The VO Meter, Measuring Your Voice Over Progress. Hi, everybody, and welcome to a very special episode of the VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
Today we’re in between episodes, but we’re doing this special report about the interview I just did with the two local authors who I recorded in my studio doing their own book.
Yeah, I’m sure you’ve heard Paul mention on some of our earlier episodes that he’ll actually rent out his studio and record local authors to do their audio book projects and stuff like that, which I think is a really cool added value for having a personal studio. So it’s not something that all of us can do if we’re working out of a closet or have roommates and stuff like that. So that’s really cool, Paul.
Yeah, something I sort of walked into by accident. I had a friend, the first one was a friend of a friend who had written a book and they were talking about it on Facebook. And just sort of the Looney Tunes thought bubble over my head said, hey, I wonder if they’d like to do an audiobook.
So I asked and she said yes. And then we worked on it over the next couple of weeks. At first I approached her and said, do you want me to do your book?
And she said, well, it’s a book about working moms.
You know all about that though, don’t you? Your wife’s a working mom.
Yeah, my mom was a working mom most of my life. But anyway, I said, good point. Would you like to do it yourself?
And she said, yeah, I’ve actually been thinking about that. Tell me how it works. So we talked about the ins and outs and the dos and don’ts.
I sent her Sean Pratt’s video of talking to herself in the bathroom for two weeks to see if she actually liked doing it. And she said she tried it. And she said, yeah, let’s do it.
So we produced a book, put it out on Audible, and it’s been out for I guess about six or seven months now. So that was fun. And I said, hey, this is cool.
I like being on the other side of the glass for a change and just doing the editing and listening. So my local pastor, who we’ll talk to in a second, you’ll hear the interview I did, and his associate had written a book that was wildly successful. And I approached them about doing an audiobook about a year ago.
And they sort of said, yeah, we’re thinking about it. Maybe we’ll tell you when we have some time. And then they said, yeah, let’s do it over the summer.
We’ll make it our summer project, which you’ll hear in the interview. It was probably the worst time to do it, because it’s in the…
Oh, the heat.
Yeah, the East Coast and Baltimore and the humidity. They were locked up in this booth. And I tried to use the fan, but it was interfering with some of the recordings.
So that’s one of the things Pastor Michael actually mentions that that was the worst part about doing the audiobook. So you’ll hear that in the interview. But yeah, the book has been out now for a couple of weeks, and we’ve had good feedback from it.
And they actually have a whole series of books that I’m hoping to work with them on in the future.
That’s wonderful. Best of luck to both of you guys, or to all three of you, excuse me.
Thank you. Something you’ve considered at all? Have you ever rented out your studio or let somebody borrow it, either here or back when you were in Nagasaki?
Well, yeah, I did it all the time, actually. Well, mainly for what I do, like sort of the English e-learning modules that I do. I’ll have people…
And I’ve certainly advertised my studio to local talent, but just based on where I’m located, there’s not a whole lot of people who need it. But back when I was in Japan, if anyone had any audio recording needs, they had them like, oh yeah, sure, just come on by. And by the way, I need more narrators, so it was kind of a you scratch my back, I’ll scratch your situation, which is what I’m sure you’re experiencing now.
You might have… Or you can trade your studio services for marketing services or any number of things, whatever you set your mind to, really.
Yeah, actually brings up a good point. I met with a local marketing strategist this week, a friend of mine, who I’ve known for 20 years, that’s also what he does. And we talked about that.
And he said he’s more or less doing only consulting now. And I said, well, how could we work something out where you help me with the strategic part of my business? And he said, well, let’s barter for it.
And he apparently volunteers with a local school at where his kids go and helps them with their production for their sports teams. So his son and some of their classmates produce videos for the football team, the soccer team. And they’re really good, actually, for high school kids.
Like awesome cross-phase and dissolves and epic soundtracks behind it. So they need some voice overs for that. And I said, yeah, I’d be happy to help.
