The Second Voice
You Don’t Have a Communication Problem (You Have a Visibility One)
A conversation with Luisa Hogan on The Second Voice. Published June 18, 2026. 40 minutes.
Watch on YouTube, inside the full playlist.
THE CONVERSATION
The moment before you speak, a voice says hold back. Luisa Hogan and Salvatore trace where that voice comes from and what quiets it: the three triggers behind communication nerves, a gremlin named Perry, a three-word mantra, a 90-second reset for the body, and the entry word that lets you speak before you feel ready.
KEY IDEAS
Three things trip the inner voice
Smart, capable people stall for one of three reasons, and Salvatore asks listeners to notice which one is theirs. Who you are talking to: the person who decides the funding, the senior people you rarely face. What you are talking about: too much information and a wish to be exact. He describes a client who runs a billion-dollar fund and kept correcting himself mid-sentence, when the room needed the generalization and nobody needed the 0.0072 percent. And the environment: fine one-on-one, fine with four, shut down past fifteen. Each category has its own strategies, and he has wrestled with all three, including the day he coached a presidential candidate and walked in feeling he did not belong.
Not about me, and a better question
Before a stage or a conference room, Salvatore says not about me ten times. It reminds him that 99 percent of the cues he reads have nothing to do with him. People are thinking about lunch or the last email, and the communicator’s job is to win attention back. His example: a scientist who glared through his whole talk, then called it the most insightful presentation she had ever heard. The second tool is the question you walk in with. Whatever you ask the brain, it answers, and negativity bias turns am I ready into no. Noah St. John’s afformations flip it: how do I know I am prepared? What perspective do I bring that nobody else here has?
Name the gremlin
Rick Carson’s book Taming Your Gremlin gave Salvatore a practice. His gremlin is Perry the perfectionist, who shows up mid-talk to announce a skipped word or a lost point. Caging Perry failed; pressed down, he pops out somewhere else, like a balloon. What works is asking Perry to sit to one side, then giving him the floor after the talk. Some of his notes are valid, some are not, and the belief underneath came from a wish to protect. Luisa connects this to her first voice and second voice: naming the gremlin regulates the loud one long enough to hear the quiet signal. Naming moves the brain from emotional processing to rational processing, step one of self-regulation.
Ninety seconds to let it pass
The second voice is quiet, neutral, and never urgent, so hearing it takes stillness. Salvatore teaches people to pause between calls. Ninety seconds is enough for an emotion to pass, and rumination is what keeps it going. A dog shakes after something intense and the cortisol clears. Humans can do the same with breath, by squeezing the feet or hands, or by shaking out backstage. Before a difficult conversation, check where the energy sits in the body and put a hand there. Try the double inhale: one breath, then a deeper one on top of it. The capillaries open in two stages and the emotional charge comes down with them.
Is it true? What else is true?
For a hard conversation, Salvatore has clients write three columns: the verifiable data, the judgments and opinions, and the emotions. With practice the tool turns inward. For thoughts that feel like facts, he uses a sequence he credits to a teacher whose name escaped him; Luisa’s show notes identify her as Byron Katie. Is it true? Is it 100 percent true? It rarely is. What else is true? What evidence supports that? What can you say about yourself going forward that is also true? His worked example: nervous about 500 people, so not capable of leading a group. What else is true: he has led hundreds at a time, so 500 is a new thing to learn.
Speak before it feels comfortable
For about five years Salvatore, an introvert who wanted a rock-solid argument before opening his mouth, challenged himself to speak before it felt comfortable. Nine out of ten meetings, he had been leaving with great information the team never heard. His tool is an entry word: huh, something feels interesting about that. Or, can we pause here? The entry word gives you permission to start exploring a thought before it is fully formed, and often the room takes it from there. Build the relationship and psychological safety first, then take the risk. Practice in low-stakes places, with the barista, before a meeting. And treat the doubts as a good sign: imposter syndrome means you are pushing into new territory.
IN HIS WORDS
“I have a phrase I use. It’s called not about me. I will say not about me 10 times before walking on the stage.”
“I thought that I could cage Perry. I could wrestle Perry down and just keep him quiet till I got through the talk. It doesn’t work that way.”
“My theory now is imposter syndrome is a good thing. If I don’t have those doubts come up, I’m not pushing myself hard enough into new areas.”
LISTEN AND FOLLOW
Thank you to Luisa Hogan for the invitation and the questions. Subscribe to the show for the rest of the catalog.
The frameworks behind this conversation.
Clear and Compelling collects the principles, strategies, techniques, and frameworks Salvatore teaches on shows like this one, written for analytical, technical, and introverted leaders. Morgan James Publishing, October 2026.