Archives for March 2025

The VO Meter, Measuring Your Voice Over Progress. The VO Meter is brought to you by voiceactorwebsites.com, VocalBoot2Go, podcastdemos.com, Global Voice Acting Academy, and IPDTL. And now, your hosts, Paul Stefano and Sean Daeley.
Hello everybody and welcome to Episode 34 of The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
We have a great show today, some fantastic guests, and some cool things to talk about. We’ll start off with our current events, but first, here’s a word from our sponsor, voiceactorwebsites.com.
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So up next, we have our current events. Anything new with you, Paul?
Yeah, quite a bit, actually. We talked about in our Meetup group, our Voice Over Vanguard group a couple weeks ago, how several of us feel like we’re going through a midlife crisis. I think one person actually said those words.
I’m not quite to that point, but I have been re-evaluating my Voice Over career and how to approach things. And what I’ve decided is that I need to chase the money, basically. So I’ve been doing a little bit of everything, and still do, and still plan to.
But I’m going to focus primarily on audiobooks while those are providing me some sustainable work, because it’s by far the genre where I get most of my work, and I’ve been pretty successful at it lately. So, that’s what I’ve been focusing on. And recently, actually New Year’s Eve, right before the new year, my new book, The Happiness Paradox, that is done by best-selling author Richard Ayer, came out.
And that has done really well so far. It’s been a couple of weeks, and it’s sold over 20 copies, which may not sound like a lot, but I have books I’ve done two or three years ago that have sold less than that. So it’s off to a good start, and I’m excited about that.
And then I have another book in the can, so to speak, all the recording is done. I’m waiting for the rights holder to approve it. It’s called The Falls, and it’s a supernatural thriller.
That’s pretty exciting. And it’s also a series. So the first one’s done, and the next one is out there, and I’m waiting for the rights holder to talk to me about it and officially offer it up.
But we’ve talked about it, and he said, yeah, I’d like you to do the series. And that’s book two of four. Now the other two, three and four, are not written yet.
The author is currently working on them. In this case, the author is the rights holder. But it looks pretty promising to have two more books on the horizon as well.
No, that’s great. And I remember you talking about this, I think, last episode where you had just gotten this deal and it’s rare where it’s like, hey, I love you guys so much, I want to keep you on for multiple books. And I definitely think that’s a wise decision of yours to try and focus on where you’re getting the return on investment.
And I actually just finished leading a workout today where we talked about the importance of identifying your niche and where… When you get started, sure, you want to experiment and try a variety of genres, a variety of scripts to figure out what your wheelhouse is. But when you’ve been doing it for a while, like Paul and I have, you kind of figure out what elements are in your wheelhouse.
And I’m kind of in a similar boat right now where it’s just like, I can see where I want to get with my voice over career, but a lot of it is patience involved, right? And like I’m trying to just kind of like build a nest egg for myself and kind of invest in some training and some new marketing materials to kind of bring myself up to that next level.
Yeah, in fact, this book I’m working on sort of brought me to this conclusion and I shared it with the rest of our workout group who I thought it might help. It’s all about noticing the things around you that are making you happy. But you can also relate it to work.
The author talks a lot about serendipity and how he equates that to taking the cues from the world around you that are telling you the direction to go. More in line towards personal growth and happiness. But while I was doing this book, it also applied to the work I was doing where I realized I was getting a lot of notice in these books.
I had several auditions that have come recently to me through my website where people just reached out to me for auditions for audiobooks. That doesn’t happen with anything else for the most part, honestly. I don’t get hired off my character demo very often or my commercial demo where people are actually reaching out to me on my website.
But audiobooks it does. As it was happening and I was doing this book, I thought to myself, hey dummy, this is actually happening to you. Pay attention and follow what’s going on.
That’s super important.
That’s wonderful. I don’t know where your opinions fall on it, but you shouldn’t have any shame in being a good audiobook narrator. It’s a very specific skill set as far as VO goes and one that not a lot of people are good at.
I even do similar projects, long form. The bulk of what I do is corporate or documentary narration stuff. Even me, I can do hour long projects, but 12 hour ones is difficult.
It’s not something I don’t like doing, and don’t get me wrong if it sounds like I’m saying I don’t enjoy doing it or there’s a stigma attached to it. It’s not that. Really it’s the first thing that I had success with, and that should have been my clue three and a half years ago.
Because I’ve been chasing all these other types of VO, just like you said, to find my niche because I didn’t really think I knew what it was. I’ve done a lot of workout groups. I was supposed to do one tomorrow actually.
I was supposed to go to Philadelphia to do an in-person workout with Everett Oliver and a bunch of the Philly meetup group. So Everett’s going to be on Zoom and the rest of us are going to meet at Martha Mellinger’s house and we were supposed to do that in person. But we’re getting our first snowstorm of the season and we actually had to cancel it because it’s about to snow any minute here on the East Coast and we had to put it off.
But I still do workouts with Everett. I do workouts with several other coaches and don’t plan to stop because, as we talked about, we have several agents and they’re not going to stop sending me auditions, at least I hope they don’t. Please don’t.
I’m going to keep doing those, but it’s good to have a defined focus, like you talked about.
So yeah, and it’s great because it’s important every couple of months or annually to kind of sit down and reassess, like you said, where am I getting the bulk of my income from? What areas should I focus on? And that doesn’t mean that, say, maybe Paul has a passion for character work, like he said, or he might need more training or something like that.
So you want to try and recognize as quickly as you can where your strengths are, what your potential weaknesses are, and then get both to a competitive level. Because that’s the only way you’re going to get bought is if you have something that’s undeniably good, right, or a product or performance that the people want.
So yeah, totally makes sense. So that’s basically what’s happening with me lately. What’s happening with you?
Well last, I know a lot of people complain that like this time of year is very slow, and it can be. For me, honestly, I kind of needed a break. Last month was very difficult for me because on top of all of the usual, just like the nature of my work, I mean I kind of worked throughout the winter break and stuff like that for doing my own VO work and GVAA membership stuff.
But I got sick for like three out of the four weeks of December. It was really frustrating. And of course, it was mainly like throat-based illnesses, so I could…
there was long periods where I just couldn’t voice anything, and it was very disheartening. I don’t know about you guys, but I get a little sad when I get sick, because I’m just like, well, not going to perform today.
Unfortunately, you can’t really help that, because it is your instrument. So if you can’t talk, you can’t work.
Yeah, and we know all the shortcuts, right? I mean, my pantry is loaded with throat coat tea, and I have vocal sprays that I like and all that stuff, but none of it is a good substitute for rest and recovery. So some things that I did do to fill the time, I figured out everything in my business that I could be doing other than voicing actual stuff.
I researched some more. I reached out to potential clients, heard back from some potential clients, so that was good. And figured out, kind of went over my expenses for the year, figured out what my goals for the year would be.
So there’s definitely things that you can do during your downtime to sort of make it feel like you’re not just sitting on your laurels, in case you’re just ridiculously sick because I had a couple of days where I’m just like, I can’t do anything. And sometimes you just have to listen to your body. And like, if anything, I feel like I was kind of just burning way too many candles trying to like trying to be there for family and friends and try and get all my work obligations done.
And so you have to like, self care is very important, right? So you can’t let your you especially when you’re trying to build a business, whether you’re working part time or not, you just have to be it’s even more important to make sure you’re eating enough, that you’re resting well enough, that you’re like washing your hands often enough. And like, because like we said, your voice is your instrument and you just can’t afford to get sick for long periods of time.
Luckily for me, it happened during the holiday season where everyone else kind of just shuts down anyways. But you really have to be mindful of the circumstances that might have caused that so you can do your best to prevent them in the future.
That’s awesome.
Even in sickness, we can learn.
Right, exactly, because most of the things you mentioned, I still have to do to close out 2018 and haven’t really done any of it, which is a problem.
It’s alright, you still got three-ish months.
Yeah, exactly. Although 1099s are due. If you hire any independent contractors, the 1099C has to go out by the end of January, so get on that.
I did, but it was under the monetary requirement.
Yeah, $600 I think is the last check, the monetary requirement.
But who might we be employing, Paul, just for our audience who you might not know?
Well, the editors that work on my audiobooks, so I’m not going to give names.
I have a couple of editors that I work with who, now that I figured out punch and roll a little bit better, I don’t have to use them as often, but it’s still great to have if you just have a high volume of projects that you’re doing. So definitely, even if you don’t intend to use them, at least get familiar with a few, because you never know when your workflow is just a little bit too high for you, and you just want to get your projects or make sure that your projects are finished on time or even earlier within deadline. So those might be expenses that you might have to pay out for.
You might be working with an audio engineer or someone like that to sort of dial in your studio sound, so that would definitely fit if you spend that $600 towards that. Or even paying someone like Joe Davis at Voice Actor Websites to help you get a new website up. Things like that.
It all applies.
Oh, right. I’m glad you mentioned that.
I’m glad I reminded you.
Yeah, and I was going to say sometimes hiring other talent for jobs too. We hired Marisha Tapera to do our intro, the fabulous new intro we have for The VO Meter. So yeah, sometimes when you’re hiring colleagues to do joint projects, that applies too.
So yeah, so we just want to instill in you guys that even though for the most part, freelance voice talent are one man bands, at some point in your career or several stages of your career, you might want to build a staff that you can work with to help you out, to either improve your efficiency with projects, to do some of the tasks that you don’t feel strong or as confident in or don’t like to spend time on, say email marketing or client or reaching out to new clients, things like that. So again, it’s all just about thinking how to be an actual business or however big you want it to be.
Yeah, some people I know actually hire virtual assistants or in-person assistants, sometimes the family member who might be in the house, to do the clerical work for them. Sometimes that even crosses over to marketing. People will hire people to do cold calls for them or cold marketing.
Again, it’s all about figuring out what makes you a more efficient business person and sometimes, yeah, you’re spending extra for staff, but again, what is the return on investment? If you’re able to make more money because you have staff, power to you. Keep working with that system.
Exactly. So this is totally unrelated, but because we’re talking about current events, it’s something that came to mind. My family and I went to Florida for the week between Christmas and New Year’s, and we went to Busch Gardens Tampa.
So we’re on the tram ride out of the parking lot on the way to the park, and I hear the voice saying, Welcome to Busch Gardens Tampa, please enjoy your tram ride as we make our way through parking lot A or B or whatever the heck it was called. And I said to the people with me, I know that voice. So I thought about it a little bit more, and I was like, it’s Sean Caldwell, who, as you may know, lives in that area.
So I emailed him while he was on the tram and said, Are you the voice of the tram at Busch Gardens Tampa? And he’s like, I sure am, and a few of the safety features for the rides too, so listen up. And then sure enough, later on, we were on a roller coaster.
And again, I was like, Oh, there’s Sean, I hear him, where is he? And it was the ride next to us as he was giving the warning to strap yourself in. And that’s just so cool whenever that happens when you’re somewhere, you’re not even thinking about VO.
Like I was just talking about the roller coasters and how exciting it was to go to the park. And here I hear Sean in my ears over the tram loudspeaker, it was really cool.
That’s really awesome. At first I thought you were going to say Terry Daniel, just because I know he does a lot of amusement park rides. It’s so cool when our friends, we get to hear them doing their things.
Yeah, the ironic part was Sean was actually in town at that point. He was in Tampa and said, do you want to get together? And I said, well, we’re going to be at the park and I got six kids with me.
We were with another family. So it didn’t really work out. We just spent the whole day eating cotton candy and riding roller coasters.
But it would have been cool maybe next time, Sean.
Still sounds like a productive day.
Indeed.
Well, that pretty much wraps up everything for current events. Before we get to our questionable gear purchase, we have a quick word from our friend Tim Page over at Podcast Demos. So let me tell you about Tim’s team, who has produced over 1,000 podcast intros for some of the biggest podcasts on the planet.
Each demo includes custom written scripts and hand selected music, and is guaranteed to showcase your voice and talent in the best light possible. With a finger on the pulse of what podcast producers want, you can be sure your podcast demo will sound professional, current and competitive. And you guys know this, but Paul and I actually got our demos produced by Tim and his wonderful team.
And all I can say is that those guys are amazing. His script writer created original scripts perfect for my voice and personality, as well as reflective of current popular podcast genres. I recorded in the comfort of my own home studio, and Tim worked his mastering magic.
The whole process only took a couple of days, and I couldn’t be more pleased. Tim is a consummate pro and so easy to work with. Thank you, Tim, and podcast demos.
And Tim, as you may know, has recently ventured into audio books himself as a narrator, and has talked about how much he’s enjoying it, and I’m listening to a book he’s doing right now, and he’s really good.
He’s just an amazing talent all the way around. I mean, he’s just an inspiring individual, and I’m not just saying that because we both love Marvel Comics, but he’s just a really cool guy, and I just feel like if you want to see someone who was able to kind of make… did everything right, got all the right training, had very clear goals of where he wanted to take his career, he’s definitely meeting them.
You can hear him doing promo in Sketch VO for the Jimmy Kimmel Show, and he’s just killing it in various markets and wherever he sets his VO goals to. So, Tim, great work, man. We’re rooting for you.
We hope you have a great and successful 2019.
Yeah, so the audiobook I was talking about is called Ancient Echoes. It’s by Joanne Pence and narrated by Tim Page. If you haven’t looked him up based on our glowing reviews, it’s P-A-I-G.
So, look him up and download that book.
Very cool. Awesome, Tim.
Questionable Gear Purchase.
All right, so questionable gear purchases. I’ve done a lot of stupid things. Well, it remains to be seen, I guess.
Do you want me to go first or do you want to start?
I don’t really have anything. I can’t think of it.
I don’t know. All right, so I’ll start then. I have actually sold a lot of things this month or this last couple of months.
And the reason is because of what I talked about before with my greater focus on audiobooks. I am starting to do everything I narrate or everything I do standing up. I used to sit down both when I did this podcast and when I did audiobooks.
And I think it was kind of constructing my diaphragm where I found I was running out of breath a lot. And that is not good for either a podcast or audiobooks. So I stood up for the last couple of audiobooks I spoke about.
And I think it made a big difference in my delivery. So with that, I started using my Sennheiser 416 exclusively. And as I did that, I didn’t need as much of the processing on the background I was doing with my Apollo Twin audio interface.
I was using some of the live plug-ins. The… what’s it called again?
USP processing? DSP processing. DSP.
I was using a lot of the DSP.
DSP processing.
Right. So I was using some of those plug-ins at digital signal processing, and I don’t really need those with the 416. So, and as I mentioned, I was using the SM7B while I was sitting down.
So I got rid of all of those and have simplified my life considerably. And also made a nice…
You finally got rid of the Shure? Really?
I did get rid of the Shure. I know, I liked it for a while, and you know, it’s still a venerable mic. In fact, we’re doing a mic shootout.
This is what we call a tease in the biz. We’re doing a pretty involved mic shootout in our upcoming episode, where you’ll hear that mixed in with a bunch of the other mics that we have on hand. And it still sounds good.
Oh yeah, and I think you’ll be surprised, because we kind of, like, I don’t know, we had a weird variety of microphones in Paul’s and mine studio. So everything from very affordable microphones, like the Shure SM58 and the MXL 990. I’m sure you know the 58.
It’s a very popular, like, live performance microphone. Very durable, affordable, dynamic microphone. Then the MXL 990 is another $99 mic that’s very affordable, but certainly surprisingly useful for voice over.
And it’s also very popular to be, like, modded by, I know that, what’s his name, the guy over at Octava Mods.
He actually retired, Michael Jolly.
Yeah, he actually retired. But you can still get one through microphoneparts.com as well. A lot of my engineer friends were like, ooh, mod that MXL 990.
I was like, I can’t, it’s my uncle’s.
I actually bought one and tried to mess around with it at one point, of course. Of course.
You know you can pay them to replace those parts for you.
I thought it would be a cool project to try. I didn’t do a whole lot. I just cleaned out the mesh in the head gasket and tried to improve the sound.
It wasn’t bad.
That’s cool. You get to know your tools a little bit. We’ve got those.
We’ve got some interesting dynamic microphones thrown in the mix. I happen to have an interview mic on hand for field audio interviews and stuff like that. Tried that out.
Of course, we also had our 416s and some higher level microphones as well, at least in the price department.
So both those videos are out now. We actually both did videos to showcase it. If you’re so inclined, go check those out now and let us know what you think.
Then you’ll have the full shootout in an upcoming episode.
Absolutely.
But the point of all this was simplifying my process and my booth. Now I just have the 416 in here. Don’t even have another mic mounted anywhere.
I’m using my Yamaha AG-06 audio interface, which surprisingly I did keep. And I’m still using that now.
Well, I know you use that a lot in some of your own field audio situations and stuff like that, taking it to sports events and things like that.
Yeah, we use it in Maybo to record all the interviews too.
Indeed, indeed. And that’s another… That’s something that I’m seeing a lot.
If you’re ever debating on buying a really expensive piece of gear, like will it really help my sound? I’m seeing more and more people with, say, just a nice industry standard mic, like the TLM 103 or the 416, and a really affordable interface, something in the $150 to $300 range. So, while it’s important to have aspirational goals with the kind of gear and setup you want, I think people are finally discovering that the financial barrier to entry with a quality sound is much lower than you might think.
And I matched those sounds pretty closely. I sent it to you and all of our friends at the VOV, where I did the onboard DSP processing with the Yamaha and what I was using with the Apollo and the 416. It was almost indistinguishable in my mind.
It’s crazy. Keep in mind, Felix, this is like a $200 interface versus a $700 interface. So, like I said, the proof is in the pudding.
So…
So, yeah, questionable gear purchases? Not so much, but maybe smart financial decisions? That’s not as catchy.
I know. It’s sensible gear purchases, right?
Yeah.
But for me, I actually… You guys know a few episodes ago, I finally got my own dream microphone, the Gefele M930. Something that was really fun about doing the mic shootout for me was really getting to put this through its paces, and I got a lot of compliments on it.
So I was just like, oh, thank God, I justified the decision to get it. Are you using it now? No, not now.
I think maybe next episode I will. But it’s just a beautiful microphone. It’s very different.
Some people compare it, saying it sounds very similar to the Neumann TLM103, and I’d say they have similarities about it in the level of clarity and in the super low noise floor that they both have. But they have their very own distinct sound. I loved how the Neumann sounded on me, but like I said before, I was not a huge fan of the shock mount it came with.
