August 29, 2024 • 39 mins
Tom Dheere, known as the VO Strategist, shares his origin story as a voice actor and discusses the changes in the industry over the past 30 years.
Tom emphasizes the importance of being a good storyteller and adapting to the evolving industry, including the use of AI, and offers guidance and mentorship to voice actors, helping them navigate the industry and make informed decisions.
He also discusses the potential impact of AI on the voiceover industry and advises voice actors to consider their values and consult with a lawyer before getting involved with AI voice cloning.
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction and Origin Story
07:09 The Cultural Shift in the Voiceover Industry
11:31 The Positive Impact of Diversity in Voiceover
17:52 Becoming the VO Strategist
26:24 Common Strategic Mistakes in Voiceover Careers
30:15 The Impact of AI on the Voiceover Industry
34:10 Considerations for AI Voice Cloning
37:26 The Future of AI in Voiceover
Tom's site: https://www.voiceoverstrategist.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Tom, you don't even know this, but you and I were at Mavo together.
It was the first time we were in the room together.
And you probably wouldn't know or remember this, but I ate breakfast one morning sittingacross the aisle from you in the little restaurant there.
Okay.
And I could not work up the nerve to come talk to you.
(00:22):
geez.
Wow.
Yeah, that was probably going back six or seven years.
That probably had to be May vote 2018.
I figure it was 18.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That was my first time.
So I caught that presentation.
I've known about you ever since I run into you occasionally at Uncle Roy's.
I've seen you speak at VO Atlanta may have seen you speak at Dallas.
(00:45):
I can't remember.
Would that be right at one voice?
Yes.
I was there last year and the year before they all merged together after a while.
Tom Deere is known as the VO strategist.
He's a wildly successful voice actor himself.
Like me does a lot of corporate stuff a lot of e -learning.
We'll talk about that But he also helps voice actors with the strategy of their careersPlease welcome if you will my burgeoning friend Tom dear with an H Tom's good to have you
(01:14):
man.
Thank you The H is silent and you'll wish I was by time I do want to start with yourorigin story as a voice actor.
How did it all start rolling for you?
It started in 1994.
Wow.
So was 30 years ago it started.
(01:36):
was a classically trained theater actor.
My goal was to be a working Shakespearean actor.
That was what I originally wanted.
And I went to the National Shakespeare Conservatory here in New York City.
It was a two year program.
I left after one year for various reasons.
So I was a little
(01:58):
adrift.
I was living at home.
was like 22, 21, 22.
And, my mom was reading a copy of a New Jersey monthly magazine.
And, in the back of it is all these classifieds and want ads and stuff.
And she said, she said, Hey, Tom, what's voiceover?
And, the only thing I knew about it back then, it was just, it was a saw, it was anoccasional side hustle.
(02:22):
Wasn't side hustle.
Wasn't even a term back then, but, but it was a side hustle for.
film and TV and theater actors to do in between real gigs, real acting jobs.
That was that was all I knew about it.
And she said that there's a coach nearby a voiceover coach.
(02:43):
Her name was Hope Noah.
She was a voice actor.
She was a DJ on NPR radio's New York affiliate WNYC for many years and she was
Also a voiceover coach.
So I gave her a call.
She said, sure, come on over for a diagnostic.
I went to her home.
She'd read this, read that, ask me some questions.
(03:05):
And she's like, yeah, I think you've got some potential to do this.
So I worked with her for about six months purely on commercial.
I mean, frankly, Paul, there really were almost no other genres back then.
I mean, there were people doing cartoons and stuff like that and narrating books on tape.
I can't even call it audio books back then.
(03:25):
But, so, so I worked with her for six months and then, I recorded a demo, which I havehere.
It's my little cassette tape.
There it is.
Look at that.
Yes.
Yes.
Very exciting.
Well, we'll fold out J cars.
Absolutely.
Yep.
Yeah.
(03:46):
The, the five minute cassettes from broadcast supply warehouse.
I'm right there with you, man.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
For me, was PSI Multimedia in, I want to say, Montevale, New Jersey.
And I would buy, I would order cases of demos, cassette tapes.
And I would print out the J cards myself.
And then would go to Staples and get piles of padded mailers and stuff those.
(04:10):
And then eventually turn into CDs.
But man, did my post office hate my guts.
sure.
They're like, great.
Because I would come in with like a lawn bag full of padded mail.
They're like,
And that's the way we did it back then and we thought nothing of it.
Right.
But I recorded the demo at a studio in New Jersey.
It turns out that the guy who runs the studio is now my comic book partner.
(04:34):
I've been producing a comic book for a while and he is my he's my business partner.
We've co -produced this this comic book Agent 1 2 2 if anybody wants to go check it out.
Agent number one number two number two dot com.
Shaken not stirred.
What?
Shaken not stirred.
Yes.
She's this is a this is a cyborg female cyborg from the future.
(04:55):
Wow.
So it's a whole thing.
But anyway, very cool.
But when I finished everything, and I got the demo and all that stuff, and hope gave me alittle certificate, which I still have in a filing cabinet somewhere.
She gave me a ream of Xerox copies of production company listings.
And she's like, here's your certificate.
(05:16):
Here's all these production company listings.
Start your cold calling and good luck.
Now this is like spring of 95.
was your marketing training.
That was my marketing.
That literally was my mark.
She didn't even tell me what to say.
She's like, just call them.
That was literally my marketing training.
That was the whole thing.
Cause also remember there was no social media.
There were no pay to plays.
There was no home recording.
(05:37):
There was, there was, I mean, most people, most your average person didn't have a website.
There was nothing like that.
So I would call cold call sometimes 50 times a day or more.
to production companies, advertising agencies, marketing firms, all kinds of things allover the place in the tri -state area.
(05:59):
And it took me a year to get my first voiceover.
It was a public service announcement for Herpes Awareness.
What's interesting about it besides that is that the company that booked me wasn't acompany that I cold called.
It was a
It was a referral from a different production company that they were friends with that Idid cold call.
(06:24):
So cold call direct marketing turned into referral indirect marketing, which turned intomy first voiceover gig.
how about that?
never know how the seeds are going to sprout, right?
You just wait.
Yeah, that's how it started.
That's amazing.
So you started in 93, you said it was before all these technologies that you named.
(06:48):
One you didn't name was digital video.
You've been in this long enough to see the trajectory and the arc from us literallysending out demos on cassettes to now the generative AI era dawning on voiceover.
Is that the biggest change?
Is it the technology?
(07:08):
Is it the reads?
Is it how we do business?
What to you has been the biggest change in the last 30 years?
That's a great question.
It's also interesting to zooming out even more.
I'm Gen X.
We both are.
Gen X is the generation, as you know, that was born with eight track tapes.
We were born in an analog society.
(07:31):
And now we are in this digital society.
So the boomers were before us.
The millennials were after us, but we are straddling the space, I guess what you go, thestraddling the space age to the information age.
Is that right?
That's a very, very apt description.
So we're in a very interesting position, prospectively, socio, socio -culturally,politically, economically, logistically, to kind of see where we were born into, which is
(08:02):
what came before and what we're living in now, which is just so different.
So that's part of the, that's part of the filter for, for, for your question.
I'm going to say cultural.
mean, yeah, the technology, technology constantly changes.
constantly evolves and it's gone.
Yeah.
It's gone from, mean, and before I started voiceover, it was real to real.
(08:24):
So there are voice actors are running around, which had real to real demos, which was thegeneration before me, but cultural.
In what sense?
Awareness, awareness that voiceover exists at all as a vocation.
as a trade.
When I started, wasn't, nobody knew about voiceover.
Your average person didn't think, you know, I want to be a voice actor.
(08:47):
It just, I mean, I'm sure there were some people out there watching cartoons or whateverbeing like, I'd love to do that.
