Today we’d like to introduce you to The Voiceover Beard.
Before we jump into specific questions about your work, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
When people ask me how to get started in Voiceover, the best advice I have is “lose your job”. That’s what happened to me. I got unintentionally laid off from my first secure job in my early 20’s. It motivated me to take freelancing seriously. After that point, I had terrible taste in my mouth about employers. I think it was a little post-traumatic stress but it fired me up. After a ton of coaching, auditioning, iteration, branding & content creation, I finally got to a comfortable spot in my career where I’m earning enough to live and even teaching others how to do it. I have a fully online course and I produced an audiobook on the subject.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Like any new career, you’ve got the foundational issue of “no experience, no work, no work, no experience.” The first thing I did was try those online casting websites, and with the same voice I have now – but without coaching – I got no work. So coaching helped me dial in my commercial demo to make it look like I was booking a lot. Then I got my first bits of real work. I’m really glad I didn’t go any longer without coaching. I would have developed really bad habits. And not to mention, I would lose my mind wondering why I wasn’t booking.
But the real fortune came when I discovered how to use Instagram. Instead of reading articles on marketing written by other Voiceover artists, I was reading and watching guys like Gary Vaynerchuk, who are the modern day social media theorists. According to Gary V, you shouldn’t just make content that highlights yourself, you’ve got to give people a reason to care. Give them something. So now I tell poop jokes and make people laugh. Eventually, it gets into the right hands and people hire me for stuff—what a world.
Please tell us about your work.
I am a Commercial / Narration Voiceover Artist, meaning that I don’t do animation or characters. Rather I am the voice you hear under a social media ad or a YouTube video. What makes me unique is that I have the vocal pitch of someone much older than me, but the speaking sensibilities of a millennial so my utility spans across a wide range of my clients’ target demographics.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
I would have gotten coaching sooner. It’s not worth wasting energy needlessly treading water in five different directions when you could ask someone what to do.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.thevoiceoverbeard.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the.voiceover.beard/
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