From Street Performer to #1 Bestseller: The Complete Story Behind “Master Your Voice”

What happens when you combine 12 years of vocal teaching, 2,000+ transformed singers, and a power outage that sparked a writing marathon?

You get “Master Your Voice” – my #1 bestselling book that condenses everything I’ve learned as a vocal coach into one easy-to-read resource.

But the journey of actually writing, editing, proofing, designing, recording, and finally launching the book on Amazon has been EPIC!

So today, I want to share the complete, unfiltered story of how this book came to be – from the crushing failures to the unexpected breakthroughs, and everything in between.

Box: By the way, if you want to get the book, it’s just 99 cents on Kindle at the time of writing (it will most definitely go up), so, if you’re reading this, grab a Kindle or hardcopy now!

How it Started: The Spark in the Dark

It all started during a freeze two years ago on February 2nd 2023.

We don’t often get super cold weather in Austin, Texas, but when it happens, all hell breaks loose!

That year, tree branches which had recently been soaked with rain now turned into frozen trunks, several times heavier than their typical weight.

As a result, stout tree branches, unaccustomed to the heavy ice now frozen to their bark, were breaking under their own weight all over central Texas, bringing down power lines on a mass scale.

One cold morning around 10AM, the power suddenly went out. 

No internet, no streaming services.

A day that was supposed to be full of teaching singers online suddenly turned into a “free” day with zero power.

Just me, a fresh pot of coffee and my laptop with about four hours of battery life. 

Instead of doom-scrolling on my phone, I found myself inspired and dangerously caffeinated.

Could this be the morning I finally start writing my book? I thought to myself.

Looking out at the frozen landscape of my backyard, I opened Microsoft Word (Google Docs was offline, after all) and started typing:

“Every singer starts by imitating others…”

Those words had been brewing in my mind for years, drawn from my own journey from struggling street performer to vocal coach. 

I thought back to my days busking in the San Francisco BART stations, trying desperately to sound like my idols at the time, Elliott Smith, Thom Yorke of Radiohead, Jeff Buckley and many others.

The problem was those singers recorded their music on $3,000 condenser mikes, designed to pick up the tiniest nuances of the human voice.

Their brand of beautiful, fragile whisper-singing absolutely DID NOT translate to the busy train stations I found myself performing in.

Singing in a train station requires a singer to project their voice fully, using a powerful voice.

But this was way before I had my first voice lesson and long before I had the first idea of what good vocal technique was.

I was just a guy with a guitar trying to whisper-sing over the trains passing by.

The result?

My voice would give out after just an hour of performing.

My Vocal “Wake Up” Call…

My vocal wake-up call came from an unexpected source – a homeless man with an empty beer can.

One morning while I was playing in the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit – basically the San Francisco subway), I heard a sudden shriek:

“You suck!”

Before I could trace the source of the insult, I felt a beer can whiz by my head.

A homeless man who had been drinking in the entrance to the station hated my singing, and threw an empty beer can at me to voice his displeasure.

Before I could even shout back “What the hell man?!”, the man walked away – leaving me to stew in my own inadequacies.

The “beer can incident” left me shaken to my core.

Almost immediately, I started asking around if anyone knew of a voice teacher.

This led me to take my very first voice lessons with an SLS (Speech Level Singing) teacher in Oakland – about a 45 commute from my San Francisco apartment.

My teacher (let’s call him Mandrake) taught me that I had been using my voice improperly:

I was straining on every single high note and my voice wasn’t within a mile of the correct pitch.

Mandrake showed me a system where I could begin using my relaxed “speech-level” voice to hit notes with more power and without straining.

Around the same time I started lessons with Mandrake, I was quickly growing tired of San Francisco.

From the cost of living, to the lack of a tight-knit music community, I decided to leave San Francisco and set my sights on Austin, Texas.

The Move to Austin

As soon as I landed in Austin, I met fellow a couch-surfer named Brett Randell – who was also a terrific singer/songwriter.

Finding out that Brett also took lessons in Speech Level Singing, he introduced me to his own vocal coach who I’ll call Dave.

Meeting Dave when I first moved to Austin was like a lightning strike to my young singer/songwriter soul.