But they, and then they just dismiss it because like that's as far as it goes.
There was no, there was no Google.
There was no, you know, there wasn't like a yellow pages where you could look up thevoiceover, local voiceover school.
You know, it just didn't exist.
So awareness, and the awareness is obviously a result of technology as a result of homerecording, social media, digital, and all that stuff.
(09:12):
It democratized voiceover.
Many more people became aware of it, which is cool.
But cultural, because for the first, what, 90 years of voiceover, the only people thatwere allowed to do it were people that looked and sounded like you and me.
That's right.
(09:32):
And now there has been a grossly overdue market correction where the people who aretalking into the microphone look and sound and are like the people who are listening to
the things that we say in the microphone.
So it's been democratized in that just the general public is aware that voiceover as atrade exists, but now it's a trade that anybody
(10:01):
anybody can try of any ethnicity, of any gender, of any location, of any lifestyle can,you know, can give it a shot, you know, and you know, talent will rise to the, to the top.
Training will rise to the top, you know, self -discipline, acumen, all that stuff willstill rise to the top.
But now it's like, everybody can give it a shot because you could have all the technologychanges in the world, but if it's still gate kept by old honkeys like you and me, then
(10:28):
like, is it really changed?
Right.
Right.
that diversity has been a hugely positive thing and it feels to me and you know time sincethe pandemic has been an accordion right something to me could be 3 months ago could be 3
years ago I have no idea right yeah but it seems to me we sort of had a me too likemovement that seemed to center around guys like Hank Azaria right where we were now
(10:57):
beginning to very quickly and very suddenly call out
white guys, generally white males, taking roles that had been, you know, that we've alwayshad.
But now there was, as you say, a market correction and a hyper awareness.
It feels like we hit that me too moment.
I want to say what, four or five years ago?
(11:20):
Thereabouts, yeah.
Yeah.
You believe that's largely positive, yeah?
1000 % positive.
Now, the only negative side is for the
old white guys who had it good for so long.
And all I can say to them and you and me is that we just need to be better storytellers.
(11:40):
Thank you.
Us, we now have to swim in a bigger pool, guys like you.
Yeah.
Right?
Yeah.
That forces us to be better.
And in an age of generative AI, where it's, and tell me if you agree with this, is AIgonna take out the bottom end of the market?
put it to you this way.
(12:01):
I recently had a conversation with someone who had been a successful voice actor on Fiverrand is not as successful now.
Apparently, this is secondhand information.
And I was trying to find a way to verify it literally yesterday.
I wasn't able to do it.
But apparently, voiceover revenue on Fiverr in the past few years has dropped by about70%.
(12:29):
And it is attributed to AI.
So I had been saying for years now that the lowest hanging fruit is what's going to getconsumed by AI first.
And the lowest hanging fruit are the $5 jobs on Fiverr and the very low no pay stuff onUpwork and Backstage and Twitter and other places like that.
(12:56):
So if the secondhand information is true, then yeah, generative AI is doing it.
Because here is the thing about Fiverr, just to
sidebar for a quick second is that there are ethical voice actors on Fiverr who aregetting paid industry standard rates through Fiverr.
Some are making six figures.
Those six figure people aren't making their money $5 at a time.
(13:18):
They're making them $500 a time or $5 ,000 at a time.
And that's fine.
Totally cool with that.
And you know what?
They're not even auditioning so good on them.
They build their gigs.
They optimize their profile.
They mark they do their thing and they they're getting good work.
But there are also a lot of voice actors who are getting paid.
five dollars and I want to stress American voice actors who are getting paid by Americanclients five dollars to do something that should be five hundred dollars which I have a
(13:45):
huge problem with.
So if they are willing to pay five dollars to an American voice actor which is 99 percentor 999 percent less than it should be or whatever it is then clearly they will have no
problem spending pennies to pay
an AI service to do to do that voiceover.
(14:07):
So it doesn't surprise me.
It doesn't surprise me in the least.
So yeah, AI is here.
AI is making its way through the voiceover industry.
AI is causing the voiceover industry to contract.
Is it going to contract 5 % or is it going to contract 95 % over the next two to fiveyears?
have absolutely no idea.
(14:27):
But what I do know is that if you are an aspiring voice actor,
Or if you're a voice actor at any point in your voiceover journey, your job's to be abetter storyteller than the AI.
Hear, hear.
And the best way to do that is to get theater training, on -camera training, improvtraining, opera training, or stand -up comedy training.
That will be just as important, if not more important, than your voiceover training.
(14:50):
Because if you know how to tell a good story and get layered with the VO101 training andthe genre training, you should be able to step over that relevance gap and be able to be
effective.
in voiceover when all of these low hanging fruit slash entry level jobs may vanish.
Agreed.
I agree 1000%.
(15:11):
I also my my spidey sense tells me that in addition to AI that slowdown on fiber hasanother factor built into it.
And you can tell me whether you agree or not.
We had a huge influx of untrained and under trained talent.
during the pandemic.
(15:32):
And I feel like part of that contraction of the business is those folks starting toprecipitate out of the business, agree or disagree.
That makes a lot of sense that that tracks because I don't know.
I'm sure the Fiverr company knows how many how much voiceover revenue was being generatedpre pandemic.
(15:52):
I, I agree with you, I think that there was definitely a surgence or a spike of some sort.
of voiceover people being or people being drawn to voiceover.
They do their Google Icing and the first thing they find is fiver.
They dive in with no training and recording in their bathroom.
They dive in.
And then after a while, they're like, I can't make any money doing this.
And then they exit stage.
(16:14):
Right?
Now, were those people generating revenue?
Probably not.
Maybe a few of them.
I guarantee there's a couple of people like I know for a fact that during the pandemic, Iwas having theater and film actors
coming to me for my mentorship program saying, my career is gone.
I can't act anymore.
(16:35):
Broadway shut down, the TV studio shut down, everything is shut down, help.
And there were a couple of people who I actually helped along as a voice actor.
And then when they got their feet under them with voiceover and the theater TV scenestarted to normalize, that's where they went back to, which is totally cool.
But yeah, I think.
(16:56):
Also, have you noticed how much have you noticed in the Facebook groups or other socialmedia platforms, people that are selling all of their voiceover equipment?
Honestly, I myself haven't seen a ton of that.
But I also don't look for it.
So you know, well, right, I've been noticing it a little bit more here and there andpeople who have been going trying for a while for years who I have had as students, or
(17:18):
I've just seen in conferences or whatever are are
are leaving the industry because they just can't generate enough revenue to sustainthemselves.
And that's why folks like you and I exist so that we can hopefully help those folks along.
That's a pretty good segue into the VO strategist part of your career.
How and when did that come about?
(17:39):
When you said to yourself, you know what, I think I have something to offer other voiceactors here.
Let me see if what I have, the experience that I have is of value to other people.
How did that happen?
October, 2011.
Wow.
It was the weekend that I attended my first voiceover conference.
(18:00):
And that would have been was that gone?
It was Fafcon.
Exactly.
It was Fafcon three, which back then it was one of the only conferences around now you youknow, swing a micro you can't swing a microphone around without hitting a conference.
But it was an uncon unconference format, which meant that there were no speakers,presenters or sponsors.
(18:20):
Only a hundred voice actors were allowed in and they had to apply and be evaluated.
And if you attended, you had to contribute in some way, which meant we set the agenda.
We decided what we wanted to talk about.
And it could be as much as it could be as something like somebody did prepare a full blownpresentation, which I did.
Or some people would just say, I have a question about home recording.
(18:44):
And then they pick a ballroom and anywhere between two and.
50 people would sit in the ballroom and talk about home recording or whatever subject.
