Apple Podcasts
SpotifyScwair One presents Speaking of Success (SÖS) — episode two with voice artist and former BBC broadcaster Sara Starling, on finding your voice, public speaking nerves, and why voice notes are a communication tool most people are ignoring.
My guest for episode two has spent almost 40 years doing the thing I’ve spent my whole life avoiding.
Sara Starling is a voice artist, broadcaster, and storyteller. She started with a drama degree, spent nearly 20 years at the BBC as a studio manager, announcer and newsreader – including the World Service… then left to build her own voice studio from scratch. She’s been doing that for 20 years too.
She also, it turns out, was quite shy.
In this conversation we talk about the one mindset shift that makes speaking to a room feel manageable, why a bad experience reading aloud in class can follow you for decades, how voice notes are quietly one of the most powerful communication tools most people are ignoring, and what it actually looks like to stay calm on air when everything around you is falling apart.
The line that stayed with me: “It starts as a pencil mark. Then it gets inked in. Then it’s a marker pen. And then you just believe it.”
That’s about the story we tell ourselves when we stumble. Worth hearing the rest.
In this episode you’ll learn…
- The one mindset shift that makes speaking to a room feel manageable, from someone who’s done it for 40 years
- Why a bad experience reading aloud in class can quietly follow you for decades – and how to put it down
- How Sara went from shy drama graduate to BBC World Service announcer and newsreader, then built her own voice studio from scratch
- Why voice notes are one of the most powerful communication tools most people are ignoring
- How to stay calm on air – or in any high-pressure moment – when everything around you is falling apart
- The “pencil mark → inked in → marker pen → you just believe it” idea, and what it says about the stories we tell ourselves when we stumble
