April 2, 2025 • 58 mins
Take a journey behind the microphone with veteran voice actor Mike Payne as he reveals the surprising, hilarious, and sometimes bizarre path of his nearly 40-year career in voice acting and radio broadcasting. From his audacious beginnings as a 17-year-old to interviewing rock legends like Ozzy Osbourne, Mike's story demolishes every assumption about breaking into the voice acting industry.
According to Mike, it's not about having the perfect radio announcer voice or expensive training programs – it's about confidence, authenticity, and understanding the acting fundamentals behind every read. With refreshing candor, he shares how modern voice actors can work globally from home studios, the surprisingly simple vocal warm-up technique he swears by and why aspiring talent should be wary of expensive "voice acting schools."
Whether you're curious about the voice acting industry, considering it as a side hustle, or simply fascinated by the human voice, this episode offers an entertaining and informative glimpse into a world most people never see. Ready to step into the booth? Grab your cracker and water – Mike Payne is about to show you how it's done.
Learn more about Mike:
https://mikepainecoaching.carrd.co/
https://www.youtube.com/@mikepaine6287
https://soundcloud.com/mike-paine-show
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Victor (00:00):
Welcome everyone to the I'm Not Dumb but Podcast.
I'm your host for today, victor, joined always by Rob.
Hello, chris Yup and Cesar, howy'all doing Whoa?
That's my line.
That's my line, actually,introduce me again.
And Cesar Yup, so let me hearyour best voiceover.
(00:23):
Slash commercial voice.
Rob (00:25):
welcome to mike's auto repair shop no, that was
terrible, that was bad okay,interesting, interesting.
Victor (00:33):
I mean, I'm not going to mike's with that definitely not
now, that guy'll screw you lefthe's on a watch list here we go
in a world full of erectiledysfunction.
Cialis, that's all I got oh,okay, all right, I think you
went two different directionsthere.
It was pretty good.
Chris, what do you got?
Chris (00:53):
oh, man, just do it in korean chris is buffering.
I'm let me see it.
There's um yo I have nothing.
I don't know, I can't.
I can't do this, do a moviepreview.
Rob (01:06):
I can't get that confidence .
75 is confidence.
Victor (01:12):
It's amateur shit, it's a it's yeah, all right, guys,
that was something, so you guysneed some work.
I don't think any commercial isgoing to be calling you anytime
soon, but you're in luck.
Our guest today has had anearly 40-year career voicing
over 50 audiobook explainervideos, radio and TV ads, movie
(01:33):
trailers, documentaries Alsospending time as an on-air radio
personality for Z-Rock inDallas, where he hosted a weekly
show called Headbangers Heaven.
Our guest today is Mike Payne,and he's going to help us answer
the question I'm not dumb, buthow do you become a voice actor?
Cesar (01:52):
Welcome to the I'm Not Dumb but podcast, where we won't
claim to have the answers tolife's deepest questions but
we'll give you an excitingjourney into the realms of
knowledge you never knew you'dbe Might be mainstream, but not
common knowledge, Fromartificial intelligence to the
show Mike.
Victor (02:14):
Thank you, victor.
Good to be here.
Let's just get into it.
Let's start at the beginning.
Sure, when did you figure outpeople wanted to listen to your
voice?
Mike Paine (02:26):
out.
People wanted to listen to yourvoice.
I was a 17-year-old kid butwhen I was 9, 8, 9, 10 years old
, my dad, for Christmas, boughtmy brother and I one of those
little mini tape recorders andyou hit the old play and record
thing and we just did sillyvoices and mimicked stuff on TV
and it was really just kid stuff.
And at 17, I was in college.
College and I thought you know,maybe I could do something with
(02:46):
this, I don't know.
So, naive 17-year-old, Istarted picking up the phone and
cold calling video productioncompanies and cable TV places.
And one guy by the name ofMorris Rose picked me up on just
saying, hey, kid, come over andI'll teach you some stuff and
we'll do some commercials.
Pick me up on just saying, hey,kid, come over and I'll teach
you some stuff and we'll do somecommercials.
And my first gigs were paidgigs and I was doing commercials
(03:09):
for a cable company like arestaurant, a print, a copier
place, stuff like that.
Victor (03:16):
What was your, your speed, like how did you become
that I'm a?
Mike Paine (03:19):
hell of a salesman.
Well, it was just, I literallywent, I picked up the old, the
old school phone book and I wentto v and video production
companies and then went to c andwent cable television companies
and just said hey, I'm mike.
Uh, do you need any voice workor something stupid like that?
Because I was 17, I didn't yeahyeah or anything.
I was like yeah how do you getyour?
(03:40):
Do you have, uh, in-house voiceactors?
And I I just heard lingo from Idon't know where I got it from.
I just guessed.
And sure enough, people werestarting to pick up.
And after that I went to thelocal PBS station in Dallas,
texas the TV station and didtheir fundraising drive.
I did the voice for their tripsto Hawaii and like the product
(04:01):
descriptions for all the stuffthey were putting up for bids.
And after that I auditioned forother stuff.
I auditioned for the Voice ofGod, for the Zola Levitt Show.
I was way too young for that,so at 17,.
Rob (04:15):
I am the voice of God.
Victor (04:18):
It's a younger God, it's a younger.
Rob (04:19):
God, yeah, it's God in his teens.
Yeah, youthful God's originstory yeah, old Testament, god
and his teens yeah, youthfulit's.
Mike Paine (04:24):
Old.
Victor (04:25):
Testament God.
Yeah, Old Testament God.
Mike Paine (04:25):
It's kind of like the Young Sheldon thing, but
didn't quite work out that way.
So, yeah, there's that and Itried out for a few other things
.
And then I also I was ahorrible guitar player.
So I had bought a guitar, triedto play, couldn't play for
anything.
And I listened to this radiostation that I heard in Chicago
(04:46):
and it was also in Dallas.
It's a hard rock, heavy metalkind of radio station, which was
actually network, as I foundout later.
And the overnight guy said,yeah, I'll buy your guitar, why
not, I'll try and play.
And it's like all right.
So I drove over there and saidthis would be really cool to
work here.
Do you know anybody that'shiring around here?
And totally naive, not knowinga thing about radio or anything,
broadcasting nothing, Just hey,anybody hiring?
(05:07):
Like like they're going to hiresomebody that just says, hey, I
want a job.
And the thing about it is itactually happened because he
said, yeah, the guy down thehall at the top 40 format is
hiring for a producer, Try outfor that, why not?
And I'm like all right.
I had no idea what that meant.
So I talked to the guy and Isaid, oh, you know what?
I'll work for free for a week.
Just hire me.
(05:27):
I'm the guy.
He's like what do you mean?
You're the guy.
I got all these applicants, Igot all these resumes.
I'm like I'm the guy.
Just teach me what you want toteach-to-reel machine was.
I didn't know what a mic tech,I didn't know anything.
I just know there's amicrophone and there's a studio
(05:49):
and there's songs and you playthem.
That's all.
I knew Nothing.
Wow, and he hired me and I wasproducing a morning show for a
top 40 network that had like 60something affiliates within a
week.
Chris (06:03):
And it was not.
Mike Paine (06:03):
Picking songs and you know taking calls and how
the heck did.
How is this happening?
Victor (06:11):
Did you ever feel at like any point like you
shouldn't be here?
Rob (06:19):
Like it was just, or you just had like an imposter
syndrome, like someone's goingto catch on.
No, I never had that.
Mike Paine (06:23):
It was just.
It was just one of those thingswhere I felt like I'll just
roll with this, I'm still goingto catch on.
No, I never had that.
It was just one of those thingswhere I felt like I'll just
roll with this.
I'm still going to school, whynot?
It's something cool to do andI'm getting paid for it, kind of
attitude.
And I didn't think it would be.
38-something years later, I'mstill doing this stuff.
But here I am.
But anyway, the guy that sold methe guitar, he became program
director of the format down thehall for the hard rock and heavy
(06:43):
metal thing and he's like yeah,why don't you work part-time?
Never been on the air beforeother than doing bits for the
morning guy.
So I listened to stuff and Ilistened to people on the air
and they threw me on a show on anational network, being 18
years old or 19 actually 19years old, no experience, yeah.
And he's like you know themusic well, you know, I, I
didn't really even even havetraining.