So I did not think I deserved to be there.
I assumed everybody was more talented and more successful than I.
A voiceover friend had to convince me to go because this is 2011.
(19:08):
So I did my first voiceover in 96.
I went full time in 2005.
So I've been a full time voice actor for six years.
So yeah, I deserved to
be there.
Absolutely.
That was just my imposter syndrome insecurity, whatever.
So I thought to myself, OK, well, if I'm going to go, I'm going to present something, andI'm going to prove to them and myself that I deserve to be there.
(19:30):
So I did a presentation on how to write a mission statement, how to set annual goals, andhow to write a monthly action plan.
I had that knowledge because I'd been doing that for at least eight or nine years.
doing those things.
know I started the mission statement in 1997, because that was the year I read The SevenHabits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey.
(19:57):
then annual goals and action plans came quickly after that.
So I had already developed these systems.
So I thought, OK, maybe this is something.
Now, what I did not know, with the exception of one or two people, no one in the voiceoverindustry had talked about business or marketing as a voice actor.
Nobody really had done it.
There may have been one other person that had done it before me.
(20:19):
So I'm like, okay, I'm going to do this.
Now only a hundred people were allowed into FAFCon and I got like the smallest ballroomand 50 of the conference attendees.
So literally 50 % showed up for this.
There were people hanging outside, like with the door open and sitting on the floor andall that stuff, because everybody wanted to see what I had to say.
Not because nobody wanted to see what I had to say, but they wanted to see what I had tosay.
(20:41):
Sure.
The material, not the speaker, right?
Right, because who the hell am I?
So I did the presentation.
I even brought somebody up and walked them through how to write a mission statement andthe goals and everything.
And it was very, very well received.
And not long after that, I got an email from somebody said, expect a phone call.
And I got a phone call from somebody who runs a voiceover, one of the voiceover schools,and said, hey, I would like you to be one of my instructors.
(21:09):
So yeah.
So it literally, I literally got discovered at a voiceover conference.
a couple of years after that, I came up with the VO strategist branding.
so yeah, so it's been almost 13 years.
So I didn't tell the industry I wanted to do it.
The industry told me that I should do it.
Nice.
(21:29):
Well, in that regard, you and I come at, come at it from, different sort of origins,right?
I thought maybe I've got something to offer.
Let's find out.
And of course I had to test it and all that, but you came in.
Your test was at that conference and that's fantastic.
That's live and probably a lot scarier than what I went through.
So was terrifying.
I'm sure it was.
(21:50):
Let's talk about the video strategist part.
What, first of all, explain to our audience what you do as a video strategist.
Well, it's my tagline.
I help people navigate the voiceover industry.
You'll find that my logo is a compass.
(22:11):
so that's literally what I do because people decide they want to be a voice actor and mostpeople, well, they don't know what they don't know.
They go to Google, they type stuff in and then fiber comes up and other, and other placesand they may be talented.
They may actually get good training.
They build a website, they build a home recording studio, they produce their first demo.
(22:35):
They get that demo in their hands and they say, what I'm the now what.
And that's what I used to say for a long time.
So I used to say, you can only work with me through my mentorship program if you havethose things in place.
But I have since changed my view on that because you don't know what you don't know at thebeginning.
(22:58):
because also you don't know, you know, who to work with as a coach, how to build thatwebsite, how to set up that home recording studio, who you can trust for quality training.
So now I'm happy to work with.
anybody at any point in their voiceover journey to help them navigate.
And I've also worked with people with 20 plus years of experience in the voiceoverindustry because all the stuff that worked for so long stopped working.
(23:25):
And they're like, Tom, what happened?
Which is why it's so important for me as the VO strategist to make sure that I understandFiverr and I understand AI and I understand.
Other things that some find polarizing or controversial, which they're really not.
They're just tools.
and understand how they work, why they work.
(23:47):
So I can provide provide data so that all of my students can make informed, thoughtfuldecisions about how they want to navigate the voiceover industry.
If someone says to me, I just want to, I want to make six figures on Fiverr.
I'm like, great, let's make it happen.
If someone says, I want to go to LA and do.
Pixar movies and be in high end video games.
(24:10):
I'm like, cool, let's make that happen.
Most of the time it's somewhere in between e -learning corporate commercials.
I want to get one or two agents and all that stuff.
So that's how I help them.
So in the broadest sense, that's how I help them navigate the industry.
And I do that through my video library.
I have a VO how -to library, which is streaming videos.
You can watch them, buy them one at a time.
(24:30):
I have rental specials where there's always one or two.
You can rent for five bucks where you can stream them for 72 hours.
or for 20 bucks a month, six month commitment, can join, you can subscribe to it, so canstream as many videos as you want and watch them as many times as you want.
And then there's the mentorship program, which is where we, in addition to the videosubscription, we do a 30 minute check in every month.
(24:55):
it's, you're basically paying for an accountability buddy, but it's a lot more than thatbecause what predates the...
Diagnostic, what predates the mentorship session is a diagnostic where I lift up the hoodof their voiceover business and figure out what's going on, try to figure out what all
their knowledge and skill gaps are and what they need to work on to help them realizetheir definition of voiceover success, not the loudest jerk in the Facebook group's
(25:23):
definition of voiceover success.
No offense to voiceover Facebook groups, they're all lovely, but that's what happens a lotas people get steered.
really the wrong way in social media because they're asking questions that are answered bypeople that don't understand the question or are just so biased like Paul, why don't you
wear my glasses?
(25:43):
They help me see better.
Why don't they help you see better?
And if you don't wear my glasses, you're a jerk, right?
That's what happens a lot culturally on social media.
So I, that's why I am versed in fiber and voices .com and AI and all the things because
these are the realities of the voiceover industry.
I need to understand them so I can help people understand them and decide whether theywant to use them as a tool to get them where they want to go.
(26:07):
So you've been doing this a hot minute now.
You've worked with dozens, I assume hundreds of voice actors over the course of well overa decade.
I'm to ask you about commonalities.
Are there maybe one, maybe a handful of common
strategic mistakes that voice actors make with their career either early on or later on?
(26:32):
I'm gonna half answer that question first and say that the biggest commonality is that thereason why most voice actors don't succeed is because they can't get out of their own way.
What does that mean?
They can't get out of their, yeah, they can't get out of their way because they don't knowwhat they don't know or they have assumptions about themselves or the voiceover industry
or what is or could be their relationship to the voiceover industry that
(26:54):
is generally what hoses them.
understanding Source Connect or SAG -AFTRA, collective bargain agreements don't matter.
Because if they don't listen to themselves and don't listen to the voiceover industry,they're not going to get anywhere.
So that's why most voice, I think that's why 90 % of voice actors that fail, why they failis because they just don't know how to listen to themselves or the industry.
(27:18):
But strategically, it's interesting because everybody
Everybody screws up in their own adorable way.
The one, the biggest, usually the biggest strategic mistake is one that's unfortunatelyoften impossible to fix because of lack of resources, which is they don't know what they
don't know.
They type in, they do some Google -izing, they find certain demo mills that charge themexorbitant fees where in only a few classes you'll get a demo.
(27:47):
And then they have
horrible training and a ratty demo and they can't afford to repeat the process and nowthey're stuck and they don't know what to do.
They don't know how to navigate the industry anyway, even even if they got good trainingin a good demo, which you can't get good training in four or five sessions, you just
can't.
And then they're just boned.
(28:09):
And like I said, often, they can't do that again, because it's four or $5 ,000 or whateverthat they're that they're just out and they it will take them
years, not decades to save up that money again, to do it again.
So that's one of the biggest strategic strategic things farther down the road.
The reason strategically why many voice actors, screw up is because they refuse to adapt.
(28:35):
They refuse to evolve to what's going on in the industry.