You know, I have the studio here, just like you said. We can barter out the services and we’ll see what we can make happen. So that’s something I’m looking forward to, too.
And I’m sure that’d be a fun little field trip for some of the kids participating in that. Like, create your own professional voice over.
Yeah, exactly. We’ll figure out if I can bring a mobile setup to the school, because it’s not that far away. It’s basically the next town over.
So I could bring a mobile setup there to a class and set it up there. Or maybe bring them here. We’ll see how that works.
Maybe you can get our friend a deal involved and have them set up their own little professional studio with vocal booth to go blankets.
Well, yeah, that’s kind of what I was thinking anyway. But maybe you’re right, get a deal out to bring his van out there and do it for his benefit as well. That’d be cool.
Maybe not a van, they might be skeptical, but…
You’ll see the nice man in the unmarked van on the corner. Yeah, perfect.
So once again, the reason we’re doing this episode is to play the interview I did with Pastor Michael White and Tom Corcoran of Church of the Nativity here in Lutherville, Maryland. And we’ll talk about the book, Rebuilt, how they liked doing the audiobook and what challenges there were. And you’ll hear me trying to convince them to do another one.
Thank All right, so we are here in the interview portion of The VO Meter with pastor Michael White and Tom Corcoran, who are the authors of Rebuilt, the audiobook that was just published on Audible, iTunes, any place you can pick up audio books. And we’re talking about the experience and how the book came together. So welcome, guys, how are you doing today?
Good, thanks for having us.
Thanks, Paul.
So as I said, we just produced the audio version of this book, but obviously there was a print version before. Can you tell us the background story? Because the two of you work for the Church of Nativity here in Lutherville, Maryland, or do we call it Timonium, Maryland?
Mostly official zip code.
We say Timonium because people know the Timonium Fairgrounds.
Okay, so Timonium, Maryland, the Church of Nativity. But how did you come about writing a book about your experiences here at the church?
Well, I think a little bit was kind of both of us were new to working in a church. So for many years, we thought there was just an easy template. I think a lot of people think about church work that it’s kind of really easy.
We meet people all the time that come in from the business world, work at a church, and expect it to be very easy. And we certainly expect it to be easy. But we came in and found it much more difficult than we thought.
And also that in the Catholic Church, at least, there was no, the playbook or the template that seemed to be the way you would run a church, which made us think it would be easy. It was broken and not working. So over about five or six years, we learned that, that this is not working, that we need to do something different.
And that really a lot of places didn’t understand what the business of the church was and that this temple was not working. And so after having gone through that experience, frustration, and then learning some things that did work and seeing a growth and change in the church, we wanted to just share that story and share what we learned and think it was something that other people were feeling, some of the same frustrations that we had had, and give that a voice. So that’s kind of how the book came about.
Did you want to add anything to that?
Well, I think that you had the instinct to want to put our experience down on paper, and I responded accordingly. I think that was the basic exercise.
One good thing about kind of our partnership in writing the book is that I love a blank page, but I’m terrible at editing. I am awful, I can’t, you know, and Michael’s really good at editing and writing and rewriting. I like to say I’m not really a writer.
I just have ideas. I think Michael’s more a writer than makes the book readable.
Yeah, I don’t have any ideas.
Did you edit it and proof it yourselves or did you hire someone third party to do that?
Well, eventually we identified a publisher and he appointed an editor.
So you ran it through several hands before it was actually published?
Sure.
But that was the big obstacle for people who are trying to write a book. It’s hard to do, and so you have to go through a lot of different no’s. We got no’s many times and sent out proposals and did all that.
You either get nothing back or just get no form letters back. We actually got very lucky. Kind of the way it got printed was that we went to a conference where there was a bunch of publishers and we just happened to run into one.
I don’t know if you wanted to add that story at all.
Yeah, we were desperately in search for a publisher and we were at this conference where there were a number of them. And we ran into one sort of by accident and hit it off and struck up a conversation that led to our association, our publishers Ave Maria at Notre Dame University.