The mic itself is surprisingly heavy. The build quality, you want that kind of confidence in it, but it’s also, despite that heaviness, that weight, it’s still very fragile. You never want to drop it.
It had this wonderful, rich, almost… I was telling my friend, it had a really ballsy sound to it. It sounded great, but I felt like the Gafel was kind of captured things more as they were, with maybe just to smooth everything out.
It was just really pleasant. So I’m really happy that I have it, and I hope for the time being my gas has been cured. So speaking of questionable gear purchases and sort of slimming down your audio chain, we have a VO Meter stick slash questionable gear purchase from one of our listeners.
But before that, a quick message from GVAA.
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Not unlike myself.
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I like what I do.
And you will too when you’re learning your craft at Global Voice Acting Academy. Find us at globalvoiceacademy.com.
Because you like to have fun.
Hey, everybody, it’s time for the VO Meter shtick.
What did he say?
It’s time for the VO… Oh, never mind.
The VO Meter shtick? Oh, got it.
Hey, everybody, this is Curt Bonnem here, and this is my questionable gear purchase. Sorry, I had to. Anyway, I was in the mood for a new mic.
I think it’s because I’ve had this microphone of mine that I’m talking on now. It’s a Mojave MA-201 FET. I’ve had it for about six months, and I really loved it when I got it, and got a great deal on it off of eBay from an engineer that only used it in an animation studio.
It was in perfect condition. Got it for $400, a few hundred off of the new retail price, and really liked it. But I think over the past six months, I sort of got ear fatigue listening to my own voice through it, and started to pick apart every little thing, and decided it wasn’t right anymore.
I’m looking at frequency charts and saying, oh, I’m pulling out frequencies that it’s boosting, and maybe this isn’t the right mic for me. So I decided I was really interested in the Sennheiser MKH416. Everybody knows it’s an industry standard.
A lot of big pros use it. It’s in a lot of studios. I actually used it at the SAG VO lab to do all my commercial spots that I recorded for my demo, and I thought that would be great.
Unfortunately, it was out of my price range. I just really couldn’t afford that right now. So I decided to take a look around and see if I could find anything comparable that would be something I could afford.
And I stumbled upon a YouTube video comparing the 416 to a Rode NTG2, and it was done in a professional sound studio, highly controlled environment, matching gain levels, no effects, no compression, nothing raw audio. And to my ear, they sounded the same, practically. And I thought, fantastic, this mic is way cheaper.
I can try this out and maybe get what I’m looking for. So I went and looked around online and decided on eBay, I found a deal for $199, new, no shipping charges. Discovered later, I could get it brand new from BPH photo, BHP photo, I forget what it is, for $179.
Hope you won’t talk about that. And I pulled the trigger and got it. While I waited for the seller to get back to me to ship it, it took about five days.
And in that time, I started looking around again and found a cheaper one and decided, well, I’ll go ahead and get that and try and cancel my other order, which I couldn’t, or I’ll just sell one, you know? And I ended up pulling the trigger on that. So then I had two NTG-2s on the way to my house.
And I got them on the same day, very excited, headed into my studio here and hooked one of them up right next to my Mojave and decided to do my own, you know, mic shootout for my own sake. And pretty much immediately realized how much better my Mojave sounded. There was a marked difference in their sound.
Not to say that the NTG-2 is bad. It sounded good. It just didn’t have the resolution or the crispness.
The Mojave seemed a lot brighter, more detailed, also warmer. I did a shootout that I posted on a few of the FB pages and everybody pretty much seemed to agree on that, that the Mojave sounded better. So here I am with two NTG-2s that I now am going to get rid of.
I don’t really need another mic right now. And since it’s not working for me and I’m not going to be doing fieldwork with a shotgun at any point soon, I think I will probably have to just go ahead and sell them so I can take that money and put it to good use in something else, like some X-Sessions at VO Atlanta or maybe a ticket to APAC or something like that. So that was my questionable gear purchase.
And I know now to be a little more careful and I’m going to just keep loving on my Mojave, which actually sounds fantastic and I’m very happy with it. So thanks all, love The VO Meter and hope to see you all in the new year.
Thank So thank you, Curt, for that. As I was listening, I was thinking about my own stupid questionable gear purchases. I had a very similar experience, but with a much higher price item, boots, if you remember an early episode, where I did almost the same thing he did, where I had two boots that I had to buy.
But yeah, I’m so glad that you brought that up, Curt, because it’s very easy to romanticize about, will that new microphone or that new piece of gear cause an improvement, a really noticeable one? And sometimes, no. So do your research, get the best gear that you can afford, when you can afford it, and just use it for as long as is necessary.
Yeah, thanks again, Curt. So we’ll get to the interview portion in just a moment. This time we have two thirds of The Voice Over Collective.
We have Brad Venable and Tim Friedlander. And we’ll get to them right after our word from our sponsor, IPDTL. So if you don’t know, IPDTL is the cost-effective ISDN replacement.
It’s great for interviews like the ones we did with Brad and Tim, outside broadcasts and voice overs. There’s no special hardware or software required. It works anywhere with an internet connection.
There’s monthly or annual subscriptions. And it runs in the Chrome web browser. The best part is it just works.
So without further ado, here’s the interview with Brad and Tim.
Hello, everybody, and welcome to the interview portion of this episode of The VO Meter. We are honored to welcome two stalwarts of the Los Angeles voiceover community who have also taken upon themselves to do something to make it easier for working pros to practice their chops and hold up the industry standards that are so important to the VO world. So let’s welcome first Tim Friedlander and Brad Venable.
How are you guys?
Hey there, very well.
Well, thanks for joining us. I know that it was a bit of a struggle to get going today because Tim is actually with Sean in person in Washington. Guys, how’s the studio out there?
It’s really nice.
Yeah, this place is awesome.
Yeah, it’s a place called Binary Recording. I’ve actually come here before for some of a… So we’re in more of a control room, so if there’s some echo, I apologize.
But anyway, so I came up here for some narration work one time and the guy was just great. It’s like, he’s open 24 hours and I sent him an email at like midnight begging for openings today. And he’s like, oh yeah, it’s fine, just come by.
And he even remembered me too, it was nuts.
That’s awesome, yeah, it’s a great… It’s a place I actually grew up here and I had never been here. In the 20 something years I lived up here, I never came to the studio until I moved to LA and came back to Washington and then came to the studio.
And it’s actually in a barn. I drove up and I sent Sean a text, I’m like, is it in like a big red barn looking thing? And it is, and it is awesome.
It’s very cool, and it was so crazy because I remember, I think it was like two years ago, like Tim and I had reached out to each other. I was still in Japan, but I had seen him mention something about Western Washington University, which is where I went to college. It was like, dude, you went to, and there was this like bromio and bruliet from then on.
And here we are back in our old college town.
That’s right, causing trouble and painting the town red.
Yeah.
That’s awesome.
Well, the barn’s already red.
The barn’s already red.
That’s right, that’s a good point.
That’s awesome, I’m so glad we could make that workout.
Yeah.
So guys, why don’t you start by telling us a little bit about yourselves and how you got started in voice over, or started in voice over. Who wants to go first?
Tim, go ahead, buddy.
Okay, hey, thanks. Well, my name is Tim Friedlander. I am from Bellingham, actually I’m out front in Washington, but we’re in Bellingham, Washington right now.
I actually started in voice over in about 98, 99 or so in Seattle, studying with a coach in Seattle called, her name was Veronica Weichel. And she was kind of the only coach that I knew of. My dad actually was in theater and he kind of tracked her down for me.
And that’s how I kind of got into voice over. But, you know, obviously the differences between 98, 99 and here we are in 2018 are substantially different. And so kind of this transition, it took me, you know, 15, 16 years or so to actually get back into voice over and learn how to do it correctly and to get caught up with the times and to get caught up with, you know, the trends and things that were happening in voice over.
And I got back into voice over in about 2014 or so and went full time in 2016. And here we are in 2018. And, you know, working in voice over full time and flying to Washington for interviews.
Living the dream.
It’s great, yeah.
And Brad, how about you?
Well, I’m Brad Venable. And I grew up in the hotbed of voice over activity that is Eastern Oklahoma. And I say that with tongue firmly, firmly in cheek, so much that I could probably bite at every other word.
Yeah. About the biggest claim to fame is the fact that Carrie Underwood and I grew up in the same hometown and her mom was my fourth grade teacher. I always say that because she played softball with my sister growing up.
And so it’s so fun to see her be successful. And I’m like, you set that bar so high, it’s like all I need to do is just be the second most remarkable person from my hometown and I’m great. So what’s funny about my way into this industry is, Tim already said it, it’s funny because I made a comment the other day of some folks I was working with about how panel discussions go, especially with these really hardcore established people who are wonderful and awesome in their given area.
And they’re like, tell us about how you got started. And they go, well, in my day, I’m kidding, but they talk about how things were in the early 80s and late 80s and early 90s and getting started when there was literally like 35 people in the industry. And I’m like, that’s great.
It’s awesome to hear. And it’s really great for the people who are totally lay people and just interested in voiceover as a construct and a concept, but it doesn’t help you at all because how you get started in the 80s and 90s is so not how it happens now. And thank you for saying that, Tim, because I mean, if you didn’t say it, I probably was gonna say, yes, when I got started, this is not how you do it now, just so you know.
But what’s funny is, though, is that there are some things that I did getting started that I actually would say are a good thing to get started. And that was, I was a huge fan of every cartoon on Earth as people of a certain age are now, and nerds in general, of course. And I was a big, huge fan of the GI.
Joe’s, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Transformers G1, and all this other stuff that was just integral parts of it. And found out that there was this really, really just wonderful fan community that took a whole lot more of what we knew as cartoons, like Transformers specifically. And my good friend Daniel Ross and I did this together, just to preface it, which is really great.
And they have these fan dub projects where they take Japanese versions of Transformers cartoons that never made it over here and are never going to see the light of day in an official English release, a dub almost like anime. And so they basically took all of the sound effects and the music beds and stuff from various iterations of Transformers and made a complete audio track, almost like Riff Tracks does, when there wasn’t such a thing as MST 3K for the longest time. And that’s kind of how I got started doing character work, is basically doing the Optimus Prime characters and a couple of these rando, wacko voice characters on these Transformers fan dub projects.
And like I said, my friend Daniel Ross, who’s also here in LA with Tim and I, he is now like one of the voices of Donald Duck. And so it’s like two of us from back in the day, fan dubby projects. And this is only 15 years ago or less.
But I got started with live announce really, if you wanna get technical. I mean, the fan dub stuff was like, oh, this is the fun stuff that I’m gonna learn how to do character work, or I’m gonna teach myself, or I’m just gonna face plant, whatever. But I did live announce for sports.
I was the announcer for all the Olympic sports at the University of Tulsa, where I went on an opera scholarship. So it’s a weird hodgepodge of vocal weirdness that I had that got me into the industry, and then realizing this is a crazy business, and one, and two, I’ll never do anything in Oklahoma because nobody does any commercials on the radio or TV unless you own a car a lot, or if you’re a radio jock that’s making $15,000 a year and only making more because they do sales in radio. And so I left because there was just no place for me there.
And I went to Dallas in 2010 and got some good coaching because I started a company called Superhero University, which sole purpose was to bring coaches to me so that my large girth did not have to muffin top into an airplane seat and travel all over the place. Made you laugh. So I kind of worked on that from there.
And two years ago, June in 2016, my wife and I moved from Dallas to LA. And the first night I was in Los Angeles, I visited Tim’s studio. And Phil Bakke was there that night.
And that was my first experience connecting with Tim in person. Jay had connected us through the Collective and stuff outside of that. But it’s been just kind of like a whirlwind ever since.
It’s crazy how it’s just taken off in so many ways for us.
I didn’t know about the live announce stuff. Did you know we actually had an episode on that a couple of weeks ago? Because that’s how I started as well.
You mentioned it, or I scanned it. I didn’t listen to the episode, but I knew that it was a thing. So I was like, I’m definitely going to mention this, because that’s going to be one of those I’ll be damned kind of moments.
I mean, you guys didn’t thoroughly research our podcast before you joined. So funny story, Brad.
I actually found out about you from your VO Superhero website, and the funny story is I wanted VO Superhero to be my business name.
So this was back when I was getting established, and I was like, but… I mean, first off, loved the site, loved the comic book appearance and everything like that, but I was just like, but… dreams deleted.
But now that I know you…
That URL is for sale if you want it. I’m kidding. I will eventually get rid of it, but I don’t know.
It’s just one of those things. There’s too many things going on here now to keep that thing going as a thing.
Absolutely. We’ve talked about the importance of just kind of being… Marketing yourself as yourself, like Brad Venable VO versus VO Superhero or whatever else.
There was just so much gold in your guys’ stories that I wanted to unpack that a little bit before we moved on to the next question. Because both of you said you see these industry pros with 20 or more years of experience. We actually had an episode recently where we went to a comic or anime convention, Otacon, and so many of them would start their stories with, well, you can’t do it like I did.
We’re aware now that that’s not…
Thank goodness.
The avenues for entry are different now, and it’s not really relevant. It’s great. It’s more important to learn about the skills and the mindset and the attitude of these people that helped them be successful rather than exactly how they went about it.
I think one of the things we’re at right now is that there are so many different ways to get into it. There’s so many different opportunities, so many different ways to make your own avenues into this. Absolutely.
I’ve been saying this for the last couple of years, is that we’re in the VO Wild West right now, and yes, there are still certain do’s and don’ts and things along those lines, but for the most part, if you want to do it, do it. Try it. If you have an idea, try it.
If it doesn’t work, there’s no governing body of voiceover that’s going to tell you what you can and can’t do. I think that that kind of opens you up to different ways of getting into voiceover, different ways of creating content, different ways of getting heard that you couldn’t have heard… even five, six, seven years ago, I think that weren’t as available as they are now.
Absolutely. And Brad, I’m actually really glad that you brought up fan dubbing, because I know that it’s not thought of very highly in the professional VO community, and I can understand why. There are a lot of amateurs and hobbyists who want to do it, but in the same vein, there’s fewer opportunities for better character practice, and you’re practicing being part of a production team.
So those skills are useful, and if you’re interested in it, it might be your only way to practice or get involved with it until you can afford to invest in training and things like that. So I think as long as you go in with that mindset of practice, rather than, I wouldn’t want to send anything that you’re doing, I wouldn’t advertise that to agents or anything, but like I said, you could build connections, and who knows, maybe the person that you did a fan dub with became a producer or a caster, and they want you back.
On that same note, the assistant that you’re dealing with now, the person getting you a coffee, whoever it is in the studio, they’re going to be the agents in a couple of years. They’re going to be the ones who are going to be making the new content. They’re going to be the ones who are hiring you in the future.
So, be respectful of everybody that you work with, regardless of where they are in the chain.
Especially people at the bottom of the totem pole.
Yeah. That’s just general, I think, just general respect, but know that it’s things… I’ll use this as an anonymous example, but somebody that I first met in 2014, who I’ve come across…
crossed paths with over the years, came across and very blatantly and personally insulted a group of voice over talent that I was with and has no idea that they did this. And years later, this is somebody that when I cross paths with, I don’t really care to engage with because of something that happened four years ago because it was a bunch of newbie talent that we weren’t… We were nobody.
We were just a bunch of people in the corner of a room talking and somebody decided to come up and either show off or something. And now all of us who were in that room are working actors who are now peers with this person, who are now sharing opportunities and now crossing paths with this person.
Or withholding opportunities.
Or withholding opportunities or ingratiate them very nicely into a community.
So it’s very easy to forget that this is a people-centric business. And very often we work in isolation, but we work with people. So whether that’s in person or online, just be respectful.
Don’t be a douche. Nobody likes douches.
Well, Tim, you mentioned when you were a newbie, some of the things you observed. Let’s talk about that a little bit because a lot of our audience, honestly, is still people getting started in the business. What are some of the mistakes you think newbies make when they’re getting started in the business?
You know, I think the biggest mistake I have seen recently in the last few years, and I think this is with the rise of some of the movement to the online opportunities, is that people think that it’s going to happen faster than it is going to happen. They expect it to be, well, I’ve been doing this for a year and I’ve done 50 auditions and I haven’t booked anything and I’m just going to quit, you know, and that is, you know, you’re just getting started. You’ve got another few years of doing this.
And then I think also, I think it’s one of the things that I say in the workout groups that we run is like, I love you all, but get out of here. Go somewhere else. And I think, you know, it’s great to have like a coach or somebody or a home place to work with that people know you.
But, going back to what I was saying before, a coach’s information and feedback is subjective. And there’s lots of great coaches and there’s lots of great feedback. And take what works for you, but you need a different perspective.
And if you get stuck working with one person for the entire duration of the beginning of your career, you’re just getting kind of one element of this. And I go back to kind of like Brad, I come from a music background. I got my…
originally I got my degree in clarinet performance. And kind of coming through that, as a musician, the idea of coaching and training and taking lessons is something that is just… expected in what we do.
And I think that same thing can go for voiceover. People are like, well, I trained for six months and I got my trainings done and I’m ready to go out there and be a professional. Well, you keep training, you keep learning, you keep having somebody…
You need a different ear to be able to tell you what you’re doing, where you can improve, to hear all the things that you don’t hear. Because no matter as good as we are, we don’t really hear ourselves authentically, I don’t think. I think we hear ourselves through our own filter of what we think we’re going to sound like and through our own filter of how we’re feeling in that moment and our emotions.
Exactly.
Plus your ego gets in the way.
Absolutely true, no, absolutely true.
I use a sports analogy a lot that Tiger Woods still has a swing coach all these years later and every baseball team has a hitting coach because you just have to keep training the entire time.
Absolutely.
Well, the funny thing is that I feel like that’s the area of biggest resistance for new talent is pursuing coaching and it’s usually financial reasons why. I understand most coaches charge about $150 an hour and up, but you just, like you guys said, it’s expected. It should be expected.
I mean, we are doing Olympian level vocal gymnastics and the fact that people don’t think that requires any training is really upsetting.
It’s just talking, Sean, didn’t you know?
It’s just talking. How can I forget that, right?
I wouldn’t expect… I play guitar mainly now, but I wouldn’t expect to pick up guitar at 35 and just watch a bunch of stuff on YouTube and be a great guitar player. You know, I mean, that is an avenue and not to dismiss anybody who can do that.
