to think of all the diversity.

If the US is producing 65%, that means that 35% are coming from other places in the world, and if Brazil only has 5.6% of that 35, so many language groups have podcasts! I think that’s great. I want that number to keep growing. I’m excited to see what happens to that number over the course of my life.

So, according to Riverside, the top 10% of podcasts get over 400 downloads in the first week, and mine get 20. So that’s what’s putting me in the bottom 50% there.

But only 41.5% of podcasts make it past eight episodes, and only 8.7% of podcasts make it past 50 episodes. So that’s putting me in the top 10% because I’ve got more than 50 episodes.

And the image that this is giving me is we’ve got 3.8 million podcasts, but only 8.7% of them have more than 50 episodes. It’s like all the garages that are just full of stuff that need to be taken out, right? Like things that never launched that didn’t make it.

Well, and to be fair, maybe it wasn’t supposed to be 50 episodes. Maybe they had a story to tell and it took 10 episodes and that’s what they ran with and that’s great.

But anyway, back to me feeling good about being consistent. I like being in the 8.7%. That feels good to me.

So, Listen Notes, the podcast search engine, assigns global popularity scores to podcasts. I don’t know how they figure that out, but I am down at 24 out of a hundred and you know, it’s not 20, so I’m gonna, I’m gonna like that.

And Listen Notes confirms what Riverside says, which is that my global rank is in the top 10%, and I’m attributing that to the fact that I have more than 50 episodes.

By contrast, Joe Rogan’s Listen Score is 96 out of a hundred, and his global rank is 0.01%. He’s in the top one 100th of a percent.

IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson – global rank is 76 and they’re in the same top one, 100th of a percent with Joe Rogan. So is Good Hang with Amy Pohler. Her global popularity ranking though is 73.

Lawfare, which is one of my favorite podcasts, is in the top 0.05%.

Middlebrow, which is one of my kids’ favorite podcasts, is in the top 1% and Northwood’s Baseball Sleep Radio, which, it’s fake baseball for sleeping – I mean, how adorable is that? – they’re in the top one half percent.

Oh, and did I tell you the rankings? Lawfare is 68 out of a hundred Middlebrow is 47 out of a hundred, and the sleep, fake baseball for sleeping is 52 out of a hundred in global popularity.

Anyway, there you go. There are some numbers for you.

So what can I say for myself after these three plus years?

I’m going to keep going. It’s a good project. it’s a good intellectual and creative exercise for me. My students tell me that my episodes are helpful.

I think there’s a lot of room to grow, to reach more people, to help more people, and that’s what I’m working on now. That’s the main focus, is how can I grow this podcast’s reach? 

To that end, if you’re listening and you like what you hear, it would help so much if you could rate the podcast and leave a review because that really does help discoverability, and I would be so very grateful.

I’d also love to hear what you would like to hear, so that I can make episodes that are useful for you.

I hear from my students who are in my studio and I know what would be useful for them. But if you and I haven’t met yet, feel free to reach out, give me some marching orders. I may ignore them, but I, I would love to hear what you find valuable and what you’d like to hear more of.

I’ll tell you one of the things that I’m contemplating is renaming the podcast to make it easier to find, because Can’t Wait to Hear You, doesn’t tell you what it’s about.

And I love the title because it’s true, I can’t wait to hear you, and I think it speaks to the encouragement and the information that I’m putting out to help people live fuller, louder, more change-making lives. So, I’m, I’m toying with the idea of renaming or figuring something out that works for my heart. Yeah, that works for my heart.

I nearly forgot. One of the things I wanted to say is that this podcast has never been about accumulating listeners so that then I can take on advertising and earn ad revenue. This podcast has always been about shameless self-promotion and wanting to help people feel better in their bodies and use their voices better in the world.

So growing my reach is really about reaching the people who could benefit from my teaching. And you’re never going hear an ad on this podcast from some other company trying to sell you some other thing. All the ads are for my own work, and that feels wholesome. That feels honest and true.

It’s an interesting question now that I’ve hit the goal of reaching a thousand people a year with my podcast, what’s the podcast goal?

I think 10,000 people sounds really good to do next. Can I reach 10,000 people a year with my podcast? I don’t need to be as big as Joe Rogan or Michelle Obama or Amy Pohler. I can’t fathom that kind of fame or that kind of reach right now.

When I was talking earlier about the goals that you can hold close and feel comfortable with – even if you don’t know how you’re gonna reach them – versus the goals that you just immediately push away from – the idea of being as downloaded as Joe Rogan, that, my nervous system does not enjoy the thought of that at all.

But I can stomach, I can hold 10,000 unique listeners a year close. I think that’s, yeah, we’re calling that the next goal.

So this is what I’ve got for you today. I hope it’s interesting.

I apologize that my two year review is happening more than a year late, but I think it’s all okay.

I know for myself as a self-employed person, and someone who’s putting creative work into the world regularly that I’m interested in how other people in my position evaluate how they’re doing. Because there isn’t, right, I’m the employee and the CEO and the COO and the CFO and the CTO, with the exception of K.O. Myers who’s helping me produce this podcast.

So when there isn’t somebody over you telling you how you’re doing, how do you know how you’re doing? So I hope what I had to say today was interesting from that perspective, if that’s a position that you find yourself in.

And I just want to thank you so much for listening. It really means a lot.

If it’s within your ability to recommend this podcast to a friend or a neighbor, or to leave a rating or write a review, I would be ever so grateful.

And as always, please reach out letters@mvmusik.com.

I can’t wait to hear you.

If you enjoyed today’s episode, please rate and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new people find the show. Subscribing ensures you’ll learn about new episodes as soon as they come out. If you have a question about singing or speaking or being, please send me an email at letters@mvmusik.com.

That’s letters at M as in Mary, V as in Victor, M U S I K.com.

Transcripts and show notes are available on my website. You can subscribe to my newsletter there, too. Can’t Wait to Hear You is produced in conjunction with Particulate Media. I’m your host, Michèle Voillequé. I can’t wait to hear you.