We just clicked! It seemed like destiny.

I immediately started booking lessons and continued my journey into vocal technique.

But it wasn’t all wine and roses.

Learning to sing was hard!

During one particularly frustrating lesson where I was still trying to channel my favorite idols, Dave stopped me mid-phrase and said something that would become the cornerstone of my teaching philosophy: 

“Stop imitating others,” he said…

“Start singing with your own voice.”

It sounds simple, right? But that one piece of advice contained a profound truth: 

As far back as I could remember, I had been channeling my favorite singer/songwriters, imitating them to a fault.

And I wasn’t alone!

Most singers start by imitating others. And that’s perfectly normal! After all, humans are natural imitators.

The problem was getting stuck there.

Not only is imitation unoriginal, but it can actually damage your voice. 

I had been reinforcing someone else’s bad habits instead of developing my own authentic sound.

The mission was clear:

Stop imitating others. The real work was to begin singing like myself.

Twelve Years in the Trenches

Fast forward through 12 years and over 2,000 students taught. 

I’ve made the major transition from struggling performer into an actual certified vocal coach (becoming certified with the Institute for Vocal Advancement in 2014).

Right from the very first student, I started seeing the same patterns in my students that I had experienced myself.

Every day in my studio, I’d see singers struggling with imitating their idols. 

They’d come in trying to sound like Adele, Bruno Mars, or Whitney Houston, pushing their voices to the breaking point.

Caroline was a perfect example.

She came to me after consistently losing musical theatre roles to more advanced singers. 

“I’m just not cut out for this,” she told me, fighting back tears. 

But the real problem wasn’t her voice – it was that she was trying to belt like her favorite musical theatre vocalist without any proper technique.

Then there was Michael, the vocalist for a screamo band. 

Michael would strain and push his voice so hard, he would always lose his vocal stamina within 30 seconds of the song.

The rest of the song would be so demanding on his voice, he would overcompensate until he would just sing every note flat.

Then there was Dave, who absolutely loved the song “Country Roads” by John Denver – except for the high note in the chorus (on the words “I belong”) which would always make him break into a ghostly falsetto.

Each student that I taught reinforced what I’d learned in the train station all those years ago: 

We all start by imitating, but true growth only happens when we find our authentic voice and learn to use it correctly.

Writing the Book: My Requiem

Mozart died while composing his final work “Requiem”.

And while I can’t say I know exactly how he felt, I have an idea.

For years, I had been writing about vocal technique for my own website as well as some other music blogs.

You’d think that after years of writing for my personal singing blog and being a guest post author for sites like CDBaby, Musicnotes and Disc Makers, that writing a book would be easy right?

Wrong!

First, I built off the introductory chapters I had written in the winter storm in 2023.

But I would write a few chapters, and then realize that my entire approach was leading me down a blind alley – focusing on the details, not the big picture.

Then, I began constructing an outline with my colleague Adam Fix who I had worked with on other writing projects in the past.

Suddenly, the path became clear.

I would take my students on the same journey from imitator to original that I had done years ago – eliminating all assumptions about what level the reader might be at. 

My new outline broke everything down to the basics – from finding your range, to singing on pitch, discovering chest voice, head voice and mixed voice – all the way to finding your unique vocal style.

And a framework that I had created over the years became the foundation for the book.

It’s a framework I call the Perfect Performance Pyramid.

After working with hundreds of students, I noticed something interesting: 

Every singer, regardless of their style or experience level, seemed to face similar challenges in a predictable order.

For example: singers need to learn to sing on pitch before they can hit high notes consistently.

Why?

Because even if they could squeak out a high note, their voice would still sound awful because they would be so off pitch. 

The Perfect Performance Pyramid breaks down all the skills that a singer must achieve in order to become a great vocalist – step-by-step.

Put one skill out of place and the whole thing falls apart.

In the end, the diagram became a pyramid with an “order of operations” flowing seamlessly from one to another like this: 

This is the method I’ve used with hundreds of students, and I’ve seen it work time and time again.