For me and for most people I know, that’s not an effective way to be as good as you can be. And so, you can learn at 35, you can learn at 40, you can learn at 50, whatever age you choose to get into music or acting or any of these artistic endeavors that you choose to get into, you can do, and it’s so much easier if you have somebody helping you along the way. Learning, passing along all that information.
I use this as like, you know, the best example that I use is like, you know, great, I’m learning how to play all these scales and I’m playing what I think is a D major scale, but the entire time I’ve been playing the D7 scale and I’ve been playing it for years and I sound so great, but it’s the wrong scale and it takes one person to walk in and go, oh, in three seconds I go, oh, sorry, you’re missing that one note right there, and now all of a sudden you’re going to be booking all those jobs because now you can play the right scale when you thought you were playing the wrong scale. Yep.
So, like, long story short, why coaching? Objective feedback.
Yeah, absolutely.
That’s… When I moved to Los Angeles two summers ago, I kind of made it a point of pride for the first year I was here to take a class or attend an event every single week. And the only really…
I remember that. That didn’t happen. And that was…
And a lot of people would say, okay, that’s a bit much. And it’s true to a degree, it was a bit much, especially poor Charlie Adler, who I love. He’s like, who’s my father in this industry?
I mean, I’m not kidding. He’s a VO dad to me. Last time I went to his class, I guess it was probably summer, May of last year, 2017, he’s like…
And I can’t repeat what he said.
He’s got a mouth on him.
Because he walks into a room, and sailors run out screaming. So, he was like, what are you doing here? I’m like, you’re my safe space.
What can I say? And he’s like, well, you need to get more dangerous. So, but yeah, coaching is everything, everything.
I did that in 2015. I worked with a coach every week in 2015 for the entire year.
But, yeah, to put things in perspective, some people actually recently asked me to lead a workshop on choosing a voiceover coach. And I had done some research in preparation for it, and I was like, wow, over the years, I’ve been with 30 different coaches, either at just like one day events or like, yeah, they weren’t all like extended periods. They might have found out about them from various things.
But yeah, it was amazing. And for me, it was more about just kind of exposing myself to as many different perspectives as possible. And just because I fricking love VO, I wanna learn as much about it and be able to experience different perspectives and different genres.
Because I mean, not everyone’s good at everything.
Yeah, absolutely true. And you need that different perspective of other people. And you need, kind of this goes to kind of the education side of things.
I think Brad would chime in on this as well. You know, is that you need, not everybody explains things in a way that everybody understands. And I think it’s, you know, I come from education as well as music.
And I think it’s being able, kind of the secret to being a good teacher is that you need to be able to explain the same thing 500 different ways so that 500 different people can understand it in exactly the same way that you understand it. And being able to explain something of like, well, you know, I just do it. And you know, that’s how it works.
Some of my best, the best musicians I’ve known have been some of the worst teachers because they didn’t know, they just did what they did naturally, but didn’t really understand how to explain their process or how they did what they did in a way that somebody else could emulate it.
Wonderful. And you see talent who get frustrated because I worked with this like, highly recommended top of their game coach and it wasn’t satisfying for me. Or like, I didn’t feel like I got anything out of it or just had a frustrating experience.
That doesn’t mean that you’re a bad talent or they’re a bad coach. They just might be a bad fit for you. Well, it may.
Given the benefit of the doubt, guys. This is a positive. This is a glass half full podcast.
But that’s the thing. It’s like, it’s important to try and don’t feel like you have to be married to this coach if you’re not feeling like you’re getting the most out of it. So now there’s a glut of voice over coaches available.
So whatever your snowflake educational needs are, you can find someone.
You can. And along those same lines, explore it. Ask people who have worked with them.
Find somebody who works for you because not every coach is going to work for you. And there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong with that.
It’s not like, same thing, you go to college here in high school, people are like, oh man, my favorite teacher is this person. You’re like, God, I hated that person. They were the worst.
How could you like that person? It’s who you connect with. And are they a better or worse teacher?
Well, for you, there were a better teacher. And for somebody else, they were a worse teacher. So don’t be afraid to move on if who you’re working with doesn’t give you what you need.
And along the same lines, just because somebody comes highly recommended does not mean they’re the right person for you.
Absolutely. So that took a really interesting turn on the importance of coaching. But I love that we’re all on the same page.
It is important. And like I said, there’s lots of opportunities to do it or to try different coaches in more affordable ways, like maybe at a workshop or a webinar or a digital product or like our convention. So there’s lots of different…
Maybe.
Or maybe.
Maybe at a weekly workout.
That’s a great idea. Maybe we should look into that.
We should check into that.
Speaking of…
Yeah, speaking of weekly workouts.
Speaking of, you two have, along with Jay, have started yourselves a weekly workout to do with the exact thing we’re talking about. Get working pros to hone their craft and get some practicing. Can you tell us a little bit about how that started?
It was in direct response to the substantial changes of the industry that happened last year in August or so with some of the consolidation of the players, these big players in the game.
There we go.
Diplomatic, bringing it back.
One of the things that disappeared or that we thought was gonna disappear was this opportunity to do these online workouts that was offered by one of these companies last year. And going back to education, I come from education, Brad comes from education. I just finished my master’s in education about a year and a half ago.
And so, for me, I know I can bring the education side of things. There’s no way that I could compete, that any of us could compete against the juggernaut in helping, in posting jobs and trying to find a workup for these. But I sure knew that we could compete with them when it came to education.
Brilliant.
So we took that component of it that we knew was missing and which, unfortunately or fortunately, we were absolutely right. As soon as this consolidation happened, the education portion disappeared. And the online workouts disappeared instantly.
Not even like, hey, they’re gonna go away. It was like, they’re there one week and the next week they’re gone. And so we kind of jumped in.
I think we heard about the change at about seven, eight o’clock in the morning. And by noon, I had the website domain. And by the end of the week, we had already started talking about it in advertising and had the first mockup of the website done.
And we went live, I think, about three weeks after that. Which is something, you know, it had been in the back of our minds something we had been talking about, that at least Jay and I had been talking about for a long, for about a year, but no reason to do it when there was opportunities out there already. And as soon as that opportunity disappeared, we knew that we could step in and fill that void.
And it’s, you know, it’s been great. It’s been challenging. It’s been exciting.
It’s been frustrating. It’s all these things that you do with, hey, let’s do it.
Great.
That was our plan.
How?
Well, let’s, we’ll put it together and see how it works.
It sounds like our podcast, actually. That’s how we started that.
Now, why don’t we get along so well?
Absolutely.
And going back to what we said before, it’s the Wild West. I mean, who do you have to get authorization from somebody to do a podcast? Do we have to get approval from somebody to do an online workout?
Do we have to get, you know, again, going back, you know, this isn’t to say that just go out there and, you know, run over everybody and do exactly what you know, what you want to do, regardless of what, you know, maybe some of the social conventions of Voice Over may be. But that there are, if you have a good idea, you see an opportunity, you see something that’s there, do it.
After a thoughtful research and…
After a thoughtful research.
Yes. Yes.
You know, take your time. But, you know, like, you can put it together. We didn’t go, you know, we definitely consulted with agents and people who had been guest before with talent to see if this is something that they would be interested in.
You know, we, I did a mock-up and had a few people run through it to see, hey, is this going to be beneficial? Is this better than what was happening before? Is this going to be more, you know, bulkier than what was happening before?
And, you know, we’re here a year later. We’re still running, actually. Just posted, you know, our newest workout yesterday, which went live.
You know, we try to do it every week, but it’s, you know, life gets in the way, work gets in the way. We don’t always can’t follow, we always find a coach that’s available every week. We do our best to try and do it every week if we can, but, you know, it’s also something that we just, we do for the community in, I say free time, I don’t know when any of us have free time, but, you know…
In our made time.
Yeah, I mean, you know, we make time for this, but it’s also something that we do because we know that it’s needed.
How does it work exactly? Because not all of our audience, I’m sure, is familiar with it, and if they want to get involved, tell us a little bit about the process.
Sure. Well, it’s voweeklyworkout.com, and basically what we’re trying to do is give people a chance to be heard and to try something and have an opportunity to get heard on a regular basis, which if you’re not in LA, New York, Chicago, some of the larger areas where there is a bigger community, it’s a little difficult. It can be lonely.
It can be isolating. I mean, it can be isolating in LA. You know, I was in LA for 12 years before I even knew that there was anybody else in voice over in LA, which is just insane.
But what we do is we have a special guest each week. It could be a cast director. It could be an agent.
A lot of who we have are agents. That’s a lot of who we have our connections and friendships with. But we post up a script or a variety of scripts.
You get to download that script. You get to read one or two takes of that. You upload it back to the website and the guest director will listen and provide feedback.
Very cool. After that, then everything gets posted on an archive page with everybody else’s reads, everybody else’s feedback. So you can go and listen to what other people did.
If you got a specific feedback, say, hey, try doing this, you can find somebody who read it the way that you wanted to read it. Listen to what they did. Exactly.
I think one of the greatest things is somebody gets feedback on something that you’ve been doing. You listen to them and you go, oh, okay, well, I hear what you’re talking about. Now I hadn’t heard it when I did it, but to hear somebody else do that, now I understand what you’re saying.
Man, that’s huge. I love… because a lot of people are so focused on improving their own performances that they forget to listen to others and to learn from the interaction of them and the coach, or just maybe just being around another talent.
Be like, wow, that was a really great technique. I should pay more attention.
Absolutely. And I think that you can learn more. This goes for any of the workout groups that we do in LA and all the classes that we go to.
You get your 10 minutes or so in the booth. Use the other rest of those three hours and learn. You can see so many of the people in that booth.
You can hear all this feedback. You get to hear all of this stuff. Take those notes.
Take what other people are doing. What are people doing great? And try that.
Here’s somebody stumbling over something and go, I remember when I used to do that. So how did I get out of that? You know, let’s see if this person gets out of the same way that I did.
And use that time to learn. And this kind of goes to the conventions. This goes to working with coaches.
This goes to doing any of the workout groups. You will get out of it what you choose to get out of it. And if you just go in and say, okay, give me all your knowledge and just throw it on me and I’m going to take this out of here and leave, you can leave very frustrated.
You can leave not feeling like you learned anything. But if you take the time and really pay attention to other people and what they’re doing and what they’re learning, listen to that feedback. Read the feedback.
Listen to people’s takes. Listen to some really great takes. Listen to some stuff that people need to improve on and learn.
I love that. You can definitely tell that you come from an educational background. But just the way that you approach it from this level of conscious critical awareness and critical analysis.
Absolutely.
And so, because as we’ve said many times on the podcast, you need to know what your voice sounds like, what it’s capable of. And you need to be able to analyze and articulate performances. Because if you can articulate something, you can do it.
Yeah. One of the things that I always… We do the in-person workouts at my studio a couple of times a week.
A lot of times, people give a great read. And instead of me saying, that was a great read, I say, great, tell me about that read. What was it?
How did that feel? What did you do that changed? What did you do?
Explain to us why that read was different. I know why it was different. I want you to explain to us why it was different, so you can articulate what it was that you did to make it different.
And going back to kind of one of the earlier questions about one of the mistakes that newbies make, I think one of the biggest mistakes people can make is just going into this passively. And not… One of the things that I found is the very first convention I went to, which was Voice 2014, was how insanely friendly everybody is.
And welcoming. And, you know, we always say like, oh, I mean, the voice of people are so nice. I keep waiting for people for that to change.
It’s been four years now. It’s not changing. We’re all…
I mean, everybody is… You know, everybody is just… Everybody is nice.
Everybody is helpful. And everybody wants to help. But if you just sit in the corner and expect things to come to you, it’s not gonna happen.
You have to go out and make it happen.
Yeah, it’s just like, you know, okay, I’ve signed with an agent. Now I’m just gonna sit back and wait for the phone to ring. That’s the same attitude that gets you that subsistence at best, honestly.
If that, yeah.
Yeah, if that. If you’re lucky that. But then again, there’s also the mindset of, okay, an agent is gonna take 10% of what you do.
You need to be doing the other 90% of the legwork.
Mm-hmm, yes.
So I mean, that right there, to me, it changes the mindset completely to, oh, they’re the gatekeepers to the work opportunities, but you need to be doing things, too, and making a partnership. So that whole idea, Tim, everything Tim said, it’s like we’re straight in a parallel line when it comes to approach. I know that I would never have been able to absorb as much stuff from workouts and workshops and seminars and everything if I had been passive, and I only go in there to go, I’m going to do this, I’m going to try to wow them, and then I’m just gonna sit there on my phone the rest of the time.
I mean, what’s the rule, Tim, when you walk in, phone’s down, right?
Put down your phone, yep, put down your phone, or at least let us know that you’re taking notes on your phone.
Exactly.
Because that’s now.
Because I mean, I lead a lot of workouts, too, through Global Voice Acting Academy, and even Paul and I will occasionally work out together. But anyways, I get so frustrated when I see people who are obviously muted, but practicing their next take. And I’m like, that’s great, I know you wanna do a good job, guys, but you’re no longer present and you’re missing out.
And I love that you brought up the word gatekeeper, Brad, because I feel like, and this is going back to that sort of antiquated idea of how you get in, we don’t view ourselves as gatekeepers to our own careers. Like, we always assume that someone else is going to get us in, to give us access. And agents do give you access to jobs that you might be unable to find on your own, but that doesn’t mean they do all the work for you.
Yeah, so like you guys are saying, you get in what you, or excuse me, you get out what you put in, and if you’re extremely active, you can see the people who just, you guys probably know who I’m thinking of, but just in a year or two or three have just gone from zero to full-time. And the drive is apparent. It’s obvious in this person and their interactions.
So that, more than anything, is just don’t sit on your laurels and just constantly try and move forward in your career.
Yeah, and I think it’s, sorry, go ahead, Tim.
Oh no, go ahead, Brad, I’ll pick up after that.
What’s funny is that it’s a balance to strike too, where it’s like there is a, you need to be doing more than the minimum of beating the pavement and doing what you need to do to be well known amongst your peers and everything, but then there is a limit on the upper side too, where you don’t want to end up being the person that’s introducing themselves to new people with their resumes and stuff.
Yeah, yeah. That goes back to being respectful and understanding what you’re doing, because agents don’t want to be solicited at a workshop.
Oh, God, no.
Yeah, that they don’t. And we’ve worked with agents in our work groups, and one of the things that more than one of them says is, don’t come in here and show me what you can do. Don’t come in here and show off.
This isn’t a showcase. Come in here and work. If you’re not here to work, then let somebody else come in here who is here to work and get better at what they do.
And it’s a big distinction between workshopping and showcasing.
Absolutely. Absolutely. And agents can see that, and casting directors can see that, and people know.
And it goes back to that, like, I mean, VO is a collaborative effort. It’s not, like, you’re not the star of the show. And if you’re going in this for fame or recognition, like, then stop.
Like, it’s not for you. Your job is to help give agents, casters, directors what they want. And so, like, there’s a partnership there that you need to respect.
Very much so.
Well, Tim, you talked about your workouts having the phone be… check the door. You’re talking about the in-person workouts at your studio, Soundbox LA, right?
Correct. Let’s talk a little bit about that. How did you start this studio, and what kinds of work do you do there?
Man, that was… I started this place in direct response to the fact that I had no idea what the heck I was doing, and I was failing at voice over, and I basically am a great example of how to do everything wrong. Get a demo, make a demo made.
Good, I’m done. Move to LA. Great.
Send that out to agents. Great. Nobody picked me up.
Okay, great, I got an agent. Well, let me take another year, and a year I’ll send out that. And in this year, I’m not going to study voice over for that year.
And let me take another couple of years off from voice over, and then I’ll go out and try and get an agent. And then I’m going to wonder why the agents don’t want to listen to what I’m doing, because I don’t sound like me. And let’s just isolate yourself and not talk to anybody and not know anything.
And part of that is the fact that it’s as overwhelming as it is, you pick up the Voice Over Resource Guide or look for a list of coaches. There’s what, three, four, five pages of coaches? They all look the same.
I can’t tell it’s between one coach or another. If you don’t know anybody, don’t have anybody to ask, don’t have anybody to hear feedback on, you don’t know, it’s like, here, let me pick, I can’t afford to go to every university I want to go to to find out which one I like. So then you just don’t go to any of them.
So I didn’t coach with anybody. I didn’t study with anybody. I didn’t train with anybody.
I would send out demos once a year and then wonder why I didn’t hear back from anybody. So talking about being passive, I was doing all the wrong things. And I was hours away from quitting Voice Over, and I decided to get out of bed and go to Voice 2014.
And there I met a bunch of people who were, as I say, failing the way that I was failing. And all of a sudden I was like, well, wow. So I’m not an outlier here.
I’m not completely lost in what I’m doing. And I have a great opportunity. I have the space.
So why don’t I invite some people over and we can all just kind of learn about Voice Over together and we can maybe all fail together. And from there, it kind of became a place that I kind of have built around the community. I built the studio was never supposed to be public.
It was supposed to be just a place where I do music and where I practice. And people came over and they needed opportunities or they needed a place to record. Well, here, let me come over.
You know, you need this mic. Well, okay, I’ll have this mic for you next time you come over. And I guess you need this and we need this kind of connection.
You need ISDN. Well, let me look into ISDN and see about this. ISDN kind of grew around the needs of the community and kind of became just, you know, I had this, I had a place and I wanted to share it with people and not keep it to myself.
And it’s grown into this, into something way beyond anything I had ever thought it would be. And we actually, you know, kind of opened two satellite studios earlier this year, one in Studio City and one in Sherman Oaks, where we’re going to start, you know, the responsibility of offering workout groups at those locations as well at some point. I do three workout groups a week most of the time, two that I run myself and one that Jay Preston and I run together.
And we don’t, I don’t advertise, it’s all word of mouth. And I just try and give people a place that feels safe and comfortable, and you can come in and do the best work that you can do because it feels like being at home.
That’s amazing. So I’m sure Brad will agree with me on this. And we were just talking about how amazingly, just generous and kind voice over people are.
I feel like Tim is an exceptionally kind VO person. Just a cut above. Because of all, I mean, just this idea, you’re incredibly community minded, and you’re always thinking, like, I don’t need all of this stuff, but someone else does, and I would like to provide it.
It’s amazing. I mean, I even saw a post recently, he’s like, I’m out of town this week, anyone need my studios? Keys are in the box.
It’s amazing.
Yep. The man does yeoman’s work. I mean, to use an antiquated term, but still.
