1. Why you need this podcast in your life

Hi, I'm Sal! Listen in to my debut episode to find out what this podcast is all about and why your voice MATTERS.

Transcript

I'm Sally Prosser and welcome to That Voice Podcast. I believe no matter who you are or what you do, your voice matters and unless you've sworn a lifetime vow of silence, this is the podcast for you.

Now, I know a lot of podcast hosts start out by saying how excited they are to be with you and that's great. I love the positivity, but today I am especially excited to be with you because it is my very first podcast and it's been a long time in the making. A lot of people have said, Sal, Oh my gosh, you're a voice coach - you have to start a podcast. It's true. My profession does lend itself to podcasting and it's something I can also do in my dressing gown, so I'm surprised it's taken me this long.

There is another reason though, not just because people suggest that I should do it. I wanted to start this podcast because a lot of people I find (you might be in this position) don't think about your voice that much. On my business cards, I actually say Sally Prosser, voice coach, and in brackets I have no, it's not singing. And the reason I have that is because people tend to assume, oh wow, you must work with singers or actors. Not with them.

But it's true. Unless you are silent all the time, your voice is really, really important. And that's what this podcast is going to focus on. Voice for the every day, voice for the every person. And I'll start out by telling you a little bit about myself. Hopefully throughout this journey I'll dig deeper and tell you all sorts of personal stories. But for today, let me just give you a bit of a high level career overview.

So when I was younger I did a lot of speech and drama and some of you might have done that when you were younger, you know, eisteddfods and exams, things like that. And when I was a teenager, I started my own speech and drama studio in the front room of my parents' house, which was fantastic. And that's where I learned a lot of the fundamentals of how voice works and how to use it in all sorts of scenarios.

Right through from answering a phone call to reciting Shakespeare in an eisteddfod. Then at uni I did law and journalism as well and I worked as a TV and radio news journalist, so as you understand voice is a pretty important part of that and I worked for channel Seven up in Rockhampton and then also freelanced a bit down in Brisbane and through the course of this podcast, I'll tell you more stories about my time there. Then as we say in the industry, I crossed to the dark side and I worked as a media advisor at Queensland Urban Utilities, which is water and sewerage. Very, very glamorous, but you know what they say if you can sell 'it', you can sell anything. Right.

Anyway, it was my time in a corporate environment where I started to see how not a lot of people could do proper presentations. Some people couldn't even speak up in a meeting properly. Some people couldn't even come over to your desk and ask you a question. Everything was just on email. And I thought, wow, all these skills that I've had over the years with what I've done, I've really taken for granted - and they can help people. And so I started getting a bit of hallway advice and then that led to me taking the plunge, starting my own business.

And here I am almost a year later with a pretty thriving voice coaching business and now podcast. So it's all happening. So how is this podcast going to work? Every episode you're going to be stuck with me. Sorry about that. But one episode will be just me and I want to talk about just different things people want to know about voice.

So maybe you know how to stop saying Um and AH, how to get rid of the rising inflection at the end of your phrases. Maybe how to get more resonance in your voice. So I'm going to be covering a whole range of topics and I'm really keen to hear what you'd like to hear about. So you can send me messages. I am not an international woman of mystery. I am everywhere - on Instagram I'm at @SallyProsserVoice Facebook as well @SallyProsserVoice. Twitter I'm @sally_prosser and I'm on LinkedIn.

You can go to the podcast page which is www.thatvoicepodcast.com so you shouldn't have any trouble finding me and I'd love to hear what you would like to hear about. Then every second episode I'm going to chat to somebody and I've already got a few interviews in the bag and I know I'm going to use the word again, but I am very excited about these interviews because they were thoroughly fascinating - and I want to talk to people from a whole range of disciplines about how their voice impacts their day-to-day.

And the question that I ask at the beginning of each of the interviews is could you do your job if you lost your voice? And that'd be a good question to ask yourself, could you do your job if you lost your voice?

We really do take this for granted and we think often about how the world sees us, you know our face, outfit, makeup and trimming the beard if you're a bloke, but we're not thinking too much about how the world hears us yet. It's such a huge part of first impressions and it's what I call the soundtrack to our personal brand. If you want to get all buzzwordy on me, there you go. It's the soundtrack to the personal brand.

