Welcome back! It has been a little while for me. During this time on my break, I usually like to, you know, hang out with the family, do fun things like exploring this beautiful place in the world that we live way out on the west coast of Canada, on an island, and just really enjoy the outdoors. And yeah, I did that. But because of the year that I’ve had with my dad passing in June and my mother-in-law passing as well in February, this time was spent with a lot of reflection on my personal life and my story so far, and what that all means, and how I move forward with all of this as well because my daughter is turning seven this year and, you know, she’s still young. So it’s things like thinking about when I was young, what was that like with my dad? And how does that reflect my parenting style with her? And yeah, this isn’t a parenting podcast, but that’s all the things I was thinking about during my break, and that all ties into podcasting as well. It’s knowing when do I share things, how do I share things, and what is important to share? What’s relevant? Does it matter? Does the story matter to you as a listener? How do I decipher that? And in fact, I had a few listeners ask me, Yeah, how do you decipher that? So I thought, I’d take this episode and the next few episodes for the rest of 2022, for the rest of this year, to dive deeper into the mindset and your story behind your voice.

And another reason for this episode was back in episode 40 when I interviewed Alex Sanfilippo about finding the perfect podcast guest, we were just chatting before the podcast was going to be recorded and getting to know each other and telling our backstories. And so I was telling him about how I came from radio into podcasting, and then it kind of moved into how even though I had a whole 20-year career in radio, I still felt that imposter syndrome when I started in podcasting and he was like, What? How is that possible? You have all this experience. And so it dawned on me and him. He said, You need to share this story on your podcast if you haven’t yet. I’m like, Oh, I guess I should. It dawned on me that this is an important story to share. And when I go back to the question of how much is too much, is this even relevant? Is it important? When I hear someone else say, Wow, I did not know that, or you got to share this story with someone else. That’s your first hint. That is the marker right there. If someone finds this interesting, it’s a story you have to share. And it’s one of the things that I always share with my clients when I do voice coaching with them. It doesn’t matter how you’re going to say something, it doesn’t matter what the words are. If you have a story to share that you are passionate about, it’s worth sharing. The person listening to you on the other side of this is going to get some sort of little nugget and it will stay with them. And when I reflect back more about how many times I’ve told this story, just to people one-on-one versus in a more public setting, I would say like in podcasting or whatnot. I do get that reaction of, Wow, it took you that long too? Or, Whoa, that is incredible. And then they see themselves reflected in a little bit of my story and it helps them. And that’s what I want to do. I want to help, I want to share. And in order to do that, I actually have to share the story or at least parts of the story. And I think that’s the thing people are asking me. But do I share everything? How much is too much? And it goes back to how is this relevant to the whole theme of what you’re trying to say? And in my case, and in the podcasting purpose, what is the theme of this episode that I want to convey to you? I need to keep that in mind when I am recording, or when I’m writing out my notes beforehand, or however you prepare for your podcast, that is the main theme you want to have as your foundation. And podcasting is great. If you mess up, you can just start over again, make an edit, and cut that out. So try not to self-edit as you’re speaking, which I do tend to do sometimes when you’re doing a solo episode because you’re like trying to talk through something without having that other person’s feedback if they’re doing an interview with you, for example. And so I do self-edit it in my own mind for content, but try not to self-edit yourself and being self-critical of how you’re saying something about, is this good enough? I think we need to go more within our gut feelings because sometimes I think too that, oh, what’s that word I’m thinking of? You know what? It doesn’t matter what that actual word is, because that emotion will still come through when you speak about that situation or you describe it in a different way without using that very specific word. Although words are very important. Language is very important. I think in the podcasting space, we might get a little too caught up in that because of writing, societal pressure, a blog post, social media, and how to write something on social media. In podcasting, we just got to let it flow a bit more. So here is my version of my story in this present time and space of where my mindset is, how I’m reflecting on it, and hopefully not self-editing myself too much. I’ll let you know how that goes at the end. Okay, here we go. 