I mean, it’s just so wonderful to know that that whole story of this being the most wonderful industry and everything. I think some people, they only scratch the surface when they understand that to a degree, because we circle the wagons and we take care of our own. I mean, I don’t know of any industry, especially an artistic one, where a person gets an audition and goes, you know what, this is not for me, but I know two other people that would be great for this.
I do that all the time. I’ve actually walked people to my agent. Well, I say walk, not physically, but just last week there was one where I said, I have a colleague who would be better at this than me.
You want to hear from him and maybe sign him? And they were like, yeah. So we did it.
Brilliant. Honestly, guys, thank you both so much. It’s not just about getting out what you put in, but you guys have given so much to the community and continue to do so on a daily, weekly basis.
Just to circle back to the weekly workout, Brad, what was something that surprised you from one of those weekly workouts, either from the presenter or the guest director or from a submission?
Oh, I’ll tell you what’s been surprising, and it shouldn’t be surprising. The funny part is I should have seen this. We should have all collectively seen it coming, but there is so much varied types and level of verbosity, if you will, of feedback that you get, because some of our most wonderful, great coaches that we’ve gotten wonderful relationships with over the years, they’ll sit back and they’ll record live, like what we’re doing here for the podcast.
They’ll record an audio version of what they have to say to any person that participates in the workout. Then there are others who are extremely concise and waste no words. And then there are others who type long, huge…
This is specifically what you did that I did like, what you didn’t like, and here’s how to improve it. And what’s been the greatest thing, the greatest gift, I think, out of all of this and all that variance of the kind of feedback that they have provided is the insight into the industry as a whole. As the fact that there are people whose whole reason of existence is to give feedback and lift others up and push them aside, push them further in their careers and make them better actors.
Then there are some who is like, I am a business person, and I’m going to give it to you straight, and I’m going to give it to you in a way that you may not like, but you’re going to hear something that you need to be more self-aware of. And then there are those who, you know.
Are moving yourself from that box, right? You’re no longer in isolation. You find out what…
You hear from people straight from the horse’s mouth. What is hiring? What people want?
What is the popular sound? So you’re able to provide it, ideally, because you’re listening and you’re just learning as much about what they want as you can.
The one thing that I really want people to take away from what both Tim and I and Jay together do versus what we do individually is, is we’re always trying to lift everybody. We really are. I mean, it’s not like we’re trying to do it to have people have high opinions of us or anything.
It’s just that this is what this industry needs, because we have seen corporate entities come in and just waylay the industry and try to literally, quote unquote, take over the world. I mean, it’s like a real live version of Pinky and the Brain some days, and that’s not necessarily a good thing. So we just want to make sure that we realize that we in Los Angeles have really a glut of wonderful coaches and agents and casting people that we all call friends, and we want them to know people that may not have that opportunity elsewhere.
And I think that has been one thing. Between Weekly Workout and between my old friends in Dallas who have been starting to poke the bear of Los Angeles and providing them an air mattress in my studio has been something I just want to make sure anyone knows, that when they come in from out of town, they generally, if they know me at all, then they have a place to stay with me. And it’s been great to see some of the projects that have actually been shown to be going live this week.
You know, something that one of my friends did, she just announced this week, and I remember a year ago when she was hanging out with us, my wife and I, here, and staying in our second bedroom, which is the studio, and now all of a sudden, here’s this thing that she was working on a year ago that’s now seeing the light of day, and I’m just sitting there just like shaking my head.
We’re like, oh my gosh, how does this all come together? And it just makes us feel like a giant spider web that we’re all interconnected in some way. And I just want to make sure that we do whatever we can to make this industry a better place and not a worse one at all.
Well, you guys are certainly putting a Herculean effort forth in that regard. I mean, honestly…
Well, one of us is. Tim. Tim is doing that.
You’re all great, but honestly, guys, I feel like you’re definitely kindred spirits. I love… I’m so happy to hear you.
And you can hear the joy in your voice from recounting people you’ve worked with succeed and excel. Yeah. It’s amazing.
He’s tearing up on me now. Big softy. But, I mean, honestly, I’ve felt for a long time that the biggest tool we have in maintaining and hopefully improving the voiceover industry is education.
And you guys are providing that in spades and you’re really bettering your part of the voiceover world. So thank you both so much. Or thank all of you guys.
Before we go, tell us where people can find you if they want to hire you as a voice actor or if they’d like to participate in the weekly workout.
Yeah, well, the weekly workout is just is voweeklyworkout.com. And you can see all the information is on there. There’s a login section where you can sign up.
And when you sign up, you get an email with all of the information about how it works, why we put it together, and kind of our goals with that. And then to find me online is just timfriedlander.com and it’s Friedlander like Frydlander.
Well, I’m not going to revisit the weekly workout because Tim made it more than clear where to find us there, but voweeklyworkout.com. And you can find me at bradvenable.com. That’s V-E-N like Venn diagram, but with one N, able, able to do things, or at atlastalent.com, one of the two.
All right, thanks, Edelman. We really appreciate you being here. It was a fantastic discussion.
Tim, thanks for making the effort to come to a studio in Seattle, or Bellingham.
Bellingham.
Hey, I had to drive farther than he did.
But you work here.
Sort of, sort of.
And we’re going for burritos afterwards.
Yeah, it’s a labor of love. And lay burritos.
Nice. Well, hopefully we’ll see you soon.
I see what you did there. Yeah.
I like portmanteaus. I miss you, man. Definitely.
And thanks again.
So thank you so much, Tim and Brad, for being on our podcast. And thank you, Voice Over Collective, for just offering an amazing resource. I highly recommend you check out their workouts and get to know a little bit more about them.
So you can find them at thevoiceovercollective.com or at their Facebook page, Voice Over Collective. It’s a wonderful community. It’s a great place to network and workout with your peers and just kind of practice those performances and maybe even get your ear in front of some very worthwhile casters.
So thank you guys so much for being a guest on our podcast. As you might have seen in sort of the promotional video teasers for this interview, Tim actually came up to… Tim and I actually recorded on location in a place called Bellingham, Washington.
I actually used to live up there when I was going to college. I was visiting my family that week, my brother and his family, and Tim actually had family, had grown up there himself in a neighboring city. So he came up for the afternoon and we recorded at a studio that I’ve worked at at the wonderful Binary Recording Studios in Bellingham, Washington.
Thank you, Bob Ridgely. And we actually used sort of… We weren’t in the actual studio per se.
We are in the kind of live room. So we used the VOMO, the Voice Over Mobile Booth, from our good friends at Vocal Booth to Go. So Vocal Booth to Go’s patented acoustic blankets are an effective alternative to expensive soundproofing.
Often used by vocal and voiceover professionals, engineers and studios as an affordable soundproofing and absorption solution. We make your environment quieter for less. So thank you so much to Jeff over at Vocal Booth to Go for supplying us with that VOMO.
And thanks again, Tim, for coming up. It was so great to meet you in person.
Yeah, thanks to both Brad and Tim from The Voice Over Collective and VO Weekly Workout. We really appreciate their time. The interview was really great.
Well, that wraps up this episode of The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
Come join us next month, like we said before, we have that epic mic shootout where we get to try over about a dozen different microphones at various price ranges, various polar patterns, just some really interesting choices.
Some other upcoming guests we have are Sarah Jane Sherman, casting director, marketing guru, VO marketing guru, Celia Siegel, and Peter Dixon and Hugh Edwards from Gravy for the Brain. Lots of good content coming up over the next couple of months.
Very cool, so don’t miss an episode, guys, because we’ll keep churning them out as the year goes by.
So that’s it for this episode of The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
Bye, everybody.
Thanks for listening to this episode of The VO Meter. To follow along, visit us at www.vometer.com. VO Meter is powered by IPDTL.

The VO Meter, Measuring Your Voice Over Progress. The VO Meter is brought to you by voiceactorwebsites.com, VocalBoot2Go, podcastdemos.com, Global Voice Acting Academy, and IPDTL. And now, your hosts, Paul Stefano and Sean Daeley.
Hi everybody, welcome to Episode 33 of the VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
Today is a very special episode. No, I’m just kidding, holidays are coming up, but we are talking about the Mid-Atlantic Voice Over Conference, MAVO 2018, and our experiences there.
Well, your experiences there, I sadly was not able to attend this year, but I get to listen to all of the wonderful interviews that you and our good correspondent Ken Foster took. So, if you’re listening on the interwebs, Ken, thank you so much for being on the field for me.
Yeah, and we had a great time. Hopefully you’ve been listening to the content we’ve been releasing over the last couple of weeks. We’ve been putting out one of the full interviews each day over the last week and a half, and we have a few more to go before we release this full episode.
So hopefully you’ve been enjoying that content, and stay tuned a little bit later when we have a compilation of all the interviews we did at the show.
Awesome, I can’t wait. It’s always so much… I mean, these conventions are always such just a mind blast of just amazing VO nuggets, whether it be performance tips or home studio builds or marketing tips.
It’s just an overload of information. So luckily you recorded some of it.
And speaking of recording, we’re actually recording now using the services of our sponsor, IPDTL. If you’re not aware, IPDTL is the cost-effective ISDN replacement. It’s great for interviews, for outside broadcasts, and voice-over, recording live at conferences like we just did.
And the best part is there’s no special hardware or software required. It works anywhere with an internet connection, even in a hotel. Monthly or annual subscriptions are available, and it runs right in the Chrome web browser.
And the best thing is, it just works.
Thank you, IPDTL, for being a sponsor of our podcast. Meanwhile, current events. So like Paul said, we recently went to MAVO 2018, but we also had another exciting current event happen this week.
We’ve reached 12,000 downloads! That is amazing! Thank you all so much for listening to the podcast, for downloading, for sharing with your friends and having them download.
We really appreciate it, and we’re just so happy that so many of you are finding the podcast helpful. So keep listening. If you have any ideas or questions for future episodes, please let us know.
So just hit us up on Facebook at The VO Meter or on our website, vometer.com.
Yeah, we really do want to thank everybody for listening. As you’re fond of saying in the Mike Myers tradition as his character in Wayne’s World, we weren’t expecting a listener. So to have 12,000 is just completely humbling and overwhelming.
Absolutely. We weren’t expecting any listeners. It was truly a passion project.
So aside from the MAVO content, is there anything special you want to talk about this week in your voiceover business, Sean?
Well, let’s see. Actually, I am participating in a fun little voice acting competition by anime voice actor Chuck Huber. It’s called the Now Voice This Competition.
It’s like the third year doing it. I’ve actually made it to the quarterfinals, so I’m really happy about that.
Congratulations.
Woohoo! So if I win, they fly me out to their studio, and then I get to record an hour segment, or I get a one-hour studio recording, and then get featured in an anime. So that, like, life goal achieved.
So keeping my fingers crossed for that, I’m working on my second entry for round two, and yeah, hopefully we can make it work.
That’s really cool.
Yeah, so other than that, I got a new mic that I didn’t need, but…
Wow, that’s shocking, honestly.
Very, very shocking. I did so well for so long, and then I just found an incredible deal. You guys have heard me talking about or dreaming, fantasizing about the Gafel M930 for a very long time.
It’s basically like a TL… Excuse me, the Norman TLM103 in the body of a TLM102. It’s super, super tiny.
It fits in the palm of my hand, and it’s just an amazingly well-made, beautiful mic, and to go with it, I got the Rycote Envision USML, as pointed out by our good friend, Paul Strickverde, and it’s just… Strickverde. Do I just have to say it like that?
It gets my heart racing a little bit.
Yeah, ever since Pamela, Paul’s lovely wife, screamed that in my ear at Uncle Roy’s, I feel like I have to say it right, otherwise I feel guilty.
Oh wow, she was there too? Yeah, but what about you, Paul? I mean, pretty much other than that, it’s business as usual over here.
What about yourself?
Well, I had one of those valleys we talk about where it gets really scary because the phone’s not ringing, the emails aren’t coming in, and at least in my book I start to think about how am I going to pay the bills? And man, I’m just a hack, I have no idea what I’m doing. No one’s going to call me ever again.
But luckily, as the ebb and flow of the business goes, right after those little feelings, and then I actually landed a pretty exciting audiobook project. It’s a really popular author, an actual New York Times best-selling author named Richard Eyre. I looked up the sales figures of his previous books and was really excited when I saw this and luckily they accepted me.
So I’m pretty excited about that. It’s a royalty share book, but like I said, it being for a best-selling author, I think the prospects are good. And the interesting part about it is that it’s a simultaneous release.
And if you don’t know what that means, it’s where the print version of the book is not out yet. And they want to release the print and the audio version at the same time. So it’s actually a really tight deadline, and that scared me a bit, but once I read through the book and then contacted my trusty editing pal Andrew Bates, we decided we probably can pull it off.
I only have 34 days to do it, so with the holidays mixed in, it’s going to be interesting, but pretty confident we can get it done. So I’m really excited about how that’s going to go. And it just goes to show that when you have those valleys, if you hang in there and show some perseverance, it’ll all come back around eventually.
It’s always darkest before done. Very nice. I’m very happy for you, buddy.
Thank you.
Very cool.
So, we’re going to get to the fabulous content we have from MAVO 2018. But before that, we need to tell you about our sponsor Vocal Booth to Go. So, Vocal Booth to Go, as you may know by now, sells patented acoustic blankets that are an effective alternative to expensive soundproofing.
They’re often used by vocal and voiceover professionals, engineers and studios, as an affordable soundproofing solution. They make your environment quieter for less. Now, they were actually featured at MAVO by me because I was demoing their products for a lot of people.
It was kind of funny because I had the booth set up and I had the VOMO that I brought that they provided, the Voice Over Mobile Unit, to record the actual content from the show. And then I had some business cards of theirs, too. And what I found was that most people wanted to know about Vocal Booth To Go.
They weren’t asking me any questions about the podcast.
They were asking me for prices. Well, I’m sure, I mean, like, you kind of had a confusing appearance for them, I’m sure. Like, everyone was like, what is this podcast?
I thought you were a rep.
Yeah, in fairness, you’re right. It was a little confusing. But since they’ve been so good to us as a sponsor, I was happy to help with them as well.
And I know all the products. I knew the prices. I knew how to get them.
I knew where the company is. And since this was a local show, conference in the Mid-Atlantic, I was able to tell people exactly how close it was to where they lived and it worked out pretty well for both of us.
Man, Vocaboot to Go has no idea like the gold mine they found in Yupo.
I think they did. That’s why they supplied me with all the stuff and sent me down there and said, you guys take care of it, because they were there in 2016.
Hmm, very cool. No, absolutely. I thought, hey, save them money.
They didn’t have to have any other people out there. It’s good business.
Yeah, it was funny, though. Because then people from the conference, like the staff, our friend Bob Johnson, who is actually one of the interviews we did, he was sending people over and said, just go talk to Paul. He’ll tell you all about Vocaboot to Go.
So up next, we have a very special VO Meter Schtick. It’s the Door Prize winner from MAVO 2018, Doug Schuetz.
Hey, everybody, it’s time for the VO Meter Schtick.
What did he say?
It’s time for the VO… Oh, never mind.
The VO Meter Schtick?
Oh, got it. All right, welcome to the VO Meter Schtick, featuring our door prize winner from MAVO 2018, Doug Schuetz. How you doing, Doug?
Fine, I never win anything.
You know, I always say that too, and then I couldn’t have pulled that off at MAVO because I won something, and then both of my kids did too, so that was right out the window.
That’s amazing. We were sitting at a table, and we all won something. There’s like four of us, and there was one guy there who hadn’t won anything yet, and I said, it’s your time, it’s karma, and you’re gonna get it.
It’s gonna happen, and it didn’t happen, so I was really bummed. And it was really from the other corner, opposite corner from us, won their table. So that was pretty interesting, I don’t know.
I don’t know, so hey, cosmic justice here.
Very cool.
I was keeping my fingers crossed to win this, let me tell you.
Well, who wouldn’t be?
I know, there’s so much pedigree and fuzzazz.
Right, and I think this is my first podcast interview talkie thing, this is great.
Very cool, so why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself, Doug, and why were you at MAVO?
Well, I was at MAVO, one, because I liked to attend something once a year. I went to Atlanta, I think, a couple years ago, but moving recently from Chicago to the Raleigh area to be closer to some family and grandchild, actually. And this was perfect, I kind of found it.
No, they had some great people on it, it was great. I got to be doing a little training with Johnny Heller and he was there and got to check out and Nailer was there and it was just great. So I wanted to get there and meet people that were closer to me and it was fun.
It was really a lot of fun. It was like right in my backyard. And it was small, too.
That’s what I really enjoyed about it. Compared to like Atlanta, which I guess has gotten huge. So nothing bad about that.
But it’s like the San Diego Comic Con of VO Cons pretty much. It’s pretty big.
Yeah, exactly. I know. And so I hope it gets bigger.
But she, you know, I was talking to her and she does keep it small. She puts a cap on it, which surprised me.
So yeah, it’s really to keep that intimacy. Like you said, and yeah, you can definitely feel the difference because when we took that picture at the end, for instance, you could look around and realize you had met probably everybody with the exception of maybe one or two people.
Right, right, exactly. I mean, I felt either I was better at, which I’m pretty good at meeting people I don’t know, but at Atlanta, it was a little daunting. And that was two years ago.
So I hate to be trashing them, but I mean, it was just easier, right? I think I met everybody, you know, I came across more people. I knew more people and felt comfortable about milling around than ever, than any other show I’ve been to.
Let’s put it that way.
Very nice. I mean, it’s just, like you said, it’s a very different experience. So like you might like the larger con experience, you might like the smaller one.
So, and like you said, it’s just so easy. Like there’s no distance between you and the other attendees. It’s only a couple of rooms, like chances are you’re gonna bump into someone.
Exactly, exactly.
As if you’re stalking them.
You’re not waiting. Yeah, you know what, you’re right. You know how you get those big ones and you’re kind of like, I really wanna talk, I don’t know, to Johnny Heller, but he’s got these six people deep and you’re kind of waiting there.
And this was much, much easier. I mean, it was much easier to approach people and you felt comfortable about it. And it was fun sort of not to be the newbie, you know?
Yeah, totally, totally.
I told everybody the things I screwed up on, but in my thing, but it was great to see, I said it was fun to help people and that’s what it’s all about, you know? And so I focused mostly on audio books. I do a lot of different things.
I narrate some stuff for the PGA and that kind of thing, but I’m really trying to get my audio book kind of corner together and it’s a little disorganized right now and I’m trying to fix that.