There are many voice actors that I know that have behaved themselves out of the voiceoverindustry because they cling to old technology.
or old ways of doing things or old incorrect assumptions about pay to play sites versusdirect marketing.
(28:57):
Or they've just decided that all AI in every iteration is profoundly evil and is ananathema and affront to the senses of all true artists.
And anyone that even looks at AI, and I'm looking at an AI camera right now, so clearlyI'm the devil, has no business.
(29:17):
being in the arts at all.
And that sort of myopic, stubborn, backwards -looking behavior turns into strategicmistakes of not what to do, but what not to do.
And then they wonder what happened to their voiceover industry, their voiceover business.
(29:38):
Yeah, we all know voice actors who have very strong opinions based on
for lack of a better term, the decade in which they got into the industry, right?
It's almost like the guy that you went to high school with who's still listening to thesame music, who's still living in the same town, right?
(30:00):
We sometimes, I think we develop a frame of reference and we never evolve it.
So that makes absolute sense to me.
We've danced around AI quite a bit here, Tom.
What is your take?
Is this something where, I mean, obviously the genie is out of the bottle.
Is this something that's gonna decimate the industry?
Are we gonna work alongside of it?
(30:20):
How do you see AI affecting us in let's say the next two to three years?
Because God knows even that's a far flung prognostication now.
Yeah.
Well, as someone who cloned their voice two years ago, that'll tell you a littlesomething.
So that was even before chat GPT and what we consider the current wave of generative AI.
(30:42):
You were on this early.
Yeah, I was actually.
Now that I think about it, yeah.
I think my voice went live May or June of 2022 and then Chat GPT was November or Decemberof 2022 if memory serves.
If you are a lousy storyteller, AI will eat your voiceover business.
(31:04):
So if you are a non -talented hack who just has no business being here, though I'll nevertell anyone not to pursue their dreams, and I know I'm not the most talented
person in the world.
don't have a naturally whatever voice, but I got, I got good storytelling training.
I got good voiceover training and I have been consistent and persistent, which is one ofthe reasons, which is why I'm a successful voice actor.
(31:30):
But also if you don't have your business hat on, the AI is going to eat up your voiceoverbusiness.
And that can mean everything from, you know, auditioning for a text to speech thing onsome
casting site and then they steal your voice and then create permanent conflicts and thenyou can never work in the industry again.
And you did it for $2 ,000, which sounded like $2 million when you saw that castingnotice.
(31:55):
but I would, I think that AI can and should compliment the voiceover industry.
because like you do long for me learning stuff and you may have mispronounced a name or aplace.
or a medicine 32 times.
(32:17):
Wouldn't it be nice if you could just have your AI just do those retakes and be done withit?
I mean, wouldn't that be nice?
Wouldn't it be nice if, you know, some celebrity or politician wrote an autobiography, butthey're lousy storytellers and you as a narrator could
(32:43):
narrate that book in the style of that celebrity or politician and then they use AI toskin their voice over yours and you still get paid and you still get the credit for it and
you were still being an artist.
I mean, wouldn't that be nice?
So I have no problem with these things.
(33:04):
Karin, our friend Karin talks about how nobody can narrate the New York Times overnight.
And people who are blind or visually impaired
have as much of a right to ingest to the New York Times as any sighted person.
Wouldn't it be nice if they were afforded that?
And when your AI voice narrates to New York Times, you get paid for it.
(33:27):
Obviously you won't get paid as much for it, nor should you.
Because ergonomically, you're not sitting there doing the session, but you should get paidfor the usage.
And that's the thing with AI is that, you know, I'm happy to not get paid a session fee.
for something my AI voice is doing as long as I'm getting paid some form of usage for howthose audio files are being used because while my AI is over there doing that, I'm over
(33:51):
here doing this or doing a different project.
So yeah, I think that pretty much spells out my views on AI.
So as one of the, we'll call you a pioneer because you're one of the very few voice actorsthat's been in this for even two years to have a cloned voice.
an AI model of your voice.
(34:12):
For somebody today sitting down going, should I, should I not?
What are the big considerations when you're evaluating whether or not you want to dip yourtoe into having your AI voice clone made?
Well, first thing you need to see if it aligns with your value system.
Are you comfortable with this as an artist?
(34:33):
I'm an artist.
I'm a theater trained actor.
I trained at Shakespeare and Chekhov and ballet and all of that stuff.
So I'm an artist and I'm not going to let anyone tell me I'm not an artist.
So, but if, if AI offends you, if it offends you that a blind person can read, can get theenjoy the New York times, then don't do it.
(34:56):
That's a real ratty way for me to frame that.
But I get your point.
well, you know what I mean?
So if it aligns with your value system,
If you're comfortable with being an artist over here while your AI is doing a phone treeover there.
And there are people who would argue that telephony is art.
All voiceover is art.
All of it is every genre.
(35:17):
There's it's it's it's coming from a human.
It's a performance.
So yeah, there's a level of art in it all of it.
But then it's like, okay, but it's a telephony thing.
And if you, if the, if the generative AI is able to convey what needs to be conveyed.
in the most mildly engaging manner, which is about the level of telepathy, needs to beintelligible and mildly engaging and informs the listener for this press one, for that
(35:45):
press two.
Yeah.
And again, some people are like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I won't even go there, that'sunacceptable.
Now, if you're able to reconcile it with your value system, well, first of all, you gottarealize like,
There are, yes, there are new AI companies popping up every day and there's AI companiesgoing out of business every day, being sold every day, merging with other companies every
(36:05):
day.
It's happening constantly.
Just in the couple of years that I've been marketing myself and my AI voice, or when I waslooking around to find an AI production company to do it, some of those that I had
meetings with two years ago have gone out of business.
So also think of it this way, is that how many Paul Schmitz do they need on an AI roster?
(36:28):
Two, three, at most.
guess what?
You're immortal.
So they never need another Paul Schmidt sound -alike unless you have whatever provisionsin your contract where if you pass away, your data files will be removed.
Or if you choose to part ways with the company and they are not allowed to use your voiceaudio files anymore.
(36:50):
So if you're gonna do it, do it while you can.
Because the other thing is that
Tech is trying to eliminate humans from the equation altogether.
So there are production companies like Murph, which is the one that I cloned my voicewith, who is using human voice actors to generate their audio files and then making their
text to speech stuff.
(37:11):
Great.
And I get paid.
I get paid.
I get a quarterly payout.
It's not much, but it's something.
Hopefully it will grow.
So do it quickly.
And the most important thing is have a good lawyer.
Rob Siglund Paglia.
is at your service, you'll be happy to review the contract to make sure that your IP isbeing protected and you're getting compensated in a way that you're comfortable with.
(37:36):
That's the best advice I could ever give anybody and you nailed it.
This, mean, we're almost 40 minutes in here, Tom, and I honestly, looked up and I expectedit to be 20.
This time has flown by.
I've learned a ton.
I hope our audience has learned a ton.
Where can people get in touch with you as the VO strategist?
(37:59):
I recommend going to voiceover strategist comm or vo strategist for short Give it a whiffgive it a sniff.
There's a lot my website is very broad and very deep There's a lot to look at and checkout Book a free 15 -minute consult with me.
I'll be happy to chat with you about whatever you want regarding the voiceover industry Ialso recommend subscribing to my youtube channel and Paul's the VO Pro.
(38:22):
It's great
It's a great YouTube channel as well.
Follow me on Instagram and LinkedIn and vet me.
Go to TomDeer .com because I think with the exception of Mary Lynn Whistler and a coupleof other very special people, you need to be a full -time boots on the ground working blue
collar actor to be able to effectively dispense performative marketing and business adviceto be effective in the voiceover industry.
