The VO Meter, Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
Hello, everybody, and welcome to episode 13 of the VO Meter podcast.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
I am Sean Daeley with my host, Paul Stefano.
Hi, everybody.
Hi, everybody. It’s like the clerks on The Simpsons, oh, my pimples.
A mix of that and maybe President Clinton.
Oh, gotcha there. Well, that’s a lot of fun to do. So we have a wonderful guest on today, voice actor and coach Terry Daniel.
You might know him from his very open Facebook presence in the voiceover camp and the voiceover pros groups. But other than that, since we have a coach and demo producer on the show today, the topic of the day is demos and demo production. Some exciting stuff.
So, before we talk about that specific topic of the day, let’s quickly do some current events. What has happened in your VO world in the last couple of weeks, Sean?
Well, just kind of recovering from the summer. I just got back from vacation, as we talked about in our last episode, so just trying to get some projects wrapped up. Every month, I’ve got these very long e-learning projects from my first and most loyal client, and so I have to make sure that those are all polished and done in a few days.
Other than that, I got some new international clients that I’m excited about, and working on an audio textbook for an actual English Language Institute in the Middle East. So some increasingly fun projects. I’ve seen some people complain that July was an incredibly dead month for them, and for me, it’s actually been one of my most successful ones this year.
So, yay! What about you, Paul?
Yeah, I’m actually in the same boat. I wrote, I think, that same post you were reading from Dan Hurst. I wrote that I’ve had my most successful month, I think, too.
I just wrote a blog post about it that John Florian picked up, and it’s going to feature on Voice Over Extra this week, so that’ll be cool. But it comes from a couple of e-learning projects that I did, where I signed up with this big e-learning company about six months ago, and waited patiently till they got me a few jobs, but now they’re starting to come in, and they’re all union scale or close to union scale for explainer work or e-learning. And I’ve done three of them so far.
I have another one that’s coming up this week, and they pay on time, and it’s fantastic.
Wonderful, wonderful.
I also am in the middle of four audiobooks that are in various stages of completion. One’s almost done, one’s in editor’s hands, and two more have to start. And then, finally, I have done some work for that giant 10,000, or was it 60,000-word e-learning project I mentioned in episode 10.
I’ve done the first couple jobs for them. They’re coming in very slowly, a few sentences at a time. So whenever they come in, I just knock those out, send them off.
They pay me the per-minute rate, and it’s worked out well so far. Hopefully, those will keep coming.
Very cool. I actually, unfortunately, I did lose a recent e-learning client. It was like an 18,000 word project.
So they auditioned My Voice. It was actually a referral from our friend, Mike Norgard. And it was a project that the time-to-rate ratio was no longer working out for him.
So he recommended me. And unfortunately, they’re just like, we can’t quite get the sound from you we want. But they’re very cordial.
And I felt like it was a bad fit too. So I’m not too disappointed. But yeah, something that I wanted to bring up is because, as you noticed, Paul and I, we do a lot of either audiobook work or e-learning or corporate training stuff.
And that kind of work doesn’t really have dead periods throughout the year, unlike say commercial or some of the broadcast television work that you can be doing, which tends to kind of peter out during the winter and summer holidays because everyone’s on vacation. So…
Especially if you’re working with other countries.
Yeah, exactly.
Because maybe vacation here in the US., but I’m working with a company in Australia, where it’s winter.
Exactly, exactly. So, I mean, these are all things that you should consider. I mean, if you get to a point where you’re doing multiple genres of work, you could basically be working through the entire year because you’re like, oh, like during the bulk months, you got your commercial and promo work.
And then during the quieter ones, you can work on your longer e-learning or audio book stuff.
So that brings us to our topic of the day for discussion. And we’re going to talk about demos and some faux pas that some people might make when they’re starting out. And we’ll talk about our experiences with our demo production.
So I’ll start off with the biggest faux pas that everyone tells you not to do. And I think we talked about this in episode one as just the biggest overall newbie mistake, but producing your own demos. And I was totally guilty of this.
I created some that I thought sounded good. I used a friend’s music catalog because he was offering it to me for free. And great tunes, but that wasn’t necessarily the best fit for the copy I was writing.
I wrote my own copy with zero experience other than my bachelors in journalism. And they were terrible. But I put them out of my website and we’re actually going to play one right here so you can hear just how terrible it is.
But it suffices to say, it didn’t get me any work. And all it did was get me criticism from, and rightfully so, from all the VO pros that are out there. When you have a job to do, the last thing you need to think about is where to lay your head.
You want to know when the day is done, you can relax, recharge, and get ready to do it all again tomorrow. You have a dream, but you’ve put it on hold. Maybe it’s about the kids.
Maybe it’s about the house. Maybe it’s about the time. Well, the one thing it doesn’t have to be about is the money.
With the Next Day Small Business Loan from Mayfield Community Bank, you can make that dream a reality. Open your eyes. Stretch your arms.
Do you hear that? No? Nothing?
Exactly. When you go camping, all the hustle and bustle of your normal world just melts away along with your cares. Go.
Oh, Paul, Paul, Paul. How far you’ve come.
Or a little bit, at least.
Well, to your credit, it can be a great learning experience to try and produce your own demo. It’s like writing those letters that you don’t end up actually sending because it could get you in trouble. Yeah, that’s a fair point.
But it’s important. I’m working on some new demos with the Global Voice Acting Academy, and they really want me to be as involved as possible. They want me to do my own research, figure out where my voice fits in with what products, try and find my own scripts, maybe write my own scripts.
And they do want a much higher level of involvement. But whether or not you want to do that for your first demo is debatable. And as Paul said, you should definitely get some feedback from trusted sources before you go off submitting it to agencies and stuff like that.
Yeah, that was the key. Once I heard from the pros out there, mostly on the VOBB, that was a terrible idea. I did immediately take them down, and it was a good choice.
But it’s interesting that you brought that up, though, Paul, because recently in our sort of VO support group, we’ve been talking about genres where making your own demo might actually be a good idea.