(07:04):
They just kind of threw me onthe air.
Wow.
Victor (07:08):
You were live, like broadcasting.
Oh live, this is all live, thisis another state.
Mike Paine (07:12):
Totally live.
That's wild.
Rob (07:13):
The first time you got on was there just like dead air, or
you just jumped right in?
Mike Paine (07:17):
I just jumped right in and did it.
I thought, oh, I still got allthe tapes from the early days,
the earliest days.
I got a lot of tape.
But well, now it's digital, butyou know tape.
Victor (07:27):
I'm so old, oh my God.
But.
Mike Paine (07:30):
I've heard, I've read about these.
Victor (07:31):
Yeah, yeah, it's a square, yeah, and there's two
circles in the middle andthere's the brown stuff
Chris (07:37):
on the bottom.
Mike Paine (07:38):
Yeah, the first, like I think the second month,
not barely the second month in.
I was filling in because theywere taping some Ozzy Osbourne
interviews down the hall,pre-recorded.
They're going to have five ofthe whole week's worth of Ozzy
doing whatever he was going todo.
I was like, oh cool, ozzy's inthe building, maybe I'll get an
autograph later.
I did, which is fun, yeah, nice.
(08:00):
But all of a sudden he walksinto the studio completely
unannounced.
They're like, well, he's here,he's live, might as well, just
do something, live to promotethis stuff and have fun with
whoever's on the air.
Again, I had barely been on theair two months, 19 years old
and in walks, ozzy, you knowjust, hey, how you doing.
You know one of those?
Yeah, ozzy.
Chris (08:19):
Yeah.
Cesar (08:22):
I know the later.
Ozzy, yeah, I know the later.
Mike Paine (08:24):
Ozzy, yeah, yeah.
And and it was one of thosethings where the the all these
record execs and and networkexecs were peering through this
little porthole window in thestudio and and, believe it or
not, I didn't have any nervesCause I I earlier in the day I
heard a horrid interview from alocal DJ.
He was awful, yeah, and he justI'm just going to say he sucked
(08:46):
and I thought I could do itbetter than that.
And I got my chance and Ithought you know what?
This is my chance, I'm going todo this and, with all these
people looking in the littleportal window, I'm going to nail
this thing.
And I did it.
It was great.
And the president of thenetwork's like who's this 19
year old kid that's doing?
Who is he?
He's producing a morning showthere and what is going on.
(09:07):
And he talked to the my, mybuddy, who was the program
director.
He's like make this guyfull-time, let's find a spot for
him.
And then I got a spot and ittook.
It really took off from thereand I had my own full-time show
and then I was setting uppromotions and interviewing all
kinds of people and doing livebroadcasts and jumping on stage
and introducing people andthat's where the radio thing
(09:29):
took off and still doing voicework through the network and
other stuff.
Rob (09:32):
So, going back to that interview, there was no prep.
No, because it's the thing thatyou posted online, right?
Yeah, it seemed like you justhad it ready, yeah.
Mike Paine (09:40):
Yeah, absolutely.
There was zero.
There wasn't even a warning, itwas just Ozzy just walked in.
Victor (09:46):
And you weren't like nervous at all, no, I was.
Mike Paine (09:48):
I kind of knew in my own head what to prepare for.
It was one of those thingswhere it was like I heard the
interview go so badly on the youknow the traditional rock
station in town and I thought Icould do better than that.
We just talked about being inthe movies and weird stuff like
that, just whatever.
How does a photo shoot work andintroducing songs and yelling a
(10:12):
lot and just goofy stuff.
Towards the end of the year Igot a Christmas card from Ozzy
and Sharon.
Victor (10:17):
No way, I still got it no way.
Chris (10:19):
That's awesome.
Victor (10:21):
Have you ever been starstruck?
Mike Paine (10:23):
I don't know, I mean me.
No, I guess Okay.
Victor (10:27):
I've only been starstruck once, really.
Yeah, I had met JamesGandolfini.
Oh okay and I was a huge likeSopranos was my life and I could
not say anything to him Like I,literally, I was just like hi,
I, literally I was just like hi.
Mike Paine (10:46):
It's different kind of just approaching someone cold
like that than people walkinginto the studio or just going to
a show where you know you gotto, even in a situation where
they used to have this recordconvention called the Concrete
Foundations Forum, which is aweird name for a hard rock heavy
metal convention, but they hadit in L in la every year for a
few years and going out there,uh, in the radio days and just
(11:07):
people, famous people werewalking past all the time, I
mean just major names and likelemmy from motorhead would walk
by and he'd just sit down andjust start talking and it was
just like you know, hey, how'sit going?
We talk about girls walking byand jimmy hendrix and what,
what's favorite, what hisfavorite drink is, and just
random stuff.
It wasn't anything about howdid the album sound and how's
(11:28):
that new record come.
It almost was never like that,because everybody does that and
I figured you know what I'mgoing to do, something that
nobody else does.
I'm just going to talk topeople.
It was a lot of these people.
They didn't have anything to do.
I mean, some of them didn'teven have a ride from the
airport.
I had to go pick them up.
(11:50):
So you know, the record labeldropped the ball.
It was like the band sepultura.
They were a couple of members,they they were at the airport
and they're like mike, we don'thave a ride, nobody's here, what
do we do?
Chris (11:56):
I'm like, I'm kind of so we went at mexican food and went
out their hotel room and andjust talked about music it was.
Mike Paine (12:04):
And, and they faxed me later, uh, when they got to
New York and said, yeah, hey, itwas great having Mexican food
with you and hanging out, cool,that's awesome, it's funny.
And now, looking back on it,you go how does this, did this
happen?
It's like a.
It's like a movie, setconstantly but in real life and
it wasn't even like it didn'tstill doesn't seem real, it's.
(12:25):
It's surreal.
I mean, how did all this stuffhappen?
And even the stuff I missed isa good story.
All of a sudden, I was exhausted.
I worked like till two o'clockin the morning, then production
and other stuff, probably likethree or four in the morning.
So by like nine or 10am I'm out, I'm, I'm gone, I'm asleep,
yeah, and my answering machinegoes off and I'm out, I'm gone,
I'm asleep and my answeringmachine goes off and I'm like,
(12:45):
yeah, whatever.
And I hear this weird voice andI'm like what, who's?
Please don't play pranks on me,I'm so tired.
One guy, steve, that worked atthe network interviewed David
Lee Roth and he had Dave call myanswering machine and go hey,
mike, what's going on?
It's David Lee Roth and he didthis whole Daveave thing and
he's like sorry you couldn't behere, maybe go hang out later.
(13:07):
Hey, all right, the whole davething did the whole dave thing
dead on.
And I thought at first Ithought it was a joke and then I
found out later on that heactually interviewed dave and
he's just like hey, can you?
Victor (13:18):
can you prank this guy?
Can you just give him a?
Mike Paine (13:21):
call and to find out it was real, it was, it was
going.
I'm.
Why did I sleep through that?
Or another time Lita Ford wasgetting interviewed and she said
to the host Dave, not that Dave, another Dave, where is this
guy that likes to go shoppingfor cowboy boots?
That would be a fun time andthat would have been a fun story
(13:42):
, but no, I slept through that.
I mean a couple of bad onesthat I slept through that I
regret.
Those were two of them.
Victor (13:49):
Yeah, did they like try to like get you to go out, like
hit the town with them?
Mike Paine (13:53):
Yeah, sometimes I mean it wasn't like the wild
movie thing where you'recrashing cars and trashing hotel
rooms and stuff.
A lot of times we just hung outat like Denny's or something,
you know, it wasn't that exotic.
Yeah, that would be awesome.
What would they order, I wonderyou know what the limited late
(14:15):
night menu moons over my hammy.
I mean, what else is there at?
Victor (14:16):
Denny's three in the morning.
You know, when you did like theradio thing, did you feel that
you needed to put a persona oflike I need to change my voice
in a certain way or I need totalk in a certain way?
Mike Paine (14:28):
Oh yeah, well, their format was designed to be
yelling and screaming over likesound effects and drop ins and
stuff and zany cartoony notcartoony, but like really over
the top, someone who would beunbearable as a real person.
You know, if you, if you heardsome of my stuff, uh, you look
my stuff up on youtube and lookup crazy mike pain z rock and
(14:50):
you'll hear these interviewsgoing oh my gosh, that guy's
like way over the top.