I had this client once. I was doing some voice coaching with her and she was asking me, How long did it take you to sound the way you do, and to read a script, and voice commercials, and all that stuff? I said, actually a very, very, very, very long time and doing it every single day, day in and day out, because that was my career. Working in radio in my first full-time radio job, it was 10-to-6, so I’d show up just before ten. But before I even get there, I have a lot of show prep. I know what I’m going to be talking about. I was on the air from 10-to-2 p.m., so talking Monday to Friday, 10-to-2. And then after that from 2-to-6, I would produce commercials. And in that production of commercials, because we were such a small radio station, I voiced a lot of the commercials. Then, I wasn’t really that in love with my voice. I felt it was still young sounding in my mind. I felt that it wasn’t truly representative of who I wanted to be, and it felt different than my on-air voice or everyday voice. It sounded different, but I knew I had the tips and the techniques and the tricks to work around that. I just needed more practice because I went through a two-year radio program. I know how to speak behind the mic, but speaking behind the mic live on the radio is very, very different than speaking behind the mic, reading a script. And to flip it back to the present day of podcasting, you kind of have to do both. If you have an interview-style show, you’re very present like live radio, but then if you are reading someone’s bio, you’re doing your intro and your outro to your episodes after the fact, then that is very script-like where you might be following some notes, you have a path that you’re going to take, and you might be reading a few lines. And so, I find podcasting is a beautiful blend of those two parts of my radio world. 

So going back to using my voice as a job, as a career, every single day, I was able to listen back with a very critical ear, a discerning ear, as I would say. Not being self-judging and judgemental about my voice, but having that acknowledgement of, okay, this is how I feel in the way I sound, but this is how I truly want to feel. I want to feel powerful. I want to feel authoritative. I want to feel connected. Like your best friend, like someone you want to hang out with, like someone you can trust. And those were all things that I reached towards. And so when I heard myself back on the radio because this was a time where we did something called voice tracking. So you actually recorded all the tracks beforehand, like while I was in the building from 10-to-6, but I also ran the evening show, and so that was a voice track, all pre-recorded. And so during the evening, I think it was weekend evenings only – that was what I voice tracked. So either way, during my time at home, I would listen to the radio. It would have my voice on it so I can critique in real-time, in that real-time of it being live on the air, how it sounds flowing in and out of the music, in and out of commercials. I also voiced a lot of the commercials so I can hear my own commercials and hear the difference between my live-to-record voice being on air, hosting the show and my reading commercials voice. And did those voices align with the values that I was going for? 

So having said all of that, it took a long time. I worked at this radio station for about a year and a half, and before that, I did a couple of months at a different radio station doing part-time work. And then I also had a two-year radio programme, that was a full-time programme, but I also did a one, almost one year, a couple of months radio programme, part-time to see if I actually liked being in radio. So just doing some quick mental math here. What is that? Two plus one and a half is three for five years? My gosh. Wow. That’s about five years of radio/vocal training that I did before I felt confident enough to say, I can do this. I want to move to a bigger market. And that’s when I landed in Victoria. Here, where I am still today and still am outside of radio. 

So now having moved to Victoria, I still wasn’t 100% aligned with the values that I wanted in my voice, the authority, the power, the connection and the friendliness. Moving to a bigger radio station meant there were other colleagues and co-workers who had more experience than I did, so I can learn from them as well, and writers who’ve been writing for a very long time, and so they kind of knew the ins and outs of creating different types of scripts, where in the smaller market they were written by salespeople. We didn’t have a dedicated writer and I wasn’t able to have more variety in my voice with the scripts that we had. And so I felt when I landed in Victoria in the first year or two, I was able to absorb and learn and try things out because there were more variety and scripts. We were able to play with more character voices, and there were more conversation pieces, so I had to really figure out how to be a conversational speaker when you were by yourself in a soundproof room. So this is still all imposter syndrome. I’ve had, like I said, about five years of experience at this point. I land here and now I’m like, Oh no, I am like the little girl again. I start having a higher pitch in my voice. I realize I’m one of the youngest people here. I don’t really know what I’m doing because I feel like that fish out of water feeling everything is just so new. But after, I don’t know, I felt like, a couple of months maybe, I was getting some of the other announcers to read a script and some of them just flat out said, No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I don’t- I don’t read commercials. And I’m like, What? What do you mean you don’t read commercials? You are on the air. You talk behind the mic all the time. And that’s when I realized there really is a difference in a disconnect between live on-air versus reading a script for a commercial. I pushed them to do it because I’m like, No, it’s part of your job. I need a voice. You’re the only person in the building right now. Get behind the microphone. And that’s how I was able to coach people out of their shell through some of those initial experiences. And then realizing as well, if this person with all this experience feels like they cannot read a script, and here I am, a young girl, what am I 21 at this point? 23? 23. I was 23, coming in and telling this person what to do. They trusted me too. And I was like, I really have no idea what I’m doing, but I’m just going to give this a try. And I think that’s the whole philosophy. And the beautiful thing about podcasting is that you don’t have to know what you’re doing, just give it a try. And if it doesn’t work out, you have another episode to try something else with.