Yeah, that can’t be the case. Audiobooks specifically, the coach that we work with, Sean Pratt, has suggested that you create your own samples for your audiobook work, and that was echoed at VO Atlanta when I was listening to Amy Rubenet talk, where she said the same thing, that your audiobook samples really only need to be you reading an audiobook or the text of a book. And there are some criteria that Sean recommends.
It’s that it’s about a five-minute length and that it’s one genre, one piece, so it could be young adult, drama, it could be historical or non-fiction, but it should be one genre that showcases your talent in that specific type of work.
And another thing is that since a lot of people are self-producing for say ACX or just have a home studio, your demo is selling your studio as well. So like with commercial and narration, you might be going into an external studio still when you’re working with an agency. But for things like e-learning or audio books, you really want to showcase your studio sound too.
Yeah, exactly. So let’s shift gears and talk about professionally produced demos. I know you had one done early on I believe with our guest today.
Let’s talk about those experiences.
Yes, I actually had several demos done with Terry, because I wanted to do all of the voice over.
I will do all the voice over.
I will do all the voices. All of them. Oh God, don’t get me started.
My girlfriend and I just slip into German all the time. There was one time we went on a nature hike, and we were just talking like this for the whole time. And then when we got to the top of this beautiful, it’s called Moana Falls, we heard some…
We were eavesdropping on some people talking behind us, a couple of tourists, and it was like, so where are y’all from? Oh, via from Germany. I hope they didn’t hear us on the way up.
But anyway, so I wanted to do Oz devices, and I talked with Terry, and I was like, I want a commercial demo, I want a narration demo, I want an audiobook, and I want a telephony or IVR. And he hooked me up with all of them. And that was about, four years ago.
We worked together for about six months, and then I actually told him, you know what, I think I’m ready for a demo. And he’s like, you know what, I think you are. As I mentioned later in the interview, I actually traveled home to the States to visit my family.
I was still in Japan at the time, and then had booked a local studio from there. That way it was a lot easier to coordinate schedules, and I could communicate better with the engineer, and didn’t have to use broken Japanese. And Terry didn’t have to try and navigate the Japanese at all, which I’m sure he appreciated.
How did that work out for you?
Really, really well. Like I said, this was almost four years ago, and depending on what circles you inhabit in the voiceover realm, people will recommend different amounts of time before you should update your demos. Some people say once every three years, some every two, every year.
I’ve heard as often as every six months.
Wow.
Yeah, I mean, if you can afford it, you want the most current content you can get that really showcases your ability. But honestly, I’m still booking work off of my demos from four years ago. As long as it showcases your abilities and it sounds like you, why change it?
Awesome. My first professionally produced demo was done with Edge Studio, and that was as part of their training program where there was a package deal, and there was a set amount of weeks where you were doing classes and then individual coaching with some of their coaches privately, and that was to be determined how many sessions you had until they thought you were demo ready. So once that was done, we did the demo.
I went to a professional studio in Washington, DC., and they recorded it for me there with a phone patch into Rachel Butera, my coach at Edge, and mine came out great. It signed me to my first five agencies.
Wow.
They seemed to love it, and I had a really great experience there. Now, the one thing I want to caution against is that in that sort of environment where you have group classes and a pre-determined time where you’re going to produce your demo, you want to be careful that you’re ready, because I have heard people have bad experiences with that type of environment. Where they felt like they were pushed out the door because they weren’t ready.
Now, in my case, similar to what I did with Terry, which we’ll talk about in a second, I was champing at the bit. I was ready to go. I was studying all the time, practicing as much as I could, and I thought I was ready.
And I pushed that process along. And I also made sure that I was heavily involved in the process. I think that’s another problem that sometimes people have.
Especially if they’re brand new, they feel like they shouldn’t put in any input because what could they possibly provide to these professionals up on high that must know better? And I would caution you to know thine self, as Shakespeare said, and know what you want to get accomplished with your demo. I definitely had that mindset where I had a certain sound I wanted to get across, and I was not going to let them tell me any different.
And I think it bared… The results speak for themselves, where I was immediately signed to some agency, so it must have gone pretty well.
Well, it’s an important skill set to start building as early as possible, because one thing that we don’t consider is that we’re creative collaborators. We work with a whole other team. Even though we record on our own, we’re still kind of collaborating with the producer or with the agency, trying to get a specific sound out of whatever we’re recording.
So it’s really good to kind of build that collaboration from the beginning and being able to communicate as part of a creative team.
Yeah, because those skills will serve you well later. When you’re in a session, especially if it’s in your own studio, the director on the other side of his remote session may not hear you walk into the wall or drop that glass of water. And you would want to say, oh, you know what, we need to redo that because I tripped or I just heard my dog bark in the background.
Now, you don’t want to have that happen all the time because then you’re not professional, but you want to make sure that you’re aware and being professional on your end so the professionals on the other end can do their job. So not long after my Edge demo, because as we’ve talked about, I’ve only really been doing this about three years, I looked into getting another demo done because my demo with Edge was only a commercial demo. And I wanted to get a narration demo done, so I started doing some research and asked some of my peers, which I highly recommend doing, ask your peers who they worked with, who they like, and get some advice on who does a good job out there and also might fit into your budget.
And Sean, you said that your demo was done with Terry, and I was a big fan of that, so I contacted him and started working with Terry as well. And I didn’t do any specific coaching, it was just the coaching and preparation for the demo production, so my process was much shorter, probably only about six weeks. But we wrote some copy together and recorded it in my studio, which didn’t have to happen, but I was pretty confident in the way my studio sounded.
It was Volvo Studio approved, yeah, Volvo Studio certified by the tech committee there. And I was confident in the way it sounded, and when I sent a clip to Terry, he thought so too. So we did it in my studio with him passion, via plain old Skype, and it worked out great.
Now, I want to say again, Terry, as you’ll hear in the interview, has a very strong personality, if you don’t already know him. And that could have a detrimental effect on the result, if you’re not strong-willed, like I was saying before. So even with somebody who has a strong personality, you want to make sure that you can work with them, and they’re going to listen to your feedback.