(38:48):
So vet me, look at the work that I've done.
It's not like I played one
flash in the pan cartoon character 40 years ago.
Like I'm working constantly and my website shows that.
So check me out at tomdeere .com, book that free 15 minute consult at vo strategist .comand we'll see if I can help you navigate the voiceover industry.
There it is.
(39:08):
Tom Deere, the VO strategist.
I can't thank you enough for taking the time to educate me and our audience today.
Thanks so much, Tom.
Thanks for having me.
This was fun.
Tom, you don't even know this, but you and I were at Mavo together.
It was the first time we were in the room together.
And you probably wouldn't know or remember this, but I ate breakfast one morning sittingacross the aisle from you in the little restaurant there.
Okay.
And I could not work up the nerve to come talk to you.
(00:22):
geez.
Wow.
Yeah, that was probably going back six or seven years.
That probably had to be May vote 2018.
I figure it was 18.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That was my first time.
So I caught that presentation.
I've known about you ever since I run into you occasionally at Uncle Roy's.
I've seen you speak at VO Atlanta may have seen you speak at Dallas.
(00:45):
I can't remember.
Would that be right at one voice?
Yes.
I was there last year and the year before they all merged together after a while.
Tom Deere is known as the VO strategist.
He's a wildly successful voice actor himself.
Like me does a lot of corporate stuff a lot of e -learning.
We'll talk about that But he also helps voice actors with the strategy of their careersPlease welcome if you will my burgeoning friend Tom dear with an H Tom's good to have you
(01:14):
man.
Thank you The H is silent and you'll wish I was by time I do want to start with yourorigin story as a voice actor.
How did it all start rolling for you?
It started in 1994.
Wow.
So was 30 years ago it started.
(01:36):
was a classically trained theater actor.
My goal was to be a working Shakespearean actor.
That was what I originally wanted.
And I went to the National Shakespeare Conservatory here in New York City.
It was a two year program.
I left after one year for various reasons.
So I was a little
(01:58):
adrift.
I was living at home.
was like 22, 21, 22.
And, my mom was reading a copy of a New Jersey monthly magazine.
And, in the back of it is all these classifieds and want ads and stuff.
And she said, she said, Hey, Tom, what's voiceover?
And, the only thing I knew about it back then, it was just, it was a saw, it was anoccasional side hustle.
(02:22):
Wasn't side hustle.
Wasn't even a term back then, but, but it was a side hustle for.
film and TV and theater actors to do in between real gigs, real acting jobs.
That was that was all I knew about it.
And she said that there's a coach nearby a voiceover coach.
(02:43):
Her name was Hope Noah.
She was a voice actor.
She was a DJ on NPR radio's New York affiliate WNYC for many years and she was
Also a voiceover coach.
So I gave her a call.
She said, sure, come on over for a diagnostic.
I went to her home.
She'd read this, read that, ask me some questions.
(03:05):
And she's like, yeah, I think you've got some potential to do this.
So I worked with her for about six months purely on commercial.
I mean, frankly, Paul, there really were almost no other genres back then.
I mean, there were people doing cartoons and stuff like that and narrating books on tape.
I can't even call it audio books back then.
(03:25):
But, so, so I worked with her for six months and then, I recorded a demo, which I havehere.
It's my little cassette tape.
There it is.
Look at that.
Yes.
Yes.
Very exciting.
Well, we'll fold out J cars.
Absolutely.
Yep.
Yeah.
(03:46):
The, the five minute cassettes from broadcast supply warehouse.
I'm right there with you, man.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
For me, was PSI Multimedia in, I want to say, Montevale, New Jersey.
And I would buy, I would order cases of demos, cassette tapes.
And I would print out the J cards myself.
And then would go to Staples and get piles of padded mailers and stuff those.
(04:10):
And then eventually turn into CDs.
But man, did my post office hate my guts.
sure.
They're like, great.
Because I would come in with like a lawn bag full of padded mail.
They're like,
And that's the way we did it back then and we thought nothing of it.
Right.
But I recorded the demo at a studio in New Jersey.
It turns out that the guy who runs the studio is now my comic book partner.
(04:34):
I've been producing a comic book for a while and he is my he's my business partner.
We've co -produced this this comic book Agent 1 2 2 if anybody wants to go check it out.
Agent number one number two number two dot com.
Shaken not stirred.
What?
Shaken not stirred.
Yes.
She's this is a this is a cyborg female cyborg from the future.
(04:55):
Wow.
So it's a whole thing.
But anyway, very cool.
But when I finished everything, and I got the demo and all that stuff, and hope gave me alittle certificate, which I still have in a filing cabinet somewhere.
She gave me a ream of Xerox copies of production company listings.
And she's like, here's your certificate.
(05:16):
Here's all these production company listings.
Start your cold calling and good luck.
Now this is like spring of 95.
was your marketing training.
That was my marketing.
That literally was my mark.
She didn't even tell me what to say.
She's like, just call them.
That was literally my marketing training.
That was the whole thing.
Cause also remember there was no social media.
There were no pay to plays.
There was no home recording.
(05:37):
There was, there was, I mean, most people, most your average person didn't have a website.
There was nothing like that.
So I would call cold call sometimes 50 times a day or more.
to production companies, advertising agencies, marketing firms, all kinds of things allover the place in the tri -state area.
(05:59):
And it took me a year to get my first voiceover.
It was a public service announcement for Herpes Awareness.
What's interesting about it besides that is that the company that booked me wasn't acompany that I cold called.
It was a
It was a referral from a different production company that they were friends with that Idid cold call.
(06:24):
So cold call direct marketing turned into referral indirect marketing, which turned intomy first voiceover gig.
how about that?
never know how the seeds are going to sprout, right?
You just wait.
Yeah, that's how it started.
That's amazing.
So you started in 93, you said it was before all these technologies that you named.
(06:48):
One you didn't name was digital video.
You've been in this long enough to see the trajectory and the arc from us literallysending out demos on cassettes to now the generative AI era dawning on voiceover.
Is that the biggest change?
Is it the technology?
(07:08):
Is it the reads?
Is it how we do business?
What to you has been the biggest change in the last 30 years?
That's a great question.
It's also interesting to zooming out even more.
I'm Gen X.
We both are.
Gen X is the generation, as you know, that was born with eight track tapes.
We were born in an analog society.
(07:31):
And now we are in this digital society.
So the boomers were before us.
The millennials were after us, but we are straddling the space, I guess what you go, thestraddling the space age to the information age.
Is that right?
That's a very, very apt description.
So we're in a very interesting position, prospectively, socio, socio -culturally,politically, economically, logistically, to kind of see where we were born into, which is
(08:02):
what came before and what we're living in now, which is just so different.
So that's part of the, that's part of the filter for, for, for your question.
I'm going to say cultural.
mean, yeah, the technology, technology constantly changes.
constantly evolves and it's gone.
Yeah.
It's gone from, mean, and before I started voiceover, it was real to real.
(08:24):
So there are voice actors are running around, which had real to real demos, which was thegeneration before me, but cultural.
In what sense?
Awareness, awareness that voiceover exists at all as a vocation.
as a trade.
When I started, wasn't, nobody knew about voiceover.
Your average person didn't think, you know, I want to be a voice actor.
(08:47):
It just, I mean, I'm sure there were some people out there watching cartoons or whateverbeing like, I'd love to do that.
But they, and then they just dismiss it because like that's as far as it goes.
There was no, there was no Google.
There was no, you know, there wasn't like a yellow pages where you could look up thevoiceover, local voiceover school.
You know, it just didn't exist.
So awareness, and the awareness is obviously a result of technology as a result of homerecording, social media, digital, and all that stuff.
(09:12):
It democratized voiceover.
Many more people became aware of it, which is cool.