Did you go to Johnny Sessions?
Yeah, I went to two of the three and he’s a lot of fun. This is what I like about this industry and it was apparent at MAVO that everybody’s really nice.
Or pretending to be.
And that’s okay, I’m an actor, I can pretend to be nice too, but that’s what was great about it was… You can go to Scott Brick and talk to him, super nice guy. Johnny Heller, super nice guy.
Rachel Naylor, wonderful lady. It’s just really fun and every so… Let me help you.
Here, call me later or here’s the guy you need to talk to or no, yeah, call me up later. And it’s great. I mean, in actors, it’s kind of like you stand around and go, I have this secret place where I get all these acting jobs.
I really don’t want to share it with you.
It’s almost like we talked about this with… I can’t remember who it was. You have to listen back to the other content, but there’s somebody I mentioned it to.
It’s almost like you’re thinking, they have to be punking me, if you know that term. They can’t actually be seriously giving me the places where they find jobs.
Yeah, that came out a couple of times. Because we’re in Washington, DC., there’s a big government place where they need a lot of narration, voiceover stuff.
It’s a little tough to get in, but I had no idea. And people go, oh yeah, this is my bread and butter. Then I do this stuff, and I try to have some fun.
But yeah, that’s what’s funny about it.
So Doug, tell us, what was your biggest takeaway from the conference? Something you can put into action, or maybe you’ve already put into action, because it’s been a week and a half now.
Yeah, don’t make me laugh. No, I put it into action. I’ve gotten a couple things from Tom Deere that I’ve looked at.
I was trying to find a CRM that I could put stuff into. I keep finding them, and then I don’t do them because they’re so freaking complicated. And I’m not that stupid, but apparently I am.
I found a CRM that he mentioned, Close, C-L-O-Z-E, that works on your phone, works on your computer. I said, okay, I’ve got to implement this and get this to happen.
We were talking a little bit about, so now you’ve got all of this great information, you’ve got all of these tips and potential ideas for marketing your business. What are your goals for this year? What are you going to do with all that gold and knowledge?
Oh, my God. I can’t put this on tape. Then I’ll have to do it.
Yeah, I’m making you accountable.
Oh, God, you’re accountable. Everybody’s going to ask me now, how’s it going? No, what I want to accomplish this year is I’m going to get all my audio book samples, et cetera, up to, you know, the best they can be through professional guidance from folks I know.
And, you know, get my AHAB directory OK. I want to register with all the… My goal is to register with all the main book narration places and set up my marketing and my CRM so I can execute, you know, reminders and, hey, you know, I just did this sample.
Go listen to it. No, keep a system in which, you know, Tom Deere is just, you know, horribly organized about. And so it’s…
And get that all set and I’m going to go to APAC in May and, you know, the big publishers thing in New York for audio books and get my act together in that direction. And I think that’s enough for me right now.
Very cool. It sounds like a really kind of getting your ducks in a row kind of year. And like you said, preparing for those opportunities when they come up.
So I think you’ve got a great plan on… You’ve got a good head on your shoulders. You’ve got a good plan in place to stick to it.
And remember, there’s still lots of things, like you can still continue to grow your business in other ways while you try and reach for these plans.
Right, right.
Doug, thanks for being on The VO Meter today. We’re happy to have you on as our door prize winner from Mid-Atlantic Voice Over Conference 2018. And good luck with the rest of your VO year and beyond.
Tell us where folks can find you if they do want to hire you.
Well, yeah, if they want to find me, they could find me at www.dougschuetz, and Schuetz is spelled S-C-H-U-E-T-Z-V-O, so it’s dougschuetzVO, doug at dougschuetzvo.com.
Awesome. Thanks again, Doug, and we’ll talk to you soon.
Well, thank you so much, Doug, for being a guest on our podcast, and congratulations on winning our raffle. Speaking of podcasts, I’d like to thank our good friend and sponsor Tim Page of podcastdemos.com. Tim’s team has produced over 1,000 podcast intros for some of the biggest podcasts on the planet.
Each demo includes custom-written scripts and hand-selected music, and is guaranteed to showcase your voice and talent in the best light possible. With a finger on the pulse of what podcast producers want, you can be sure your podcast demo will sound professional, current, and competitive. And we’ve talked about this before, but Tim actually produced Paul’s and my podcast demos, and all we can say is that he and his team are fricking amazing.
His script writer created original scripts that were perfect for my voice and personality, as well as reflective of current popular podcast genres. I recorded in the comfort of my own home studio, and Tim worked his mastering magic. The whole process only took a couple of days, and I couldn’t be more pleased with the result.
Tim is a consummate pro and so easy to work with, so thank you again, Tim, and podcastdemos.com.
So we’re gonna get to our fabulous MAVO content in just a second, right after a word from the GVAA.
How many times does this happen to you? You’re listening to the radio when this commercial comes on, not unlike this one, and this guy starts talking, not unlike myself.
Or maybe it’s a woman that starts talking, not unlike myself, and you think to yourself, geez, I could do that.
Well, mister, well, missy, you just got one step closer to realizing your dream as a voice over artist, because now there’s Global Voice Acting Academy. All the tools and straight from the hip, honest information you need to get on a fast track to doing this commercial yourself.
Well, not this one exactly.
Classes, private coaching, webinars, home studio setup, marketing and branding help, members only benefits like workouts, rate and negotiation advice, practice scripts, and more. All without the kind of hype you’re listening to right now. Go ahead, take our jobs from us.
We dare you.
Speak for yourself, buddy. I like what I do.
And you will too when you’re learning your craft at Global Voice Acting Academy. Find us at globalvoiceacademy.com.
Because you like to have fun.
Hi everybody, we’re live from the Mid-Atlantic Voice Over Conference, MAVO 2018, with a very special episode of The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
I’m joined live, trying to fill in for Sean, but probably not as well as Sean could do, hopefully, by Ken Foster.
I’m gonna try my best.
So, Sean, we’re here at the conference, and last time it was you and I here, and we sort of winged it. Actually, we had this presentation to do a little bit later. Ken’s gonna join me on stage, or maybe just in front of a table, and I’m going to talk about how we really were sort of launching the podcast show when we came to the conference last time, and I’m gonna credit the conference with giving us the confidence to keep going forward, because I never thought anyone would talk to us, let alone some of the guests they had at the conference in 2016.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I find that people, everyone wants to feel like a celebrity, and nothing makes you feel more like one than being interviewed, both the presenters and the attendees. But you’re absolutely right.
I feel like that really is where we kind of hit our stride and kind of solidified our idea with what we were trying to accomplish with the podcast, with just trying to be genuine and helpful for people like where we’re at in before and after.
Yeah, it was really great. We got to talk to Nicola Richards, Sunday Muse, among others. Who am I missing?
Like you said, it was Jason Lanier-White and Sunday Muse and lovely Nicola Richards. And I believe Sunday and Nicola are gonna be there, are both there this year, right?
They are as well. So that brings up a good point. Ken, who are you most excited to meet or talk to?
Kari Waldron. I’m signed up for her breakout session. I’m really excited about that.
Joe Cipriano.
Nice.
Seeing Herb Moore again, that’s always inspiring for me.
And for people who don’t know who Herb Moore is, could you tell us a little bit more about that, Ken?
He is an animator on Disney Animation, and usually his session involves him creating some kind of a visual and people kind of chiming in with different voices and characters that they would take to bring that character to life. It’s a lot of fun.
Yeah, it’s really cool to think about it from an animator’s perspective.
Yeah, it’s an angle you probably wouldn’t think of, but obviously that’s where our work is going. Sometimes in reverse order, sometimes the voice is first, sometimes the animation is first, but if you’re working in animation, it’s good to know where your voice is being used and how.
Well, speaking of alternative insights, I know that Sarah Jane Sherman, Casting Director for projects like Disney and Warner Brothers, is going to be there again this year. She’s actually one of our new animation coaches over at GVAA, Global Voice Acting Academy. And so if you’re at MAVO, definitely go to her workshops, just listen to her say hi.
She’s an amazingly talented director, and hopefully you can do a session with her. She’s really great.
Yeah, I’m excited about that because I’m actually bringing my kids to the special kids program on Sunday, and they get to work with Sarah all day.
That’s awesome. That’s so cool. So I think now is as good as time as any to talk about how to sort of approach being at a voice over conference because a lot of people are curious about it.
They don’t know if it’s a worthwhile investment or not. Is it okay if you’re a complete beginner? Do you really need to have some experience?
So what do you guys think? What do you think is the overall ROI or return on investment ongoing to a conference like this?
Well, I can start. For me, it’s all about the people. The reason we’re doing this right now is because I met Ken at MAVO 2016.
So did I.
That’s true. I think I knew him from social media, but when I walked in and saw the purple hair, I was like, hey, I know that guy.
So did I.
He walked up and had a chat, and now two years later, he’s here helping us at MAVO 2018. So, and that’s not the only person I met at that day that sort of helped me solidify the relationships I had. But for me, that’s really what it’s all about is meeting the people and learning more about them, not only for their business, but personally, and getting to hang out with them and sort of peel back that veil that hangs over the relationship of social media and getting to know somebody in real life.
Absolutely, I would agree. It’s about the people and about the handshakes you make and the conversations you have. Making yourself available, being open, being social.
The ROI may not be as tangible because you’re meeting peers and you’re establishing initial contact with people face to face instead of online through a like or a friend request. So you’re gonna put a face with a name, shake a hand, maybe share a drink and have a conversation about something that’s not voice over.
I’m so glad that you brought that up, Ken, that it’s not necessarily a tangible or a financial return on investment because you don’t go to these things to get hired. Like it’s much more about professional development and networking with the people in the field that you are pursuing or want to pursue. And like, so like I said, you don’t want to go there with the mindset of like, here’s my business card, hire me, please.
Because you’re talking to your colleagues, not voice casters, right? These are fellow talent, not casters of talent. But even then, if you make a good impression, if you build strong connections, it might come back to help you in other ways.
Like fellow talent might refer you to a project that they’re not appropriate for, but they think you’d be a great fit for. Or any number of other things can happen, like you might start a podcast with someone you met at a conference. I don’t know.
I think what you’ll find is the returns are not immediately tangible, but you’ll see them down the line, especially if you stick with the business and you have staying power in the business. For instance, that same MAVO 2016, I met Jason White because I stuck a microphone in his face and we interviewed him. But then I did some coaching with him later on that year and found out that I really could do some character work.
And then what I found out was that I started to get opportunities from these people. I’ve received auditions from Sarah, I’ve received auditions from Jason because I made that relationship, even though it was two years ago, because we maintain that relationship, those opportunities present themselves and it all bears fruit down the line. You have to keep that in mind.
You’re not gonna see anything probably tomorrow. No one’s gonna call you on Monday and say, hey, remember we met 24 hours ago, I have a job for you. But it’ll bear fruit down the line.
And that’s wonderful. I remember two years ago, you actually taught me, like, man, I never thought I could do character work. You were just like, ah, audio book, narration, maybe commercial, but not character.
So I mean, it’s great. It really is a great way to experience different facets of voiceover that you might not be familiar with or not realize that you’re interested in. And so that kind of segueing from that, it really is a great place for beginner talent, I think, because it’s just a wonderful way to experience so many different things about the voiceover industry and to learn so much about it.
Yeah, like 500 or more might sound like a large investment, but considering how much you could be spending on training and equipment and setting up a home studio and all this other stuff, it might be a more worthwhile investment for you, even if you use that to realize that voiceover is not for you.
You can’t ask for a better way to get started if you are a beginner here at MAVO. We have Dan Friedman who can help you set up your studio, Tom Deere who can tell you how to market your business, as well as Celia Siegel.
Brigid Reel is doing the Veal for Newbies thing on Sunday morning, so that’s targeted right into that pocket.
It really is a place of good karma and just positivity and support of, nobody is judging anyone there and keeping like the presenters are all professionals, but they understand that the people who come to these are at varying levels of their career or maybe are not even officially professional voice talent yet. So, and they’re completely, like they’re so down to earth and they’re so like approachable, so you really should. And I know a lot of voice actors tend to be introverts, I know I am, but you really have to challenge yourself to break out of your shell a little bit.
And, cause I mean, this is your tribe, man. These are all kindred spirits. And even if you’re not talking about voice over, you’re sure, like, I mean, I have made dozens of like fast, lifelong friends from these kind of events.
So really, I can’t stress enough, you get out what you put in. So come from a place of giving when you attend.
Exactly, and speaking of great atmospheres, a couple people are blowing up my phone about not being at the bar. So Ken and I are gonna skedaddle and get down and mingle with some of the people and get ready for tomorrow.
I hate you guys so much.
So we’ll see everybody tomorrow morning when we get started with the presentations and the panels, and we’ll have another talk then.
All right, bye guys. Have a wonderful time, you two. Ken, thank you so much for contributing to our podcast.
And everyone else, have a wonderful day.
Okay, so welcome back to the floor here live at MAVO 2018. I’m now joined by Tom Deere. Tom, how’s it going so far?
It’s going good, man, how are you?
I am well. So I sat in your session this morning. Tell me what you’re looking to get out of a conference like this when you come to present.
I come to spare people of all the things that I screwed up. I really do, I really believe in that. The voiceover industry has been so good to me for such a long time.
I would not be a successful voice talent or coach without the amazing community of voice talent that have guided me and helped me and advised me and gave me hugs when I need them and smacks on the butt when I need them. So what I want to get out of it is knowing that I have been able to even just help one person avoid one mistake or to help one person look at themselves in a slightly different way, to be a little bit more forgiving of themselves because we’re all alone in these booths, we all think our problems are unique and we don’t know if we understand the industry or ourselves or what to do or what not to do or how often to do it or am I doing this right, am I doing this wrong, but if I can help validate or affirm even one person to help them know that they deserve to be successful, they’re on the right track, they’re gonna make mistakes, we all make mistakes, I make mistakes all the time and I’ve been doing this for a long time. If they realize that and they are just that much more set up for success, then I feel like that my time and my presence here has been worth it.
That’s great. I really resonated with that this morning when you said about your most popular response to your blog is when you talk about your screw ups and I found the exact same thing to be true. My most popular Instagram post, even though I haven’t done that many, was when I posted where I got rejected for an audition at 7.05 in the morning from Chicago.
7.05 Eastern Time, which means it was 6.05 there and I was so bad that the program director got back to me that quickly and said, no, no thanks. And that was hugely popular on Instagram.
It’s funny like that, isn’t it? Well, like I said in the class, we admire people for their flaws, not their virtues. And when you say, I made this mistake, especially someone like me or Johnny Heller or Joe Cipriani who’s been doing this forever, when we share, this is how I blew it, people can identify with that and they go, okay, so I’m not the only person.
They are not perfect.
Johnny Heller had a first audiobook, 700 audiobooks later. He did the first one and I bet you it wasn’t perfect.
Welcome back to MAVO 2018 on the VO Meter and I’m now joined by Stanley or Stan Fisher. How are you doing, Stan?
I’m good, man. I’m having fun today.
Awesome. So tell me what brings you to MAVO or what are you doing at a conference like this?
I do audio production on top of voice work and one of the things I created a couple years ago during the transition of my life was called My Demo Dude, where I had at the time was doing a lot of demo work for a couple people in the industry, a couple companies, and I wanted to get away from that and just focus on my own control over how we were creating that content. And the bigger reason I did is because I love the creative conversation, I love working with other artists, and I found more value there to sit with someone and serve their life by helping them create a portfolio that was going to serve their career and maybe along the way build a healthy relationship with that person. And from there, I’ve scaled it back even more where if the relationship isn’t right, then I won’t touch that either.
I want to make sure that on all ends of the spectrum, the experience is amazing for both of us. So I’m not a mass production house. This is not my meat and potatoes.
I do not live off of this. It’s just a sub-brand to what I do on a daily basis.
I’m curious because I know you’re based in my hometown of Baltimore. How is that as a home base for production in VO?
It actually has increased my workload because there’s not a lot of people in the area touching into it. And what a lot of people don’t know is there’s a lot of national brands out of Baltimore. A lot.
And I’ve networked recently with two or three brands that are now using my work for their companies. And I’ve also networked with a PR firm that is responsible for the creation of commercial content for 13 national brands. And I did not see that as much in the Carolinas.
They exist, but not as much as you would think. And so doing my research, a lot of the reason these national companies are in the area is because they were established in the early 1900s. And you’ve got the Inner Harbor, and you’ve got a city that’s trying to rebuild itself.
A lot of companies are coming out of the North. There’s a lot of people moving out of New York. They’re leaving New York State because of the taxes that they’re paying.
And so they’re coming a little bit more further south.
And Maryland’s that much better, really?
Well, for them…
It’s like a ding for the tax burden, too.
Yeah, and it’s not as bad, though. So if you do your research, New York is pretty rough. New York State, because my family’s from there.
And my uncle’s a truck driver. He spends far more in taxes to the point that he wants to leave because it gets worse and worse each year. And so more and more people have left those areas to come further south.
And you also throw in the factor of the weather and stuff like that. Even though the weather isn’t the greatest up in the Baltimore area, it’s still better than going up further north. But anyway, that’s just something I’ve noticed since I’ve been here for the last year and a half, that there was a need for the things that I do and supply to that area because of the riots, businesses that had to shut down for that particular area.
And I’m right in the middle of the arts district, the Baltimore, and there’s a surgence of them recreating and breathing life into the city. And there’s a huge hole creatively for people like us to step into the equation to give clients a direct connection so they don’t have to outsource outside the city.
So, welcome back live to MAVO 2018. We’re here with Rachel Naylor from The Voice Over Network. Tell me about your experience so far at the conference.
It’s been fantastic, so thank you for having me on to start with. And yeah, it’s lovely to be here. Really, really excited to be back in the States and to be at this wonderful conference, which is, Val’s done an amazing job.
It’s really, really great and lots of lovely people, so yeah.
I agree. So when you target your appearance at a conference like this, what are you hoping to get out of it?
When I come to things like this, I want to meet as many people in the industry. I want to help inspire people. And I love seeing people at the beginning of their journey and watching them grow and watching their careers flourish.
And yeah, the Voice Over Network, which is the company that I founded and that I run, is all about helping, supporting, and strengthening the voiceover industry. And it’s about bringing the industry together. Agents, producers, casting directors, voiceover artists.
From around the world. So we started in London and we’ve grown now. We have lots of members here in the States as well.
We’re going to start doing events over here. And yeah, it’s exciting.
