Speak and Sound Like a Pro with Broadcast Voice Coach Susan Murphy

Shirlee dives deep into the power of voice with special guest Susan Murphy, a seasoned broadcast voice coach with over 40 years of experience in TV and radio. Susan has worked with a wide range of professionals, from journalists to CEOs, helping them harness the full potential of their voice to communicate more effectively. Whether you’re a business owner, a thought leader, or simply someone looking to improve your communication skills, this episode is packed with invaluable advice to help you unlock your authentic voice.

Keywords
voice coaching, authentic voice, improve communication skills, confident communication, breath control for speaking, storytelling techniques, effective presentation skills, vocal impact, engage your audience, public speaking tips

Takeaways
•Master Your Authentic Voice: Discover why finding your natural pitch is key to keeping people engaged and how it helps you connect on a deeper level.

•Eliminate Filler Words: Learn practical strategies for reducing “um” and “uh” in your speech with simple adjustments like intentional pauses.

•Breathe for Impact: Find out how breath control and proper use of pauses can make your voice sound more powerful and authoritative.

•Adapt Your Voice for Any Medium: Whether on stage or on social media, your voice matters. Learn how to adjust your style to connect with different audiences.

Links
Susan Murphy's website
Connect with Susan on LinkedIn

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Transcript

Shirlee Engel (00:01.046)
Hi and welcome back to the Camera Confident podcast. I am so thrilled today to be speaking to a broadcast voice coach. Susan Murphy joins us today and Susan, I'm so excited to dive into these details because I don't think enough people talk about this. Before we get to that, let's get your elevator pitch. Who are you and what do you do?

Susan Murphy (00:24.391)
I'm Susan Murphy and I'm a broadcast voice coach who works with people in all kinds of industries, women especially, to help them find their natural pitch so that they are stronger in their conversations with everybody from the CEO to their children.

Shirlee Engel (00:42.242)
I it, I love it. And a lot of our listeners and viewers are entrepreneurs, they're thought leaders, they're service -based businesses, and they've got a great story to tell, but they don't always hit the right notes when they're doing that. So I'm excited to talk to you all about how to get the most out of your voice and how to present really well. Before we do that, I'd love to just get a little more about your background because you've got a very interesting story, having worked in the newsrooms of New York, traveled the

the world, public broadcasting, tell us a little bit about how you got to where you are today.

Susan Murphy (01:16.887)
Well, I was a communications major in college and I thought I was going to be Jane Paulie. I was going to inherit the Today Show. It's a good thing that I didn't inherit the Today Show. We're all sleeping very well, thank you. But I got into TV news, got to New York by helping to start what was then the premier traffic reporting service for radio stations called Shadow Traffic. And that is how I got to know everybody in New York.

So from there, I became a radio talk show host. Then I went to television. I had done television earlier in my career in West Palm Beach, Florida, but honestly didn't really like it. Radio is my first love. There is something about telling a story, using your voice and illustrating a story with your voice that I just love. And I'll always tell my TV clients, I don't care how many pictures you have. I'm sorry, the voice is more important than those pictures.

So then I worked in public television for several years. I moved to North Carolina about nine years ago. I've been a freelance voiceover artist and I decided about three years ago that I really wanted to help some young reporters get better in their vocal skills because schools don't give any time to it almost. I had taught at Hofstra University in New York about 25 years ago and yes, I did.

voice work, of course, with my students, but most universities don't. So I ran the idea past a news director friend of mine. He thought it was a great idea. I trained two of his reporters. He gave me a great recommendation. I went out on LinkedIn, kind of presented myself as a voice coach expert because what I do from singing lessons, voiceover lessons, and then just being 40 years in the business, I could really help young reporters sound as good as their stories.

looked. And since then I have coached probably it's over a hundred maybe a hundred and twenty young people, some of them not so young too, and I've also reached out and people, nurses and ministers and CFOs, I also work with them on really becoming a stronger communicator whether it's in the boardroom or whether it's with your spouse or with your children. So

Susan Murphy (03:39.817)
I kind of combine the best of public speaking with what we do on television. And it's amazing how what I tell a television reporter can work for just about anybody.