But cultural, because for the first, what, 90 years of voiceover, the only people thatwere allowed to do it were people that looked and sounded like you and me.
That's right.
(09:32):
And now there has been a grossly overdue market correction where the people who aretalking into the microphone look and sound and are like the people who are listening to
the things that we say in the microphone.
So it's been democratized in that just the general public is aware that voiceover as atrade exists, but now it's a trade that anybody
(10:01):
anybody can try of any ethnicity, of any gender, of any location, of any lifestyle can,you know, can give it a shot, you know, and you know, talent will rise to the, to the top.
Training will rise to the top, you know, self -discipline, acumen, all that stuff willstill rise to the top.
But now it's like, everybody can give it a shot because you could have all the technologychanges in the world, but if it's still gate kept by old honkeys like you and me, then
(10:28):
like, is it really changed?
Right.
Right.
that diversity has been a hugely positive thing and it feels to me and you know time sincethe pandemic has been an accordion right something to me could be 3 months ago could be 3
years ago I have no idea right yeah but it seems to me we sort of had a me too likemovement that seemed to center around guys like Hank Azaria right where we were now
(10:57):
beginning to very quickly and very suddenly call out
white guys, generally white males, taking roles that had been, you know, that we've alwayshad.
But now there was, as you say, a market correction and a hyper awareness.
It feels like we hit that me too moment.
I want to say what, four or five years ago?
(11:20):
Thereabouts, yeah.
Yeah.
You believe that's largely positive, yeah?
1000 % positive.
Now, the only negative side is for the
old white guys who had it good for so long.
And all I can say to them and you and me is that we just need to be better storytellers.
(11:40):
Thank you.
Us, we now have to swim in a bigger pool, guys like you.
Yeah.
Right?
Yeah.
That forces us to be better.
And in an age of generative AI, where it's, and tell me if you agree with this, is AIgonna take out the bottom end of the market?
put it to you this way.
(12:01):
I recently had a conversation with someone who had been a successful voice actor on Fiverrand is not as successful now.
Apparently, this is secondhand information.
And I was trying to find a way to verify it literally yesterday.
I wasn't able to do it.
But apparently, voiceover revenue on Fiverr in the past few years has dropped by about70%.
(12:29):
And it is attributed to AI.
So I had been saying for years now that the lowest hanging fruit is what's going to getconsumed by AI first.
And the lowest hanging fruit are the $5 jobs on Fiverr and the very low no pay stuff onUpwork and Backstage and Twitter and other places like that.
(12:56):
So if the secondhand information is true, then yeah, generative AI is doing it.
Because here is the thing about Fiverr, just to
sidebar for a quick second is that there are ethical voice actors on Fiverr who aregetting paid industry standard rates through Fiverr.
Some are making six figures.
Those six figure people aren't making their money $5 at a time.
(13:18):
They're making them $500 a time or $5 ,000 at a time.
And that's fine.
Totally cool with that.
And you know what?
They're not even auditioning so good on them.
They build their gigs.
They optimize their profile.
They mark they do their thing and they they're getting good work.
But there are also a lot of voice actors who are getting paid.
five dollars and I want to stress American voice actors who are getting paid by Americanclients five dollars to do something that should be five hundred dollars which I have a
(13:45):
huge problem with.
So if they are willing to pay five dollars to an American voice actor which is 99 percentor 999 percent less than it should be or whatever it is then clearly they will have no
problem spending pennies to pay
an AI service to do to do that voiceover.
(14:07):
So it doesn't surprise me.
It doesn't surprise me in the least.
So yeah, AI is here.
AI is making its way through the voiceover industry.
AI is causing the voiceover industry to contract.
Is it going to contract 5 % or is it going to contract 95 % over the next two to fiveyears?
have absolutely no idea.
(14:27):
But what I do know is that if you are an aspiring voice actor,
Or if you're a voice actor at any point in your voiceover journey, your job's to be abetter storyteller than the AI.
Hear, hear.
And the best way to do that is to get theater training, on -camera training, improvtraining, opera training, or stand -up comedy training.
That will be just as important, if not more important, than your voiceover training.
(14:50):
Because if you know how to tell a good story and get layered with the VO101 training andthe genre training, you should be able to step over that relevance gap and be able to be
effective.
in voiceover when all of these low hanging fruit slash entry level jobs may vanish.
Agreed.
I agree 1000%.
(15:11):
I also my my spidey sense tells me that in addition to AI that slowdown on fiber hasanother factor built into it.
And you can tell me whether you agree or not.
We had a huge influx of untrained and under trained talent.
during the pandemic.
(15:32):
And I feel like part of that contraction of the business is those folks starting toprecipitate out of the business, agree or disagree.
That makes a lot of sense that that tracks because I don't know.
I'm sure the Fiverr company knows how many how much voiceover revenue was being generatedpre pandemic.
(15:52):
I, I agree with you, I think that there was definitely a surgence or a spike of some sort.
of voiceover people being or people being drawn to voiceover.
They do their Google Icing and the first thing they find is fiver.
They dive in with no training and recording in their bathroom.
They dive in.
And then after a while, they're like, I can't make any money doing this.
And then they exit stage.
(16:14):
Right?
Now, were those people generating revenue?
Probably not.
Maybe a few of them.
I guarantee there's a couple of people like I know for a fact that during the pandemic, Iwas having theater and film actors
coming to me for my mentorship program saying, my career is gone.
I can't act anymore.
(16:35):
Broadway shut down, the TV studio shut down, everything is shut down, help.
And there were a couple of people who I actually helped along as a voice actor.
And then when they got their feet under them with voiceover and the theater TV scenestarted to normalize, that's where they went back to, which is totally cool.
But yeah, I think.
(16:56):
Also, have you noticed how much have you noticed in the Facebook groups or other socialmedia platforms, people that are selling all of their voiceover equipment?
Honestly, I myself haven't seen a ton of that.
But I also don't look for it.
So you know, well, right, I've been noticing it a little bit more here and there andpeople who have been going trying for a while for years who I have had as students, or
(17:18):
I've just seen in conferences or whatever are are
are leaving the industry because they just can't generate enough revenue to sustainthemselves.
And that's why folks like you and I exist so that we can hopefully help those folks along.
That's a pretty good segue into the VO strategist part of your career.
How and when did that come about?
(17:39):
When you said to yourself, you know what, I think I have something to offer other voiceactors here.
Let me see if what I have, the experience that I have is of value to other people.
How did that happen?
October, 2011.
Wow.
It was the weekend that I attended my first voiceover conference.
(18:00):
And that would have been was that gone?
It was Fafcon.
Exactly.
It was Fafcon three, which back then it was one of the only conferences around now you youknow, swing a micro you can't swing a microphone around without hitting a conference.
But it was an uncon unconference format, which meant that there were no speakers,presenters or sponsors.
(18:20):
Only a hundred voice actors were allowed in and they had to apply and be evaluated.
And if you attended, you had to contribute in some way, which meant we set the agenda.
We decided what we wanted to talk about.
And it could be as much as it could be as something like somebody did prepare a full blownpresentation, which I did.
Or some people would just say, I have a question about home recording.
(18:44):
And then they pick a ballroom and anywhere between two and.
50 people would sit in the ballroom and talk about home recording or whatever subject.
So I did not think I deserved to be there.
I assumed everybody was more talented and more successful than I.
A voiceover friend had to convince me to go because this is 2011.
(19:08):
So I did my first voiceover in 96.
I went full time in 2005.
So I've been a full time voice actor for six years.
So yeah, I deserved to
be there.
Absolutely.
That was just my imposter syndrome insecurity, whatever.
So I thought to myself, OK, well, if I'm going to go, I'm going to present something, andI'm going to prove to them and myself that I deserve to be there.