And as far as the audience for the book, what was your initial thoughts about who would read the book? Who was it for, basically?
For anybody in a parish that cares about the work of a parish, then I think, again, the way I think we describe it in the beginning is who feel like things are not going well, that love the church, want to see the church grow, want to see it be successful but feel like it’s not, and maybe aren’t sure why that is or what’s the path forward. So it was for anybody in a parish that cared about the church and wanted to see it grow and succeed and was not satisfied with the status quo.
You’re talking about staff or actual parishioners as well?
Either staff or parishioners, yes. We thought it could have a wider reach beyond just church staff and it has. It’s sold about, we’ve told, about 100,000 copies, I think, of Rebuild, 140,000 among all the books that we’ve, the three books we’ve written.
Full disclosure, I’m a member of the parish here and have read the book, and I know from the community that it really was well received and it sort of became a rallying point for the parish. Have you found that other parishes have been able to duplicate that and use it as a rallying point for themselves?
Yeah, there’s still, there’s some parishes that are doing that now. It’s still actually, even though the book was printed or published about five years ago now, almost, it’s still kind of early. It takes time for people to read a book, put it into practice, but definitely we see, we’re seeing fruit in other parishes, and that’s very satisfying.
I think probably the most satisfying thing about writing a book is, and this we were told by our editor of the book, that you wrote and put into words what people were thinking, but no one either had the courage or had taken the time to voice. And that kind of reminds me, you know, CS. Lewis said he wanted to write the books that he’d wish someone else had written.
And I think it’s cool to say you’ve written a book that all these other people wish they had written, but you wrote it and put voice to that.
Well, I think you both did a great job of getting that voice across. Sometimes there’s a disconnect between your writing voice and your actual speaking voice. And one of the things I like so much about the book is that knowing you two, it is your speaking voice.
When I read it, I hear your voices in my head. And that brings us to why we did the audio book, or at least in my mind. So let’s talk about how that started.
I think you had some thoughts about it, but I approached you both about two years ago to actually get it off the ground and see if it’s something you wanted to do. Did you have thoughts of the audio book before we talked?
Yeah, absolutely.
No, not at all.
Go ahead and say it. Ed, you explain your no. I’ll explain my yes.
Well, I just didn’t… It didn’t occur to me that anybody would have any interest in it.
Yeah, I mean, we had… People had come to me a few times and said, you guys should do an audio book. And our publisher at the time had said, yeah, we don’t do it.
If you want to do it, go ahead. But they just said, it’s not something we’ve found. I think since then, they’ve actually…
Come back around.
Come back around.
Said, oh, we’d like to do an audio version.
Because they had to read Already Worked With You. Oops. Yeah.
But, you know, but yeah. So I mean, a few people had said, you know, I never read, but I will listen to audiobooks. So the idea was out there, but…
It just makes so much sense, too, because people spend so much time in the car, in commute, at least in our community here in North Baltimore. And they’ve got plenty of time to listen, not much time to read.
So what were some of the challenges involved with doing the audiobook? First of all, before we started, what did you think it was going to be like? And then once we got into it, was it that way, or was it completely different?
I thought that it would be easy. I thought that it would be a no effort kind of exercise. And I thought that it was extremely challenging.
It was exhausting, actually.
Yeah, that’s the reaction a lot of people have when they think about it. I’ve worked with a coach where he has lots of people come to him and say they want to be audiobook narrators, and he has this video, I think it might have sent it to you, actually, Tom, where it’s a test that he gives everybody. He says, go in your house, his name’s Sean Pratt.
We talked about him on the podcast. But he says, go in a small room in your house, maybe your bedroom or the corner of your kitchen or maybe even a bathroom, and sit down with a book and read it for three hours every day for two weeks.
Oh my gosh.
And tell me what you think after that if you still want to be an audiobook narrator. And he said, at least half the time, people come back and say, yeah, this was not what I thought it was going to be. There’s no way I could make a living out of that or do that long term.
