Paul Stefano

The VO Meter… Measuring Your Voice Over Progress. The VO Meter is brought to you by voiceactorwebsites.com, Vocal Booth to Go, podcastdemos.com, Global Voice Acting Academy, JMC Demos, and IPDTL.
And now, your hosts, Paul Stefano and Sean Daeley.
Okay, we’re now back live at VOcation 2019, and we just finished the presentation by Maria Pendolino on negotiation tactics. Was it actually called Negotiation Ninja?
No, Negotiation for Voice Actors. I said that I’m a negotiation ninja. I have not trademarked that yet.
Well, you should get on that right away. You talked to Rob. He was in the audience, wasn’t he?
Yeah. So I really enjoyed the session. What were your takeaways from it?
I took away that I think there were a lot of times that I heard people in the audience kind of saying like, ooh, or ah, like it was something that they hadn’t thought about. So, you know, if I can help people think about things that they hadn’t thought about before or something that they didn’t know about or they didn’t know that that was a question that they should have asked, I’m really glad to, you know, bring that ounce of enlightenment to someone as they’re building their business. But also I think it benefits all of us.
Like I really truly believe that the more that we all work together and share this kind of information, like it truly does benefit the entire industry.
And I like the way you said, even if you’re a stone cold beginner, and we saw at the end where they’re giving out some door prizes, that somebody just started on Friday, their first job. It really makes sense to get with this from the get go, right?
Yes, if you think about it as a business person and think of your voice over career as a business from day one, you can make decisions today in your first day as a voice over actor that help protect the interests of the voice actor business that you want to run, the voice actor that you want to be. So if you’re thinking smart today, even if you’re not booking yet or you’re auditioning or whatever, you can be protecting the interests of your career of where it would be at 3 years, 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, and make decisions today that will give you the longevity that you need.
That’s really what it’s all about, because you really don’t know at this point what you don’t know. I know I’ve been burned because I didn’t have this kind of information when I first started. There wasn’t a VOcation 2014, and I’ve been burned, and I wish I’d known the information you put out today.
There weren’t online rate guides in 2014, so if you didn’t know or trust someone that you could ask to bounce an idea off of, or three people, you know, if you didn’t have your own voice over actor focus group, there weren’t resources out there. Now, there are resources. We’re talking about it at conferences.
I think as a voice actor today, if you’re educating yourself, there’s no excuse to not take the time to educate yourself with the resources that are out there so that you can be making good decisions.
Well, I really enjoyed your session. We really appreciate you donating your time, and thanks for being here.
Absolutely, thanks for having me.
Thanks for listening to The VO Meter, Measuring Your Voice Over Progress. To follow along, please visit www.vometer.com.
The VO Meter is powered by IPDTL.

The VO Meter… Measuring Your Voice Over Progress. The VO Meter is brought to you by voiceactorwebsites.com, Vocal Booth to Go, podcastdemos.com, Global Voice Acting Academy, JMC Demos, and IPDTL.
And now, your hosts, Paul Stefano and Sean Daeley.
All right, so we’re back on the floor of VOcation 2019 with John Duffin. Hey there. And you’re from where?
I’m from Philadelphia, PA.
Never heard of it.
Oh, well, sure.
Are you actually from Center City?
I am, as a matter of fact. I’ve lived in Center City for the last 23 years.
I grew up in Orleans, just up the street on the R5.
I was going to say, oh, just a couple of stops, or maybe 30 stops. But yeah, absolutely.
That’s awesome.
Yep, I’ve lived there. I’m Philly all my life.
So tell me a little bit about what you’re looking for in this conference.
Well, I just launched my voice over career in earnest this year, 2019. So it’s first, that sense of connection with other pros, learning techniques, finding ways to better market myself, and ways to better infiltrate how do you break through. I’m lucky I have some relationships.
I’m able to utilize those relationships, but I know I’m not maximizing the opportunity. So it’s how do I get better on the first take so that people will pay attention? And how do I break through the casting agencies, the pay-for-plays, what have you?
And how do I best market myself?
That’s what it’s all about. That’s what we’re all here for, I think.
Right?
So we can always use more clients.
Yep. Exactly.
Well, good luck. I hope you enjoy the conference, and good luck with launching your career.
Thanks so much for including me, man.
No problem. Have a great day.
Thank you.
Thanks for listening to the VO Meter, Measuring Your Voice Over Progress. To follow along, please visit www.vometer.com.