(19:30):
So I did a presentation on how to write a mission statement, how to set annual goals, andhow to write a monthly action plan.
I had that knowledge because I'd been doing that for at least eight or nine years.
doing those things.
know I started the mission statement in 1997, because that was the year I read The SevenHabits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey.
(19:57):
then annual goals and action plans came quickly after that.
So I had already developed these systems.
So I thought, OK, maybe this is something.
Now, what I did not know, with the exception of one or two people, no one in the voiceoverindustry had talked about business or marketing as a voice actor.
Nobody really had done it.
There may have been one other person that had done it before me.
(20:19):
So I'm like, okay, I'm going to do this.
Now only a hundred people were allowed into FAFCon and I got like the smallest ballroomand 50 of the conference attendees.
So literally 50 % showed up for this.
There were people hanging outside, like with the door open and sitting on the floor andall that stuff, because everybody wanted to see what I had to say.
Not because nobody wanted to see what I had to say, but they wanted to see what I had tosay.
(20:41):
Sure.
The material, not the speaker, right?
Right, because who the hell am I?
So I did the presentation.
I even brought somebody up and walked them through how to write a mission statement andthe goals and everything.
And it was very, very well received.
And not long after that, I got an email from somebody said, expect a phone call.
And I got a phone call from somebody who runs a voiceover, one of the voiceover schools,and said, hey, I would like you to be one of my instructors.
(21:09):
So yeah.
So it literally, I literally got discovered at a voiceover conference.
a couple of years after that, I came up with the VO strategist branding.
so yeah, so it's been almost 13 years.
So I didn't tell the industry I wanted to do it.
The industry told me that I should do it.
Nice.
(21:29):
Well, in that regard, you and I come at, come at it from, different sort of origins,right?
I thought maybe I've got something to offer.
Let's find out.
And of course I had to test it and all that, but you came in.
Your test was at that conference and that's fantastic.
That's live and probably a lot scarier than what I went through.
So was terrifying.
I'm sure it was.
(21:50):
Let's talk about the video strategist part.
What, first of all, explain to our audience what you do as a video strategist.
Well, it's my tagline.
I help people navigate the voiceover industry.
You'll find that my logo is a compass.
(22:11):
so that's literally what I do because people decide they want to be a voice actor and mostpeople, well, they don't know what they don't know.
They go to Google, they type stuff in and then fiber comes up and other, and other placesand they may be talented.
They may actually get good training.
They build a website, they build a home recording studio, they produce their first demo.
(22:35):
They get that demo in their hands and they say, what I'm the now what.
And that's what I used to say for a long time.
So I used to say, you can only work with me through my mentorship program if you havethose things in place.
But I have since changed my view on that because you don't know what you don't know at thebeginning.
(22:58):
because also you don't know, you know, who to work with as a coach, how to build thatwebsite, how to set up that home recording studio, who you can trust for quality training.
So now I'm happy to work with.
anybody at any point in their voiceover journey to help them navigate.
And I've also worked with people with 20 plus years of experience in the voiceoverindustry because all the stuff that worked for so long stopped working.
(23:25):
And they're like, Tom, what happened?
Which is why it's so important for me as the VO strategist to make sure that I understandFiverr and I understand AI and I understand.
Other things that some find polarizing or controversial, which they're really not.
They're just tools.
and understand how they work, why they work.
(23:47):
So I can provide provide data so that all of my students can make informed, thoughtfuldecisions about how they want to navigate the voiceover industry.
If someone says to me, I just want to, I want to make six figures on Fiverr.
I'm like, great, let's make it happen.
If someone says, I want to go to LA and do.
Pixar movies and be in high end video games.
(24:10):
I'm like, cool, let's make that happen.
Most of the time it's somewhere in between e -learning corporate commercials.
I want to get one or two agents and all that stuff.
So that's how I help them.
So in the broadest sense, that's how I help them navigate the industry.
And I do that through my video library.
I have a VO how -to library, which is streaming videos.
You can watch them, buy them one at a time.
(24:30):
I have rental specials where there's always one or two.
You can rent for five bucks where you can stream them for 72 hours.
or for 20 bucks a month, six month commitment, can join, you can subscribe to it, so canstream as many videos as you want and watch them as many times as you want.
And then there's the mentorship program, which is where we, in addition to the videosubscription, we do a 30 minute check in every month.
(24:55):
it's, you're basically paying for an accountability buddy, but it's a lot more than thatbecause what predates the...
Diagnostic, what predates the mentorship session is a diagnostic where I lift up the hoodof their voiceover business and figure out what's going on, try to figure out what all
their knowledge and skill gaps are and what they need to work on to help them realizetheir definition of voiceover success, not the loudest jerk in the Facebook group's
(25:23):
definition of voiceover success.
No offense to voiceover Facebook groups, they're all lovely, but that's what happens a lotas people get steered.
really the wrong way in social media because they're asking questions that are answered bypeople that don't understand the question or are just so biased like Paul, why don't you
wear my glasses?
(25:43):
They help me see better.
Why don't they help you see better?
And if you don't wear my glasses, you're a jerk, right?
That's what happens a lot culturally on social media.
So I, that's why I am versed in fiber and voices .com and AI and all the things because
these are the realities of the voiceover industry.
I need to understand them so I can help people understand them and decide whether theywant to use them as a tool to get them where they want to go.
(26:07):
So you've been doing this a hot minute now.
You've worked with dozens, I assume hundreds of voice actors over the course of well overa decade.
I'm to ask you about commonalities.
Are there maybe one, maybe a handful of common
strategic mistakes that voice actors make with their career either early on or later on?
(26:32):
I'm gonna half answer that question first and say that the biggest commonality is that thereason why most voice actors don't succeed is because they can't get out of their own way.
What does that mean?
They can't get out of their, yeah, they can't get out of their way because they don't knowwhat they don't know or they have assumptions about themselves or the voiceover industry
or what is or could be their relationship to the voiceover industry that
(26:54):
is generally what hoses them.
understanding Source Connect or SAG -AFTRA, collective bargain agreements don't matter.
Because if they don't listen to themselves and don't listen to the voiceover industry,they're not going to get anywhere.
So that's why most voice, I think that's why 90 % of voice actors that fail, why they failis because they just don't know how to listen to themselves or the industry.
(27:18):
But strategically, it's interesting because everybody
Everybody screws up in their own adorable way.
The one, the biggest, usually the biggest strategic mistake is one that's unfortunatelyoften impossible to fix because of lack of resources, which is they don't know what they
don't know.
They type in, they do some Google -izing, they find certain demo mills that charge themexorbitant fees where in only a few classes you'll get a demo.
(27:47):
And then they have
horrible training and a ratty demo and they can't afford to repeat the process and nowthey're stuck and they don't know what to do.
They don't know how to navigate the industry anyway, even even if they got good trainingin a good demo, which you can't get good training in four or five sessions, you just
can't.
And then they're just boned.
(28:09):
And like I said, often, they can't do that again, because it's four or $5 ,000 or whateverthat they're that they're just out and they it will take them
years, not decades to save up that money again, to do it again.
So that's one of the biggest strategic strategic things farther down the road.
The reason strategically why many voice actors, screw up is because they refuse to adapt.
(28:35):
They refuse to evolve to what's going on in the industry.
There are many voice actors that I know that have behaved themselves out of the voiceoverindustry because they cling to old technology.
or old ways of doing things or old incorrect assumptions about pay to play sites versusdirect marketing.
(28:57):
Or they've just decided that all AI in every iteration is profoundly evil and is ananathema and affront to the senses of all true artists.
And anyone that even looks at AI, and I'm looking at an AI camera right now, so clearlyI'm the devil, has no business.
(29:17):
being in the arts at all.