Even some of the bands are likewhoa, that's a lot too early
for me to do that.
And and some of the record,people were like how do you do
that?
How do you turn it on and off?
I thought, and I said it's just,it's part of the record.
People were like how do you dothat?
How do you turn it on and off?
And I said it's just part ofthe gig.
You can't order a pizza likethat going hey, I want a pizza
with pepperoni and mustard.
(15:11):
That doesn't work.
And I even told them I'd be atotally awful person if I just
yelled and screamed at everybodyall the time.
Victor (15:21):
Yeah, you have no voice.
Mike Paine (15:25):
Even when I blew out my voice.
There's one time I blew out myvoice, bad, and this is stupid.
I wouldn't try this at homekids and I still went on the air
, didn't take any sick time offthe home and the uh production
director wanted to do a promofor a post live concert you know
credits and stuff and he wantedme to be a like a mob type dude
and he's like hey, yeah, theguy who was on the board was tim
and, uh, joe was the guy thathe held the mic at the at this
(15:49):
concert.
And then all of a sudden he getsa call going all right, we
can't afford to hire new voiceactors for this.
And he's like no, that was mike, he's been sick.
You haven't heard all week.
He can barely talk I thought itwas a new, some new voice actor
they hired.
You should have gotten a secondpaycheck out of that.
Victor (16:05):
Yeah, seriously, no, that wasn't me, that was Ike,
that wasn't Mike.
Yeah, sorry.
Mike Paine (16:11):
Before I got hired full time, I was three different
people and I got threedifferent paychecks.
That's why the president of thecompany went wait a minute,
you're three people.
This isn't going to work.
We can't pay you three timesand send you three W, whatever
forms back then.
Victor (16:23):
Did you guys do like callers as?
Mike Paine (16:25):
well, Like did you get like callers all the?
Victor (16:26):
time it was people like vetting them, or it was like no,
we are vetting Our vettingprocess.
Mike Paine (16:32):
Back then was hey Z rock, don't swear, that's our
vetting process.
I'm sure that was effective.
It was effective.
Yeah, I rarely had people onlive live, but we kind of it
wasn't that severe and harshback then.
I'd have band members call upand just say, hey, mike, you
want to talk?
Oh okay, sure, why not?
I got time.
And this one guy would juststart swearing and like, phil,
(16:55):
we're on the air, you can't dothat.
We got to play nice and he'slike, oh, okay, but you know you
can't throw the F-bomb aroundon network radio and not have
someone get upset about it.
I did that, I, I draw.
I said shit once in the verybeginning and the program
director called me up and he waslaughing.
He goes that's the funniestthing you've ever done.
Don't ever do it again.
Rob (17:17):
Got it.
That's a great boss.
Mike Paine (17:19):
Yeah, he's the one I sold the guitar to.
Rob (17:21):
So from radio, what was the transition into voice acting?
Was that just kind of seamless?
Did you just find new avenuesor did you make that decision or
just kind of rolled into?
Mike Paine (17:31):
it.
They kind of all, up until 2021, went step by step and I was in
both all the time anyway.
So I I went from the network tovarious other stations and then
I was a traffic reporter forlike 11, 12 years.
Not the kind in the helicopter,just the voice.
Yeah, because you know me in ahelicopter.
(17:53):
Nah, not going to happen.
Yeah, I'm not going to.
Chris (17:58):
It's not when I think I'm .
That's not me, never is goingto be me.
Mike Paine (18:16):
So yeah, putting makeup on me is not going to
work, so yeah, and then justdoing voice acting, I really
decided about know you couldtalk to anybody anytime,
anywhere around the world.
That's when I really jumpedback into it and thought you
know what?
I can really do this a lot morewith worldwide clients, because
I worked the other nine to five.
I talked with people all overthe world and I got to jump on
(18:38):
the competition because I'm up,they're not, you know, most
everybody here in the States areup at you know two, three in
the morning and they'll say, andhow to make sushi?
And it's like, all right, yeah,I do it in a couple of minutes
and send it out.
And they're like, oh yeah, theclient instantly approved, let's
start it.
And it's huge, oh great, let'sdo it.
Rob (18:59):
Do you have to?
Is it like those unionized orassociated?
You have to get into thosethings, or how?
Mike Paine (19:05):
does that work?
Voice acting I've done it on myown since the beginning of time
when reel-to-reels were things.
But yeah, I'm an indie personand could I be union, I suppose.
But then it kind of limitseverything.
You can't do anything else,virtually anything else that I
do.
Everything I've done is on myown.
(19:26):
I still do games.
I still do audiobooks.
I've done 56 audiobooks.
Oh wow, chris has read three ofthem.
Cesar (19:32):
I've done 56 audiobooks.
Oh wow, Chris has read three ofthem.
Rob (19:35):
He's a big audiobook guy.
He's a big audiobook guy.
Yeah, he doesn't talk, he justlistens.
Really that's okay though.
Mike Paine (19:45):
Chris, you would look at my repertoire and go,
okay, you've done everythingfrom like horoscope stuff to
strength training, sexy poetryto all over the map.
Victor (19:56):
Have you done any Korean voice work?
Maybe Chris has.
Mike Paine (20:01):
That would be a fantasy of mine, that I'd be a
polyglot and I could speak about30 languages.
I would be the richest man inthe world.
Rob (20:10):
You just got to like dub over those like Squid squid
games movies.
Victor (20:13):
You know like why?
Rob (20:14):
why are their voices so wild every time you get like a
dub, it's like the guy you'relike, that guy doesn't even look
like that they just pick randompeople.
Mike Paine (20:23):
A lot of times they have in-house dubbing.
Just think of the old school.
We're talking old, old school,like the old speed racer
cartoons.
They had like three people inhouse that did all the voices.
That's kind of like and likethe old kung fu movies where
they had like three people inhouse, it's like, okay, here's
the one female voice, let's haveher do all the kids and the
female voices, and then the twoother guys were all the same
(20:44):
voices and they were australianon top of that, so it sounded
kind of what sort of likeresearch or practice have you
done to try to like perfect yourcraft Voice?
acting.
I kind of just have always doneit with a little training.
I got back in 1987 and wentfrom there, learned how to
project my voice, learned how toemphasize certain things and
(21:07):
how to read a script whenthere's no direction.
I mean, I get that a lot, whereI just go here, here's a script
and I'm making a video and myclient wants a voiceover.
I have no idea what and I'lljust pick up the piece of paper
that I print out or look at it,analyze it for a couple seconds
and do it.
I don't even need to pre-readthem.
I could just rip them off andvoice them instantly.
(21:27):
I don't.
I don't even prep a lot oftimes just because I didn't know
that sounds.
Oh, that's amateurish, it's not.
I've been doing it so long andread so many scripts.
I can see them coming readingthe first sentence.
I can see them and see how it'sgoing to go and it's like all
right, oh, it's like this.
Okay, boom, let's do it.
Cesar (21:42):
So let's say, for somebody that's like trying to
get into the work, what wouldyou recommend for them like
first timers?
Mike Paine (21:54):
For first timers, I would recommend going online and
searching for voiceoverpractice scripts and there's
like thousands and thousands ofthem out there.
Just start doing those.
And also listening to actualstreaming television, whatever
forum, whatever medium, onlineYouTube.
Listening to actual commercialsand actual explainer videos and
things that you're interestedin.
Or, if you're interested ingaming, listening to some of the
voices and how they do it anddon't mimic them, just kind of
(22:16):
see how, what their style is,okay.
So if you've got, let's saysomething, that's how to you
know how to connect yourBluetooth speaker.
It would be a lot moresimplistic and kind of run of
the mill, but not boring, thanit would be if you're like a
drill instructor in a uh, youknow, an rpg game or something.
So totally different approachand just practice with it.
(22:37):
I would say, start with there'sfan dubs everywhere where you
can.
Just, you know there's peoplejust playing around, it's for
free and it's great experienceon dubbing as well as just voice
acting, and it's not sillyvoices, that's the the oh.
Uh, if you do a simpsons voiceCause no one's ever done a
Simpsons impression I meanthat's not voice acting.
Victor (22:56):
I, we don't want to see your up.
No, no, no.
Nobody wants to see that.