The VO Meter is powered by IPDTL.

The VO Meter, Measuring Your Voice Over Progress. The VO Meter is brought to you by voiceactorwebsites.com, Vocal Booth to Go, podcastdemos.com, Global Voice Acting Academy, JMC Demos, and IPDTL. And now, your hosts, Paul Stefano and Sean Daeley.
Okay, so we’re back live at VOcation 2019. We’re at the Picnic at Riverside Park, now joined by Jim Kennelly and Hugh Edwards. Gentlemen, welcome.
Thanks, guys. Happy to be here.
Yeah, me too.
So tell me a little bit about what you’re enjoying about the conference so far. Jim, why don’t you start?
For me, we’re always interested in meeting new talents, so having a one-on-one experience here has given me as a producer and as someone who casts every day, an opportunity to get to know talent a little closer. And I think that when I cast specifically, that’s to my advantage.
And Hugh?
Yeah. This is a really intimate conference. Unlike a lot of them that are really massive and kind of slightly impersonal, this one you can see the whites of people’s eyes and there’s a lot of personal relationships going on.
And yeah, it’s been quite special, actually. And because the focus is just about business, it doesn’t feel like there’s been any kind of padding going on. You know, people are here for one reason and one reason only, and that’s to help their businesses grow.
And I think they’re getting value for their money here.
That’s great. So both of you were part of the AI panel last night. Jimmy, you were the moderator, and Hugh, you were one of the panelists.
What was surprising about either questions from the audience or that came up from the other panelists?
What did you think, Hugh?
Well, I mean, the future of AI, I think we should clarify that we were really talking about voice and TTS in AI, as opposed to AI in general. But the general feeling of the voice over public, I think, is that people are a bit scared because there’s a lack of knowledge and the unknown is always a bit scary. And I think one of the things that the panel did pretty well actually was reassure them that this isn’t the end of the world.
It may change and we may have to adapt a little bit, but as human beings, we’re always going to evolve. I mean, you look at Uber and what happened there. The taxi industry went crazy for about a year and then Lyft came along and everything rebalanced.
And it will be the same when driverless cars come along and it will be the same when TTS properly takes off. Humans will readdress the balance somehow. So I think people don’t need to be as scared as they feel.
The robots aren’t coming to take all our jobs, basically. It’s going to evolve and it will be different. But that was my main thing that I felt happened in that panel.
That was the goal of the panel was to educate people that the future of voice overs is bright, that AI is a stand-alone industry, and that the voice over industry will still exist and evolve, but we’re going to integrate or augment your voice over career with synthetic voices, with new opportunities and new platforms to work on. So we really wanted to get across that it’s good news.
Me and Rupa had an idea for like mid on stage, which we’ll be talking about afterwards, about how we can actually commoditize our own voices with TTS, you know, and become less of a service industry while still doing the jobs that we want. So I think…
March over to the US Patent Office and file it right away.
Sure, yeah, yeah. I’ve got someone doing that right now. But no, I mean, there aren’t that many people who can do it in terms of building the tech to be able to go and do it.
But because we’re at the very start of the industry, no one can see what potential opportunities there are yet. And I promise you there will be some because there’s loads of bright cookies around.
There’s a platform shift to voice and the story is just beginning. So it’s important to get educated about what’s happening, the people who are the players and then in time, introduce yourself to them and build on your career.
I really like your analogy here, the taxi reference, because I’ve taken a taxi four times so far on this trip. And you know, every time I looked at Uber and the taxi was cheaper, so they’re still surviving.
Exactly. I mean, all the different areas of AI, not just voice, are going to change things radically. But these things are supplemental to our life.
They’re not core to our life. And human voice is something that is core to our life. And even if TTS takes over in a big way for a little while, there will be a reaction to it, and people will want humans to do things again.
So we may end up changing the types of jobs or the approach of jobs or the way we get jobs or whatever, but the voice industry will still be there.
Voice is all going to be about choice. The personalization of apps is going to create new opportunities for talents. It’s going to be great.
Can’t wait. Well, thanks for being here. Thanks for donating your time to the conference.
Our pleasure.
And we’ll see you at the rest of the panels and discussions.
Yeah, thanks so much. Great interview.
Thanks for listening to The VO Meter, Measuring Your Voice Over Progress. To follow along, please visit www.vometer.com.
The VO Meter is powered by IPDTL.