Shirlee Engel (03:51.25)
Mm -hmm. It's interesting when I was in my TV reporting days people used to tell me that I have my TV voice Is that a thing? I don't know. I'm not aware of it But I maybe my voice gets a bit deeper when I do that Is there such a like is that a bad thing if you sound different on video or or audio? then in real life

Susan Murphy (04:12.919)
Probably a lot of that is perception. When people think of a TV reporter or a TV anchor, we think back to the days where it was very, you know, stentorially, and now the news, you know, the Ron Burgundy's of life, the parodies that we all remember. And yes, some of that up through, say, the late 90s into the early 2000s was still around. And actually, I think some of the US network anchors

have perpetuated that and I don't think that's a good thing. But here in the US, the role of television anchors and reporters is rapidly changing and that sort of voice doesn't cut it anymore. So if people think you have a TV voice, yes, you might be a little bit more bold, you might be a little bit more specific in how you say something, but a TV voice, that's probably what they have in their head. It probably isn't you.

Shirlee Engel (05:09.91)
Hmm, okay. Why is it so important? Why is your voice so important in storytelling?

Susan Murphy (05:10.231)
Yeah.

Susan Murphy (05:19.745)
Voice is important because you want to keep people's attention. You want them to enjoy what they're listening to. You want them to be engaged with you. And if your voice is strident, or if you say and a lot, or if your pitch is too high and you speak too fast and you become a runaway train where you never take any pauses,

And then by the time you're finished your speech, I can't even tell you what you talked about because you never took a breath. So there are lots of reasons speech is important in terms of not only getting people to listen to you, but it's also important to listen to others. I mean, this goes both ways. So being able to speak with your authentic natural pitch is a great idea. And men, 98 % of them get help.

Shirlee Engel (05:51.948)
You

Susan Murphy (06:18.089)
in puberty from hormones and what have you and their Adam's apples grow larger and their vocal cords grow larger. Girls in puberty, nothing happens to our vocal cords. Nothing at all. Our vocal cords, women's vocal cords are the size of a dime. A dime. And men's are about the size of a quarter, slightly elongated.

Shirlee Engel (06:30.476)
Really, nothing? Nothing at all?

Shirlee Engel (06:40.802)
Wow.

Susan Murphy (06:45.579)
It is amazing to me that the instrument with which we speak to the world is the size of a dime. And using those, well it's not that you use the vocal cords, it's a whole production of what you use to make speech, but making sure your speech and breath are supported with air and energy that come up from your diaphragm, and then by the time it gets to your vocal cords, you want the sound to be

bold and strong and powerful, unlike the Kardashian sisters who, you know, the vocal fry and they just like speak with no air coming up. I mean, that for a while that was very big in commercials, that vocal fry voice. Thank goodness that seems to have passed somewhat, but that was giving me a lot of work actually. And that's just unsupported breath. So being able to speak

Shirlee Engel (07:25.793)
Yeah.

Susan Murphy (07:42.893)
clearly and beautifully is something you want in all phases of your life and you want to be taken seriously. You want to become an authority in your workplace. You want to be emotionally secure with a partner. You want your children to focus on you when you go to speak with them and vice versa. So voice really is important and we don't get lessons in school and in journalism.

classes. Most universities are so hell -bent on making sure you know everything about technology. How about the technology, the simple biology of how your voice works? Doesn't happen much anymore. And also back in the day, I don't know whether you did, did you go to radio out of college first? No. Okay. Most of us did back in my day. And so if you were in radio news first, okay, you got some training.

Shirlee Engel (08:32.14)
No.

Susan Murphy (08:41.377)
from somebody there or you just learned how to use your voice. Now that doesn't happen because there's no radio news left anymore in most cities in America and perhaps Canada. And that is so sad because you go straight to television and your voice is not often well suited for a viewer to spend time listening to it.

