At his first keynote as himself, John Di Domenico faced the response every performer dreads: the audience was not laughing. He reached for the voice he knew would work. Out came Donald Trump. The room responded, and the reliable character rescued the moment.
The room responded, and the reliable character rescued the moment.
That reflex reveals something uncomfortable about authenticity. We can want to take off the mask and still grab it the second being seen feels risky. Deciding to show up as ourselves does not stop the nervous system from whispering, "Sure, but maybe bring the crutch."
For John, the distance between performance and his own voice is unusually clear. He has mastered more than 200 voices, but speaking in his own words brought on imposter syndrome in a way impersonation never did. Most of us are not walking onto a stage as Trump, Austin Powers, or Dr. Phil. But we know how to perform a dependable version of ourselves: the funny one, the polished one, the person who always delivers. Once that version has been rewarded, using our own voice can feel like the bigger gamble.
A speech impediment made other voices feel safer
At five years old, outside of Philadelphia, John performed an Ed Sullivan routine for neighbors gathered in front of their row homes. He had watched John Byner imitate Ed Sullivan and was fascinated by the possibility of making one voice sound like another. He walked up to the adults and announced Girl Scout Troop 625 from Brooklyn. They laughed. Their laughter gave him affirmation and connection.
But there was more to it. John had a severe speech impediment, yet impressions overrode it. When he spoke as someone else, he could bypass the difficulty attached to his own speech. Impersonation was more than entertainment. It gave him a reliable way to be heard when speaking as himself did not.
It gave him a reliable way to be heard when speaking as himself did not.
John spent eight years in speech therapy, twice a week. His first task was learning to hear his own voice. Then he learned the physical mechanics of sound: throat placement, nasal placement, jaw placement, tongue placement, airflow, and the vocal mask. Because his tongue was getting in the way, he had to place and use it intentionally rather than trust what sounded correct inside his head.
That training became his method for taking apart other voices. He could listen to Peter Falk as Columbo or hear Groucho Marx and work backward through the mechanics. What was happening in the throat? Where was the sound placed? What were the jaw and tongue doing? The skills that helped him work through his impediment also gave him a method for building Columbo, Groucho Marx, Austin Powers, and eventually more than 200 voices. Other people's voices were available to him, and they also felt safer.
Success kept putting the character's name above his
John's impression work took him from walk-around characters in Atlantic City to major corporate meetings. In 1996, John worked his first national sales meeting. At The Swan in Orlando, he wrote down the companies and cities he wanted to work with. Before long, he could host a meeting as five different characters for audiences of 2,000 or more people.
Success also created a strange disconnect. A company might publish photographs naming its executives and its MC, while John appeared only as "a Trump impersonator" or "an Austin Powers impersonator." He could carry a meeting, get the laughs, and help the production succeed without anyone leaving knowing his name. Even when someone attempted an introduction, they might mangle it. The character remained clear; the person inside it did not.
That distinction became more pronounced after Donald Trump announced in 2015. John says he worked every single day, traveling to Europe and Thailand and performing on huge stages. His preparation had begun much earlier. He met and worked for Trump in 1990, began performing the impression in 2004, and had assembled the wardrobe, material, and visibility before demand accelerated. The professional payoff was enormous, and the role offered protection. If a joke or choice failed, the character absorbed part of the blame.
Speaking as John removed that insulation. He was no longer offering Dr. Phil's manner, Austin Powers's personality, or Larry King's interview style. He was stating his own views about the human voice, so criticism could land directly on him. After COVID, as he considered what he still wanted to say, that exposure began to matter more than the comfort of doing what had always worked. He did not need to abandon impressions. He needed to stop using them to disappear.
He needed to stop using them to disappear.
We cannot change a voice we have never really heard
John describes himself as a voice evangelist and says the average person uses only 38% of their vocal range and capacity. In his framing, we leave 62% of a strategic asset on the table. Yet most of us give our voices almost no deliberate attention. We make choices about our clothes, hair, work, relationships, and surroundings, while our voices develop from the people and places around us. Then we assume whatever emerged must simply be "us." It is a convenient assumption, but not necessarily an accurate one.
The first obstacle is auditory attenuation: our brains treat our own voices as background noise. We also hear ourselves differently inside our heads than other people hear us. That is why a recording can sound so foreign, and why intentional listening matters. John recommends recording ordinary phone calls, with permission, or revisiting Zoom calls and listening specifically to our voice. Prepared reading can help, but casual conversation reveals habits that polished text may hide.
Those habits are often impressions we do not know we are performing. Our parents, communities, geography, and regional accents shape the way we speak. John completed two rounds of accent reduction through the New York Speech Academy because his Philadelphia pronunciations were difficult to strip away. Dropped Gs, local vowel sounds, and words such as "water" can feel so natural that they become invisible. Hearing them does not mean rejecting where we come from. It allows us to decide which elements belong in the voice we want to use.
John offers a concrete exercise: create a voice avatar, an image such as sunlight, a rock, or a horse running, to visualize something otherwise invisible. We can also identify speaking voices we admire, such as Morgan Freeman, James Earl Jones, or Les Brown, and listen for the specific qualities that connect with us without turning the exercise into another impersonation.
Then comes practice. John uses tongue bites to wake up the back of his tongue, tongue twisters such as "Sue is a thistle sifter," and lip rolls to engage the vocal mask. He recommends five to 10 minutes a day. The goal is not to manufacture a more impressive voice. It is to hear what is already there, separate choice from inheritance, and develop enough command that we do not automatically retreat behind the version of ourselves guaranteed to get a reaction.
Taking off the mask does not require discarding the skills that helped us survive or succeed. John still uses impressions, but now he wants them to demonstrate throat placement, contrast vocal qualities, and teach people how the human voice works. The familiar skill remains, but its job changes. It becomes a tool instead of a hiding place.
A character can earn applause, but it cannot let another person know us.
Our own voice may never feel as protected as a performance. A character can earn applause, but it cannot let another person know us. The human voice can comfort, soothe, anger, and bring someone to tears. If we want ours to do any of that honestly, we first have to stop treating it as background noise.