Now, it turns out, Terry is really receptive to feedback. So I had a script that I wrote myself. So there was, I think, four clips he wrote, or five clips, he wrote four of them, and I wrote the last one.
And it was because it was an Edgar Allan Poe piece. And a lot of my work is based on sort of a low, dark, creepy voice. I’ve done a lot of horror audiobooks.
I’ve done some character work where it’s a creepy serial killer. And that’s a voice that suits me well. So I made sure I got that in there.
And the other reason is because living in Baltimore, I wanted to have something that represented my local flavor. And everybody here loves Edgar Allan Poe because of him spending some time here and ultimately passing here. And his grave is a local landmark.
So I put that in. At first, Terry was like, I don’t know about that. And I said, no, we’re doing it.
And we did it.
I thought it was one of your strongest spots.
Yeah, I think so, too. That’s what most people say. So again, the point is, know yourself and make sure you get your own flavor into your demo, even if someone else is producing it.
Very cool. And so kind of going off of that, like really having your own input. Like I was saying, I’m working on two new demos with the Global Voice Acting Academy right now, a new commercial and new narration one.
Because like we were saying, every now and then it can be important to try and reevaluate, see if your demo is still the best representation of your current skill set and talent. And my friends and coaches over there, Christina Melizia and David Rosenthal, were like, yeah, this is good, but it doesn’t showcase your whole, like enough variety and it doesn’t showcase your full abilities. So that was the main reason why they would encourage me to make another one.
Right now, like I said, like I had a lot of help from Terry for my previous ones, but this one, it’s just like, you really get what you put in because it’s like, they really want me to have a much higher ownership of these demos. So Christina was very helpful. She sent me a couple of talent who she thought had a similar kind of voice and style to me.
She’s like, study all of their work, listen to their demos, figure out what kind of products they’re marketing for, figure out what kind of products you want to do. And then, like nowadays with the internet, it’s so easy to just research commercials. I mean, we have YouTube.
You can literally just do like BMW commercial, like 2017 commercial and see what they’re doing right now. Or another popular one is ispot.tv, which is where it’s pretty much just like all commercials all the time. And you could even like learn about who voiced a spot or who produced a spot.
And just learn about, like you can learn so much more and be so much more involved in the process. It’s kind of, it’s a little intimidating, not gonna lie, but it’s also very empowering too. And I know that when we are, that we’re done working on these, they’re just gonna be amazing.
So before we get started with Mr. Terry Daniel, we will actually have a VO Meter stick from a mutual acquaintance, Mr. Rob Marley. No, not the reggae musician. This is voice talent and blogger Rob Marley.
He’s got an incredible blog and a wonderful free ebook that you should definitely check out. But before you do that, why don’t you listen to this episode’s VO Meter stick?
Hey, everybody, it’s time for the VO Meter shtick.
What did he say?
It’s time for the VO… Oh, nevermind. The VO Meter shtick?
Oh, got it.
Hi, Sean and Paul. Thanks for allowing me to share my shtick with you. Wow, that sounded bad.
Anyway, I was listening to your last podcast, and Paul had mentioned that he had his first live directed session with a client, and I thought I’d share my first experience. Now, I thought I’d planned out everything perfectly. I’d worked with hundreds of clients so far in my voiceover career, but this was my first experience with the client.
In this case, the producer and engineer of the spot listening in while I did the recording. It’s one thing to be able to flub a line and redo a take while you’re by yourself in your little studio, but man, it’s a whole different ball game when there’s someone watching or listening closely to your performance live. I didn’t know if the client was gonna use video with Skype, so I made sure my background looked professional.
I mean, come on, I work out of a closet. Now, I’ve studied acoustics for several years, and I understand the finer points of wave propagation and acoustic absorption. I’ve done the work, treated the walls, carefully isolated all interior noise, and my room boasts a very respectable negative 73 dB noise floor.
In other words, it’s pretty good. I work really hard to be as professional as possible, but the trust that a client has in me might be completely nuked if they catch a glimpse of a T-shirt hanging in the corner of the shot that says, damn right, I’ve been naughty, now spank my evil butt. As it was, the client connected via the audio-only mode of Skype, so it wasn’t really a problem.
The first take went well enough. I thought I hit all the key points and the client seemed okay with this take. They asked for a second take, and while I was setting up for that, I discovered that the first take didn’t record.
I don’t know what happened. I apparently never started the record or thought I did. I hit the shortcut keys I use for my software and thought things were recording, but they weren’t.
So it was at this point that I have to then tell the client that there was a problem with the first take and that we would need to do it again. They understood and I quickly delivered a respectable second, third and fourth takes. The client seemed happy and the audio sounded good, but I never heard from this particular producer again.
The moral of the story is try to be prepared for anything, but know that it’s gonna be the thing you can’t imagine that will probably be the thing that trips you up. Knowing how to fix the problem and how to handle yourself while you do it is what separates the amateur from the pro. And it’s something we all need to be reminded of from time to time.
Anyway, thanks for letting me ramble at you. Love the podcast, keep up the great work.
Okay, so now we are pleased to welcome our guests for this episode. We are so excited to have coach, voice over talent, marketing extraordinaire and dare I say, ambassador to the voice over community, Terry Daniel. Welcome, Terry.
You know, I like to be preferred to as the pharaoh of voice overs.
Very nice.
Yeah, so please address me as that from moving forward, or I’m going to hang up on you bastards. Just kidding. I mean, honestly, I’m very, very happy to be here.
Fantastic.
Yeah, we’re very excited to have you. So Terry, let’s jump right into it. I’m sure people are wondering who aren’t familiar with you.
How exactly did you get started with voice over?
This is a true story. My parents, this is going to make me sound like a real dinosaur. My parents bought me a Donnie and Marie microphone when this is the latter part of the 70s.
I’m probably about maybe nine or 10 years old when this is happening. This is like Mr. Microphone. This is where you put the battery in, you turn on the mic, and you find that empty frequency on your FM dial, and then you can kind of sing and talk through.