Let me break it down for you:

Level 1: Support

At the base of the pyramid, we have the introduction that every singer needs:

• Understanding your vocal range and voice type
• Basic vocal hygiene
• Proper posture alignment (and why most people get it wrong)
• Breath support (not just “singing from your diaphragm”)

Level 2: Fundamentals

The foundation for building actual singing skills:

• Rhythm and timing (often overlooked but crucial)
• Pitch accuracy and how to train your ear
• Basic scales and exercises

Level 3: Range

The heart of developing a complete vocal range – discovering your chest voice and head voice

• Mastering chest voice without strain
• Understanding vocal breaking points
• Developing head voice clarity
• Expanding vocal range safely

Level 4: Mixed voice

Blending chest voice and head voice for seamless transitions

• Understanding mixed voice
• Learning how to increase resistance in the vocal cords to create a strong sound
• Managing the passaggio (the transition between registers)

Level 5: Vocal effects

The ornaments that every singer needs to learn in order to sound “musical”.

• Vibrato 
• Legato 
• Sustains 
• Dynamics and much more
• Basically, all the “cherries” on your vocal sundae

Level 6: Style

Developing your personal sound

• Style-specific techniques and how they will change from genre to genre
• Discovering your true singing voice
• Being inspired by your singing heroes – without integrating their bad habits

Level 7: Perfect Performance

The peak of the pyramid – the ideal we’re always working toward.

• Complete vocal freedom
• Emotional connection with the music
• Consistent technique under pressure
• Unique artistic expression

This pyramid became more than just a teaching tool for vocal development – it became a roadmap for the entire book!

Once I had the Perfect Performance Pyramid in mind, writing the book became MUCH easier. 

I would just sit down each morning and imagine a student who had NEVER sung before.

Then I would guide them through the Perfect Performance Pyramid step-by-step – incorporating my own humorous stories and examples of famous singers who struggled with these issues themselves.

The Production Marathon: A Story of Persistence

If writing was a challenge, production was an all-out war. Looking back, I can’t help but laugh at how naive I was. 

“I’ll just format it and upload it,” I thought. Oh, how wrong I was.

Let me walk you through the journey that turned my hair a bit grayer (no joke) and taught me more about book production than I ever wanted to know.

First came designing images for the book.

Stuck in Design Hell: Making Images for the Book

From time to time, I have “borrowed” images of singing diagrams and photos of vocal anatomy for my own articles.

This is for the most part legal, because you’re using the images as an educational tool, not for profit.

But with Master Your Voice, I wanted to completely own the content.

I didn’t want someone to hunt me down 5 years later saying that I didn’t have permission to use their images and that I would have to re-design the book.

So I reached out to graphic designers I had worked with in the past, showing them all the images, graphics and diagrams I wanted them to create.

There were tons of diagrams, graphics and illustrations of vocal systems and anatomy I needed to design:

Like this one demonstrating mixed voice…

Or this one, demonstrating how most singers feel overconfident at the beginning of their vocal journey…

But all my previous designers fell through.

So I went to an online design website called 99designs.com and hired an illustrator who seemed game for the task.

Although this person was a GREAT designer, we went back and forth for MONTHS getting each image correct.

English was not the designer’s first language, so translating my feedback into comprehensible ideas was tricky, to say the least.

This was extremely time-consuming, but resulted in images I finally owned. Nice!

Want to Nail Those High Notes?

Every singer wants to expand their range. Expand Your Range Fast will show you how to finally hit high notes in your voice without straining. Expand your range by 5 notes or more!

Learn More

With the images completed, it was now time to format and layout the book so that Amazon would accept it.

Formatting FUBAR: Getting the Book Formatted for Kindle

I had originally written the first chapters of Master Your Voice in Microsoft Word during the power outage.

Pretty quickly though, once the power was back on, I switched to writing in a Google Doc.

Months later and after several drafts were completed, I had a 218-page document staring me in the face!

I had painstakingly formatted the document in the Google Doc, thinking this would save me time down the road.

Then, when it came time to upload, I had a crushing revelation: Kindle Direct Publishing doesn’t accept Google Doc files directly. 

And they have hundreds of requirements about how to format the book so they can publish it (most of which look like they’re still stuck in 2000)…

All that work, straight down the drain.