You’re spending an awful lot of time in the state side, aren’t you?
I am, yeah. This is my third trip this year. And I love coming out here.
It’s just wonderful to come out to these events and surround yourself with other forward-thinking, proactive people in the voiceover community.
It really is a community, isn’t it? You get that feeling of camaraderie, of having somebody as your wingman, somebody by your side to go through it together. It’s really fantastic.
Definitely, definitely. And it’s very unique. I don’t think there are any other industries like the voiceover industry in terms of that sort of wonderful community.
And because we’re actors, most of us are, well, all voiceovers, I think, is acting. But it’s not the same as kind of on-screen and theatre actors who, you know, you have to think about your appearance. And there’s something lovely about voiceover artists because it’s about our personalities and successful voiceover artists.
You know, we are getting booked to interpret scripts, so you have to have quite a big personality to be able to do that. And it’s, yeah, I mean, it’s lovely, I think also because we spend a lot of time sitting on our own in a little black box talking to ourselves, that when we come to these events, you know, it’s just lovely, everybody’s so, so wonderful and share, you know, there’s a lot of sharing and a lot of kind of helping each other, so yeah, it’s wonderful.
You started out with an acting career before a voiceover.
Yes, yes I did, yeah.
What brought you to that transition?
Oh, I’m still an actor, but yeah, I mainly do voiceovers now. And I think for me, the big thing was feeling in control. I loved having a voiceover business, and I remember feeling like, also I wanted to start a family, and I could just see the structure of having a voiceover business.
Plus, the first time I got in front of a microphone, I just had that moment, you know, when I was like, I am home, this is where I’m meant to be. And I, like a lot of people, in my early days of my career, I really struggled. I mean, it was tough back then.
You had to have an agent, and I couldn’t get an agent. And I remember having to, like, make CDs and send them in the post and, you know, all that kind of stuff we don’t have these days. It’s so much easier.
And the fact that as much as you can, as long as you’ve got the kind of, the drive, you can get your own work. Whereas when I came into the industry, it was really hard to get your own work. You know, you didn’t have a home studio, you had to have an agent, and it was, I remember sort of pounding the streets, no, this is, I’m going to continue.
So I think that I’m in a good position with the Voice Over Network, because I totally understand that, I relate. And I want to share the information that wasn’t available when I started.
Welcome back live to MAVO 2018. I’m now joined by the fabulous Nicola Richards. How are you this morning?
Marvelous. How are you doing?
I am doing well. So you are a host on the opening night. Tell us what that experience was like.
First of all, I think I’m still recovering.
As am I, actually.
Well, it was a lot of fun because we hadn’t done something like that before. So to have the beginning, the intros, and then into the karaoke, it was a lot of fun. But as I said, I am still recovering.
But it was a lot of fun. A lot of singers. Yeah.
I tried to sing. I don’t know if you could call it singing.
A bit like My Sweet Caroline.
I did The Power of Love.
Yes, you did.
From Back to the Future and did not realize how high the key was. Halfway through, my voice started cracking. I had to bring it down here and completely change the song.
It was not pretty. There’s actually a video of it that I think Anna Clements tweeted out.
I think it got like… That went viral, didn’t it?
Probably. So tell me what you’ve enjoyed about the conference so far. Have you had a chance to go to any sessions?
I have, actually. This time has been really good for that because when I was here a few years ago, I was doing things at different times and it managed to see as much as I wanted to. So this time, I feel like I’ve seen most people, most of our guest speakers, and I’ve been to a couple of breakout sessions.
But for me, this conference is just… well, it’s getting inspired, so I found it massively inspiring once again. And got a few different tips.
I went to a gaming… for video games, which I’ve never sort of even looked into before, but I found that fascinating, so that could be something I would look more into maybe.
Yeah. Awesome. So, unfortunately, we’re almost done.
It’s Sunday morning, Sunday afternoon. Is there anything you’re still looking forward to this afternoon?
So, there’s a couple of things. I know Herb Moore has got a session today, and Mark Scott as well, so I’m looking forward to those. A bit more networking.
A bit more inspirational videos with people probably.
Have you done a lot of live videos here?
I’ve been doing a few. And sort of trying to get clips of people, like what’s been inspiring for them throughout the conference. It’s been quite interesting.
Lots of different answers.
So what’s your biggest takeaway? When you leave the conference, you go back… Are you going back home after this?
Back to England, and then I’m going literally a day later to Lisbon, because I’m going off on my travels again.
That sounds fun. So what’s the biggest thing you’re going to take away from the conference, you think?
I think, and this is something I’m quite passionate about anyway, but the importance of being true to yourself, especially in your voice career and things like that, because that seems to have been quite a theme. I know Kari Walgren, she spoke about that, about being authentic and genuine and following things that you are truly passionate about. I feel like I’m going to do more of that.
That’s great. I noticed that as well. Kari mentioned it, like you said.
I know Gabby Nistico mentioned it in her session. And even Joseph Riano in his promo session talked about not being all the time amped and up in the air, really amped up to do the promos that you think of that he does. He found a lot of his work recently with CBS by bringing it back and being more conversational.
Yeah, exactly. And that’s a theme that I’ll definitely, the biggest one I’ll probably take away.
Awesome. Well, thanks for being with us this morning. Thank you.
Enjoy what’s left of the show.
Thank you very much.
So welcome back to The VO Meter live at MAVO 2018. I am now joined by Mark Scott. Mark, how are you doing?
It’s been so long since we talked.
I know. It’s weird. It’s almost like we’re working together.
I missed you. But where’s Sean?
It just doesn’t feel the same.
You know, we actually thought about piping him in. We did it yesterday for a little pre-show, Ken and I did, but it’s a little difficult on the floor here. You get to wear headphones.
It would just be weird.
Yes, I understand.
So tell me about what you’re looking to get out of the conference.
You know, I love what’s going on this weekend in that I love that it’s been intentionally kept small. And it’s cool to walk down the hallway and be able to talk to people and spend a little bit of time with people. And it’s nice to have a smaller number of people in the session as well because it gives me more time to address personal questions.
You can’t always do that when there’s 50 or 60 or 100 people in your session, right? But when there’s only a dozen or 15, 20, whatever, it makes it a lot easier. So I think that’s really cool.
So I like that aspect of it.
Yeah, it’s small by design.
Yeah.
I think it really works well. This is my second year here, second year for the podcast. And just like 2016, I really love that intimate atmosphere.
You get to know everybody.
Yeah, it’s cool.
Yeah, you get to rub elbows and say hi, and you know, put your faces to names and all that.
For sure.
Much more than bigger ones, for sure.
Yeah, don’t feel like you’re getting lost in the crowd.
Yeah, so you’re doing some sessions here. Tell us about those.
Yeah, I’m doing a marketing fundamentals for voice actors. And the beautiful thing about that, actually, is once you learn the basic foundations of marketing, it really applies to anything. So, you know, it’s a really popular thing in 2018 now for people to have side hustles and stuff like that, too.
And so, not only are you going to draw value from that session in being able to step up your voice over business, but if you got something going on in the side as well, maybe some of the principles are going to apply to that. So I’m really looking forward to that session this afternoon. And then tomorrow, five essential goals for your voice over business and the one word that will kill it all, which I know I’ve done a good job on that title because a lot of people have been like, ooh.
So now, we’ll see whether that converts and they all show up for the session or not, but a lot of people are definitely intrigued by it, so I’m looking forward to that one too.
That’s awesome. So aside from your own sessions, what’s something you’re looking forward to for the rest of the conference, either today or tomorrow?
I’ll tell you what, actually. I sat in this morning on Tom Deere’s session about… Actually, we were all there….
more about the business. That should be required training. If you are going to do voice over, if you think you’re going to do voice over, his session that we sat in this morning, 100% should be a required training course for anybody before they even take the next step forward, because I think it’s one of the most overlooked aspects of it.
Voice actors tend to be creative by nature and by that side of the brain that they operate from. And so many fall short because they don’t think like a business owner and they don’t treat it like a business. And so getting that business foundation laid down before you dive in will make your life so much easier and I think it will help you grow your business a lot quicker with a lot less pain and heartache.
So I really wish that there was a way to make that required learning.
You can’t buy a microphone until…
Yeah, that’s it. We’re going to talk to all the manufacturers. Don’t sell this guy a microphone and an interface until he’s got a certificate from Tom saying, I took his course.
Tom did say he lives across the street now from the B&H headquarters. Or the B&H store in New York. He could do that.
Yeah, we got to work that out.
Stand at the revolving door and say, uh-uh.
No, not until you take this course.
Welcome back to live at MAVO 2018. We’re now joined by Lisa Leonard and Ken’s back, which is nice.
Hi, Paul.
How are you enjoying the conference so far?
Loving it. So glad I came. This is only the first day.
I’ve had, what, four sessions or so, and I feel like I’ve learned a ton already. And I’ve been doing this for a couple of decades, so I really… It’s a case where you can teach an old dog new tricks.
I’m just learning some really good, valuable, practical tools. And this is only day one, so I’m pretty happy to be here.
Have you been to this conference before?
No, I had attended other voiceover events in the past, years past, different one-day trainings as well, but this is my first MAVO.
And what was your expectations going in, or did you have any?
I talked to some people who recommended it, and they specifically mentioned the smaller group size, which appealed to me. So I am enjoying the fact that I’m seeing the same people, and already the bonding is happening, and a group of us just went to dinner together and had a great time, and I think that there’s some value in that small group dynamic.
What was your, before you came, since we’re halfway through, what was the highlight in your eyes coming here?
The expectation of what I was hoping?
Yeah, like you’re looking forward to the most, maybe a speaker or maybe a session.
Well, branding is something that I’m hearing a lot about, and I saw Celia speak years ago, Celia Siegel, and I feel that I’m at the stage now in my life where I want to get clear on my own branding so I can market myself better these days when everybody is trying to find their own niche, their own brand. So that’s what I’m hoping is really going to come out of this weekend, and I feel like I’m already off to a good start. I enjoyed Celia’s program this morning, and I’ll do the breakout with her tomorrow as well.
Excellent.
Unfair question, but what’s been your favorite thing so far?
That is totally unfair. I don’t think I can really answer that. No, but it’s so far so good.
I mean, I would be very honest and offer some valuable feedback if I feel like this was a bust or a waste of time or we just weren’t getting our needs met, but I’m very pleased so far with everything. And I’ve been speaking with a lot of experienced voice professionals as well as a lot of newbies are here, and it seems that we’re all getting value from being here. So I think that’s…
I don’t know how they’re finding something for everyone, but we’re all getting what we want. So there’s magic happening here at MAVO. MAVO magic.
So one thing that’s a highlight for me so far, the three of us are in Joseph Riano’s promo class.
Yes.
What did you think of that?
Oh, so good. Yeah, I mean, just to get mic time in front of a guy like Joe who’s so awesome, that was special. And for all of us, we all, you know, just to be working with one of the greats, it was a wonderful opportunity to get the kind of real-time feedback and to get his insights, like to just hear how he manages when he’s in a hotel room and the client needs him at, you know, all hours or two in the morning or something, and he has to wake up and sound really bright and happy and promo-y, and he does it well, and that’s just kind of a day in the life of this really famous voiceover guy.
That was kind of cool, just to see how he does it when he’s on the room.
Yeah, it was really cool that he actually brought this set up to let us execute, you know, reading promos. Instead of just talking about it, we were all doing it, and you killed it.
Oh, well, thank you.
And he directed, too, which surprised me. I mean, I guess he’s been doing it so long, he should be able to do that, but I guess I still don’t know, I should have asked him this, if it’s something he does regularly. But he was able to turn people’s performance on a dime in just a few directions, including me.
We all got something out of it.
Yeah, that was a great session.
So we’re through two days, well, if you came last night, it was mostly just partying, but we’re through the partying of the pre-show and now today. What are you looking forward to tomorrow?
Well, tomorrow, the breakout about the branding, that’s one thing, and then is on the schedule tomorrow. I’m just an open book. Whatever comes to me, whatever lessons I can learn, I’m going to be really open, soak it all in, absorb it all like a sponge.
Awesome, thanks for joining us. Glad you’re enjoying the conference. Happy to be here.
Thanks for having me.
We’ll see you tomorrow.
Okay, see you.
We’re back live at MAVO 2018 with Johnny Heller. How are you doing, Johnny?
Very well. Thanks for having me on your shindig here.
Thank you for appearing. We’re so glad to have you. Tell me, what brings you to a conference like MAVO?
Well, I’ll tell you what. I got contacted by Val Kelly, who runs this… Gosh, I can’t remember, earlier in the year, to see if I do this.
The Johnny Hillings Flynn Difference Workshop, the New England Narrative Treat. I’ve done a lot of stuff. She wanted, I guess, somebody to come out and talk about audio books, the genre for which I’m best known.
I welcome the opportunity. I love doing stuff. It’s fun to go share what you know and meet new people and give them a…
kind of open the door. There’s so many people who want to do what we do in the voice of the world. Some actually should do it, and some actually shouldn’t.
But it’s not for me to pick the wheat from the chaff, but to tell them what it’s all about and then let them take steps forward. So it’s a wonderful experience, and I enjoy hotels.
And I love the way you do it. I sat through your session in Beale, Atlanta last time, and I still use a quote I heard you say in that session about reading ahead. Somebody asked the question, do you read the book ahead?
And you said, the last person who should be surprised by the end of the book is you. I just love that quote.
Well, there’s real true stories about people who I know, I’m not going to name names, who have done books, and found out at the end that the character that they voiced with whatever accent they gave them was not the accent the author intended and the author didn’t reveal to the end.
I did that actually. One of my first audiobooks, I made that mistake before I trained with our friend Sean Pratt. It was a book about space aliens.
None of the character names were English. They were almost like Klingon. So I get to this general, and I selfishly assume it’s a man.
So I do the whole book, and then I get to Chapter 9, 9 of 10, and I see the general walks in with her troops, and I say, it’s a woman.
It ruins everything, and you simply have to redo it.
I did, yeah.
It’s a ton more work, only because you didn’t read ahead. There are other books. I did a book, Democracy’s Right and Democracy’s Mike.
There’s three books. I’ve done two so far. And I’ll tell you what, I started reading through them, and I kept on these wonderful characters.
You know, these space… It was like a Star Wars kind of thing. So you got these generals and pilots and stuff, and it begins with all the stuff about them, a huge backstory, and then they get blown up by three pages in.
Every single one. So I have all these character voices. So I realize they’re all getting killed.
I started doing any impersonation I felt like. You can have fun with it. But I had to read ahead to make sure that it’s men, women, or…
If they’re a space alien, then who cares what they sound like. But if they tell you that the guy’s Irish, you can’t be doing Scots. And you have to read the book to know that.
It’s the same as knowing the punchline to a joke. A joke with no punchline is no joke.
So you’ve had your session today. How did that go? What impressed you about the session?
Besides my personal self. I thought… I actually was really pleased that they had to bring in like 30 more chairs.
I don’t think they knew that people were really excited about audiobooks. I think audiobooks and video games are the two biggest… two fastest growth industries right now in the voiceover industry.
So being a part of that, people were really, really keen to know things. If you know a thing, and someone wants to know what you know, it’s kind of exciting. It’s like, oh my God, someone’s interested in my knowledge of cabinet making.
You know, so you share that. So they wanted to know about audiobooks.
They really loved me.
They liked me. I’m not a worthless guy. So that was kind of nice.
It was nice to see all the people who were interested, and they were absolutely interested. You know, lots of questions, lots of… You can just tell.
It was really neat. It was really a good experience.
Welcome back to MAVO 2018. We are now joined by John Florian from Voice Over Extra, who was our very first live guest on the show.
My gosh, was that in this century? When was it?
It was actually two years ago, right in this exact spot, actually where your table is now, across the hall at MAVO 2016.
You have come so fast, so far. It’s amazing. Congratulations.
I’ve got nothing to say, but we’re still fumbling like always. So this is four years for you or five years at MAVO?
I’ve been to every one.
So tell us what you’re looking for when you come to a conference like this.
What I look for is newcomers, people who are looking for answers, and well, at all levels of their career, because Voice Over Extra, it’s the online news and training resource for the voice over industry, and I want to help people, and we have something for everybody, so I want them to sign up for a free subscription mostly, and in that way, I keep in touch with them daily with new products, announcements, and then people can also sign up for our news alerts for new articles, and people have told me, they keep consistently telling me to shows like this, but I’ve helped their careers, and that just makes me feel good, so I want to meet more and more of these people.
Yeah, you’ve definitely helped our careers as well. You were kind enough to put our link to the podcast on your website, and we’ve definitely gotten a great response from that.
It’s still there, it’s still there, proudly there.
We haven’t done anything to make you drop it yet, good.
What is your goal? Let me reverse toe. What are you doing here?
My goal is to promote our podcast, to get more listeners, and expose some of the people that haven’t had as much experience to some of the things we’ve learned. Basically, the thrust of the whole podcast is to give back the knowledge we’ve learned from the kind folks like you at Voice Over Extra, all the coaches and sponsors that are here and back in 2016, and give back to the community. So help people like we’ve been helped.
We have similar intent here. That’s good. That’s like minds.
That’s very nice.
Yeah, it’s a common theme I’ve heard. I’ve heard Tom Deere in his presentation yesterday say basically the exact same thing, that he teaches because he wants to give back because of all the kindness he’s been shown over the years.
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. It’s definitely a different industry than the competitive acting and some other industries that I’ve been associated with.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, very nice.
So have you had a chance to attend any sessions, and if so, what was your favorite so far?
I have attended a number of one, a number of them, and I’ve been kind of taking with the animation people. I’m not going to be doing character voices myself, but I just love the way they can just… Sunday Muse and Carrie Waldron can just kind of get into a character so quickly.
It is so fun to see the talent that they display. And of course, they’re here to share everything that they know too.
Yeah, they started on is amazing. We were just in that panel with Herb Moore, Carrie, Sarah Sherman, and Sunday. And my kids were there.
I sat behind them. They met the stars, their shows.
Yeah, and now they’re inside the session with Sarah who cast Finneas and Ferb, and they’re both on Cloud 9.
How wonderful, yeah.
So we’re almost done here, but is there anything you’re still looking forward to at the conference?
I’m looking forward to getting back home, inputting all the names that I’ve gathered here, and getting to working with people, getting to really helping them.
Well, that’s great. Thanks again for being on this morning, and enjoy the rest of the conference.