Go look up Mr. Microphone commercials on YouTube. It’s hilarious. You’ll watch it 10 times in a row because it’s hysterical.
I had one of those actually. I think we’re close to the same age.
I had one as well. I would put on concerts for my parents and it was just brutal. I would try to sing the entire album from Paul McCartney and the Wings.
Nice.
I would sing Terry Jacks, that depressing freaking song, Seasons in the Sun, which I believe was very depressing. And man, I was one screwed up kid. And that’s kind of how I got started because I had a microphone in my hand and I really haven’t put it down since because after that, that’s when I kind of got into radio.
And I started just a quick funny story with you guys. In the, you know, about 18, 19 years old, you know, we all had like those silver Panasonic boom boxes. I would record commercials off, you know, various shows.
And then I would practice along with the commercials. And on television, I would record the TV spots, you know, in between The Love Boat and The Dukes of Hazzard, you know, with my Montgomery Ward’s video cassette recorder. And I would practice along with those commercials.
But then I would do like fake radio shows. I would record them onto a cassette with my Sears Home Stereo. I would plug a little Radio Shack microphone into the input and, you know, play songs and write and perform fake commercials.
And I would even record phony prank phone calls. I would stick the microphone to the ear part of the landline phone. And I would call up businesses like McDonald’s in the area and bullshit them and tell them…
You know, I told one manager of McDonald’s, and I’m recording this, by the way, I said if he could get everybody in the entire restaurant to stop eating their breakfast and stand up and sing Here Comes Peter Cottontail, that I would send the restaurant $50,000. And, you know, I’m pretending like I’m this hot DJ in LA. You know, hey man, this is Chuck McCann from K-Rock LA.
And then I would have him go do something really stupid. And this guy did. You could actually hear him slam the phone down.
And you could hear him in the restaurant area coaching people to stand up. And you could literally hear about 30 people sing, Here Comes Peter Cottontail. So then he comes back to the phone all excited that I’m going to send him a check.
And then there’s this kind of subtle, dramatic pause. And I said, well, Bill, I think Bill was his name. I said, Bill, you’ve just been the victim of a prank.
Sounds very Howard Sternish. He tells a similar story about starting that way.
19 years old, kind of a jackass, 19 years old. I would never encourage people to do that. I mean, you could get away with so many weird things back then.
Do you guys remember when…
Lose no caller ID.
You could call somebody, and then you could click the receiver, and then get the other line, and then call somebody else, and then you click your receiver again, and then you connect those two people, and then you can just sit there and see what happens.
Yeah, I think I technically still have that service on my phone, but I haven’t used it in 20 years.
So these people think, you know, I didn’t call you, you called me. No, you called me, I didn’t call you. You know, you just sit there, and they just bitch back and forth.
This is pre-internet, so life was pretty entertaining back then. But long-winded story short, that’s what really got me excited about doing voice overs and just being able to do this for a living has been a lot of fun and really such a joy, gentlemen, such a joy.
Well, you’ve obviously grown up quite a bit. But what is the focus of your voice over business from a talent standpoint now?
Well, it’s interesting because we all fall into that specialty. We all fall into that niche. And many, many years ago, I was more of a commercial e-learning type dude.
That’s pretty much all I would do. The occasional IVR gig, I guess, would come across my desk. But really within the last few years, I’ve gotten more into theme park announcements.
For example, if you’re on a roller coaster ride at Six Flags, you guys have heard that voice.
Mind the Gap.
Please keep your hands and feet inside the car until the car comes to a complete stop.
It’s so assuring and authoritative.
Yes. And what’s nice is it’s a beautiful fit for my attention span, which is very limited at the ripe old age of 49. I’ve tried to do a few audiobooks.
I couldn’t stand it. I would entertain the idea of maybe doing another one if I were to play a character in the audiobook, but some of these long 300-page audiobooks on search engine optimization and various car parts, I would prefer to send those gigs to you guys.
Yeah, it takes a special breed. I’ve done a nine-hour book on… I’ve done a nine-hour book on Radhaswami, the Middle Eastern religion.
Try that.
Well, you know, and you hear from people all the time, you know, that have these ACX accounts, and they’re doing it just to get experience. And I think that’s great. You know, it’s a good service for that.
But I just, you know, as the years kind of went on, I got a little spoiled with these promo announcements that I’m doing at theme parks and baseball games and state parks and all that. You know, they just send me three sheets of announcements at pretty much the same rate as some of these audio books would pay. So I got pretty used to that, and I’m pretty happy with it.
Very cool. And so about how long into your career did you start transitioning into voiceover coaching, Terry?
The coaching part of it was, you know, I did a lot of theater back then. You’re going to hear a few bumps. My crazy yellow lab is right above the studio, so she might get a lot of hand here.
But I got into the coaching aspect because, you know, I directed some plays back in the 90s. You know, I used to be a drama coach and ran an improv group. I’ve always enjoyed the mentoring and the teaching part of it.
But what really got me motivated to do it was, you know, I would get calls from people who, you know, dropped about six or seven grand on what we call demo mills in the industry. And I’m not here to bash my competition or, you know, hang anybody out to dry, but there’s plenty of them out there now that charge way too much money for too little. Everybody’s reading from the same scripts, everybody’s demo sounds the same, and you’re really more of a number than a person.
It really broke me when somebody called me, and literally, this is not a joke, they started weeping because they had paid like five or six grand. And, you know, this coach or program, they promised her stardom, and they filled her head with all these empty promises. And I just got kind of tired of it.
I’m like, you know what? I’ll start taking a few students here and there and just kind of showing them what worked for me when I launched into this full time many moons ago. And it’s just a straight up mentorship program.
I’ve tweaked it, obviously, a few times since. But that was really the birth of Terry Daniel, The Voice Over Coach.
Very cool. And so what do you feel separates you from, as a coach, from either these demo mills or even some other coaches out there today?