And so I want to talk to people preferably at the top of their game in their profession, preferably with good Instagram followings. I mean I need to have some audience for this. Hopefully someone will listen to it. So if you know somebody who would like to have a chat to me about what voice means to them, then get in touch and let's have a chat about it.

And I do have a few of these interviews in the bag and the first one coming up is with the lovely Kendall Gilding from channel seven because obviously voice is very important if you are a news reader. But I want to interview a variety of people on this show and people that you might not expect. You know, I would love to chat to a relationship expert to find out the role of a voice in that. I'd love to speak to someone from the military. You know, why is that military voice so important? Potentially a school principal. What about a phone sex operator? That'll be good. If anyone knows someone in that field, I would love to chat to them.

So it's going to be a lot of fun. You're going to learn a lot and I'm sure I'm going to learn a lot too. If you really serious about improving your voice, of course the best thing to do is to invest in yourself and get some extra coaching.

So even though you'll still learn some tips along the way here, I'd really encourage you to dive a bit deeper. I know this is going to sound like a shameless plug, but I do have lots of different things available to appeal to how much time you've got and also how much money you've got and also how much interest you've got. So if you head to my website, you can see all of my individual coaching programs.

The website is www.sallyprosser.com.au sorry about the AU sallyprosser.com was already taken and she's not even using the site. Anyway, that's another story. I also have a full online program and that one's called Speak to be Heard. I'm really, really proud of it. It's got lots of really practical tips in there and the longest video goes for five minutes, so don't worry, you're not going to be listening to it forever.

The first module is all about how to love your nerves and glow with confidence. I have a lot of people who come to me and just say, Oh my gosh, I'm just not confident. I don't have the guts. I get really nervous. I don't know what to do. So that module is all about that. Then the second part is how to release your true voice and genuinely connect. There's a lot of blockages that go on with people's voices, and you would notice this as well as you know how you feel like you get choked up sometimes and you can't get the words out. Well, this is happening with lots of voices all the time and that blockage that we have affects how our voices sound.

So that module covers all the things we can do to free that voice. It also include things like how to avoid saying UM and AH and how to not sound like you're reading when you actually are - think high school awards nights, aren't they terrible?

Then the third module is how to own the stage and charm your audience. And so that's perfect for people who might already be doing some speaking work and want to take it to the next level. Now, another part of my business, which is very, very close to my heart because as you heard in the intro, I used to be a journalist. I love working with broadcast journalists. So if you're an aspiring journalist or a working journalist, I would love to work with you and you can head to sallyprosser.com.au/journalists to find all the info there. I also have an online program for that as well. It's a really interesting area because voice is so important if you want to be a broadcast journalist and there's not a lot of training going around for it. And in my next episode I'm very excited to be speaking to Kendall Gilding and Kendall has been in journalism for years.

She is currently on maternity leave, but she reads the news for channel Seven Brisbane afternoon and also you might've seen her on Sunrise and we have a really interesting chat about how important voice is, not only to what she does as a profession but in her life. So you don't want to miss that one. And I am uploading the first few episodes of the podcast all at once. So directly after this you can carry on and listen to Kendall. So that's about it for episode one. Haha, I always tell people never to finish their speech with. That's it. So I've really put my foot in it there, haven't I?

But I don't want this to be too formal. I want this to be relaxed. As you can tell, these are nice bite-sized episodes so you don't need to dedicate too much time. And that's something that I'd love you to take away from this is that you don't need to spend that much time to show some love and care to your voice. And it can make a big difference in your spoken communication. Whether you are chatting to one person over a coffee, whether you're saying good morning when you walk into the office or whether you're presenting at a big conference.

Our voice permeates through so much of our life and with all the work that I've done, you'll see that a little bit of TLC for your voice can go a long way. So thank you once again for joining me. You're part of the early adopter team listening to episode one of That Voice Podcast, which is going to go on to international fame and fortune. I'm sure. And I will see you back here for my chat with Kendall Gilding. Look forward to it!

Thanks for listening to That Voice Podcast to find out more head to www.thatvoicepodcast.com