Shirlee Engel (09:04.95)
Yeah, and you're so focused on how you look and what the lighting is and how's your hair and your makeup and they're all of those you know visual elements overtake the audio elements, but it is an audio visual medium, right? So that's a huge part of it. There is so much to unpack in what you said. The first part I want to pull out is something that I hear from so many people, which is I say -min lot like I don't know how to not

Susan Murphy (09:11.404)
Yep.

Susan Murphy (09:21.549)
That's exactly right.

Shirlee Engel (09:35.205)
do that. What is your best advice for people who find that they're constantly saying and and stuttering?

Susan Murphy (09:42.847)
I have a lot of great hints for that. For one thing, if you are giving a presentation or you're standing up at a PTA meeting or you're talking with your children, do not put your hands in your pocket for some odd reason that enables ums and uhs to come up more than they would. The other, yes, that's been proven in studies, believe it or not. So take your hands out of your pocket. Use your hands when you speak.

Shirlee Engel (10:02.101)
Really?

Shirlee Engel (10:05.74)
Thanks.

Susan Murphy (10:11.403)
because that will help you illustrate what you're doing and give your hand something to do. The other thing you need to do is, I never like to say slow down, but that is what I'm about to say. Instead of slowing down, I want you to be more intentional and deliberate in what you're saying, because that will change the pace of how you speak.

So if you change that pace and you are deliberate and intentional in what you're talking about, you're also automatically going to put pauses into your speech. And pauses are great for a couple of reasons. Pauses stop an and an Pauses force your audience to look up, she stopped talking. Pauses

Shirlee Engel (11:07.702)
Mm.

Susan Murphy (11:09.559)
can underline either what you said or what you're about to say. And pauses for the person you're speaking to are amazing because in that pause, whether it's a second or a second and a half, as the listener, I can process what you just said. So pauses will go a great way in eliminating some of those ums and uhs. The other parts are

Being enthusiastic in what you're talking about, if you were to ask any great TEDx speaker, what's the number one thing you need to be a great speaker on a TEDx platform, they would say, enthusiasm. All of them would say that. So if you are bored, or if you're not sure, or if you're not prepared, or if you haven't rehearsed, or if you're just doing it on the fly,

Shirlee Engel (11:57.622)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Susan Murphy (12:08.757)
might not come out so well. But if you're enthusiastic about it and you know all the nuances and you know what you want to say and you know the beginning, the middle, and the end, you'll be fine.

Shirlee Engel (12:19.126)
Mm -hmm

That knowing too is what a lot of people get stuck on. A lot of my clients will be married to a specific script or some kind of line that they know they want to say. Even something as simple as an elevator pitch. And I always tell them do not memorize lines. Remember bullet points. Because if you forget one word, seven words in, you're done. Right? And it also makes you sound more robotic when you're trying to

Susan Murphy (12:44.429)
That's right.

Susan Murphy (12:47.756)
Yes.

Shirlee Engel (12:49.9)
cite something from memory rather than remembering a concept. Okay, I'm going to talk about X now and then just talk. Talk about it the way you normally would. And so few people do that. So I would love to explore with you something that you and I were talking about before we hit record, which those of us in the broadcasting world, this is like our bread and butter, but...

No matter how well you can use your voice, if you don't have good broadcast writing, you're just not going to hit that note. Can you talk a little bit about the role of writing in setting you up for success from a voice perspective?

Susan Murphy (13:32.941)
Absolutely. And voice and writing have to go hand in hand. And what I'm about to tell you is going to sound so foreign and so antithetical, but go with me on this. I am very famous for saying, my students remember from 25 years ago, they remember me saying, and I still to this day do it, I want you to write it like a fifth grader, but deliver it like a college professor.

Now, how old are you in fifth grade? You're 10. 10. So wait, what you're telling me is that you want me to go to journalism school and I'm going to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to get this degree ultimately to write like a 10 year old? Yeah, pretty much. That's what I'm saying. Because we think that if we make sentences long and we use fancy words and we just

Shirlee Engel (14:06.092)
Wow.