Well, I’m not much of a smoke blower. I’m a pretty candid person. You guys have known me for a long time now.
And I don’t really mince words in Facebook groups or anything. And honestly, I’ve put my foot in my mouth a few times because of it. But you heard my story when I was young and doing the prank phone calls and just being kind of a class clown.
I mean, that certainly hasn’t changed. But the only part of the reason… What was the question again?
See, I told you, ADD voice talent. I warned you guys.
He’s got his prescription right there, folks. It’s real.
All right.
It’s been confirmed.
The separation thing. I think it’s because I’m real. I don’t try to…
I love the teaching end of it, but I’m not teaching science. I’m not one of those big grouchy history teachers that you had in high school. I take it seriously to a point, but we have a lot of fun with it.
It’s very candid training. I think people have gotten a lot out of it. At least that’s what they tell me.
And I think that’s just the separation, is because I treat people as an individual, and I try to find a niche for each person, as opposed to inviting 500 people into a weekend seminar and then forcing them into a studio that Monday morning to do a demo. My God, I think even some of the top tier talents in the country aren’t going to be ready for a demo that quickly. So mine’s a little more of a drawn out mentorship where we just kind of keep working until I feel that they’re ready, until the talent feels that they’re ready.
There’s a mutual understanding that, all right, you know what? We’ve been working together for 35 years. Okay, well, maybe not quite that many.
Let’s take the next step.
But I never like to pressure anybody. I’m like, okay, we got to get this done by then, and this done by then, because we got to get you into the demo session by Thursday, July, such and such. And all that does is create anxiety and tension, and people are a little more too keyed in on their calendar than just learning the craft and practicing.
So I kind of take that off the table.
That’s what I was going to say. I mean, you’re so just genuine when you work with people. Like, you don’t put on any kind of teaching persona.
And like, you’re just incredibly flexible and relaxed and fun to work with. So I miss our old coaching sessions, Terry. You never call it anymore.
Speaking of which, I think Sean and I worked together back when I still did have the Donnie and Marie microphone. So I think, you know, I don’t even remember. I think Sean, you and I, that must have been…
That was about four years ago, I think.
Oh, was that only four? It felt like 14. Well, you were such a jerk to work with.
I would have been 14, 14 years ago.
Oh, don’t rub it in.
You were so high maintenance and you were such a diva. No, I’m kidding.
Well, Terry, talking about the way people approach the coaching and the demo production, do you feel that it’s better to listen to what the coach or the demo producer says wholeheartedly? Or do you feel that it’s better to come with your own ideas and have sort of a give and take? Because I know when we did our demo, and it’s been very successful, thank you very much.
I appreciate all the help.
I’m very happy about that.
When we were working together, I felt like I was maybe pushing a little too hard, but I definitely had some ideas in my head. I tend to be a little stubborn. Do you find that that’s a better style where the person comes with their own ideas, or do you feel more comfortable when you’re providing the direction almost wholeheartedly?
Somebody like you, Paul, you had some experience, obviously, so you weren’t super green. So I welcome ideas, and when I work with people for the first time who have zero experience, sometimes they’ll bring ideas, and it doesn’t always work very well. As long as I can have some veto power, I definitely want it to be an established, good working relationship.
And it’s never my way or the highway. Somebody, a student might actually write his own, her own scripts. Now I have somebody to write the scripts because my programs have received a complete makeover.
I’ve got a website designer. I’ve got a marketing person, and it’s a little more than just Terry Daniel. There’s other players involved as well as we slowly kind of get out this other program.
But I’m always up for ideas. I think that’s part of being a good coach is being open to listening to creativity from the talent. Now, well, I’m the teacher, you’re the student, so what do you know?
It’s not that kind of a relationship, and especially with demos. Those are going to be very important to come up with scripts that not only are a good match for that person’s persona and skill level, but to also come up with content that matches with their personalities and their hobbies and interests, because you have to be engaged in the content that way. And there’s just different methods that we use now.
Back then, when I first started doing the demo thing, I was kind of learning as well, so I would do what a lot of companies did. Oh, let’s just find some scripts online, and we’ll do that for your demo. That’s no longer the case at all.
That was a learning experience, and although there were some good demos that way, I didn’t want to use the same scripts as 15 other companies were using. So now, when I do demos, all of the scripts are 100% originals.
Awesome. Very cool. Do you ever turn people away for either coaching or demo production?
Nope. I’ll just take their money. No, I’m kidding.
I just contradicted everything I just said in the last 20 minutes now with that stupid joke. No, I do turn people away. I don’t exactly put them through a Peter O’Connell entrance exam.
Entrance? You know what? That’s one of those words where it looks easy on paper and I can never say it in conversations.
Entrance. I don’t necessarily put people through an entrance exam, but I do have them read a few scripts, fill out a form, learn a little bit about what they’re able to do technically. You don’t have to be perfectly technically sound to work with yours truly, but you have to have a little bit of skill, let’s be honest.
And I do turn plenty of people away. I do get a lot of emails and phone calls from people all over the country and overseas, and it’s a little bit of a process before we get started for sure.
And then just wrapping up on the demo production, what percentage of people working with you would you say you’re able to record from their personal studio versus making them either come to you if they’re local to Minneapolis or go to a local studio where they are?
That’s a great question. You know, more and more… Paul, you did it from your home setup, and that worked out great.
It’s getting to be more and more… Yeah, I think…
It’s getting more and more likely that they can record from their home setup, but I usually have to send… They’ll send me a couple MP3s, and I’ll kind of dissect the audio a little bit. It’s got to be A1.
I might throw the MP3 over to a Cliff Zellman or a Dan Leonard and go, you know, this sounds great to me, but I’m just wondering if I could get a second opinion, because we’re going to do this person’s demo from their recording studio. And if it’s not the case, you know, I typically book somebody in a studio in their area, and they patch me in. Sean, I think we did your…
Didn’t we do yours in Japan or something like that?
No, I actually timed it. So when I visited my home for Christmas in Washington, I found a local studio over there.
Oh, that’s right. Yep, yep, yep.