Mike Paine (23:01):
The one time I was a traffic reporter and the
station that carried it thepeople on the air couldn't care
less about traffic, and neithercould I, honestly.
So I did, I, I did all theirtraffic reports as hank hill and
it was just ridiculous, nice,nice, traffic's bad.
Yeah, I can't do it anymore,but I I really I need that for
(23:23):
my wage.
And I studied and I actuallystudied hank hill and watched
all the king of the hillepisodes.
I could, yeah, and and got hismannerisms down and it was like
Ooh, you know the one, the one,one other guy I filled in for um
Fred Winston.
He's a well-known, legendary DJ, uh, in the Chicago area, and I
(23:44):
filled in and did traffic forhim and I'd be the Greek waiter
and he just wanted to do this,this bit with the Greek waiter
doing the traffic and just like,push this the traffic reporter
out of the studio and wanderedin going hi, traffic is uh, how
do you say, bad no, no, too manycars, too many, so yeah and
(24:07):
it's just stuff like that thatyou just come up with and it's
fun.
That's the radio side of things,the creative part.
So many people get so focusedon this.
Oh my God, what am I going to?
Just have fun with it?
I mean, I still do that now.
How?
Rob (24:21):
do you project your voice?
How do you like develop yourvoice?
Because I've got like thatnasally, you know, like young
Ray Romano, Like it's.
You know people read it.
They're like yeah, right, Likeit's people read it.
Mike Paine (24:32):
They're like yeah right, we all have a nasally
thing that's just called wakingup in the morning.
I mean seriously, or waking upfrom a nap or whatever it is
it's like, or getting justtrying to wake up.
It's not so much that, andthere's no such thing as a
perfect.
I mean I've got the whole oldschool announcer-y thing going
for me, but other than that it'snot like it used to be, where
you had to sound like this to beon.
(24:54):
You don't have to do thatanymore.
Victor (24:56):
Like a 1920s radio guy.
Hey everybody.
Mike Paine (25:01):
No, you don't have to sound like that anymore.
That's amazing.
Yeah, you just sound like you.
And now, with the advent of AI,so many people say I want to
hear real voices and they wantto hear emotion, inflection and
attitude, and that's somethingAI doesn't have.
And we've all heard the reallybad YouTube videos with AI in
(25:23):
them and they're cringy and somethat are passable sort of, but
no emotion at all.
It's just a cold dead read andnobody wants to hear that.
So that's why I think that it'skind of cool that when you go in
there and go, yeah, I can dobetter than that, and that's
kind of it.
When I coach people with voiceacting, I say that I said can
(25:45):
you do better than this?
Oh, yeah, well, then do it, youcan do it.
So, rob, the answer to yourquestion is yeah, go do it
Seriously.
I mean, it's not thatoverwhelming where you can't you
get a microphone, get a setup,get some headphones and start
going right away.
It's not this.
You got to train for 50 yearsand you know, go through the
(26:07):
matrix and you know dodge KeanuReeves and there's a labyrinth
and you got to get the secretgreen crystal.
It's not all of that.
I mean, there's some peoplethat will have you believe that
it's not all that you know.
Victor (26:19):
Can you share with us any like vocal warm-ups, if you
have any?
Mike Paine (26:23):
Yes, I actually teach this because a lot of
people don't know how to warm up, believe it or not.
No, what I do to warm up is thesimplest thing.
It's what all the surveycompanies do with food tasting.
They take a bite of cracker anda drink of water between every
food tasting.
It cleans the palate, it getsrid of all of the mouth
(26:44):
impurities and the mouth noise,which is a benefit, and it's
actually the simplest thing.
And yeah, you can do the teawith lemon or honey as you're
talking more.
But bite a cracker, drink awater and sit for a minute and
then boom, you're ready to goand I mean, I've got my water
sitting here.
It's just a mug of water rightnow, I don't do anything that
complicated and a piece of pizzaand a cup of coffee before you
(27:12):
go into the studio.
Nothing dairy, nothing coffee,nothing that'll mess up your
palate and make you all clickyand choppy.
Nobody wants to hear it likeyou're chewing.
Chris (27:24):
Chris, interesting.
Victor (27:27):
Now they send you the stuff and you record it on your
own and then just send it in asyou complete it.
Yeah, oh, okay, so you don'teven go to the studio anymore.
Mike Paine (27:35):
I haven't been to a studio in 100 years.
I mean, yeah, I do everythingremote.
I work with companies all overthe world and coach students all
over the world.
I had a student last week whowanted to know how to narrate
his YouTube videos better, likewe're just talking about and he
said are you available now?
And beauty of the internet, whyI am?
I am right here.
(27:56):
How about five minutes Do youhave?
So we set up a zoom thing andin five minutes didn't know a
thing about him and he justshared his information and I
said okay, let me watch yourvideo with you.
And I pointed out things withthem and said here's what you
need to do and here's where youneed to.
You know you've got a goodstart.
You already know what you'redoing and kind of fine, tuned
him and off, he's running, andnow he's doing his YouTube
(28:17):
channel.
So there you go.
I mean it's.
It sounds simpler than it is.
It was a lot more detailed, butthat was kind of how it worked.
He just he's an Australian.
Rob (28:31):
He's like can I?
I'm going to go with this one,or I'm going to use this, or you
just tailor it to every job.
Mike Paine (28:35):
Yeah, it depends on if I get no direction.
I kind of have have to playcreative mindset and what would
this script sound like and whatshould it sound like?
Usually those are theexplaining something, a product,
a service, uh, ABC company isthe best company in the world
and here's why One of those kindof things and other than that,
(28:58):
like my own demos some peoplehave like one or two demos of
their voice.
I have probably a hundred and alittle over a hundred.
I have niche reels everywherefrom, like a pirate voice to a
Santa voice.
I have a, you know, a maleenhancement voice I have.
There's a separate maleenhancement voice.
Victor (29:14):
I have a male enhancement voice I have.
There's a separate maleenhancement voice, there is.
Mike Paine (29:18):
There is, it's the late night infomercial voice
that you see at about 4 am.
Is that eugenics?
If you need a blue pill, here'swhere to get yours for only 68
cents a yeech.
The late night on ComedyCentral, when you're watching
that rerun of whatever for the50th time and yeah, that
(29:42):
commercial comes on, that's yeah, I've done some of those, not a
lot, but a few of those.
Rob (29:47):
How do you get like?
You just practice like dialectslike German, like you get those
German ones or Jamaican, youget all the yeah, yeah.
Mike Paine (29:55):
you just watch tons of videos and try to like say
those words yeah, I do a ton ofwork with chinese companies and
they don't give youpronunciations for the proper
names and places.
So I have a folder.
I have a folder in a libraryfull of pronunciations so I can
refer to that.
And there's websites out therewhere you can check out and just
(30:18):
type in the name and watch thevideo.
Or there's a website calledForvo F-O-R-V-O where you type
in a word or a name or a placeand it'll give you the
pronunciation from people inthose countries.
So that helps me a ton and I'llcome up with like uh, if some
German company it's like well,whoa, whoa, and I hit the brakes
in the script, going uh, Ican't say that, what is that?
(30:40):
So I look it up and go, oh,okay, and figure it out.
And there's some accents thatsound hacky and I can't do them
and I can't pretend to do them,like if I tried a Jamaican
accent, that'd be embarrassing.
So yeah, and there's sometimesI get requests for things like
can you do a?
Uh, the voice of a Norwegianboy who's about seven years old?
No, no, I can't.
Cesar (31:04):
No way.
Victor (31:04):
Eight years old, maybe seven.
I draw the line.
Mike Paine (31:07):
I did have to do a voiceover for for a commercial
in the radio days for a circusand I had to be the voice of the
five-year-old kid and it was soembarrassing I'm like I kept
trying to tell him I can'tlisten to my voice.
Do you think I can pull off afive-year-old kid's voice?
And the line was I still have aline somewhere, it's like and
I'm here to watch the big snakeand that's about how it sounded,
(31:29):
and they're like that wasbrilliant, it was.
Are you sure?
And here's this commercialplaying all over the area.
I want to see that big snake.
So embarrassing yeah.
Victor (31:45):
You got to put out the cigarette.
I got to see this big snake andyou know what?
Mike Paine (31:49):
The client's happy?
The client's happy, yeah.