The VO Meter… Measuring Your Voice Over Progress. The VO Meter is brought to you by voiceactorwebsites.com, Vocal Booth to Go, podcastdemos.com, Global Voice Acting Academy, JMC Demos, and IPDTL.
And now, your hosts, Paul Stefano and Sean Daeley.
All right, so I’m here back live at VOcation 2019 with Courtney Cole. Is this your first VOcation conference?
It is my first VO conference of any kind, yes.
I was kidding, actually, because you know it’s the inaugural…
You got me! You got me!
But this is your first conference of any kind?
Yes.
Okay, so this is a good question to ask them. What do you hope to get out of a conference like this?
Contacts, networking. I’ve already gotten an amazing amount of questions. The panels have prompted so many questions, so that alone, I have so much to follow up on.
What was the biggest aha moment so far?
I think it’s about just how you be smarter about using your time. Using your time in ways that other people can do is not going to be cost-effective for you. That’s what I think.
I’m trying to think. I’ve had several aha moments, but…
I agree with you, by the way. When I started outsourcing my editing, it was like the skies opened up. It was a burden that was instantly lifted off my shoulders, making it so much easier to focus on what you do well, which is talking to a microphone.
Exactly. And everybody has things that they like to do, but even if you like to do it, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best thing for your business, for you to spend your time that way.
I like editing, actually. And it’s too time-consuming, really, to do it most of the time, and that’s the reason I outsource it now.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, another aha moment.
Until they asked the question up on the stage, is your demo on your website downloadable? I can’t believe it never occurred to me. Nobody’s ever asked me for this, and I still don’t know.
I have to go figure that out, but I’m guessing it probably isn’t. It’s on SoundCloud.
If not, there’s plenty of people that can help, like our upcoming presenters, Joe Davis, Brad Newman. They can help you out with that sort of thing.
Yeah, it’s on SoundCloud. It’s a link to SoundCloud. Okay, then it probably is.
Oh, you think it is?
Most likely.
Interesting.
So what are you most looking forward to and the time remaining?
The breakout panels. The breakout panels are just beginning, and to be able to get into more detail on topics, I can’t wait. Marketing, marketing, marketing.
I feel like that’s what I need most, but all of them. And I really appreciate, just while we’re on the topic, people like yourself who are actually mingling around and being here during the meals or break out, break times. Because it’s really nice to be able to actually ask the questions face to face.
Because it comes up in the conversation.
Well, you’ll find almost without fail that the VO community is the most welcoming and helpful of any industry, and it just shows again here at the conference.
Yeah, I love, love that everybody has been so free with their knowledge and helpful. But I always feel like it’s in part because we’re not competing with each other. No two voices are the same.
So even if you were a female with a similar voice profile to mine, our read of the script is going to be different, and our intonation is going to be different. So, I mean, maybe that’s in part why, but we’re all in it together, really.
Well, enjoy the rest of the conference, and we’ll talk to you again soon. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Pleasure.
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, Vocal Booth to Go, podcastdemos.com, Global Voice Acting Academy, JMC Demos, and IPDTL.
And now, your hosts, Paul Stefano and Sean Daeley.
Okay, we’re back at the Vocation 2019 floor. We’re at the main hall, getting ready for J. Michael Collins’ keynote speech.
I’m here with Bill Larson, who is the VO talent, and also public address announcer for My Philadelphia Eagles.
Yeah, Go Birds.
Go Birds. E-A-G-L-E-S Eagles. Welcome.
Thank you very much. I appreciate you having me.
So you were here last night with me at the pre-party. What’s been your favorite part of the conference so far, and what are you looking forward to next?
So my favorite part so far has just been meeting people from all over. And what I’ve gotten out of it most is the globalization of what we do. No longer is it just having an agent and getting what they feed you.
It’s going all over, finding your own thing, whether it’s in this country or even abroad. So I dig that very much.
And then are you going to any breakout sessions? Or what’s your agenda for the rest of the weekend?
So the rest of the weekend, definitely pay to play. I’m going to do that. Audiobooks is something I really want to look into.
And then the agent.
The agent panel?
The agent panel, absolutely.
That will be exciting. Now you’re here all the way through tomorrow night?
I am.
Fantastic.
I’m in it to win it.
And what kind of VO work do you do? We talked about the public address. What’s your bread and butter in VO?