So that way you were only like three hours ahead instead of like 18.
Yeah, that was very helpful. So that was a perfect example of just recording in a studio in their area. I do invite people to come and see me.
I mean, they’re always welcome to fly here if they want to do the demo live and have that face-to-face time, but that’s what we do for local talents here in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. But it’s pretty easy now with studios that have Phone Patch, Source Connect, and even Skype.
It’ll work as long as both parties can hear each other. It works really well.
Yeah, it can certainly be tempting to use your own studio because it showcases the quality of audio you can come out with, but in the same vein, it’s still so much to be the engineer and the assistant director and the talent. It’s a lot to worry about for your first demo.
I agree, and that’s the beauty of doing it in a studio. You have the coach, you’ve got the engineer to worry about all the audio, and I love doing it in recording studios for that main reason for sure.
And so one thing I’ve noticed and really like about you, Terry, is that you’ve been pretty much an early adopter of social media as a marketing tool. So could you tell us a little bit about your web presence on the various social medias out there?
Well, I believe social media is a fantastic platform for political piss matches. And I love to just soak it all in and waste at least eight or nine hours of my day pretending like I know every f***ing thing. I’m sorry, is this show rated PG-13?
Because then I think I can get away with that.
We might have to roll back that.
We’ll get your own Terry bleep, it’s fine.
All right, no, serious answer. You know, social media has been responsible for probably about a dozen or more brand new clients every year. You know, some of them stick around to become regular clients.
Some of them don’t, but still, you know, have relationships based on like Twitter, Facebook, and even Instagram. I have not, and this might sound silly, because people always think, oh, well, you got to be a part of LinkedIn. I mean, LinkedIn is a major business, you know, blah, blah, blah.
But I just honestly have never been, I’ve never really liked it that much. I like to stick to just two or three different social media sites. You know, I’m not much of a Snapchat guy.
I know all the kids love that one, but I’ve gotten some pretty good gigs, you know, via relationships that were started via Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Very cool. And like I said before, you’ve really built a Facebook community for voiceover talent, because you’ve sort of started two pages with fellow talent, Dave Courbassier. So why don’t you tell us about those?
Well, there’s two groups, and here’s where it all started, honestly, and a lot of voice actors that are listening to this podcast are going to remember it. It really all started on Voice Over Universe, the website. Many, many years ago, when Facebook was just kind of getting going, there weren’t really all these groups in there.
I mean, you had your profile, and you had probably about 20 or 30 friends, and it was fine, but Voice Over Universe was really the place where we all came to kind of chat with one another. They would schedule events in there. The beauty of going to a voiceover conference, I believe it was Voice 2008, where everybody that met up met on this Voice Over Universe website, and it was terrific.
It was almost like a class reunion or something. Everybody kind of knew each other, and it was a heck of a lot of fun. Of course, back then, there was one voiceover conference.
Now there’s one every day somewhere.
Seems like it, doesn’t it?
Yeah, it’s gotten a little watered down, to be honest with you, but there’s still some good stuff out there. But the Penny Abshire James Alberger event in the early years of 2008, 2009, 2010, they were just lights out fantastic conference. But then Facebook got around, and suddenly these groups popped up out of nowhere, and they started to become popular.
As a matter of fact, it kind of put Voice Over Universe about six feet under once they got popular. But Dave had a group called Voice Over Friends, and I had a group called Voice Over Pros. And the same people were in both groups, and we were both kind of doing the same thing.
I’m like, you know, I called Dave up one day. Why don’t we just combine the two groups? This doesn’t really make a hell of a lot of sense, right?
So he agreed to do it. So we got everybody together, and then just called it Voice Over Pros. So there’s, you know, tons of people in that group, and there’s a lot of good discussions.
You know, occasionally there can be too many chefs in the kitchen, and everybody’s an expert at just about every subject, but that’s, you know, you’re going to get that in just about any forum. I also created Voice Over Camp, which is really created for the new talent. You know, people interested in either getting into voice overs or they’re just getting started, and they don’t want to be overwhelmed by, you know, sag after a voice actor’s and all this stuff that they’re not going to be familiar with for a very long time.
That’s kind of a place for them to go. So it’s VO Pros and VO Camp. I don’t know the exact URLs for those, but if you do a search in the little search box of Facebook, just type in Voice Over Camp and Voice Over Pros, and you can find either of those two groups.
There’s a search box?
I know. Can you believe it? I never know the actual URL for these things, but people obviously find them because we get requests for people to come into those every day.
And it’s really amazing because now I think there’s about 100 voice over groups out there, and that can get very overwhelming. And by the way, it can be quite distracting to your career while you’re sitting in there, about 15 to 20 different voice over groups, soaking up some of the information and asking questions and giving out your expert opinion. Suddenly it’s like 9 o’clock at night, and you haven’t done a damn thing.
Yeah, that certainly has happened to me on occasion.
We’ve all been guilty of it, believe me. But that really has become… I mean, Facebook…
I know there’s groups on LinkedIn that people kind of swarm to once in a while, but really these Facebook groups are really huge now for lots of different industries, not just voice over, but podcasting and photography and theater acting, on-stage acting and improv. It’s become quite the empire.
Well, speaking of podcasts, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention your own podcast, which is where I was really introduced to you first, The Voice Over Cafe. I was an ardent fan listening to every episode. You mentioned Voice 2008.
I remember the interview that you and Trish did from there live, which was just hilarious. Because, frankly, it was just a mess. But it was so much fun.
And Sean and I actually tried to mimic that when we went to the Mid-Atlantic Voice Conference last year. We did it live from there as well, trying to drag on your coattails.
It gets a little noisy, and people are talking over each other. The Voice Over Cafe was actually spawned from an older podcast that Trish and I did called Voice Overs On Demand.
I think technically that’s who you were representing in Voice 2008.
Yes, and you can still find those old episodes on iTunes. And the hilarious part about that podcast is the audio never sounded the same on every episode.
That sounds familiar.
Kind of like ours.