And then there’s others that say, yeah, it’s something I really enjoyed and I want to do it. But, Michael, for you, that was the challenge, the actual sitting down and getting through it? Absolutely.
And I speak for a living. I preach. That’s what I do.
So I’m no stranger to the exercise of the spoken word. But this was a challenging at a whole different level that I hadn’t anticipated.
So, when we started, I said right away that I thought the two of you were doing really well because I’ve produced some other books for narrators and it can be a bit of a struggle. But both of you did a great job, I think, in the actual dictation and picking up on pickups when we had to stop the recording and go back. Did you find it that after a while you got better at it or was it something that you think you still struggle with if you had to do it again?
Well, it’s interesting, you told Michael that he did really well. I don’t think you said that to me, Paul, but you said I had to get rid of my Philly accent.
Well, I’m saying it now.
Professor who actually connected Father Michael and I together, still might have said, before you handed every paper in, you should read it out loud. And it’s amazing the differences. I still haven’t taken that advice yet, but read it out loud because it does change.
You just pick up things you don’t know otherwise. And we practice a message that we’re giving. Again, we say, speak it into life.
So I think the audio stuff teaches you, again, that great connection, that thought that comes from both of the written word and the spoken word, and how the connection between the two. It might be a better way to say that, but…
No, that’s perfect. So the big question is, now that you’ve done a full audiobook, nine hours worth, would you ever do it again?
Not in the summertime.
That was the other challenge. It was like 125 degrees in that booth, because we were doing it in…
We could do it here in July.
Yeah, this is a nice space. We’re inside the media room at the church. And yeah, it’s apportioned very nicely for VO.
We could do it here.
All right, next time. That’s what we’ll do.
Well, guys, thanks for coming on. I appreciate it. It was fabulous to work with you.
I was really excited going into it, and I’m so excited the book is out there now. Let’s give the title one more time. And with the subtitle, it’s Rebuilt, Awaking the Faithful, Reaching the Lost, Making Church Matter.
There we go, all together now. Thanks again, and we’ll talk to you soon.
Thanks, Paul. Thanks, Paul.
So once again, that was the interview I did this week with Father Michael White and Tom Corcoran from Church of Nativity. The book is rebuilt, and I’m so proud of the work we did, and it was also a lot of fun.
Well, that’s so cool that you got to work with sort of non-narrators and educate them a little bit about the recording aspect of audiobooks. Did it kind of remind you of your own journey getting into audiobooks and some of the challenges involved with that?
Yeah, for sure. And especially since neither of them had been in a recording booth before, I definitely could remember the struggles of sitting still, worrying about the clothes. One of the first things I had to do was tell Tom to wear a different shirt because it was rubbing on the microphone because he’s a big dude and inside this booth it was making noise.
Just those struggles that you don’t think about when you’re either speaking publicly or you’re reading to yourself and you’re thinking about doing audiobooks. Sitting still and making sure you’re on mic are two things that are so important. And I get to see those challenges as we develop the production.
Oh, absolutely. I’m actually working with a new talent, helping her set up her studio space. And just little things like giving yourself room to move, but not moving too much, making sure you have a chair that doesn’t make noise, that your clothes don’t make noise, that your mouth is clean and not too clicky, that you drink enough water.
It’s really, it’s amazing how many things we get used to just because we’ve been doing this for a little while.
Yeah, even to actually having somebody in the room, in the studio, but not in the booth. So the whole time they were doing the book, both authors were here. So if Michael was in the, I get to call him Michael now, it’s pretty cool.
If Michael, Father White, was in the booth, Tom was sitting on my couch in the editing area and vice versa. And for the first week, Tom had this awful cough. And if you listen really closely, you can hear some of it in the dead space, in the room tone of the book.
I got most of it out, but they weren’t available at the end to redo those parts and I had to do some magic with them, with Rx.
Don’t tell ACX that.