Here’s a silent handshake.
Thanks, all. Okay, everybody. So we are live at MAVO 2018 with the incomparable Joe Cipriano.
Incomparable. Thank you, Paul. I like that.
Wait, hold on. I’m just going to look that up.
Wait a minute. Thank you.
So thanks for joining us. My pleasure. My first question, and I’m thinking a lot of our listeners will have the same question.
As much as I love Val, and she does a great job, when I saw you were on the schedule, I thought, wow, they got Joe Cipriano. So tell us, what brings you to a conference like this?
Right. Well, and when we all got together last night, it was a great night last night, first evening, and they had all of us get up, the presenters to speak, and the sponsors and things like that. And what I said last night is true.
Val reached out to me over a year ago, you know. Maybe it was a year and a half ago, you know. And to put it on the schedule, and the reason why…
I love her energy, and I love what she’s doing, and I love the fact that it’s in this area in Washington, DC., and that it’s bringing kind of a big type voiceover conference, although in a smaller package, to the DC area. And for me, it’s where I started my voiceover career.
And that’s why I said to Val, listen, you got me from the letter go, you know, the word go.
You had me at hello.
Right, exactly. I started my career here in Washington, DC while working in radio. And so coming back here, I have so many great memories here.
We come here often because my wife’s family lives here. And I met my wife here in broadcasting at NBC. And we got married here.
And then together, two years after we got married, we moved to Los Angeles to pursue our voiceover, our broadcast career, her in television as a news writer, and me in radio to pay the bills, but to really now go after the type of voiceover career that I had hoped to get, and that was in network promos and things like that. So it’s great to be here because this is where it all started for me.
That’s fantastic. I knew some of those stories because I just got done listening to your fantastic audiobook.
Oh, thank you.
Living On Air. I highly recommend you download it because it’s done by Joe himself and produced by the amazing AJ. McKay.
AJ. McKay did all of the audio design on it, and it was directed by Maurice Tobias. And I asked Maurice to do it, and she agreed to do it, and I was so thrilled because I was concerned I’d never done a long form sort of thing before.
And I wanted her to be on me so that I wouldn’t fall into older habits of promo-type work, and I wanted to tell the story, and I wanted it to be more of a radio play with sound effects and original music by Greg Chun, who did some great original music. And so, yeah, it was really fun to do that. It was a thrill.
By the way, I started on my… For those of you who are into microphones and things like that, and by the way, I always say it ain’t about the mic, but I started on the 416 doing the audio book. And it was just a little too…
I wouldn’t say harsh, but it wasn’t warm enough for storytelling. So then I switched to a Neumann U87, which I’ve had forever, and I think it came out better, and it helped. I think it’s a warmer sound, and it really lends itself to storytelling.
I’ve done some books on the 416, and sometimes it works, but I found, especially a long-form book, it’s fatiguing as a listener. I was listening to a book Bob Sauer did a couple of years ago, and I’m so sorry to tell… I actually told him this, and it probably wasn’t the best choice of words, but I told him it was fatiguing on my ears, and he said, I’ve never had a problem with it before.
And he walked out in a huff.
No, he’s the second nicest guy in voiceover.
He is an awesome guy.
So did Maurice direct you in person, or did you do it remotely?
Yeah, no, we did most of it in person, and then some of it we did remotely, but most of the time she came to my home studio to do it, and then she was also on the line, AJ is in Kentucky, so she was on the line with AJ when they were doing the selects, you know, for that. I mean, it was really kind of a… it was a bigger production than it needed to be, but being the type of, you know, coming from what I come from, radio and wanting to make it sound more like a radio play, I think I needed to do that, and everybody did such a great job on it.
AJ worked endless hours on it, and that was way back in 2013, and we’ve been very good friends ever since.
I’ve heard that.
It never gets old.
We always give AJ a hard time.
I love AJ. I’ve worked with him myself. He did my last demo.
He’s a fantastic producer. So back to the conference. Have you been to any sessions yet?
Yeah, I was in this morning for Hugh Edwards’ opening. And you know, I always sit in on sessions. In fact, as I walked by you, I was just going to go in and sit.
But I always learn, whenever I come to these conferences. And one of the things I picked up from him, and I’ve heard it before, but it just reminded me of, and I was talking to my wife about it when I went back up to the room, in talking about negotiating with a buyer who wants to have something in perpetuity. And the way that he tells, teaches how to negotiate that, it’s like, okay, you can have it forever, and it’s an evergreen.
That’s going to cost this amount. Let’s say that it’s $2,500. But if you want to do a one-year usage for it, it’s going to cost you $750.
If you want two years, it’ll be $1,500. And he says, I guarantee you, they’ll look at what the evergreen is, and say, you know what, I’ll go for the one-year deal. And that’s the way it should be.
And then you calendar it, and after a year, check in with them, go, hey, how’s that video going? And yeah, it’s going well. Well, let’s talk about year two.
Let’s re-up it. Oftentimes they’ll say, you know what, we have new stuff. Let’s re-do it.
And I just think it’s those kind of things that are the business side of Voice Over that is so necessary for people who are coming in and who are already working in Voice Over, especially non-union, especially people who don’t have agents that are doing that for them. It’s so important to know the business side of that.
We’re back live on the floor at MAVO 2018. It’s Sunday, and I’m now joined by JJ Cerma.
Hey, Paul.
How are you doing this morning?
I’m going to be way better after I have this coffee, which we stocked out and now both… So, cheers. Both actually gotten ourselves to where we need to be, holding a nice cup of coffee on a Sunday morning.
Agreed. So, tell me what brings you to a conference like this. This is your first time at MAVO, right?
It is.
So, I actually met Val via email and phone a long time ago, in fact, and I take no credit for her success. Her success is all her own, but she actually sought me out. I’m the Creative Services Director of Cumulus DC, so I was a production director for local radio stations, and somehow we got connected.
She sought me out by email, and we ended up on the phone, and at the time, I think she was a French teacher, and she was…
She still is.
Yeah, she still is, okay. She had this voice, which when I heard it on the phone, kind of put her above the level of email exchanges I have with the basic question, how do I get into voiceover? Because I hear that a lot, and so I have sort of a stock answer that I give to people, and it’s a generous answer, but it’s a stock answer.
And then when I got on the phone with her, I was like, holy goodness, you do need to do animation. And it’s funny because I was actually trying to find a parking space at this school for my daughter’s dance recital, and there were no spaces. So as I drove around for like a half hour trying to wait for someone to leave so I could park and see my daughter’s dance recital, I had all this time to talk to Val.
And so we ended up on the phone for like, I don’t know, a half hour, and we had this great conversation. And then a couple years down the road, she was like, hey, I’m doing this conference. And I wasn’t in the best place with VO at the time.
I was in one of those valleys that Rachel Naylor just talked about, and I was kind of feeling negative, so I didn’t come. And Val, to her credit, had stuck with it. This event has grown, and finally I’ve gotten to be here, and I’m so excited, not only for the possibilities for myself, but for my friend, to see Val go from, hey, I’m a French teacher who wants to do animation, to putting together an awesome event like this.
I’m really happy for her.
Yeah, it really is fantastic. We were here recording in 2016, but it’s grown so exponentially, not by size because it’s designed to be small, but in stature and reputation, I think.
Well, I think it in value. You know, as someone who’s really only been to some smaller conferences, you know, sometimes the small is in the value as well. I mean, some of them are more valuable than others.
It’s just the nature of those things. And sometimes that depends on where you are in your career and also how you connect with the people that are there. But, you know, really the value of…
I can’t believe it’s only been a day and a half that I’ve been here because I’ve gotten so much information and so much encouragement and have made some great starts to a great relationship so far. It’s really, really appreciative of what she’s done and also the value of this conference.
I agree. So tell me what’s been your favorite part of either a session or something you heard on the floor?
Well, again, the relationships. And, you know, I had a great conversation the first night, just kind of… I don’t know if it’s God or the universe or whatever your belief system is, but I was in the right place at the right time to have a great conversation that really reaffirmed how I had kind of gotten through that valley that I had spoken about before.
And I didn’t really have a lot of the tools and terms to realize sort of emotionally what was going on, but I had put up a lot of resistance in my life to my own success. And now being in a position where I’m much more confident and taking responsibility for my own success, I just feel so much more encouraged. But I gotta say, the coolest thing, and you know what I’m gonna say, was being in Joseph Riano’s class yesterday and reading promo to video with him was just…
I mean, he’s a legend. That’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience. And to not have fallen on my face completely, I see as a raging success.
Welcome back to MAVO 2018. We are live with Gabby Nistico. How are you?
I’m good. How are you guys doing?
We are great. So tell us what you were expecting coming to MAVO this year.
What was I expecting?
What were you looking forward to?
Oh, gosh. So I think, you know, it’s a different group of speakers than some of the other conferences recently, so I was excited about that. Of course, Kerry is amazing, so I was like, gotta see what’s changed, at least, you know, does in the keynote.
And Herb’s here, and I really want to hear his stuff, which is coming up, I think, in like half an hour or so. Yep. He’s gonna be doing some things.
He’s on that panel tomorrow as well.
Yes, and I mean, it’s just been a great group. It’s been a very engaged bunch. I’m diggin it.
So what are you here promoting?
So I’m here on behalf of VO Boss, which is my podcast with Ann Canguzza. I know. Never, I know.
Just this tiny little thing nobody knows about us. And then, of course, my YouTube channel, Gift of Gab, and just myself as a coach and presenter and speaker and all that good stuff. I’ve got my books here with me, and it’s been a nice time.
Just getting to talk to some new people, and this is a really on-it group, very, very sharp. I was expecting, I think, more beginners, and we’ve got a nice intermediate crowd, which is really great. So we’ve been talking shop.
I think it’s probably about a third newbies or beginners I think I’m running into.
Yeah, but that’s not as much as usually. Usually it’s like twice that.
I think it might be a better educated group of newbies. Maybe thanks to you, maybe thanks to us. Who knows?
That’s pretty cool.
But I’ve talked to people who say they’re just getting started, but yet they have gone through training.
I know, that’s what I’m saying. I’m like, what? You guys are on top of it, which is amazing.
Well, it’s an investment, so I think you want to make sure you’ve got some groundwork laid before you come and spend the money and the time.
I would hope. And I feel like we’ve been saying that for years, and people are listening. It’s catching on.
I’m like, this is good, yeah.
So have you had a chance to attend any sessions yourself or at least poke your head in?
Just a couple. I caught Sunday Muse for about a half an hour. She’s amazing.
She was just thoroughly and completely entertaining. I don’t even know all of what I caught because I feel like I came in a little bit out of context on some of it, but it was great what I saw.
Was there dancing?
There was a little bit of dancing.
I attended the one she did in 2016.
Yeah, there was a lot of movement, and then Rachel Naylor, of course, I got to hear some of hers. I didn’t quite see it, but I heard it through the walls while I was presenting. And yeah, that was interesting.
I think we heard that as well, actually.
She had some people screaming, and I don’t know, there was wolf noises at one point.
It was like jungle-book, barky.
It was a whole thing. It was very animalistic. I don’t know, but everyone seemed to have a good time.
We’re two-thirds of the way through, I guess, now at this point. Would you answer the question?
I know.
It’s going fast.
No.
It’s going way too fast.
Is there anything specifically you’re looking forward to on Sunday?
Sunday, I think… No, because I hate the last day. I always hate the last day.
I don’t want to leave because my friends are here, my people, and then I have to go back to my booth all by myself.
All the teary hugs.
Yeah, so the last day always stinks. I hate that, but… There are prizes.
There are prizes. This is true. We’ll be giving some stuff away.
I donated a couple books to it. And it’s Veterans Day, so I think that’s the big thing I’m looking forward to, is thanking some vets and people who have dedicated time and service to the country. Yeah, I’m looking forward to giving them a little pat on the back.
Well, Gabby, thanks for joining us here and enjoying the rest of the conference.
Thank you.
So welcome back live to the VO Meter here at MAVO 2018. I am with Dan Freeman. How are you doing, Dan?
I’m great. How are you?
I am fantastic. So tell us what… You’re telling me.
I’m the only host right now. Tell me what brings you to a conference like this.
What brings me to a conference like this? Well, the people being… Basically, as I always say, there’s only two kinds of people that spend their lives in dark, padded rooms talking to themselves, and we’re the kinds you want to be around.
So, for me, it’s really just to get out there with colleagues and friends and just enjoy myself. And here, besides doing my own thing and representing my own company, Sound 4 VO, I’m here with Sennheiser Microphones, and they provided all the PA systems for the rooms. So I’m here setting those up and making sure everybody has what they need and just kind of making it happen.
And we thank you for being here and thank Sennheiser for being the equipment provider again.
They are awesome.
Indeed. I used the Sennheiser microphone myself.
Yes, absolutely.
So what have you experienced so far? Have you been in any sessions? Have you poked your head into any of the rooms?
I poked my head in here and there. So a little bit of Tom Deere doing the business stuff, Celia Siegel who is just always amazing with her branding stuff, and of course the opening session this morning, and it’s all been great, just totally a good time as always.
So you might have seen during Hugh’s session, he had people raise their hand if it was their first time at a conference. As an engineer, what would you say is most important for someone just starting out to get from a conference like this?
Reaching out to people. Don’t be afraid to talk to anybody here that is mentoring We are here because we want to be a part of the community and to help everybody and just make it better for everybody. And if people are reluctant to reach out to us and talk to us, then they aren’t going to experience the full effect of what we are here to help them do.
That’s really succeeding their career and also to just help the industry in general. It’s so crazy right now as an industry.
So this is just a really great opportunity to learn how to do it right.
Okay, great. And as a vet, someone who’s been here maybe to the conference before or they’ve been to other conferences, what’s a good way to approach a conference as a veteran?
Well, again, it’s really connecting, I think, with the other people.
You know, all of us have our strengths and our weaknesses. So I know for me, even though I’ve been in this business 20 years, I’m always ready to learn from somebody else. I never think that I know everything.
There’s always something that one of my colleagues and friends has to offer that maybe it’s a weakness for me, either the business side or something like that. So I’m always excited to talk to them and also see how they’ve developed over time because a lot of us that I’ve been going to conferences now for probably at least 10 years, maybe, to see how they’ve grown too in their own businesses. So it’s exciting, I think, for all of us to really kind of come up together in a lot of ways.
So we’re live at the MAVO 2018 conference on Sunday towards the end, and I’m joined by Celia Siegel. Tell me about your business and what brings you to a conference like this.
You know, I came here to talk about my favorite thing, branding. So I did a talk on branding and how to use that to catapult your business as sort of a superpower, an extra thing on top of all of your other talents, how much it can put you on the map, voice over wise. And then I’m doing a breakout session today with a group of 12 people, and we’re really going to dig in and try to really nail down each individual’s brand through some exercises that I do and listening to people’s demos, and we’re going to workshop it as a group.
And people will walk away with a really good sense of how to platform themselves and talk about themselves.
Great. Now, what sessions have you attended other than your own? Have you gone in any rooms and poked your head in?
What’s impressed you so far?
Oh my gosh, everybody’s been so great. So I’ve never been to MAVO. It’s my first MAVO.
So I was so excited Val asked me to come. I didn’t know much about it. Everything I’ve been to has been amazing.
It’s very… a lot of great animation stuff here. So, Kari Wahlgren, it’s been so fun to meet her.
She’s actually at the agency that I worked at when I was in Los Angeles. So we just missed each other. So we have a lot of people in common.
She’s just fabulous and so giving. All of the talent here are raving about how much she’s connecting with everybody and really sharing and giving. Sarah Sherman’s been a wealth of information from the casting director perspective.
They did something together from the talent perspective, casting director perspective. I just came out of Rachel Naylor’s session on networking. I feel personally jazzed.
I love coming to these things as an entrepreneur just to learn for myself and get filled up for myself in my business. Hers was amazing. I showed my schedule in front of me.
I’ve been doing tons of great stuff and great talent here. People are sponging it up.
What would you say is your biggest takeaway now that we’re two-thirds of the way through the conference? I just had JJ Surma here talking about it, and we talked about how the down-to-earthness of the presenters is so evident, that people are really willing to share what they’ve learned, and not in an aggressive way. They’re really willing to have that communal aspect.
That’s what I’ve been impressed with, and JJ thought that as well.
Yeah, no, I would agree. It’s a small conference, which I’ve been so excited. I love the big, busy conferences are so exciting, and stimulating, and you’re bouncing, and I was like, oh, 104 people.
I’m going to get to meet everybody, talk to everybody, and it does. It feels like a really casual sort of cocktail party, you know, office party, where everybody is connecting. So there is a really nice, even plane, and the sessions are small.
So yeah, it seems like everybody is talking to the presenters, and everybody’s being really sharing. Johnny Heller last night was just saying, I’m here to work, I want to connect with people, and give people what they came for. So yes, I would agree with that.
Yeah, I like that feeling as well. We both been to VO Atlanta, and sometimes you get to the bed at night, or sometimes the next morning, and you think it’s like Vegas. Your head is spinning, or WobbleCon right now is going on.
But here, I actually went home last night, because I live near Baltimore, as we talked about, and brought my kids back for the program with Sarah. Yeah, they’re having a great time. But I got home and felt right to sleep, and it was like a normal night, which sometimes is just nice.
Yeah, no, it’s got space between things, but you’re not bored. So there’s like a just enough. It’s a just about right.
Now I feel the same way, like not… You know, it’s fun to be overstimulated after talking to 700 people in a day, but it feels like your own wedding.
Exactly.
I got like 45 seconds with everybody. So yeah, this has been great.
Welcome back to MAVO 2018. Ken and I are now joined by Bridget Meal.
I’m going to shake your hand even though no one can see me shaking your hand.
So you’re representing Gravy for the Brain here this weekend, correct?
Yes.
Tell us a little bit about that. What brings Gravy for the Brain and you personally to MAVO?
So I’ve been with Gravy for the Brain for almost a… Well, for about a year now. And it isn’t…
For those who don’t know what it is, it is the online educational and small business resources for voice actors. We have, I think, 20 online courses that people can get that give them the basics of voiceover technique, home studio, things like that. We have over 200 hours of content in webinars and VO mentoring.
We do four webinars a month. One that is a voiceover genre technique specific. One that is studio tech.
One that is business and marketing. And one that is a wild card. We do one Q&A live mentoring a week.
Again, two VO, one home studio tech, and one business and marketing. And all of that is uploaded onto our site. We also have a CRM.