It would be like I’d use a different mic, or it’d be louder, I’d use different… It was just a mess. But yeah, Voice Over Cafe, we record that podcast about once every two years.
Because it’s been so hard to get together. When you’re working with like five or six people, unless you all work together in the same office, it gets to be a little challenging. Oh my God, yeah, so we’ll definitely be back at it.
There’s no question about it. And it’s voiceovercafe.org for that one. But I did create a mini podcast series for the voice talent with ADD, and that would be 95% of all voice talents.
What? What do you say?
You can go to voiceoversermons.com and the beauty of it, yeah, it’s me rambling and ranting about stuff, but there’s good information in there, and I think the longest one ever was like 10 minutes long, so that one does pretty well. It’s just something you can kind of plug in and take a little lesson and just be done with it by the time you get off the toilet.
I love your voiceover sermons because they’re short and sweet, and it either gives you a nice reminder of something that I had been failing to do in my own business or just new ideas. Sometimes it can kind of pick you up and you’re like, oh, I’m not making any progress. Like, shut up and get back to the mic.
And sometimes it can really get me into trouble. I’ll give you a little story here. One time I bashed a talent agency here in town because they didn’t sign me.
The former owner, this is how it got started. The former owner was going to bring me in and add me to the roster, and decided at the last minute that I wasn’t a fit for the agency. And I was kind of young and stupid back then because I let my ego get the best of me, and I started lashing out, and sent them along, drank a bunch one night, and left a big, long, angry voicemail.
You know, this is like quite a few years ago now.
Like almost one?
And then they have new ownership, and then I tried to get back in with the agency, and the funny part is, they like the demos, and it sounded like it was going to happen. So I go in, and the new owner brings this up at the meeting. I’m like, wait a minute, what?
I understand that you did a little podcast episode, and I literally just shit my pants when she said that. Because I was not kind in the episode about that particular agency. I apologized profusely for it, regretted it, deleted that episode.
So I have been known once in a while to put my foot in my mouth. But it had a happy ending because they’re a terrific agency. I get a few gigs every month from them.
They’ve been very good to me. We had to start from scratch, and I had to kind of earn their trust, which was justified, really, after my horrible mistake of just teeing off without really thinking about it. And then it’s really become quite a very, very positive relationship.
Awesome. Well, Terry, as you may know, our podcast focuses mostly on the newer talent who are just starting out, and our focus is really to try to educate them on the stupid things we’ve done, and maybe you’ve done as well, to maybe sandbag their career and try to avoid those things before they get into trouble. What’s some advice you can give to talent that are just starting out, either equipment or where they should go for coaching?
What’s the right path to start down so they eventually have a fruitful career?
Well, you mentioned, I mean, I’ll start with… Let’s start with the equipment, because if you’re gonna spend $200 on a USB mic, you might as well spend $400 on a really good mic. If you’re really serious and passionate about it, spend the extra money.
It will go a long way. USB mics are good for on-hold messages and maybe a podcast or maybe an explainer video, but if you really want to get into more of the commercial broadcast work, it’s gonna benefit you to buy that better mic. And I know that even I used to say, I’ll just get a USB mic for a couple of years until you build up your clientele.
I used to say that many, many years ago and I’m like, you know what? You could get a Rode NT1A for like $200 more. It sounds incredibly better than like an AT2020 or a Samsung or an MXL or one of those mics.
So not to really put the cart before the horse, but you should definitely learn how to read a script before you start buying equipment. But if you’re gonna buy a microphone, what’s an extra $200 if you’re truly passionate about doing this?
So speaking of, what are some other kind of shortcuts that you see newer talent trying to take that really just like, oh, why won’t they listen?
Well, for whatever reason, if you really look at any kind of industry, universities, schools, training programs, they all cost money. And sometimes newer talents will read blogs or read things online where they’re almost floored when you tell them that it’s going to take a little bit of an investment to get into this. You know, coaching, equipment, demos.
Time.
Websites, time, exactly. And for whatever reason, there’s books out there that can be very mythical about this, and they think they can just take a free ride and jump over the rainbow to the pot of gold without putting any effort into it mentally or financially. And I think that’s where people really get snake-bitten because they realize, oh, man, I did everything the wrong way.
I’m not getting anywhere. You know, maybe they got a couple of Fiverr gigs, you know, or something like that. I know, that’s kind of a…
That’s definitely… The cheap shot. Yeah, that’s profanity in the voice over pro world, but…
And they just kind of stumble, and they’re never going to get picked up by any talent agencies with that type of mentality. And honestly, that’s where people really make the mistake. They assume that they can…
This isn’t something that you can do. Oh, I’m unemployed. I’ll just get into voice overs, and that’ll take care of everything.
Make a quick buck.
Yeah, it’s just… It’s not that. And for some reason, voice overs once in a while have…
You know, the industry… It’s not like it has the reputation of that, but at least one out of every five inquiries that I get from somebody who wants to get into voice overs, somebody is absolutely astounded when you tell them the pricing for either coaching or a demo or just building up the business, period.
Indeed.
And one thing that… I mean, it’s funny that they do that to you, because frankly… And I’ve done this a lot on the voiceover camp.
Terry has some of the most reasonable coaching and demo production rates out there. Shh!
Don’t say that.
And still do, by the way. And still do, I’m still way under what any of my competitors are charging. Thank you very much.
Well, we’re not tossing out numbers here, but you get a lot of bang for your buck. Like, for example, Paul and I were both previous students of Terry’s, so we actually still have access to an entire archive of all of his webinars, and we’re welcome to join his bi-monthly online classes and just practice scripts or learn more about marketing. And of course, you’ve got all of your free content through your blog and your voiceover sermons.
You really are pretty generous with all the content you offer to students and non-students alike.
And dare I say, it’s actually quality. The demos you produced for Sean and I have signed both of us to agencies.
Across the world.
That’s really good to hear. And I started to kind of branch out a little bit on the programs. I’ve got an excellent copywriter.