Shirlee Engel (14:18.464)
Yeah, that's what I'm

Susan Murphy (14:32.033)
go on and on and on about a subject at great length. That makes us look smart. That's not true. It makes you look actually not so smart. It makes you look like you're trying to dance around a subject. It makes it look like you really don't know how to land that airplane. When you can put something together in short, concise, clear, and I will often say elegant, sentences,

Short, concise, clear, and elegant. A, it means you completely understand the subject because you can do it in just a few sentences. And B, it allows you to, at the end of maybe each sentence, but certainly at the end of every two sentences, to take that pause so that you are explaining whatever concept or you are

espousing about whatever it is you're talking about or you're having this conversation, serious conversation with a significant other, you're trying to get a point across. If you can do it succinctly with pauses, clearly, and then stop talking, that is how you command attention and that is how you look like an expert in the subject you're talking about.

Shirlee Engel (16:01.898)
And you have to script in those pauses, right? Like I was telling you even in my scripts, I will have little fragments of what I'm gonna say and then I'll put in ellipses like a dot dot dot. That's where I breathe. And then the other biggest thing, and I don't know if this is something that you work with people on, is you can write the most eloquent script in the world, but it means nothing until you pick it up and read it out loud.

because every single time without fail when I'm working with especially entrepreneurs on this, they'll trip on a couple of different words and they'll read it a few times and if two, three times they're tripping over the same word, I'm like get rid of the word, but that's a good word. Get rid of it, get rid of it, it's tripping you up.

Susan Murphy (16:44.845)
Correct. Right. And don't read it in your head. That doesn't count. Ever. You have to read it out loud.

Shirlee Engel (16:53.108)
Right. No, no, you have to say it out loud. And then the other big thing too is emphasis. So how do you coach people on how to know which words to emphasize to ensure that the audience either gets the point or feels the emotion or whatever it is that you're trying to get across, you can only do that by reading things in a certain way, right?

Susan Murphy (17:00.322)
Yes.

Susan Murphy (17:22.443)
you need to connect to the words that you have written. If you can't connect to them, why would I? I would be bored.

Shirlee Engel (17:31.168)
What does that mean? What does connect to the words mean?

Susan Murphy (17:34.093)
Sure. What that means is you need to take what you have written, believe in it, stand behind it, know it is correct, be enthusiastic about it, and as you are going to read the sentences you have prepared, if you are connecting not only to the words but understanding that those words need to connect to the listener, then that should

automatically dictate where the emphasis is. But people are afraid to sort of let go. They didn't have a lot of practice reading out loud. They hated it. You know, most people hate public speaking. They don't want to do it. The closest they've ever come is reading a book to their children at bedtime. And that, by the way, is a great way to sort of exercise your vocal muscles to see

what sort of intonation you can come up with, what sort of voices you can come up with, how far your voice will stretch in either direction by reading a children's book out loud. And if you don't have children, do it to your dog or cat. They'll appreciate it just as much. Honest to goodness, read to the dog. You know, are programs where schools bring first and second graders to animal shelters for them to read out loud to the dogs.

Shirlee Engel (18:46.626)
I love that.

Susan Murphy (19:02.433)
because it kind of benefits everybody. So I'm not kidding, read to your dog. And a lot of people are afraid that they'll sound too dramatic, they'll sound silly. You're not gonna believe me. Try it. You don't know until you try. You've really got to get out of your comfort zone in terms of connecting to the words you've written and then connecting to the person you're speaking them to.

If you

In a voiceover, we voice actors have a thing called ABCing a line. So I'll say to a reporter, okay, you're having a little trouble really getting into this particular part of your script. We're gonna take that second sentence and we're going to do it three times in a row. We're gonna A, B, and C. And each time you do it, you have to change something in it. I don't care what you change. You have to change something. Go faster, be more dramatic.

emphasize that word, don't emphasize this word, and then record it on your phone when you do this. And you'll pretty soon see, yeah, yeah, number three, I really liked number three, and you play them back to yourself. So a lot of people just don't know how far their voices will go in terms of delivering an interesting presentation or speech or impassioned plea to a spouse kind of thing.

you have to get the emotion behind it and you have to believe in those words and get it across to your listener.