After a long break, I discovered another solution.

I’ll just use Atticus – a publishing software that boasts the ability to format books in all the different formats I would need. 

In an act of love (and seeing how distraught I was about my formatting fiasco), my girlfriend Franchesca offered to do the formatting in this new software.

She spent another two weeks reformatting everything. 

The text looked great, but the moment we tried adding the custom diagrams, chaos ensued. 

The software kept randomly relocating images to different pages (nothing like seeing your carefully crafted vocal cord diagram show up in the middle of a chapter about breathing techniques).

The software errors made the flow of the book incomprehensible.

By this point, I was ready to throw my computer out the window.

Instead, I took a deep breath (using proper technique, of course), swallowed my pride, and did what I should have done in the first place: 

I hired a designer who had experience with formatting and laying out books.

You see, when publishing a book to Amazon, there are several different files you need:

• One for Kindle (epub file)
• One for the softcover and hardcover versions (PDFs)
• One for the Kindle cover of the book (JPEG)
• A different size for the cover of the paperback version (JPEG)
• A different size for the cover design for the hardcover version (JPEG)

And every single one of these files needs to be a different size, and cannot be converted into another!

But that was just the beginning! 

Each publishing platform had its own special requirements that felt designed specifically to drive authors insane.

Kindle wanted specific margins and a particular table of contents format. Change one thing, and suddenly your whole book looks like it was formatted by a cat walking across the keyboard.

Amazon’s print requirements included spine width calculations based on page count, paper type, and apparently the phase of the moon… 

You get the idea!

It was a formatting nightmare.

In the end, I worked my newly hired designer like a rented mule – requesting dozens of revisions and needlessly cruel demands which I passed on from Amazon’s requirements.

We went back and forth for over a month trying to get the specifications exactly right.

Finally, we had the finished products, it was time to make the audiobook…

The Audiobook Adventure: Blood, Sweat, and Throat Coat Tea

Recording an audiobook about singing while maintaining proper technique is like trying to teach someone to swim via text message – technically possible, but way more complicated than you’d expect.

The first challenge? 

Soundproofing my room.

Wanted Dead or Alive: The Soundproofing Saga

It may surprise you that the same acoustic setting that’s good for voice lessons is horrible for studio production.

In a voice lesson, you want to be able to hear the singer in a “live” room – voice and piano bouncing off the walls – to mimic the sounds of real performance venues.

For the recording of an audiobook, you want the exact opposite. You want the room to be as quiet and “dead” as possible.

So for 3 weeks, in between students, I would haul out 2 foot square sound panels and place them on every reflective surface in the room – deadening the sound as much as I could – but still far from perfect.

Between lawn mowers, air conditioners (essential in Texas heat), and cars passing by, getting clean audio was like trying to meditate at a rock concert.

And then there was the actual recording of the audiobook itself.

Recording Wreckage: Recording the Book to Tape

Within a few minutes of hitting “record”, I realized that I was basically recording TWO audiobooks – one for all the narration (the spoken parts of the book) and the other for the vast number of singing examples.

I decided to tackle the “narration” section first.

For someone who extols the virtues of “speech level singing”, I was surprised at how different I had to prepare for the narration portions of the book versus the singing portions.

Just doing my 30 minute daily vocal warmup of exercises (lip trills, “Gee”, “Nay”, “Mum”) wasn’t enough to prepare me for hours of recording narration.

I found that I needed to do tongue twisters in order to get my enunciation correct before recording.

One of my favorites came directly from the movie The King’s Speech:

“I am a thistle sifter.

I have a sieve of sifted thistles and a sieve of unsifted thistles,

because I am a thistle sifter.”

Once the narration recording was done, it was time to move on to the “singing” demonstrations and examples.

Singing For My Supper: Singing the Examples for the Book

The vocal exercise demonstrations were particularly challenging. 

Recording the singing examples had its own set of challenges.

Of course, over the course of the entire book, there is less singing than narration.

However, every singing demonstration needed multiple examples in several keys to make sure that the listener had something they could sing along with. 

Try singing the same scale 15 different ways, maintaining perfect technique each time, then doing it again because a truck drove by during the last take!