You like that I had one clientsay okay, I want you to voice
this talking house real estatescript, fine.
And I get to the first line andit's like hi, I'm Stephanie
Smith, Whoa, all right.
So I can't do a female.
(32:11):
And I contacted them and said,okay, maybe you sent the wrong
script, or is this the rightscript, or should I change the
name?
And they're like no, we wantyou to say hi, I'm stephanie
smith.
In those words, okay, hi, I'mstephanie smith.
And this house on one, two,three is just beautiful and they
loved it.
Chris (32:24):
Okay, I don't know if stephanie smith's gonna feel
about it, but all right are anylike particular gigs that you
look for over the like one theother.
Mike Paine (32:36):
Well, sure, yeah, I love to do games, I love to do
apps, I love to do stuff.
That's stuff that's fun andkind of challenging.
I voiced the.
I voiced a D-Day tour inNormandy, france, and that's
very cool.
That's very cool.
Museum voice, theEnglish-speaking voice of
museums around the world.
(32:56):
Just odd things like anaquarium, aquarium announcements
for the dolphin show in China.
You know, just, please takeyour seats.
You know that kind of stuff.
It's just quirky but weird, butcool.
There's.
I did an airport, airportannouncements, in-flight
announcements for a couple ofChinese airliners.
(33:17):
So that would be weird if Iever got out there and heard
myself do the announcements.
Victor (33:21):
I was just about to ask you like have you ever just
accidentally ran into your ownvoice?
Mike Paine (33:25):
Yes, I did when I was doing a radio station in
suburban Chicago.
We were voice tracked and werecorded things ahead of time
back then, and they still do now.
But uh, that was kind of a newthing back then.
So, uh, I recorded all mytracks for the weekend and then
my wife and I went to the seven11 and my show was on cause they
(33:46):
had the station on and I'mtalking to myself, and and then
I said, yeah, I'll have a coupleof uh Cokes and something and
whatever we bought.
And he's looking up at thespeaker, looking at me, looking
at the speaker looking at me,going, oh, that'll be $4.76.
So it was weird.
And then you hear the speakersthat they get by the gas pumps
(34:07):
because they have the radiostation, and then we're
listening to me talking our wayout of the gas station.
It was weird but different.
I guess it was cool.
Rob (34:21):
I mean kind of weird.
I remember when we first didthe podcast and then we would,
you know, listen.
I listened to the episodes.
At first I couldn't listen tomyself, oh yeah, but now, yeah,
now I'm just like yeah, whatever, and it's just like a regular
thing.
Did you run into that?
Or do more and more people runinto that?
Mike Paine (34:33):
Yeah, I mean, that's a lot of it is getting over
listening to yourself.
You know it's.
Once you're comfortable withyour own voice, then that's one
of the biggest hurdles toovercome being a voice actor or
radio personality or TVpersonality or anything like
that.
So, yeah, it's just a matter ofbeing comfortable with who you
are and going hey, you know whatI can do this, so what you know
(34:54):
?
No big, Don't over-criticizeand don't overthink it.
Cesar (34:58):
Are there any like current voice actors, now that
you're like oh man, he's good orshe's good, or like?
That you kind of listen Otherthan you.
What kind of question is?
Mike Paine (35:08):
that.
No, besides me, a couple ofgood ones.
One of them he's done tons ofvoice acting and he was my
intern actually at Z Rock isKyle Hebert.
He's awesome.
Kira Buckland is one of thebest known voice actors out
there.
A couple other ones are.
They're really good, but thosetwo are great.
So yeah, and me.
Rob (35:27):
Yeah, I got to imagine it's like a small community of like
you guys all know each other,Like you know, you hear a
commercial and you're like oh,that's a good one, he did a good
job.
Mike Paine (35:40):
Yeah, like what is a good voice actor it's.
It's a blessing and a curse tohave a good ear, and now I've
not only me but my wife has.
We have such good ears withlistening to hacky edits and
terrible flubs and stuff.
We just heard a weather, aweather forecast, this afternoon
and she said the weather systemtoday is going to be potent.
So, oh God, did you say potent?
How old are you?
(36:00):
Don't say potent?
And uh, there was a commercialhere in Chicago that ran for a
plumbing company, for HVACplumbing company, for years, and
it says, uh, uh, abc plumingroofing and HVAC, whatever it
said pluming.
And it ran for years and no onecaught it Pluming instead of
plumbing.
Really, in the third biggestcity in the country, pluming.
(36:24):
And you let that.
Nobody caught it.
The client, the producer, thestation nobody for like three
years.
It's still on YouTube somewhere.
I still laugh at it.
Victor (36:34):
Listen, plumers are high in the air.
Yeah, plumers are killing itright now.
Rob (36:39):
They can charge anything they want.
Mike Paine (36:40):
Yeah, I'd like to get paid for plume.
Victor (36:44):
So I don't know if it's something that I did or
something that I looked up, butfor like a while, instagram was
like giving me ads for, likevoiceover schools.
Are those legit or are theyworth it or like, in your
opinion, the short answer ismost of them, I'm just going to
say, are not.
Mike Paine (37:03):
It's the old.
Remember the old modelingschools where they would have
the things at the Holiday Innand, oh well, you could be a
model too.
All you need to do is buy ourphoto service, which is like
$900, and take pictures with ourphotographer and then, yeah,
it's.
Broadcasting schools are thesame way.
They still are out there.
That'll say, oh, you could beon the air.
(37:24):
No, you can't.
I mean not with no training.
You just jump on the.
They give these people, theytake their 25 grand and or more
for some of these tuitions forbroadcasting school and it's
horrible.
I mean with the voice actingthing.
There are people out there thatare legit.
Probably.
I don't really know anybody elsethat teaches stuff.
I don't really honestly carethat much.
I do my own thing.
I don't pattern myself afteranybody else.
(37:45):
I tell the truth.
I shoot from the hip.
I don't gatekeep.
I don't have any secretinformation hidden behind a cave
with seven keys to open thedoor.
I'm honest, I'll tell you whatlike just now.
I'll tell you guys, whateveryou want to know.
I mean seriously, I don't haveany problem with that and I help
people from all walks of lifewith my coaching.
(38:12):
So I've had people from verybeginning to just buying a new
mic to people well, on their waythat have done stuff before and
they're just thinking I need to, mike, I need to know They'll
have specific questions.
Mike, I need to know thebusiness of it.
Where do I find clients?
Okay, let's do that and I'llset up a course.
It's, you know, 30 bucks for 30minutes, so we'll talk for an
hour.
I usually give them the extra30.
What the heck?
So, yeah, for 30 bucks, I'lltell you what I need, what,
everything, everything.
I know it's not a big deal.
I'm not out there to you knowthese people that pay, you know,
(38:34):
two, three, four grand for onedemo reel.
It's like I don't know aboutyou guys, but I don't have
several mortgage payments toblow on a demo reel.
Victor (38:43):
For something that's not even guaranteed right Like
you're not guaranteeing me work.
Mike Paine (38:51):
You're just saying I'm just going to teach you a
few things and then send you out.
And the guys that come out andsay, oh well, if you get my demo
reel, you're going to get knowa big company, if they promise
you that, just run the otherdirection, because that's not a
thing.
It's like the broadcastingschools that say you'll be on
the air and in a big city in notime.
No, you won't.
It's not how it works.
(39:12):
Forget my story.
My story was before theInternet and everything else and
that was just a crazy path thatactually somehow worked.
I say that don't do it, becauseI did it somehow and naive and
whatever it was, but it worked.
And you know, my naive naivetegot me there and my talent kept
me there.
I guess.
Rob (39:31):
You're voice acting, you're on the radio, you have all
these, you know clients.
You're coaching.
What time do you wake up in themorning?
What does your day look like?
Mike Paine (39:39):
What time do I wake up in the morning?
Yeah Well, I get my goal on andI drink my coffee.
No, honestly, I work the othernine to five, so I get up at
1130 ish in the morning.
I mean, it sounds like I'm aslacker, but when you sleep at
six, that's not that.
You know not that much.
So I work with people on theother side of the world, so
(39:59):
usually my day is, you know, theother nine to five, and it's a
lot easier to deal with peoplethen and I don't have this whole
big motivational sayings on mywall in front of me that say go
get them.
And you know life is about acup of coffee and your attitude.