Shirlee Engel (20:43.103)
Mm -hmm

One thing I would love to ask you about is in this day and age of social media where shorter is better, attention spans have gone from 10 seconds to three seconds to I don't even know one second now. We're talking about pauses. We're talking about slowing down. We're talking about all of these things that seem to run counter to how people are taught to do reels on social media. And if you want the most views,

Nobody's gonna watch if you're pausing. So how does what you teach fit into this modern digital social media driven world where you still have to be an effective speaker but don't make it too long and don't pause because you know that many seconds matter. I'm wondering how you approach that or push back against that.

Susan Murphy (21:38.517)
It's all about storytelling. That is the buzzword that goes through newsrooms. It's been this way for two or three years now. And even in what you do and what you coach your clients to do, rather than give me stats and rather than give me sterile statistics or something that some scientist wrote, can you tell me a story about it? Can you connect to the human condition?

What stands between you, me, and artificial intelligence? Our heartbeats. Artificial intelligence will never have a heartbeat. We still go to the movies. We still sit through two and two and a half and sometimes three hour long films because we are engrossed in the story. And that's what all of us need to do more of, is to connect in our presentations.

with a story. Yes, you may have to get across some, you know, nuts and bolts, bread and butter, basic things. But if you can start with a story, if you can start by asking a question, if you can start by just pulling your listener in with some amazing, simple, but I call it head -turning, fact, well, there, you have your audience in the palm of your hand right there.

and then your job is to keep them there. But at least you've got them there. And you have to do that with a really good open. You have to do that with a really good beginning. So it's all about the storytelling and human connection. I was working with a group of women out in Los Angeles, and we were talking about elevator pitches. And one woman, this was so long ago, but what she did was,

She imported, I believe they were purses and bags made by indigenous women in India who put them together and then they were sold, you know, through her shop or whatever. And so when I asked her for her elevator pitch, she would say something like, well, you know, I sell handbags and purses and they come to me, you know, from women in India. And she did it very plainly.

Susan Murphy (23:59.713)
But then when I got her to talk about, well, tell me more about these women. Tell me more about what they do and how they do it. And what we did was we crafted something that sounded more like, I help women in India support their families by creating these beautiful works of art, bags and handbags, that I can sell here in the United States.

Shirlee Engel (24:23.242)
Hmm. So you flipped it around completely. It's less about the bags and the commodity of the bags and more about the story that the bags tell and what you're supporting by buying one of these bags, right?

Susan Murphy (24:35.777)
Right, because isn't that where the connection would be? Who cares that you import handbags from India? I mean, that's just not, that doesn't get my attention. But if you're telling me you help women in India support their families by creating beautiful works of art, well, there you go. I might listen to sentence two.

Shirlee Engel (24:54.348)
Yeah. Yeah.

So I could talk to you all day. What are some top tips that you have, particularly for a lot of people listening and watching our business owners and people who want to get their stories out, and maybe this is all new to them, this whole idea of the power of their voice to do that. So what are some top three tips or a couple of tips that you can leave people with, things that they can start doing right away to instantly improve the effectiveness of their voice?

Susan Murphy (25:24.723)
Absolutely. I can do it in seven words. I can take an hour to teach you breath work, but I can also do it in seven words. I'll give you the seven words. Drop your shoulders, breathe into your belly. Shoulders, so important in terms of making sure the pitch that's going to come up from your diaphragm, which is a muscle located and attached to your bottom ribs,

Shirlee Engel (25:40.738)
Mmm.

Susan Murphy (25:53.825)
When you think about how we walk around all day, every day, tense, anxious, excited, scared, whatever, we carry so much in our shoulders and these muscles are really tight. And what that does is it forces the pitch of our voice up to here. You can hear it in my voice now. When all you really need to do.