Overall, the singing examples of the book were similar to what I teach every day, so it wasn’t completely new. It just took time.

And then came editing the audiobook…

Audiobook Anarchy: Getting the MP3s on Amazon

Unlike my hardcover and Kindle book formatting woes, I didn’t have any delusions about trying to edit the entire audiobook myself.

There were so many technical requirements, it made me question everything I knew about audio recording:

ACX (Amazon’s audiobook platform) demanded exact specifications:

• Room tone: Exactly 2 seconds at the start and end of each file
• Background noise: Maximum -60dB RMS
• Peak values: Between -3dB and -6dB
• No mouth sounds (try that while demonstrating vocal exercises!)

I recorded the entire book at least three times – making sure every phrase was correctly enunciated and making sure the emotion of each line sounded right.

Between all the recording sessions and teaching my own students, all the work was taking a serious toll on my voice.

This was perhaps the most ironic part – a vocal coach struggling with vocal fatigue while recording his own book! 

In the end, it took:

• 14 recording sessions (usually 1-2 hours each)
• 37 hours of raw audio
• Proper vocal warm-ups before each session
• Countless tongue twisters to make sure I could read clearly
• Endless cups of throat coat tea
• A complete ban on coffee and dairy during recording weeks

After recording was finally finished, I sent everything over to the audio editor.

In the end, we did 3 separate rounds of feedback, but in the end, the product was amazing.

I’ve been told that audiobooks are the least popular ones purchased through Amazon (since it requires an audible subscription), but I know I’ll always be incredibly proud of the end product!

And then, one day, when my exclusive contract with Audible is over, I can publish to more audio platforms (like Spotify).

The Amazon Approval Gauntlet

With the book and audiobook formats completed, it was finally time to submit all my work to Amazon for approval.

If you’ve ever wondered what purgatory feels like, try getting multiple book formats approved on Amazon simultaneously. 

It’s like trying to juggle while riding a unicycle – blindfolded, in the rain, uphill.

My first submission was rejected almost immediately.

I’d fix whatever the issue was, only to be told that again, it was rejected.

The rejection notices became almost comical:

• Cover dimensions off by 0.125 inches? Rejected.
• Spine text too close to the edge by a millimeter? Rejected.
• Interior margins not matching “industry standards”? Rejected.
• PDF color profile not in CMYK format? You guessed it – Rejected.

Each rejection meant a minimum 72-hour wait for the next review. 

I started dreaming in Amazon error codes. 

One particularly memorable rejection came because the little line ornaments that indicated the page number went over the margin.

Who even notices that?

It took three weeks, countless emails, and possibly a small sacrifice to the publishing gods (no animals were harmed) to get everything properly connected.

But through sheer persistence, the Kindle, softcover, hardcover and audiobooks were finally accepted!

The Turning Point: Launching the Book and The MusicNotes Partnership

With the book finally approved and actually available in the Amazon store, it was finally time to promote it.

That’s when I learned that writing a book is only half the battle. 

Marketing it? That’s where things get really interesting.

First, I did the predictable things:

• I posted it on my YouTube channel
• I sent it out to my email list
• I even hired multiple book marketing agencies who promised bestseller status and thousands of sales. Their strategy? A generic email blast and some half-hearted social media posts. Another $1,000 down the drain.

Like this one from a popular book promotion service. My book was surrounded with tons of other books in one mass email…

But the real breakthrough came from the most unexpected place. 

I’d been writing for the website Musicnotes.com for a few years – a guest post here and there. 

During a routine interaction with the manager of their blog, I mentioned my book to their content manager.

Instead of the usual “thanks for sharing,” she offered to place the link to “Master Your Voice” in their newsletter. 

The results? 

Over 1,000 downloads in a single day – more than double what sending to my own email list had generated.But here’s where it gets really interesting: 

Those readers and my close personal friends and colleagues who downloaded the book became evangelists. 

My own voice students started buying copies for themselves. One arts conservatory in Florida bought 30 copies for their students.

The power of word-of-mouth marketing became crystal clear.

No amount of generic Reddit posts or Facebook ads could match the impact of one student or teacher telling another, “This book rocks!”