So bread and butter would have to be narration. Audiobooks, I actually do sleep stories for the app Simple Habit as well.
Really? Interesting.
Yeah. So just finding what’s been my wheelhouse and then concentrating on that. Because after getting rid of my retail job as my crutch and having that, oh my god, what am I going to do moment, just realizing this is where my strength lies and attacking that and being the best I can be at that.
So narration, e-learnings, explainer, that’s my bread and butter.
Great. I’m working to be able to find you if they want to hire you.
So you can actually just go right to my Instagram basically, and that’s at Bill Ivory Larson.
Alright, thanks for joining us and enjoy the rest of the conference.
Thanks man, I appreciate it.
Thanks for listening to The VO Meter, Measuring Your Voice Over Progress. To follow along, please visit www.vometer.com.
The VO Meter is powered by IPDTL.

The VO Meter… Measuring Your Voice Over Progress. The VO Meter is brought to you by voiceactorwebsites.com, VocalBooth2Go, podcastdemos.com, Global Voice Acting Academy, JMCDemos, and IPDTL.
And now, your hosts, Paul Stefano and Sean Daeley.
Welcome back to live at VOcation, sorry, VOcation 2019. I’ve been corrected several times by Jamie and Karen already, because I like to call it VOcation. It’s not correct, apparently.
No, it’s VOcation.
And now I’m here with Brad Newman, who’s presenting today. Brad, how are you?
I’m good, man. How are you?
I’m fantastic. We just had a nice lunch at Riverside Park.
Oh, I laid down on a towel. It was nice. I had pizza just fed to me.
It was delicious.
Yeah, I’m not from New York, so anytime I can get my hands on some legit New York pizza, I’m happy.
Man, I’m just happy that you fed me. I mean, I was laying down and you just kept serving it right in. It was amazing.
It was a little weird.
I didn’t know you served that way, but it was good.
But anyway, you’re presenting today. Tell us a little bit about your presentation and what you’re hoping to gain from the conference.
So it’s organizational marketing, but really it’s about marketing in a way that gets you out of a VO headspace. Voice over people always look at it with a VO angle, and I’m encouraging people to look at it from the angle of their buyers, instead as fellow VO talent. Look for ways that you can engage the buyers and where you can meet them and solve their needs and remove their pain.
So that’s the marketing aspect of it. So it’s literally stepping away from voice over marketing as a voice talent and thinking of the ways that you would solve other problems in the world because that helps you see it from a different perspective, a different view or a different angle.
Okay, so without giving away your whole presentation for those that didn’t pay to come to the conference, give me one or two key points.
So surround yourself around other people that have what you want. That will prove to be a tremendous value over and over and over because they can pick you up when they’re down, they can help you through problems. Everybody that’s done VO or most people that’s done VO have done something different in their life, so we all have these unique problems.
Maybe they help you edit a blog or they’re an amazing wizard in audition to edit something. And so we all have these talents that we can help one another. I call that favor debt.
I put people into favor debt and I leverage that favor debt when I need for either more exposure or opportunities that I need help on. And so I’m going to tell everybody about how to bring those two things together and look at this world of VO that we do in a different way.
Favor debt. I like that a lot.
I registered the domain. You can’t have it.
Well, there goes that idea.
favordet.com. There’s nothing there, but I own it. It’s good to know.
So in addition to being a presenter today, most people hopefully know you’re also a voice over talent. What are you looking for? What are you hoping to gather at the conference personally as a VO talent?
You know, I think every time you approach one of these conferences, you go in with an agenda of, oh, I would like to learn this. And what ends up happening is you sit down and you hear something that totally rocks your world and becomes that aha moment. And you didn’t realize that that’s what you’re going to walk away with from.
I’ve already seen that this morning with the Pro Panel. Maria Pendolino was on that. And I was literally sending her chat messages via Facebook while she was talking and how much of a rock star she is with the way that she was able to answer questions, remove people’s roadblocks.
She is like a VO whisperer or therapist to VO talent to identify and find problems and fix it. I didn’t come here expecting that. Rocked my world.
That’s going to be my takeaway so far. It was amazing.
Well, great. Well, hopefully you’ll enjoy the rest of the conference. Good luck with your presentation and we’ll talk to you soon.
And I’m looking forward to yours. Talk soon. Thanks, Paul.
Thanks for listening to the VO Meter. Measuring Your Voice Over Progress. To follow along, please visit www.vometer.com.
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