And that sort of myopic, stubborn, backwards -looking behavior turns into strategicmistakes of not what to do, but what not to do.
And then they wonder what happened to their voiceover industry, their voiceover business.
(29:38):
Yeah, we all know voice actors who have very strong opinions based on
for lack of a better term, the decade in which they got into the industry, right?
It's almost like the guy that you went to high school with who's still listening to thesame music, who's still living in the same town, right?
(30:00):
We sometimes, I think we develop a frame of reference and we never evolve it.
So that makes absolute sense to me.
We've danced around AI quite a bit here, Tom.
What is your take?
Is this something where, I mean, obviously the genie is out of the bottle.
Is this something that's gonna decimate the industry?
Are we gonna work alongside of it?
(30:20):
How do you see AI affecting us in let's say the next two to three years?
Because God knows even that's a far flung prognostication now.
Yeah.
Well, as someone who cloned their voice two years ago, that'll tell you a littlesomething.
So that was even before chat GPT and what we consider the current wave of generative AI.
(30:42):
You were on this early.
Yeah, I was actually.
Now that I think about it, yeah.
I think my voice went live May or June of 2022 and then Chat GPT was November or Decemberof 2022 if memory serves.
If you are a lousy storyteller, AI will eat your voiceover business.
(31:04):
So if you are a non -talented hack who just has no business being here, though I'll nevertell anyone not to pursue their dreams, and I know I'm not the most talented
person in the world.
don't have a naturally whatever voice, but I got, I got good storytelling training.
I got good voiceover training and I have been consistent and persistent, which is one ofthe reasons, which is why I'm a successful voice actor.
(31:30):
But also if you don't have your business hat on, the AI is going to eat up your voiceoverbusiness.
And that can mean everything from, you know, auditioning for a text to speech thing onsome
casting site and then they steal your voice and then create permanent conflicts and thenyou can never work in the industry again.
And you did it for $2 ,000, which sounded like $2 million when you saw that castingnotice.
(31:55):
but I would, I think that AI can and should compliment the voiceover industry.
because like you do long for me learning stuff and you may have mispronounced a name or aplace.
or a medicine 32 times.
(32:17):
Wouldn't it be nice if you could just have your AI just do those retakes and be done withit?
I mean, wouldn't that be nice?
Wouldn't it be nice if, you know, some celebrity or politician wrote an autobiography, butthey're lousy storytellers and you as a narrator could
(32:43):
narrate that book in the style of that celebrity or politician and then they use AI toskin their voice over yours and you still get paid and you still get the credit for it and
you were still being an artist.
I mean, wouldn't that be nice?
So I have no problem with these things.
(33:04):
Karin, our friend Karin talks about how nobody can narrate the New York Times overnight.
And people who are blind or visually impaired
have as much of a right to ingest to the New York Times as any sighted person.
Wouldn't it be nice if they were afforded that?
And when your AI voice narrates to New York Times, you get paid for it.
(33:27):
Obviously you won't get paid as much for it, nor should you.
Because ergonomically, you're not sitting there doing the session, but you should get paidfor the usage.
And that's the thing with AI is that, you know, I'm happy to not get paid a session fee.
for something my AI voice is doing as long as I'm getting paid some form of usage for howthose audio files are being used because while my AI is over there doing that, I'm over
(33:51):
here doing this or doing a different project.
So yeah, I think that pretty much spells out my views on AI.
So as one of the, we'll call you a pioneer because you're one of the very few voice actorsthat's been in this for even two years to have a cloned voice.
an AI model of your voice.
(34:12):
For somebody today sitting down going, should I, should I not?
What are the big considerations when you're evaluating whether or not you want to dip yourtoe into having your AI voice clone made?
Well, first thing you need to see if it aligns with your value system.
Are you comfortable with this as an artist?
(34:33):
I'm an artist.
I'm a theater trained actor.
I trained at Shakespeare and Chekhov and ballet and all of that stuff.
So I'm an artist and I'm not going to let anyone tell me I'm not an artist.
So, but if, if AI offends you, if it offends you that a blind person can read, can get theenjoy the New York times, then don't do it.
(34:56):
That's a real ratty way for me to frame that.
But I get your point.
well, you know what I mean?
So if it aligns with your value system,
If you're comfortable with being an artist over here while your AI is doing a phone treeover there.
And there are people who would argue that telephony is art.
All voiceover is art.
All of it is every genre.
(35:17):
There's it's it's it's coming from a human.
It's a performance.
So yeah, there's a level of art in it all of it.
But then it's like, okay, but it's a telephony thing.
And if you, if the, if the generative AI is able to convey what needs to be conveyed.
in the most mildly engaging manner, which is about the level of telepathy, needs to beintelligible and mildly engaging and informs the listener for this press one, for that
(35:45):
press two.
Yeah.
And again, some people are like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I won't even go there, that'sunacceptable.
Now, if you're able to reconcile it with your value system, well, first of all, you gottarealize like,
There are, yes, there are new AI companies popping up every day and there's AI companiesgoing out of business every day, being sold every day, merging with other companies every
(36:05):
day.
It's happening constantly.
Just in the couple of years that I've been marketing myself and my AI voice, or when I waslooking around to find an AI production company to do it, some of those that I had
meetings with two years ago have gone out of business.
So also think of it this way, is that how many Paul Schmitz do they need on an AI roster?
(36:28):
Two, three, at most.
guess what?
You're immortal.
So they never need another Paul Schmidt sound -alike unless you have whatever provisionsin your contract where if you pass away, your data files will be removed.
Or if you choose to part ways with the company and they are not allowed to use your voiceaudio files anymore.
(36:50):
So if you're gonna do it, do it while you can.
Because the other thing is that
Tech is trying to eliminate humans from the equation altogether.
So there are production companies like Murph, which is the one that I cloned my voicewith, who is using human voice actors to generate their audio files and then making their
text to speech stuff.
(37:11):
Great.
And I get paid.
I get paid.
I get a quarterly payout.
It's not much, but it's something.
Hopefully it will grow.
So do it quickly.
And the most important thing is have a good lawyer.
Rob Siglund Paglia.
is at your service, you'll be happy to review the contract to make sure that your IP isbeing protected and you're getting compensated in a way that you're comfortable with.
(37:36):
That's the best advice I could ever give anybody and you nailed it.
This, mean, we're almost 40 minutes in here, Tom, and I honestly, looked up and I expectedit to be 20.
This time has flown by.
I've learned a ton.
I hope our audience has learned a ton.
Where can people get in touch with you as the VO strategist?
(37:59):
I recommend going to voiceover strategist comm or vo strategist for short Give it a whiffgive it a sniff.
There's a lot my website is very broad and very deep There's a lot to look at and checkout Book a free 15 -minute consult with me.
I'll be happy to chat with you about whatever you want regarding the voiceover industry Ialso recommend subscribing to my youtube channel and Paul's the VO Pro.
(38:22):
It's great
It's a great YouTube channel as well.
Follow me on Instagram and LinkedIn and vet me.
Go to TomDeer .com because I think with the exception of Mary Lynn Whistler and a coupleof other very special people, you need to be a full -time boots on the ground working blue
collar actor to be able to effectively dispense performative marketing and business adviceto be effective in the voiceover industry.
(38:48):
So vet me, look at the work that I've done.
It's not like I played one
flash in the pan cartoon character 40 years ago.
Like I'm working constantly and my website shows that.
So check me out at tomdeere .com, book that free 15 minute consult at vo strategist .comand we'll see if I can help you navigate the voiceover industry.
There it is.
(39:08):
Tom Deere, the VO strategist.
I can't thank you enough for taking the time to educate me and our audience today.
Thanks so much, Tom.
Thanks for having me.
This was fun.
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