The Pricing Strategy: Finding the Sweet Spot

The decision to price the book at 99 cents wasn’t an easy one. 

How do you price something that represents thousands of hours of work and over a decade of experience?

I knew that if I priced the book at what it was worth it would generate no sales.

• Launch it at $9.95: Virtually no sales
• Drop it to $4.95: Maybe you’d get a few more bites
• Even $1.99 was still more expensive than most experts recommended

That’s when I remembered why I wrote the book in the first place: 

To help singers avoid the mistakes I made. 

To give them the guidance I wish I’d had in those train station days.

So I made what felt like a crazy decision: 

I dropped the price to free for the first week, then up to 99 cents for the second week. 

The results were immediate and dramatic:

• Downloads skyrocketed
• Reviews started pouring in
• The Amazon algorithm took notice
• Sales rank improved daily

This all resulted in the coveted #1 Bestseller badge that every new author dreams of seeing on their page – but seldom does.

The impact of seeing that bestselling author status on my page was almost too much to bear – after everything I had been through.

When I first saw it, I broke down in tears. All the emotions and pain I’d gone through to bring the book to life was finally coming out.

Bestseller rankings change all the time, but having hit #1 made all the pain and anguish worth it.

Plus, it’s something I can add to my resume that I show conference organizers and students and demonstrate the impact the book has had.

Yes, we’ll eventually raise the price. 

But for now, the focus is on getting this knowledge into as many hands as possible. 

Every download represents a singer who might avoid the mistakes I made, who might find their true voice sooner rather than later.

The Impact: Beyond Numbers

You may notice something in my (cautionary) story:

There was far more emphasis on the technical aspects of the book (formatting it for Amazon, recording the audiobook, designing the images, for example), than the actual CONTENT of the book itself.

One thing I learned from this process was how quickly the book turned from something that was genuinely inspired – into a product that I had to figure out how to package and market perfectly.

Words on the page that I had written years ago now had to be optimized and formatted to meet the specific needs of the Amazon distribution machine.

And even though I was still seeing the words I had written over the last two years while I was in formatting hell, the spark was gone.

What once inspired those words had been replaced with the anxiety of making sure that the technical concerns were satisfied.

And as you can see from my story:

The skills required to actual create the content (teaching thousands of students) is quite different from the skills needed to make it successful (marketing, copywriting, search engine optimization).

I assume that every artist probably feels this way about their work at some point:

There’s an initial burst of genuine inspiration immediately followed by the drudgery of packaging it for consumption.

But for all the pain and suffering of getting this incredible work out, there was a massive bright spot:

The book’s been out for a while now, and every day brings new stories of transformation. 

• A choir director in Minnesota is using it to help her students find their authentic sound. 
• A rock band in Seattle is using the exercises before rehearsals. 
• A grandmother in Florida finally found the confidence to sing in her church choir.

Every email, every review, every success story reminds me why I started this journey in the first place: 

To help singers find their authentic voice.

And this helps erase the memories of the pain of giving birth to this book.

I hope that if you’re reading this, you’ll do me the honor of buying the book and maybe even sharing some stories about how it has helped you.

Your Turn to Find Your Voice

Every singer starts somewhere. 

Whether you’re performing in train stations (been there!), singing in your local choir, or just practicing in the shower, you have a unique voice waiting to be discovered.

Just like I began the journey to discovering my own voice to becoming a certified voice teacher to eventually writing and releasing a book about it, now it’s your turn!

Ready to start your journey? 

Grab “Master Your Voice” now for just 99 cents (less than your morning coffee!) and join thousands of singers who are already discovering their true voice.

“Master Your Voice” will show you how to:

• Break free from imitation and find your authentic sound
• Expand your vocal range safely and effectively
• Build confidence in your unique voice
• Apply proven techniques used by hundreds of successful students

Remember: Your voice is unique. It’s time to stop imitating and start celebrating what makes you special as a singer.

What’s stopping you from having the voice of your dreams?

Want to Nail Those High Notes?

Every singer wants to expand their range. Expand Your Range Fast will show you how to finally hit high notes in your voice without straining. Expand your range by 5 notes or more!

Learn More