So now fast forward, that was a long story in my background, but now fast forward to podcasting. 2017 – at this point when I get laid off, that’s almost 15 years in the same building, lots of experience, right, you would think? And so when I decided to start the whole podcasting business, I felt like that fish out of water feeling again. I don’t know what I’m doing. This is podcasting. It’s not radio. It’s different. It’s a totally different industry. It’s not broadcast, it’s podcast. I don’t have a professional soundproof booth with all the giant board, with all the buttons and the dials and stuff. Like everything is streamlined, it’s smaller, it’s not the same. I had to also buy my own equipment. At the radio station, there was an engineer and we were able to work in tandem with the equipment. But now, I do everything myself. I didn’t know where to begin, what to do, what to buy, what was good. I mean, I had a sense because I had all this gear before. And so, some of my gear came from what I worked within the radio world. So I knew that. But then I also knew it’s not the same in podcasting because we’re just recording in our offices or bedrooms, living rooms. The mics are not the same. So there’s some gear that translated over and some that did not. And then I was like, How do you… I don’t know, how do you do anything? How do you start a podcast? I’m sure it’s all the same questions that you might have when you started your podcast. How do you start one? What mic do I buy? How do I get it on the Internet and all the apps and how do I tell people about it? If I start it, who’s going to listen? I had all those same questions and here I am with almost 20 years of experience in the radio industry. I didn’t know if it was going to translate at all. And there were some days I felt like it wasn’t going to because I didn’t know how to talk to people. Believe it or not, I didn’t know how to find the right people to talk to because in the radio industry I felt like I knew everyone already. I may not have, you know, introduced myself to people, but at least I knew who was who, the big players in the industry, the big players in the city, other people who did my similar job and I already had my own network. And so now I’m like, Oh, I got to meet people. I got to talk to people, I got a…. And by myself. Like, I didn’t have a bigger team to draw from. You know, when, when you’re at the office, for example, there are co-workers, there are other people to talk to. But when you’re podcasting or starting your own business, everything feels more isolating. You have a lot more time to just be in your head and thinking a lot, which is where I think that imposter syndrome comes from. I believe when we’re thinking too much and we’re just swirling in our own thoughts, it creates this idea of, Oh, no, maybe I can’t. What if this happens? What if that happens? And so I had to take a step back and think back to what was it that made it successful for me in radio? Especially in the beginning. And it brought me back to that time when I had to get that radio announcer to voice a commercial, and he flat-out refused. At that very moment in time, I felt like I had nothing to lose. This particular script, I don’t remember what it was, but I probably needed a male voice for it. So I couldn’t voice it myself, nor do I want to voice everything myself because then the radio station commercials would just sound homogenous with me all the time. That’s going to sound terrible and do no justice for any of the clients and commercials, first of all. So we always tried to have a variety of voices for commercials at the radio station. But because it would… it probably needed to be a male voice. It also probably needed something specific. And in that moment in time of what I needed to get done, he had to do it. And so, like I said, I had nothing to lose. I just had to try him out. And if it really was that terrible, which I’m sure it would not have been, because he has experience behind the microphone, I can coach him through it. It’ll be fine. And it was fine. I don’t ever remember having to fully redo a commercial. Sometimes there were pieces that were on the cutting room floor, sure, but I always made it work and I felt that I had the ability to coach them, to voice it in a way that I would like. And I think that’s the key point here. When you’re at a spot where you have that bit of imposter syndrome, what have you got to lose? Honestly. It’s just podcasting. It’s not a life-or-death situation. So, why not give it a try? Whatever that may be in your podcasting world. Share that story, pitch that guest, pitch yourself to be on another podcast. What’s the biggest hurdle? They’re going to say, “No?” But you still did it. You still put yourself out there. Because once you do it once, it’s not going to be that hard the second time around. I find it’s always the first step and the first time. And so in podcasting, when you share that story for the first time, it might feel awkward. You might second guess yourself on certain phrases or certain details, but the more you tell your story, the more you refine it, your intuition is going to tell you what is resonating. What doesn’t. How do you tell the story differently next time? What details will you add? What details will you take out? And the beautiful thing about podcasting that never happened in radio, at least while I was there, was that you can listen back to yourself with a discerning ear, meaning being kind to yourself. You know, in radio and broadcasting, once it’s out there, you really don’t get a second chance to listen to it. You have to listen to it live in that moment. Generally, that’s the space in radio. In podcasting, it’s out there. Evergreen, all the time. So you can listen to an interview you’ve done previously and be kind to yourself, listening as a friend. What worked, what didn’t work, and what would you do differently? And did that episode align with your values, your values for your business? Your values for your personal life? Your values for your voice. 