We have contracts and templates for people. We have a career profile website, which you don’t have to be a member for, and everyone should have, because that puts you into our VO talent finder. I call it the snapshot resume, so even like we all have websites, but on this you put your up to six demos, your bio, your agents, all your contact information.
You can break down all of your credits into on camera, off camera, singing, VO, and you can get into genre specific VO, add your links, things like that. That goes into the talent finder, but you can also put a footer in your signature or on your website. And if somebody hits it, it automatically pops it up.
And when you look at it, it really does look like a snapshot resume. That’s really cool. You don’t have to be a member for that, so that’s free regardless.
So we just like to share the love, and there’s so much information out there, and we’re just really trying to guide people and help them feel like they have some sort of a success and some sort of a path that they can follow to kind of get them up and running and get their businesses thriving. That’s awesome.
You gave your first presentation this morning, right?
I gave my first live presentation. I did this webinar, the Beginner’s Roundtable, for Gravy for the Brain, about five months ago, I think. And it seemed to go over really well.
And Val asked if we could do something else in addition to Hugh’s amazing presentation the other day. And Hugh said, hey, would you want to do it? And I said, sure.
Actually, I think originally he asked me to do something different, and I was like, no. And then he said, would you do the Beginner’s Roundtable? So that was a lot of fun.
Yeah.
I was not able to attend because I was bringing the little guys down the Beltway, but I heard great things.
Good, I’m glad to hear that. I hope so. I hope it was valuable to people.
I mean, I tell people all the time, I’m not a coach, I’m not a mentor, I’m a voice actor. And I’ve been doing this for five years, so now my job is to send the elevator back down for the next person who’s coming up. I’m trying to help people out, you know?
It’s a great analogy, paying it back.
Yeah, exactly.
Pay it back, pay it forward.
Help the next person out.
Welcome back to MAVO 2018. We are live now with Bob Johnson, who I met last time I was… No, I didn’t meet you last time, I met you just after this conference, and we said next time we have MAVO, we have to get together.
So welcome, thanks for being on.
It was 2016, and I was saying, you were at MAVO? I didn’t see you there.
Yeah, I was kind of a whirlwind that day, as I was talking about during our intro last night. It was our third episode ever, and Sean and I were running around like chickens with our heads cut off because we had no earthly idea what we were doing, and just trying to get things organized. We’re a little bit better now, marginally.
So good to see you again.
This is my fourth MAVO. I’ve been here since 2014. 14, 15, did 16, and then this one.
Awesome. So, as a veteran of the conference, what are you looking to accomplish this year?
For this particular conference, it’s the level of presenters that they have. And again, from year to year, this conference just continues to grow and get bigger, both in participants, but also the presenters as well. And so, you know, getting ready to hear Orman talk about Bedalgo, to hear Gabby talk about conversational reads, to Johnny Heller in audiobooks.
I mean, across the board, whatever level you are as a voice actor or whatever genre you want, you have some element of it here at MAVO. So that’s what makes this conference great.
Yeah, I agree. I would agree that the caliber of presenters is just amazing. I sat right here with Joe Cipriano this morning.
Joe Cip, I didn’t even mention him.
I said to him, as much as I admire what Bal’s done, when I saw he was on the schedule, too, I said, what?
Right, right. It’s going to be exciting. Yeah, it just kept coming, and I’m like, wow, this is getting huge.
Uh-huh, I agree. So what have you done so far today? Have you had any sessions that you were sitting in on?
The only… I have a session coming up with Johnny Heller, and I have another one tomorrow with Johnny Heller, I think, as well. I did one with Gabby with Conversational Reads, which is always interesting.
I did one with Tom Deere today, talking about the strategy behind this, and you’re all reminded that this is a business first. And you’re always scratching down notes and saying, all right, mission plan, goals, and vision statements and that thing. But yeah, overall, yeah, it’s been great.
I’ve met a lot of people who have been here before. What struck me this year when we were talking is the number of new people here, and specific to folks in the Mid-Atlantic region. Folks that have been doing voice overs, but others who, quite frankly, haven’t done anything in the voice over world but want to come here and try to get involved in it in some way.
Yeah, I noticed that as well. This morning when Hugh Edwards at the opening sessions asked everybody how long they’ve been doing this, he said, show of hands, who’s never been to a voice over conference? And almost half the room raised their hands.
Right, yeah.
And I was amazed at the sheer amount of talent in this area, because I don’t often see it. You know, we lock ourselves in our little boxes, or you’re about to lock yourself in your new little box.
How about that, huh? I like that.
And you just don’t see those people very often, unless you’re at a conference like this.
And that’s the beauty of the conferences, is that you get out, you get to meet people, you can talk about room tone and actually have an interesting conversation about it. But at the same time, you realize, wow, you know, we’re only a few miles apart. And even if you’re half hour to an hour, DC area being maybe two hours away, you’re really not that far away from people.
So there is a good, rich community here to get together with. And it’s nice that VAL puts this stuff together for all of us to sort of come out, as opposed to, I usually do APAC as well, and that’s always a good one. And I’m doing Voice Over Atlanta this year as well.
I’ll be there as well.
All right, good.
We are back live on Sunday morning at MAVO 2018, and we are joined by Armin Hirstetter, first thing, and Ken is here as well. How are you, Armin?
Hi, Paul. Hi, Ken. I’m great.
Thanks for having me.
So, tell us why you come to a conference like MAVO.
I’m always looking forward to be interviewed by people like you. That’s why I’m here. No kidding.
Val asked me if I would like to do a talk on MAVO, would like to get a sponsor for MAVO 2018, and I thought, yeah, that’s a nice thing. Just to find out a week later that another conference booked exactly the same weekend, which I…
Really? I hadn’t heard that.
Yeah, I haven’t heard of it either afterwards. What a shame, but it’s a different story. And of course, always connecting to the talent is very, very important.
There are many talents that are just about to start their career and to put them on the right tracks and to see what they’re up to, what their problems and issues are, how they approach online casting, and to teach them what to do, what to avoid in the online casting world. Again, inspiration from the vets. So many things why I always love to come here.
And I can get away of Europe for a few days, and then I use it as a little breakaway from the usual day-to-day business.
That’s great. So you’re here representing Vidalgo, obviously. Tell us how Vidalgo can benefit from the attendees at the conference, or how you can benefit the talent that’s here.
Well, the talents that have no clue about the online casting world whatsoever because they’re just starting, for them it’s good to know, okay, how does online casting work and what to do and the tips and tricks in my talk that I gave about the online casting. So they can benefit from them. New talents or aspiring talents can also learn how to use technology like Vidalgo Call, where you can have a session over the internet in hi-fi quality and you don’t have to pay for it because it’s completely for free.
And still the people don’t use it.
I don’t understand that. It’s a phenomenal service. I really do not understand why people aren’t…
I think it has to do with… Because it’s also connected to Vidalgo, studios might have an issue with… They don’t want to have their clients looking at a voice over casting website because then the clients might not go to the studio anymore that is doing the session, but maybe casting the voices directly themselves on Vidalgo.
So it could alienate some people from using it because it’s also an online casting service. But anyway, it works nice.
You actually tried to help with that by offering a matchmaking service yourself. Do you still offer that?
I was trying to explain to Talents if they are approached by somebody else that need a voice and the Talents themselves cannot fulfill that role, they should tell their clients, well, use Vidalgo because it doesn’t hurt them. And if everybody does that, well, there are much more jobs on Vidalgo, which is kind of the ethical online casting website. And they are not going to anybody like Fiverr, VDC, and so it’s good for everybody.
Sort of a related question for Kari and Sundae. Do either of you have a home studio? And if you do, how much do you use it?
I go into auditions, I sell tape, and then as far as recording on shows, I’m in Toronto at the actual studio.
I have a home studio, but I do find that most of the work that I do ends up being out at a studio as well.
If you are more interested in promo, if you are more interested in network branding, like for radio stations and things like that, you’ve got to have a home studio. That is broadcast quality. Because with my friends I know that do promo, they’re kind of a call almost.
It’s very lucrative, but they’re on call all day long so that the second that Fox calls them and says, we need tonight at nine, that they can record that from their house and send it to them immediately. I did one radio branding campaign for a radio station in Arizona for a couple of years. And actually for me it was really stressful because the turnover was so fast and then if I was out doing three sessions during the day for animation studios, there would be this crunch to try to get that stuff to them on time.
And for people that are interested in the radio brand, 98.1 or whatever, if you’re interested in that, one of the cool things I’ve learned is that it’s about quantity, because those places will pay you, a lot of times, like a retainer fee and stuff. So a lot of people that do that, they represent like 40 different stations. So they’re just constantly, constantly, constantly doing it.
So, you know, I was the tool, I was like just doing it for one place. But it’s, in those cases, your home studio, you’ve got to be aware that that’s going to be broadcast.
That’s what they’re going to use.
Every once in a while, it’s good enough quality to use for, you know, for use on a TV commercial demo or for the radio network branding. So you just kind of have to look at what your goals are. If you’re mostly auditioning for just TV and radio, VO and animation things, just make sure that it’s audition quality.
Okay, we’re back live at MAVO 2018 with Anna and Joseph Stefano, who just got done the first ever kids program. So guys, what did you think of that?
Well, it was very long. It was pretty fun, though. We got to do a lot of script reading and we did a table read and we were able to criticize each other’s performances.
I should note that they’re both eating mints right now from the room, so if they don’t sound like they’re doing professional voiceover work, that’s why. Alright, so Joseph, what did you think of the session?
I think it was really cool and I learned a lot. I thought I did really well, but then the teacher was like, try to do this, try to do this, so I learned a lot from that.
So you tried it and then Sarah told you how to do it a little bit differently?
Yes.
Yeah, well that’s how the job works for the most part, so hopefully we’ll do more of that. Any other things that you thought were cool and or were hard?
Yeah, I liked it a lot. I thought it would be more like just talking like I do at home, but it was cartoon things, so it was a lot like the drama camp. It was kind of like a play, because at the end we got scripts and we got to read through them and do a table read.
So I liked that. And I liked how we could give feedback on the person reading their lines and everything.
You liked giving other people feedback?
No, pretty much everybody gave feedback on every line that I said.
So do you guys think you could do cartoons?
With a lot more help?
I think I could, just might need a little more help.
Well, great job, guys. I’m glad you were able to come here and have some fun. And we want to thank Val for setting up the kids program and Sarah Sherman for running it.
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All right, so what did you think, Sean? That was pretty cool, huh?
It was amazing. Oh, man, I just… Last couple of weeks, I’ve just been so jealous between WOVO and MAVO and SOVAS and so many abbreviations.
Yeah, I was pretty jealous myself about SOVAS, especially the people who went straight from MAVO out there.
Oh, I know.
So, yeah, like Joe Cipriano, for instance. We talked to him at MAVO, and then I just saw pictures of them over the weekend at SOVAS.
Man, that’s so… It’s got to be exhausting going to so many cons, but it’s amazing that people at the top of their field, like Joe Cipriano or Sarah Sherman and Kari Wahlgren, are willing to be so generous with their time and make these appearances at these conventions so people can kind of help out aspiring talent or those who are aspiring to reach a new level of talent in their careers. So thank you Joe and Kari and Wahl and all of the wonderful people who put these events together and just get such dynamite guests to appear.
So thank you all so much.
Yeah, what we found was that, although it is an impressive list of characters, so to speak, that were at MAVO presenting or as sponsors, everybody sort of had the same theme when we were talking to them that they really enjoyed being part of the community, giving back to the community. Tom Deere talked about the whole reason he teaches is because he feels like he needs to give back to the community that helped him get started. And you and I have talked about how that’s the entire thrust of this show basically.
And Joe Cipriano said how he just loves being communal. He sits down and talks to people, not just during his sessions, but at lunch, at dinner, he will actually engage people and purposely dress up is something he mentioned, which I thought was pretty cool, because he wants to seem like it’s an important event. And because people have paid money or given up their time to be there, he feels like he should reciprocate by treating it as a professional event.
That’s wonderful. Making sure they get their money’s worth. And I’m sure you talked with him at the event.
Yeah, I may have mentioned his name like 27 times during the other interviews. I was being teased by AJ McKay about that because I used to get on him about doing that. And here I am saying, Hey, did you hear we talked to Joseph Brown?
I’m a friend of a friend of Joseph’s.
But for someone at that level of success, he’s so humble and so friendly and approachable and just a charming gentleman.
He actually came to lunch, sat down, and my kids were there with me because they were part of the program with Sarah Sherman, the kids’ program. I actually dragged them over to meet the kids earlier in the morning. And he came to lunch and called them both out by name and said, Hey, how was your session?
And they were kind of blown away by that because on the drive down I had said, He’s the guy that used to introduce The Simpsons. Or still does, I guess. Yeah, he still introduces The Simpsons.
Yeah, very cool.
But he wasn’t the only one who was so generous with their time. Hugh Edwards was there to do the opening ceremony, the opening session, and then flew to Vegas immediately after that to finish up at WobbleCon. So if you saw pictures of him in DC and also WobbleCon in Vegas, those weren’t cardboard cutouts.
He actually did go to both.
Now that’s commitment. That’s amazing.
And Rachel Naylor was so generous with her time. Kari, again, so approachable and easy to talk to. I met her within like five minutes of being in the hotel.
Gabby Nistico, also very friendly, talking on the floor with everybody. She was there with the Exhibers booth as well. Not with the podcast, though, because we were the official podcast partner.
Gabby’s great, though. I’ve done some radio imaging workshops with her in the past through GVA, and she’s just a hoot. I mean, she’s so much fun to work with.
Yeah, and someone else who I had a lot of fun with was Stanley Fisher. He runs the company My Demo Dude, as well as Stanley Fisher Creative. We talked to him.
That’s the interview that you probably have heard by now if you’re listening to this show. But he’s a local guy based here in Baltimore, and that was really cool to hear because there’s not a whole lot of voiceover talent or especially no demo producers that I’m aware of in this area. Stanley’s only been here for about a year, so he’s the first one I’m aware of that really produces demo specifically for voiceover in the Baltimore city area.
Excellent.
But all in all, it was a great show. We thank you for joining us through our sponsor, IPDTL, even as short as it was. That was fun.
And we want to thank Ken for being our wingman on the floor and helping out with some of the interviews.
I had this interesting moment because I reached out to Paul Stracquerda after I got the Gafel, and I was just like, for me, this is more than just an expensive mic. It’s a symbol of the level of talent and professionalism that I aspire to.
And he said, well, you’re not there yet, kiddo.
Even I was like, I don’t even know if I’m there yet. But I want to earn that. And if there was anything that I can do for him, because he’s always been a source of inspiration and aspiration over the years, please let me know.
And he’s like, all I ask is that you give back and pay it forward. And you guys already are with your podcast and all of your helpful posts online. So that was really touching to hear from a very respected mentor.
So if you’re listening, Paul, thank you so much for that. And we’ll just keep trying to give back, just like you asked.
He’s become really a big advocate for us. He’s always liking and retweeting our posts, always talking us up in social media. So I really appreciate his support too.
All right, so we’ve got some exciting episodes coming up. Next time, we have some guests from the VOC, the Voice Over Collective. And we’re going to talk about the importance of accountability groups and educational groups and inspiring a sense of community within the VO community.
Stay tuned for that. Thanks for listening to this one. And we hope to see you on the next VO Meter.
Thanks for listening to this episode of the VO Meter. To follow along, visit us at www.vometer.com. VO Meter is powered by IPDTL.

Welcome back live to MAVO 2018. I’m now joined by the fabulous Nicola Richards. How are you this morning?
Marvelous.
I am doing well. So you are a host on the opening night. Tell us what that experience was like.
First of all, I think I’m still recovering.
As am I, actually.
Well, it was a lot of fun, because we hadn’t done something like that before. So to have the beginning, the intros, and then into the karaoke, it was a lot of fun. But as I said, I am still recovering.
But it was a lot of fun, a lot of singers. Yeah.
I tried to sing. I don’t know if you could call it singing.
A bit like My Sweet Caroline.
I did The Power of Love from Back to the Future, and did not realize how high the key was. So about halfway through, my voice started cracking. I had to bring it down here and completely change the song.
It was not pretty. There’s actually a video of it that I think Anna Clements tweeted out.
I think it got like… That went viral, didn’t it?
Probably. So tell me what you’ve enjoyed about the conference so far. Have you had a chance to go to any sessions?
I have, actually. This time has been really good for that because when I was here a few years ago, I was doing things at different times. I didn’t manage to see as much as I wanted to.
So this time, I feel like I’ve seen most people, most of our guest speakers. And I’ve been to a couple of breakout sessions. But for me, this conference is just, well, it’s getting inspired.
So I found it massively inspiring once again. And got a few different tips. I went to a gaming, for video games, which I’ve never sort of even looked into before.
But I found that fascinating. So that could be something I would look more into maybe.
Yeah. So unfortunately we’re almost done. It’s Sunday morning, Sunday afternoon.
Is there anything you’re still looking forward to this afternoon?
So there’s a couple of things. I know Herb Moore has got a session today, and Mark Scott as well. So I’m looking forward to those.
Bit more networking, bit more inspirational videos with people probably.
Have you done a lot of live videos here?
I’ve been doing a few. And sort of trying to get clips of people, like what’s been inspiring for them throughout the conference. It’s been quite interesting.
Lots of different answers.
So what’s your biggest takeaway? When you leave the conference, you go back, are you going back home after this?
Back to England, and then I’m going literally a day later to Lisbon, because I’m going off on my travels again.
That sounds fun. So what’s the biggest thing you’re going to take away from the conference, you think?
I think, and this is something I’m quite passionate about anyway, but the importance of being true to yourself, especially in your voice career and things like that, because that seems to have been quite a theme. I know Kari Walgren, she spoke about that, about being authentic and genuine and following things that you are truly passionate about. I feel like I’m going to do more of that.
That’s great. I noticed that as well. Kari mentioned it, like you said.
I know Gabby Nistico mentioned it in her session. And even Joseph Riano in his promo session talked about not being all the time amped up to do the promos that you think of that he does. He found a lot of his work recently with CBS by bringing it back and being more conversational.
Yeah, exactly.
And that’s a, I think that, yeah, that’s a theme that I’ll definitely, the biggest one I’ll probably take away.
Awesome. Well, thanks for being with us this morning and enjoy much stuff for the show.
Thank you very much.