Shirlee Engel (26:16.394)
and roll your shoulders back, right?

Susan Murphy (26:16.439)
Drop your shoulders. What you should back a little bit. Yes, yes, you want to be open, you know, on television. I'll say to your report an anchor. You want to be open to your audience, but if you drop your shoulders. And then take those breaths where you can all the way down to the bottom of your belly. We tend to do clavicular or conversational breaths which are short. They are frequent. They do get air to our lungs, obviously, but they're not efficient.

So if you can drop your shoulders, breathe into your belly, and then speak with air and energy supported coming up from that diaphragm, that's number one. Drop your shoulders, breathe into your belly. One of the second tips, and we've already talked about it, is making sure you use pauses. We get so nervous in speaking, and for some odd reason, we all think...

that if there's a second or two of silence, that is some kind of horrible sin. No, it's not. Don't we all need a little bit more silence in our lives?

Shirlee Engel (27:24.752)
yeah, yeah. Sometimes you can say more with silence than you can with words.

Susan Murphy (27:29.717)
And that's very true, too. sure. Silence speaks volumes, of course. And the other thing is remembering to speak in those shorter sentences. You don't always have to reach for fancy words. The old ones, the old simple ones would do, would be just fine. If you're, if you're reading a speech, write like you speak. Don't write in floweriness unless

Shirlee Engel (27:34.186)
Mm -hmm.

Susan Murphy (27:57.975)
I mean, it might be appropriate occasionally. I'm not saying never. But if you write like you speak and you're just talking to a friend across a table having a glass of wine with them, how would you do it? You would do it in shorter phrases. You would do it with some passion because you're talking to a friend. So those are some simple things, simple things to try.

I could go on, you there are frameworks you can use in terms of how to present something and then how to wrap it up. there are, you can Google, you know, public speaking. And one of my favorite YouTube, Instagram speakers is a Vietnamese gentleman who is from Australia and his name is Vin, V -I -N -H, gang, G -I -A -N -G. Of course.

Shirlee Engel (28:48.203)
I see him on TikTok all the time.

Susan Murphy (28:50.601)
He's amazing. Just drop in occasionally with Vin. You'll learn a lot. So, and be passionate. Be passionate about what you're talking about. Let me feel a connection. Don't be afraid of that.

Shirlee Engel (29:07.767)
You said write like you speak. I also say speak while you write or speak before you write. So, you know, tell the story to your phone, get your voice recorder out, tell the story and then play it back to yourself. That's how you should write it. The way you would say it. Right?

Susan Murphy (29:24.781)
And another to add on to that one, yes, do that and take as long as you need. Give me all the nuance and the detail and the whatever, fine. All right, now I want you to, whatever that was, I want you to cut it down to two minutes. Figure out how to do it in two. And then I want you to do it again in 30 seconds to give me at least the gist. So learning how to edit is very important.

You'll eventually learn how to edit in your head. But for right now, make it big, make it middle, make it small. That's a good exercise.

Shirlee Engel (29:55.318)
Mm

Shirlee Engel (30:04.94)
Yeah, and a shortcut.

A hack to do that too is there's lots of transcription things out there, transcription AI that you can use and you can plug it into ChatGBT and say, can you make a two minute version of this? Can you make a 30 second version of this? Of course then don't go memorize what it says, but at least you'll see what it cut out. Because sometimes you're so close to what you're saying that you can't objectively, well but that's important too and that's important and you're not necessarily objective about what can go.

on the cutting room floor. What can be left there?

Susan Murphy (30:41.013)
I'm not a big fan. mean, I know AI is going to overtake us all. got that. But, and I think that's a that's a good trial and error sort of thing. Yeah. Watch how chat GPT does it, but I'd like you to do it too, to do it in your, in your own words.

Shirlee Engel (30:57.418)
Yeah, this is if you're really, yeah, like if you're really challenged in doing this, because I know some people it can be really hard. And one thing that I always like to tell people is I never want to, I don't want you to get stuck on the page, because that's something that happens a lot, especially when we talk about camera confidence. Whoops, there's, ding.