I don't have any of that.
I don't need science to tell mehow to do my day.
(40:20):
I do it myself.
Rob (40:22):
So, for the scripts coming in, I mean, do you need?
Are you running the businessyourself?
Do you have to get a manager?
Do you have to get represented?
Like, how does that work?
As far as just finding you, howdid they find you?
Mike Paine (40:33):
Well, I have my own website.
I have a lot of freelancersites that I'm on and the
customers that I have clientsthat I've been with for a long
time they know me and you knowwe exchange emails and stuff
like that too.
So I've been with some people10, 12 years plus and they just
say, hey, mike, they'll come outof the blue.
I'll not hear from them in sixmonths and they're like hey,
(40:54):
mike, how's it going?
Hey, can you do this for me?
And I work with people from youknow, all over the country and
the world and something like.
There's a wood flooring placethat teaches people all about
wood flooring and the genesis ofit and how to install it, and
it's the biggest wood flooringplace in the country.
And they won't pop up foranother several months, but when
they do, they throw me a bunchof scripts and I do all their
(41:15):
training videos.
So it's one of those coolthings that's like.
You know that doesn't soundlike it sizzles off the screen,
but it feels so cool to be ableto do something like that.
And I just finally got an agent, actually for the first time in
my life a month ago, and it'skind of a trial thing, but you
don't really need an agent.
I haven't gotten any parts orgigs from it yet.
We'll see what happens.
(41:35):
But you know, it's one of thosethings where you can do it
yourself.
Now you don't.
It's not the old school.
You have to be represented by atalent agent and you have to
have them do this, and you haveto join the union and you have
to.
Yes, you can and you could doall of those things, but that's
not a guarantee and that's notthe only route to success.
A lot of indie people have greatsuccess and can make a living
(41:58):
for it at living with doing this, and I do it and other people
can do it, and there's varyingdegrees.
I mean, you could have this asa side hustle.
That's the thing to do.
You could have this as a.
You know, it started as a sidehustle and develop it, and then
maybe you'll get better andbetter at it and get bigger and
bigger and you may not need thatextra job.
You know that kind of thing.
So, yeah, there's so manydifferent roads you can take
(42:20):
with this, which is the beautyof it.
I mean you don't have to gowell, you have to go this route
and that's the only way you cango.
It's not like that anymore.
Victor (42:28):
What's the most common problem I guess students kind of
bring to you?
Mike Paine (42:33):
Lack of confidence in their own voice and being
able to project on themicrophone and knowing that
voice acting is all acting.
Even if it's just churchannouncements or a voicemail,
it's all acting.
You're playing a part, so youhave to be an actor.
It's not just doing imitationsand that's kind of doing
something from SpongeBob is avoice from SpongeBob is.
(42:56):
In a voice acting career youhave to be able to have depth,
you have to have versatility andknow what your strengths and
weaknesses are.
And if you find your strengths,start with your strengths and
then work outward from there andthen kind of see where.
I mean I did stuff that I don'tprefer to do.
I mean for me, fictionaudiobooks I like do.
I don't mind doing them, butI'm much stronger at the
(43:19):
nonfiction stuff.
That's just my thing.
It doesn't mean fiction is bad.
I just found out that I didsome fiction.
It worked out all right, butI'm better at nonfiction.
Victor (43:28):
And that's like consuming, because you have to
do like characters for likedifferent.
Mike Paine (43:32):
Yeah, I mean, there is one series of audiobooks I
did.
I had to.
I was at 11 or 13 characters.
I had to keep straight at alltimes.
Cesar (43:40):
Whoa of books.
I did.
I had to.
I was at 11 or 13 characters Ihad to keep straight at all
times.
Mike Paine (43:43):
Whoa, that's tough.
And then then the first personnarration on top of that.
So you have to go from a three,three-way conversation and keep
it all straight and keep it allbelievable.
So what you do is you take asnippet of each individual voice
and sometimes they won't comein until, like the, you know,
the werewolf is in book one andthen doesn't come back until
book three and it's like what isa werewolf?
(44:03):
I don't how long ago was thatso?
you keep a snippet of werewolfand you just title it werewolf
and point of reference and go,oh, all right, so all right.
Then you stop and do thewerewolf voice.
And I say werewolf because Idid a weird series of audio
books that was kind of liketwilight meets 50 shades of gray
.
It was very unusual it was itwas fun.
(44:24):
It was a different experience.
I thought I'd dip my toe in thewater for that.
It was like mostly twilightishand then all of a sudden it'd
get a little racy in spots andit's like I kind of came out of
that field but all right, that'sthe
Chris (44:35):
same book?
Mike Paine (44:36):
yeah, ask the narrator yeah, it was the
narrator, it was like somethingto do with the office supplies
and yeah.
So, yeah, that, yeah, and someof the stuff you don't expect is
like, like, one of my biggestselling audio books is how to
play cornhole, go figure.
Victor (44:53):
You're the cornhole.
Cesar (44:58):
We should have led with that.
Rob (45:01):
When, when you do like, like deals like that, like audio
books, is there royalties withthat?
Or is it just one on?
Yeah, I wasn't sure how theyusually do it.
Mike Paine (45:11):
Yeah, exactly, there's various ways to do that.
With ACX, which is a websitethat handles all the Audible
books, you can either do royalty, royalty share plus or paid per
hour, and a lot of people shyaway from the royalty because
you are rolling the dice.
I mean, I've done audiobooksthat have sold one copy.
You got to do a little researchand think about I do nonfiction
(45:34):
, stuff that sells, that's nevergoing to go bad Workouts,
recipe books, how-to books thataren't time sensitive.
Like you know how to start up,your windows vista isn't going
to sell any copies right now, soyou know, it's coming back.
Rob (45:49):
It's coming.
It really was the best windowsit's due yeah, so you know.
Mike Paine (45:53):
Or super niche ones like, uh, which parks are the
best in Columbus Ohio?
I mean, I think six peoplemight be interested in that.
Is that going to sell a lot?
For me, no, and it's royalty no, but other stuff yeah.
I mean, the how-to stuff isgreat.
And again, these are thingsthat I just tell people.
(46:14):
I don't hold these secretinformation.
So, yeah, the answer to that isI like royalty, especially the
shorter titles, because youcould build up a resume really
quickly.
And you know, 56 audiobookssounds good and it is.
And the way I did that is, atfirst I took everything
literally going, you know,judging by the some of the weird
stuff I voiced.
But then you kind of find yourlane and go, yeah, these do well
(46:38):
and these sell.
And then, years later, I mean Istill get sales from stuff I've
done 10, 12, 13 years agoSometimes when I'm like
preparing for the uh, for anepisode right, I'm going through
, I'm going through my script.
Cesar (46:49):
Perfectly fine, yeah, I, we start recording.
And I get stuck on some ofthese words.
The other day I couldn't saywhat was it?
Mike Paine (47:04):
Uh, emancipation proclamation yeah, do you have
any tips?
Or like, have you ever get like, do you get stuck on some words
as you're reading it?
Or like, how do you get throughit?
The one word I hate the most iscommunity.
It always sounds like you'resaying me, I get stuck on that
one all the time.
There's certain words that thatwas the biggie, but there's a
couple of words that pop up andyou're just going it doesn't't,
it doesn't sound natural as aword to begin, like community is
a second.
So I don't, and that one Ialways have to stop.
(47:25):
I flub that word all the time.
I'll be honest, I do.
I flub that one.
You just kind of got to stopand kind of reset it and go okay
, I'm just going to do thesentence again and just kind of,
there's sometimes I just just Istop a script, I'll walk away
from the computer for a whileand come back and drink a water
and come back and go all right,now I'm clear, because I'll I'll
flub it five times in a row,going all right, this is getting
(47:46):
.
Cesar (47:46):
This is too much, let's just start over again yeah so
it's normal, caesar I'm gonnawalk away from you guys, or just
you need to drink your, youneed to eat your cracker and
drink your water.
I I'm going to start doing that.
Victor (47:58):
You're over there drinking your protein shake.
It is protein shake.
Rob (48:02):
Yeah, it's not going to help you.
Mike Paine (48:03):
Protein shake and a pizza and you're over here
thinking you're going to get itdone or you get the giggles and
you just read something thatsounds funny and you're like
okay.
