In today's fast-paced and competitive business environment, one of the most powerful tools you have for building client relationships isn't your marketing strategy or your product pitch; it's your voice.
Whether you're meeting face-to-face, on a client call, or presenting over Zoom, your tone of voice communicates more than your words alone. It conveys credibility, confidence, warmth, and care; the very qualities that inspire trust and long-term loyalty.
Maybe it’s because I’m a singer that I just naturally know that one’s voice has an intrinsic, almost automatic relationship to happiness. Singing brings me untold joy. And connection—to myself and to others. And it’s not just based on my own personal feeling or intuition. Over the last 20 years, researchers and study after study have shown that singing—
Othman Ouenes is one of those foresighted tech entrepreneurs who not only realized early on how critical one’s speaking voice is to one’s business-world success, he also believes even more firmly that the way you speak is vitally important to the success of a startup. (And beyond that, to one’s interpersonal relationships—and even to oneself—as well.)
And just as critical to the success of these startup businesses—having already guided one startup to success, he’s now into his second digital startup, Fidari, a healthcare platform for cancer patients. Here he talks about his path from non-native English speaker to Stanford graduate to startup wunderkind—and how crucial his speaking voice has been all along the way.