When I was 12 years old, I was given a Philips radio cassette player for my birthday. Remember them?!
If you’re old enough to remember the eighties, you’ll know that not only could you record songs off the Top 40 every week (not forgetting to press pause at the right moment to cut off whichever Radio One DJ was wittering on at that time), but you could also record yourself speaking! My sisters and I had a lot of fun recording the songs and then our own voices to pretend we were the DJs. The only trouble was that it meant I had to listen back to my own voice, and I quickly realised it sounded a lot different in reality to how it sounded in my own head!
Fast forward 30 years and not much has changed!
I posted a few months ago about getting out of my comfort zone. This involved getting up in front of a group of people at a networking event to talk about my passion for what I do when it comes to using intelligent transcription, either to improve the way your words look on paper or add value to your content.
That’s fine, but I still couldn’t hear how my voice actually sounded, not really, and although I thought about recording myself while I was practising, I chickened out.
Then I was offered the opportunity to be interviewed for B50 Radio, the podcast for Business 50, a Scotland-wide networking group. Yikes, this would mean actually listening to the sound of my own voice!
I decided to go for it, of course, as it meant I was able to talk about how I can help people add extra value to their content, and I suppose I could have avoided the recording altogether if I really didn’t want to hear myself speaking. When I received notification that it had been published I realised how foolish I was being, and I clicked on the link to have a listen.
I’d love it if you’d have a listen too and let me know what you think.
The point is, everybody has something about themselves that they feel self-conscious about, but I’ve learned a big secret recently.
Nobody else notices!
If I had a pound for every time I’ve heard someone say, “Oh, I hate the sound of my voice”, I would be in the money, plus I always say to them, “Your voice sounds fine, what are you on about?” See what I mean?
Plus getting the opportunity to talk about your business by whatever means, whether it’s via a podcast interview, a face to face interview or speaking at an event, gives you the chance to position yourself as an expert in your field, and what could be better than that?
I’m still feeling uncomfortable with the thought of seeing as well as hearing myself, so my next challenge is to do a video blog post!
Watch this space…