Susan Murphy (31:02.773)
Yes, yes, sure, sure.

Shirlee Engel (31:21.216)
Especially when we talk about camera confidence and really honing that skill of communicating on screen. If you spend all your time worrying about what you're saying, you're kind of missing that part where when you're trying to deliver it, you're gonna modify it on the fly. When you say it out loud, you'll be like, does that really matter? That's a tangent. And that's also engaging our own senses, right? Because when we've written something, we're reading it. And then when we're saying it, even we're hearing it.

and then you can actually get a lot more done in terms of editing yourself when you hear yourself say it than when you see it on a page and you're trying to cut a paragraph somewhere for sure.

Susan Murphy (31:57.92)
illness.

Susan Murphy (32:03.767)
And remember too, when you're on a stage, you have an audience. Make eye contact, look around, listen for their laughter, listen for the applause if you get that. And then conversely, listen for the crickets. Notice if they're looking at their phones or if they've drifted off to sleep. And then you've got to do something to change course here if you're going to keep your audience together. But...

Shirlee Engel (32:07.266)
Mm

Susan Murphy (32:30.987)
Connect with the audience and don't be afraid of that because if an audience has, even if they're forced to be in a room, like you're doing a meeting at work and they're forced to be there, they want you to succeed. Most of them are probably your friends. They want to get out of here in an hour or whatever it is. So they're rooting for you. They want this to be good. Allow yourself to take that in.

Yeah, you know, they're my friends. They're good. They're going to be fine when I give this presentation. And that could show us all how to be good audiences, too. When I work with classes, yes, be a good audience. Don't just be a good speaker.

Shirlee Engel (33:07.382)
Thank

Shirlee Engel (33:12.982)
Yeah, I want to ask you about this idea of you've talked about being on a stage. The problem with being on camera is you're talking to a lens. So how do you advise people? What do you feed off of when there's nobody in the audience that you can see?

Susan Murphy (33:33.055)
Excellent question. And very often people will say, well, you know, look into that camera lens and pretend you're talking to your grandmother. Talk to one person. Yeah, OK, that's fine. And if that works for you, great. But I have another hint. I don't want you to think of what's on the other side of the camera. I want you to think what's in you. Who are you here? And in terms of most people,

reporters and anchors especially, you are two things in this speech. You are an expert and you are an educator. So both of those things require knowing your subject inside out, being passionate about it, being able to answer most questions about it, just deriving confidence from

the knowledge that you have, you have more in your little finger than we would have in our whole bodies, depending on what you're talking about, go back and think of yourself in front of a class of, you know, 10th graders. If you had to deliver this to a class of 10th graders, you have to keep their attention, you have to really just be there for them, but you are the expert and the educator.

and you know this subject, this story, this idea, forwards and backwards, and derive your confidence from that. Because I want to hear from the expert, and I want to learn from the educator.

Shirlee Engel (35:14.201)
I love this. So many great tips, Susan. If people want to get in touch or learn more, how do they find you?

Susan Murphy (35:20.107)
Well, I have a website and it's called Susan Murphy Vosot .com and Vosot is broadcast shorthand for voiceover sound on tape. Now you know a little bit about what a Vosot is and I could explain if I ever meet you. So Susan Murphy Vosot .com or I'm on LinkedIn as you Susan Murphy. If you type in voice coach, I'll come right up and I would love to...

Shirlee Engel (35:39.02)
Thank

Susan Murphy (35:50.657)
help you become a communicator no matter what your professional aspirations are. You don't have to be a reporter or an anchor to work with me.

Shirlee Engel (36:02.216)
Amazing. Well, Susan, thank you so much for your time. So many great tips and we'll have to have you on again sometime.

Susan Murphy (36:08.186)
I would love to do that, Shirley. Thank you so much.

Shirlee Engel (36:11.618)
Thanks so much. We'll talk soon. Okay.