So I invite you to share your story and all the bad parts, including all the pauses and ums and uhs. And now that I’m thinking back to this recording, there was a lot of pausing because I was thinking. But in those pauses, as well, are parts where your listener is also thinking and resonating and accepting of what you are saying. So as I say, silence is golden. Let those pauses happen. Let your listeners’ minds wander a little and let your intuition guide you. You know, sometimes we’ll say, Oh, I’m going to start saying this and then you start second guessing yourself. Yes, sometimes those moments are needed and when you can always cut that out. I’m sure I will, plenty of times. In this episode with editing, post-production is amazing. But know that if you start with the foundation of what is my value and what am I bringing to this episode, with my episode theme? It will be the most perfect episode at that perfect moment in time. And that is really the only time I would use the word “perfect” because nothing is ever perfect. However, in whatever moment you are in, that is a perfect time. However you have just said it, that was perfect at that moment. So a lot of this also has to do with letting go, acknowledging your imposter syndrome, but letting it go because it’s not going to kill you. Podcasting is not going to kill you. Unless you’re, I don’t know, recording, dangling off a helicopter? But that’s just not going to make a great podcast anyway, because all you hear is a helicopter sound and someone screaming into the microphone. So sound-wise, that’s not going to work. So it’s just podcasting. Have fun with it. Take a deep dive, and listen back after it’s published. I think that’s another key thing that I missed. When you listen back, make sure it’s after it’s been published so that you’re not stuck in this revolving door of perfectionism. If you’re recording your very first episode, maybe record it once and then listen to it. But always go in with the fact that it will be perfect in the present time and the amount of time that you’ve given it. So record it, publish it, and then listen back. And that’s when you can learn things about you, your voice, your storytelling, and how you can improve that. What are you going to tweak the next time? Make some notes, and then go and record your second episode, or be a guest on another podcast, or whatever it is that you want to do with your voice when you speak up next. Start with your foundation, all of your values, and everything else will just come naturally. Sometimes, yeah, it can be as easy as that. I mean, there are a lot of things in between too that you might need to work through. And I love coaching people through that as well. But in essence, knowing your voice values is that foundation and that will get you through your imposter syndrome. 

So, here I am now. What are we? End of 2022? It feels like end of the year. I know it’s only September when I’m recording this and it’s being published mid-September, but it just feels like end-of-year just because it’s the school start of the year and September. It’s always an interesting time, the end of summer for us here in North America. And the weather’s turning and reflecting and all of this stuff. So, yeah, 2022. I started podcasting in 2017 as a business, and yeah, I did have imposter syndrome at the beginning and every now and then I still do because it’s the whole comparison-itis with other people. You meet other people in the industry and you’re like, Oh wow, they do that! Or, whoa, they sound like that! Acknowledge it, revisit your voice values and then move on and try again. 

So what resonated with you there? Let me know. I’d love to hear it. Again, this one was a bit off the cuff. I usually have notes, I usually have a bit of script because that’s how I work reading commercials, right? I’m used to the scripts and I guess that’s another thing people always ask. Like in my process, What do you do? But again, every podcast and every person is so unique that I never recommend one way or another. I usually don’t recommend scripts for most people, but again, some people can handle scripts, right? So most of the time I’ll say at least the bullet points. But even for this episode today, I didn’t have my full bullet points because I wanted to speak more off the cuff and not pre-plan and see what I share. Because now I’m going to go back after this episode’s published. I’ll listen to it again and figure out which parts of the story I shared, what I missed, and what I would love to share more of. And I don’t know, maybe we’ll revisit this episode down the road, maybe next year.

So yeah, let me know what resonated with you. What was that one little nugget that will propel you in your voice journey, in your podcasting journey, and in the way you present yourself the next time? You can email me at visiblevoicepodcast@gmail.com or I would love, love, love the voice message. You can do that on my website. There is a little purple button that says Send Voicemail. Send me a voicemail there. You can do it straight from your phone. It’s amazing. I’d love to hear it and maybe you’ll be on the podcast too, so let me know. What was your one little nugget from this episode that you were going to take with you? I’d love to know. 

So this is the start of the rest of the 2022 season. Can’t wait to share more with you. I have an amazing list of guests lined up and we’ll do more vulnerability behind the voice. So, thank you so much for listening to the show and following the show as well on your favourite podcast listening app so that you will get notified when the next time an episode drops. So until then, speak your truth and do it with spirit.

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Podcast cover art by Emily Johnston of Artio Design Co.