Okay, so welcome back to The Floor here live at MAVO 2018. I’m now joined by Tom Dheere. 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 going to 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, you know, someone like me or a 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, OK, so I’m not the only person. They are not perfect. You know, Johnny Heller had a first audiobook, 700 audiobooks later.
He did the first one. And I bet you it wasn’t perfect. And I bet you they’re not all perfect.
You know what I mean? Because he’s a human being. We’re all human beings.
So, no, I’m glad that resonated with you.
Yeah, that’s what’s great about meeting people at a conference like this. It does humanize the business, especially if it’s someone who’s just getting started, or they may not have even started yet. Maybe they’re just researching, and they’re brave enough to come here.
Seeing you humanize yourself, Johnny, Joe, like we talked about, I think it really helps to get you on the right track.
Absolutely. And that’s the thing about this, is that there’s no set way to become a successful voice talent. For most people, this is a second, third, fourth career.
They’ve been fired, laid off, retired. They may have been a DJ, or a nurse, or a pastor. There’s a pastor in there.
There’s a marine in there. There’s an Air Force pilot in there. And there’s no one way to do this right.
There’s more than one way to be a successful voice talent. So the more that you can find your track or your path, and understand that it’s not going to be a straight line. It’s going to be all over the place.
It’ll be circuitous, and sometimes it’ll have a dead end. And sometimes you’ve got to walk back and start over again, and that’s okay. But knowing that, you know, you can find more than one way to be effective at this.
Because the way I became successful voice talent isn’t necessarily going to work for you. And the way that you became a successful voice talent isn’t necessarily going to work for me.
Well, whether I become a successful voice talent is still up for debate. But we’re working on it. So, you mentioned the pastor.
Would you agree that it makes sense to bring your past lives or your past experiences to your voice over business?
I don’t see how you can’t. You know, you are who you are, your experiences. You’re the aggregate of everything that’s happened to you up to now.
So, and almost every vocation that you have, there’s some kind of voice over for it. You know, I mean, if you were in the Marines or in the Air Force, like two of our attendees here today, do you have any idea how many Department of Defense videos are produced every year? Tons of them, tons of them.
If you’re a pastor and you have an inclination for audiobooks, I mean, there are entire publishing companies like E-Christian that do nothing but religious and spiritual audiobooks. If you’re the nurse, the medical narration and pharma industry is massive. There’s tons of content that you make every day.
So I almost guarantee that whatever you did before you decided to become a voice talent will inform your voiceover career.
Yeah, I agree. I actually did an audiobook for a pastor in our local church. He’d written a novel.
It was doing really well on Amazon and print. And I asked him to come over and he did it. He came over last summer and we did the whole audiobook and it’s been very successful on Audible as well.
And I said to him, actually I interviewed him on the show as well, and I said to him, you know what, this priest thing doesn’t work out. You could probably be an audiobook narrator full time.
That’s a good transition.
Yeah, exactly. Cool. So let’s talk about the rest of the conference.
What are you looking forward to coming up?
Oh, well, Kari Wahlgren is going to speak in about 35 minutes or so. She’s our keynote speaker today. She’s going to talk about animation.
And it’s great. She has one of those composite pictures with all the cartoons that she’s done. I’m like, oh, she’s been Wonder Woman.
Oh, she’s been Enchantress. So I know some of the characters. So I’m excited about that.
I’m excited about every single class I’m going to pop my head into, because I learn something every conference that I go to, whether I’m an attendee or whether I’m a speaker. So I’m looking forward to everything that Johnny Heller is doing, that Celia Siegel is doing. Joe Cipriano has got a promo workshop coming up.
I’m in that, coming up.
Yeah, I mean, I’ve only had one promo under my belt. I’m the voice of Horson Country TV, US. Edition, so I’d love to do more stuff like that.
That was so much fun. And Rachel Naylor is doing a video game workshop. So I was just in Red Dead Redemption 2.
I heard that.
Oh, yes.
Congratulations.
That’s because I marketed the crap out of it. So I’d love to get more work on that level. So that’s a great thing.
And you’re allowing us as presenters to kind of pop in almost any session. So I’m looking forward to everything. I’m going to try to get to as many of them as I can.
Well, great. Well, thanks for being here today and talking to us, and I’m looking forward to seeing you at the rest of the conference. Cool.
Looking forward to seeing you too.