That's like the first time Iread that NSFW series and I
started reading some of thelines.
It was normal and then all of asudden it's like what?
Are you doing with those officesupplies?
A ruler?
No, okay, hold on.
I got to all right.
(48:27):
I had to kind of clear my headand go all right, let's just do
it in a voice.
Victor (48:34):
I got to take this seriously.
Did you ever miss the radio?
Mike Paine (48:39):
I do miss the in-person thing when it was fun
back then and now it's all kindof like pretty much three
corporations on almost all theradio stations and radio isn't
what it was I mean.
Now it's podcasting obviously,so it would be fun to do that.
I mean I'm going to have one ofmy own pretty soon.
Victor (48:59):
Oh nice.
Do you have a name for it,should we be looking out for
something.
Mike Paine (49:03):
It's Rock your Confidence I'm sorry, rock your
Voice Confidence from Pain.
And it's about teachingself-confidence and finding your
inner voice we were talkingabout a little earlier, and
voice acting is probably 75%confidence training and 25%
technical.
And I have so many people justsay, mike, I just want to talk
(49:25):
about you know how to talk onthe phone to people or how to go
to a meeting and talk tosomeone.
It's, there's nothing to dowith voice acting.
So I thought you know what?
I might as well start doingthis.
I mean, I'm doing it anyway.
I might as well just have apodcast about and see what
happens.
Victor (49:40):
Maybe I could help some more people, who knows?
Yeah, I see a lot of like.
I mean, obviously we don't havethe setup for this, but, like
I've seen other podcasts, whenthey're like they're looking for
that viral moment.
Like share me that story that Ican, that you didn't want to
tell.
Mike Paine (49:54):
I got a story for you, a real quick story.
Go for it that.
I've for you a real quick story, go for it that.
I've.
Probably only people that knowme know this story.
And uh, I was at the uh heavymetal convention, the concrete
foundations forum, in 91, 1990,1990 and uh, I was interviewing
dave mustaine from megadeth andhe had all kinds of weird.
(50:15):
I was just asking him hey, dave, how's it going?
How's tour going?
I heard you had did a kind of apre-tour gig in Fresno and that
was one of our affiliates.
How did that go?
It's like what are you high?
And he, just out of nowhere, hehad all kinds of attitude and I
asked him a couple morequestions.
He had this, this attitude andthe guitar player at the time,
(50:44):
marty Friedman, I knew him fromother bands and I just started
talking to Marty and I said,yeah, marty, you know you have a
guitar song that Megadeth neverhad before.
So I got I got a littlecombative with Dave and then it
became a big thing and then Iheard it.
He was he was kind of shit,talking me at different places,
like uh, one of one of uh myfriends in Kansas city at the uh
show they overheard him shittalking to me and it's like,
well, I asked him simplequestions, I didn't do anything.
So then it became a thing on theair and I started honestly,
probably a bad idea, but he gotme a little annoyed so I said oh
(51:07):
, I've got a new demo from thevocal demo from Dave Mustaine's
new Megadeth album.
Chris (51:12):
I play a baby crying and you know, this is on national
radio and you know you know, I'dhave like a baby going.
Mike Paine (51:21):
Oh, maybe I could interview dave mustaine next
week.
I think here's a preview, youknow so and then it finally came
to a head when it was the clashof the titans tour.
It was uh slayer, megadeth, uhanthrax and alice in chains and
we were all hanging out.
We're shooting hoops in theback.
You know, anthrax great guys, Ilove them.
(51:42):
Uh slayer, everybody was just Ididn't know allison changed
that well, but uh, mostlyanthrax, we're just shooting
hoops in the back and dave's allprepared and he's walking past
and he's just scowling and andstaring at us and gives me a
look, and then everyone's likedave, dude, come shoot some
hoops, what's up?
And he's just like he's, he'sbetter now.
I think those were in his dayswhere he was uh heavily
(52:05):
influenced by outside sources,let's just say I think so yeah,
yeah, yeah, I've heard stories.
I'm sure that was like the normfor a lot of stuff, though yeah,
so that was a whole thing andme and dave mustaine and and
that it kind of ended therebecause I left, I let it alone.
It's like I'm not going to keepthis thing going.
Victor (52:22):
I understand something.
I can't stand about the radioand it's partly the reason why I
stopped listening to just likeregular radio is morning shows.
I don't want to hear peoplejust talking about nonsense
every morning, I'd rather justlisten to music.
Mike Paine (52:38):
Oh yeah, the morning , the old morning zoo and the
old school.
You know the chuckle hut, as Icall them.
They it's, it's cringy, it's,it's forced bits and you have to
.
You know they're like let'scall the bakery and see if they
have donuts.
Oh God, please.
No, really, they're scripted,those are scripted.
No, really they're scripted,those are scripted.
(52:59):
Everything's scripted.
Now, I mean, a lot of it wasscripted too.
I couldn't stand that.
Just so hacky and contrived andnon-genuine.
It's like a bad audition for acomedy set.
You just go oh, that bombed,that didn't work.
So yeah, I haven't listened toregular radio in a thousand
(53:23):
years.
I've had uh serious xms and sofor I was one of the first ones
to get it and I've listened toit ever since, because I we used
to have the theory of in theradio days, in the hard rock
metal days, to get in, get out,say what you got to say and get
out real fast.
It's not, you know, be funny,be fast and get out.
And there's some people thatlove the.
In 1979, tom Petty washed hiscar with a chamois and he used a
(53:48):
wax that wasn't turtle wax Like.
Why do I care?
Can you just play Tom?
Cesar (53:52):
Petty.
For God's sake, I don't careabout his car.
Mike Paine (53:55):
I don't care about what you bought for groceries
today, just play the song.
And he just wanted.
I don't care about what youbought for groceries today, just
play the song.
And it's just play the song.
Yeah.
So I never liked that, I alwaysliked the, and there's some
stations that do that.
On SiriusXM it's like boom,boom song done, great, awesome.
Even better if there's lesswords than that.
Hey, here's a cool tune, loveit, it's great, sounds good, bam
(54:16):
, right into it.
Victor (54:17):
Mike, thank you so much for joining us.
I loved having you on.
If someone wants to reach outto you, where can they find you?
Mike Paine (54:22):
Well, first of all, thanks, guys, I really
appreciate it.
I love being here, Talk to youguys anytime.
If you want to get a hold of me, I'm at Mike Payne.
That's P-A-I-N-E coachingcardC-A-R-R-Dco.
You can find me on.
You can listen to my stuffsoundcloudcom slash, Mike dash,
Payne dash show YouTube.
(54:44):
You can find me at Mike Payne,P-A-I-N-E 6287.
And if you Google search orYouTube search Crazy Mike Payne,
Z-Rock you'll be able to hear alot of my old wild interviews
that have been remastered and Iremastered and it's been posted.
So, yeah, you can hear some ofthose, some of the weirdness
that I did back then.
And the podcast man and thepodcast I'll be on
(55:05):
motivatingradiocom and mypodcast is coming soon, so be on
the lookout for that.
I will be everywhere, even moreeverywhere than I am now.
Victor (55:14):
Well, if you need four guys to talk about insecurities,
I got you, I got you,definitely.
Rob (55:20):
Yeah that I need to hear you want four.
Chris (55:26):
That I need to hear.
Mike Paine (55:28):
But thanks guys, this is great, this is awesome.
Victor (55:30):
Thank you Thanks a lot.
All right guys.
Final thoughts.
Chris (55:36):
Chris, that was really cool.
That was a pretty goodinterview.
There's some stuff that he'smentioned about the field or
that industry with the voiceacting there was I have no idea
like I have no idea what that.
You know anything about thatfield, so it was pretty
interesting to hear what he hadto say about it and then all the
ins and outs about in in thatindustry.
(55:57):
So, yeah, I had a great timeyeah, I had a great time, cesar.
Victor (56:02):
I had a great time and I didn't know about, did everyone
have a great time here I had agreat time as well.
Cesar (56:06):
I'm messing around Chris.
No, I really wanted to talk tohim about Because I'm thinking
about potentially doing a littleside voice acting and I wanted
to get some tips and strategies.
I think the biggest takeawaythat I got from this was when he
mentioned it's 75% confidenceand that I got to work on.