Yeah. So I had to do some magic to get those out. But even to that, you don’t think about those things if you haven’t sat in the studio before, that even outside this, what’s supposedly a soundproof booth, this whisper room, a loud cough is gonna come through.
Yeah, they’re not panaceas.
No, definitely not.
So what else did you learn about recording these guys, or kind of validate your experience as a burgeoning audiobook narrator?
Well, one of the things I learned is that I have an ear for talent, because one of the things, one of the reasons I wanted to do this book is because the pastor, Michael White, is such a great speaker in person. He’s actually booked on tours for speaking and is invited to parishes all around the country and even the world to speak about this book they wrote. So I knew he’d be good.
And the first day he came out, I was like a kid in a candy store.
I said, this is so awesome.
I knew you’d be good at this.
I’m so proud.
And then Tom, of course…
Put your agency cap on there.
Yeah, and then Tom, of course, said, does that mean I’m not? And I said, eh.
You have potential, maybe?
Exactly. We’ll get there, is what I said. But yeah, Father White was just a natural.
And I said, you could be an audiobook narrator tomorrow. And so they have their own podcast, actually, where they promoted the book. And Tom told that story and he said, yeah, Paul said that Michael was great.
I wasn’t so good that if the church thing doesn’t work out, Michael could be a narrator full time. So that was a funny story.
Well, I remember some of our guests, Mark Cashman and some of the other coaches we worked with, often mentioned pastors transitioning into voiceover, either when they retire or before, just because they’re natural storytellers and public speakers. And there are definitely a lot of crossover skills involved with that. So I mean, that’s great that you got to experience that firsthand.
And it was with your very own pastor.
Yeah, I mentioned in the interview that we just heard that their speaking voice comes across really well in the book. And it’s something you mentioned to Mark Cashman that when he writes, you can hear his voice in his writing. And for the two authors, Tom and Michael, it was the same thing.
And it came across in the audio as well. They were really good at getting their speaking voice like they do when they’re doing the messages at church into the audio book. And that really shows.
Everyone has this idea of what a voiceover artist or an audio book narrator is supposed to sound like. And the truth is, it’s supposed to sound like you. Yeah, you’re supposed to be clear and convey a story well, but unless you’re actually doing character voices, you’re just supposed to be your true self and let all of your natural personality and charisma shine through on Mike.
So once again, it was a great time working with these two gentlemen. The book again is Rebuilt, Awakening the Faithful, Reaching the Lost, Making Church Matter by Michael White and Tom Corcoran. You can find it on Audible, go through Amazon or iTunes.
Go ahead and buy it now. I’d really appreciate it. I wanna thank Michael and Tom for being on the podcast.
I had a great time interviewing them at the church. And go buy the book.
Before we go, I just wanted to thank Paul for his great idea of bringing his guests in and to our studio audience. It’s just a great reminder of how to add, like have that added value to your voice over business is actually renting out your studio and making it available to other talent. I know a good friend of mine, a co-worker of mine for the Global Voice Acting Academy, David Tobak, he actually rented his studio out to some very successful voice actors, Katie Lee, and you might know this one, Townsend Coleman, the voice of the original Michelangelo from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, actually came to his studio to record because they needed that ISDN promo now.
And it was amazing. Yeah, it was really cool.
Townsend Coleman, keynote speaker at this year’s VO Atlanta, by the way.
Yes, bringing it all around. And so now when I meet him, I’m like, hey, you recorded with my friend. Can you sign my Michelangelo?
Cowabunga!
You’ve got an N.
I know, I know. You never know when those will come around. But by all intents and purposes, Townsend’s an awesome guy, and I’m sure he’ll be very friendly and sign whatever turtles you have when you see him.
Unless you’re maybe, unless it’s one of those backpacks and you want him to sign your back.
I guess you could say he was shell shocked. But anyways, that just about wraps up this mini-sode of The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
Have a wonderful week, everybody. Thanks for listening to The VO Meter, Measuring Your Voice Over Progress. To follow along, please visit www.vometer.com.