I’ve got a couple of other coaches that I’m kind of honing in to my big program that I’ve just recently… Well, it’s kind of a soft launch. And even a website designer.
Because if you really think about it, people tell me that they like my programs. They’ve gone through the coaching, they’ve got a great demo. It’s like, oh man, now I need a website.
And I never really had that as part of the program before. But now I have a website designer on my staff. I really wanted to create a program that was really the full toolbox.
The full plate of meat and potatoes, so to speak. Where it’s like, alright, so coaching, some group classes, some demos, some after demo mentoring, and website. It felt like I needed to kind of add to the toolbox just a little bit.
Why don’t you tell us about your new staff?
Oh, absolutely. I’m using a terrific talent named Tawny Plattis. She’s the one who writes the scripts for the demos, and she’s very, very good.
She also used to own a retail store and has got a ton of marketing experience. She’s done very well in voice acting as well. And Rob Marley, who’s a great blog writer and does a lot of narration work, really.
Not like a big commercial broadcast guy, but just a ton of big kind of independent contractor like Voice Talent, but a very, very good coach. And then Josh Risser, who’s a very talented young man. Designing websites is what he does for a living pretty much, and I added him to the staff as well to help design and develop Voice Over websites for students.
So it really has become quite the full menu, so to speak. Not necessarily menu. My brain is shutting down.
I’m not using the right words now all of a sudden.
Josh, by the way, is the most recent like on the VO Meter Facebook page, so thank you very much, Josh.
Oh, terrific. Yeah, he’s a good talent all by himself, but he’s a really good web master, and he’s got an understanding of what… He doesn’t build websites that suck.
There’s your marketing tagline.
I know, your tagline right there.
We build websites that don’t suck. He’s really cool, a very talented guy, and just a hell of a good website designer too. And it was just…
Even if things are going well, I’ve been a solo voiceover mentor for many, many, many years now, but it’s still nice to change things up here and there and add a few pieces and take some pieces out. I’m always trying to improve my craft as a voiceover coach as well. Paul, you’ve been very voiceless with your opinions.
I sound like I’m being sarcastic, but I’m really not. I like people who have a quote-unquote clue. I enjoy getting feedback and ideas from them, and both of you guys have been gracious with that type of feedback, so I do appreciate it.
Yeah, well, we were inspired by you, and it’s the whole reason we started this podcast, among others, but to give back to that community, to some of the knowledge that we’ve gleaned from all the successful pros like yourself.
Well, I appreciate that, and this is episode number… You guys have done pretty well with this podcast, especially considering… Yeah, this is number 13.
I know there’s people… And Rob Marley actually… Paul, you told me that you were doing it, but then Rob Marley told me about it, thinking that I didn’t already know about it, and he was a fan, really, ever since the first couple of episodes.
You guys are newer in the industry. You don’t try to pretend that you’re an expert at everything. You’re kind of like new guys who are trying to find your way through the voice over world.
You’re very real, you’re very genuine. You’re not a narcissistic elitist. It’s not your way or the highway.
And you don’t… Never mind, I was going to rip on a couple people, but forget it.
No, I’m just kidding.
Like you were saying, we don’t blow smoke. We just kind of want people to know the reality of getting involved in the business if it’s something they want to do.
Absolutely. And I will tell people who are listening to this, and I wrote a blog on this recently and maybe even did a sermon on the same blog, it’s just that there are so many different opinions out there, and there are so many chefs in the kitchen when it comes to voice over advice. So make sure that you’re getting advice from all over the place, not just like one voice over group.
Because I’ve heard people that, well, What’s-his-name said that in this group, so I’m going to just go ahead and be an auto mechanic instead. And somebody that just wants to give up. I’m like, you know, in this day and age of forums on Facebook and LinkedIn, people are going to have about 150 different opinions on the same subject.
And you really have to just dig deep and really do your research and not base everything on what one or two people say.
Yeah, it’s a valid point. And to be certain, most of the community will help if asked, as long as you’re respectful about it.
You’re right. It’s a very, very helpful community. There are people out there that kind of troll new talents, and they like to just tell them what idiots they are.
And there’s just no place for that. I see this stuff in these, quote unquote, professional voiceover groups. I’m like, who the hell is this guy?
You got a guy who’s got about a year of experience going into 25 different voiceover groups and spewing out a bunch of bullshit to people when…
Wait, are you talking about me?
When they have no idea what the hell they’re talking about. And honestly, if you’re really that successful, you probably don’t have eight or nine hours out of the day to give people advice.
Well said. Sage advice. Well, Terry, it’s been…
So put that in your AT2020 and smoke it.
Well, Terry, it’s been such a pleasure. We’ve been waiting for this for such a long time.
That smells good, Sean.
Well, I am in Washington, but…
That’s true.
That’s true. I’m sorry, Paul.
I was trying to wrap up in a nice little way. But anyway…
So was I.
It’s been a pleasure. We were so happy that you said yes to come on. We have admired your work and benefited from your coaching for so long.
It was really great to have you on.
My pleasure, guys. I’ll come back any time. This is a lot of fun.
I appreciate you having me.
So before you leave, Terry, what’s the best way to get a hold of you if people just want to ask you questions or get some coaching?
Well, I like it when people come to my door and knock. No, I would say you can hit me up on Facebook. I’m easy to find.
Come into Voice Over Camp on Facebook, or you can send me an email, terry, T-E-R-R-Y, at universalvoicetalent.com. And the website is the same address, universalvoicetalent.com. Doing a makeover of that one, thank God.
That one’s been collecting dust for a little bit. Not collecting dust, meaning that it’s not working, but it’s time for a makeover. No question about it.
But those are different ways that you can get a hold of me.
And we’re back, man. Isn’t he just sound like a guy you want to have a beer with? Thank you so much, Terry.
Learned so much, and had a blast talking with him. So you can find him up on Facebook, or you can find him at his personal website, universalvoicetalent.com. Thanks for listening to this episode of The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
Thanks again, everybody. Have a great day. Thanks for listening to The VO Meter, measuring your voice over progress.
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