25% might be technical, whichanyone can get, but that 75%
(56:27):
confidence thing it's big and Ithink that's one of the biggest
key takeaways I'm going to takeaway from this.
Other than that, like thecrackers, that's a good little
tidbit to know Crackers andjuice or crackers and water.
But yeah and Rob.
Rob (56:41):
Reading about Mike and you can tell he's a professional
comes in, obviously, theconfidence, but it's the energy,
Things that I feel like aretaught, but he just does them
better.
It's funny to hear, though,stories about like he still
struggles on certain words or hegoes through the same types of
things that we got to go throughand continue to go through, and
(57:03):
we ran into a lot when we firststarted, but just got to jump
right in, Like you said.
You know there are, there iscoaching, there is ways to
perfect your craft, obviously,but yeah, it was great to have
him on, you know, talked aboutradio, talked about his, his,
how he got into it and how hestarted.
I mean it just seems like thatis a right place, right time for
(57:23):
the time type of deal and Imean, as a 19 year old kid going
through all that, it's prettyawesome we want to thank you for
listening, but wait before yougo.
Victor (57:33):
I want you to find that share button and send this
podcast to a friend and let themknow that you have found the
podcast with the funniest andmost handsome people on Spotify.
Also check out our YouTubechannel at I'm Not Dumb, but
Podcast for more fun content.
Until next time, stay curious,see you later.
Mike Paine (57:57):
Cranking it up on Xerox looking for trouble.
Welcome everyone to the I'm Not Dumb but Podcast.
I'm your host for today, victor, joined always by Rob.
Hello, chris Yup and Cesar, howy'all doing Whoa?
That's my line.
That's my line, actually,introduce me again.
And Cesar Yup, so let me hearyour best voiceover.
(00:23):
Slash commercial voice.
Rob (00:25):
welcome to mike's auto repair shop no, that was
terrible, that was bad okay,interesting, interesting.
Victor (00:33):
I mean, I'm not going to mike's with that definitely not
now, that guy'll screw you lefthe's on a watch list here we go
in a world full of erectiledysfunction.
Cialis, that's all I got oh,okay, all right, I think you
went two different directionsthere.
It was pretty good.
Chris, what do you got?
Chris (00:53):
oh, man, just do it in korean chris is buffering.
I'm let me see it.
There's um yo I have nothing.
I don't know, I can't.
I can't do this, do a moviepreview.
Rob (01:06):
I can't get that confidence .
75 is confidence.
Victor (01:12):
It's amateur shit, it's a it's yeah, all right, guys,
that was something, so you guysneed some work.
I don't think any commercial isgoing to be calling you anytime
soon, but you're in luck.
Our guest today has had anearly 40-year career voicing
over 50 audiobook explainervideos, radio and TV ads, movie
(01:33):
trailers, documentaries Alsospending time as an on-air radio
personality for Z-Rock inDallas, where he hosted a weekly
show called Headbangers Heaven.
Our guest today is Mike Payne,and he's going to help us answer
the question I'm not dumb, buthow do you become a voice actor?
Cesar (01:52):
Welcome to the I'm Not Dumb but podcast, where we won't
claim to have the answers tolife's deepest questions but
we'll give you an excitingjourney into the realms of
knowledge you never knew you'dbe Might be mainstream, but not
common knowledge, Fromartificial intelligence to the
show Mike.
Victor (02:14):
Thank you, victor.
Good to be here.
Let's just get into it.
Let's start at the beginning.
Sure, when did you figure outpeople wanted to listen to your
voice?
Mike Paine (02:26):
out.
People wanted to listen to yourvoice.
I was a 17-year-old kid butwhen I was 9, 8, 9, 10 years old
, my dad, for Christmas, boughtmy brother and I one of those
little mini tape recorders andyou hit the old play and record
thing and we just did sillyvoices and mimicked stuff on TV
and it was really just kid stuff.
And at 17, I was in college.
College and I thought you know,maybe I could do something with
(02:46):
this, I don't know.
So, naive 17-year-old, Istarted picking up the phone and
cold calling video productioncompanies and cable TV places.
And one guy by the name ofMorris Rose picked me up on just
saying, hey, kid, come over andI'll teach you some stuff and
we'll do some commercials.
Pick me up on just saying, hey,kid, come over and I'll teach
you some stuff and we'll do somecommercials.
And my first gigs were paidgigs and I was doing commercials
(03:09):
for a cable company like arestaurant, a print, a copier
place, stuff like that.
Victor (03:16):
What was your, your speed, like how did you become
that I'm a?
Mike Paine (03:19):
hell of a salesman.
Well, it was just, I literallywent, I picked up the old, the
old school phone book and I wentto v and video production
companies and then went to c andwent cable television companies
and just said hey, I'm mike.
Uh, do you need any voice workor something stupid like that?
Because I was 17, I didn't yeahyeah or anything.
I was like yeah how do you getyour?
(03:40):
Do you have, uh, in-house voiceactors?
And I I just heard lingo from Idon't know where I got it from.
I just guessed.
And sure enough, people werestarting to pick up.
And after that I went to thelocal PBS station in Dallas,
texas the TV station and didtheir fundraising drive.
I did the voice for their tripsto Hawaii and like the product
(04:01):
descriptions for all the stuffthey were putting up for bids.
And after that I auditioned forother stuff.
I auditioned for the Voice ofGod, for the Zola Levitt Show.
I was way too young for that,so at 17,.
Rob (04:15):
I am the voice of God.
Victor (04:18):
It's a younger God, it's a younger.
Rob (04:19):
God, yeah, it's God in his teens.
Yeah, youthful God's originstory yeah, old Testament, god
and his teens yeah, youthfulit's.
Mike Paine (04:24):
Old.
Victor (04:25):
Testament God.
Yeah, Old Testament God.
Mike Paine (04:25):
It's kind of like the Young Sheldon thing, but
didn't quite work out that way.
So, yeah, there's that and Itried out for a few other things
.
And then I also I was ahorrible guitar player.
So I had bought a guitar, triedto play, couldn't play for
anything.
And I listened to this radiostation that I heard in Chicago
(04:46):
and it was also in Dallas.
It's a hard rock, heavy metalkind of radio station, which was
actually network, as I foundout later.
And the overnight guy said,yeah, I'll buy your guitar, why
not, I'll try and play.
And it's like all right.
So I drove over there and saidthis would be really cool to
work here.
Do you know anybody that'shiring around here?
And totally naive, not knowinga thing about radio or anything,
broadcasting nothing, Just hey,anybody hiring?
(05:07):
Like like they're going to hiresomebody that just says, hey, I
want a job.
And the thing about it is itactually happened because he
said, yeah, the guy down thehall at the top 40 format is
hiring for a producer, Try outfor that, why not?
And I'm like all right.
I had no idea what that meant.
So I talked to the guy and Isaid, oh, you know what?
I'll work for free for a week.
Just hire me.
(05:27):
I'm the guy.
He's like what do you mean?
You're the guy.
I got all these applicants, Igot all these resumes.
I'm like I'm the guy.
Just teach me what you want toteach-to-reel machine was.
I didn't know what a mic tech,I didn't know anything.
I just know there's amicrophone and there's a studio
(05:49):
and there's songs and you playthem.
That's all.
I knew Nothing.
Wow, and he hired me and I wasproducing a morning show for a
top 40 network that had like 60something affiliates within a
week.
Chris (06:03):
And it was not.
Mike Paine (06:03):
Picking songs and you know taking calls and how
the heck did.
How is this happening?
Victor (06:11):
Did you ever feel at like any point like you
shouldn't be here?
Rob (06:19):
Like it was just, or you just had like an imposter
syndrome, like someone's goingto catch on.
No, I never had that.
Mike Paine (06:23):
It was just.
It was just one of those thingswhere I felt like I'll just
roll with this, I'm still goingto catch on.
No, I never had that.
It was just one of those thingswhere I felt like I'll just
roll with this.
I'm still going to school, whynot?
It's something cool to do andI'm getting paid for it, kind of
attitude.
And I didn't think it would be.
38-something years later, I'mstill doing this stuff.
But here I am.
But anyway, the guy that sold methe guitar, he became program
director of the format down thehall for the hard rock and heavy
(06:43):
metal thing and he's like yeah,why don't you work part-time?
Never been on the air beforeother than doing bits for the
morning guy.
So I listened to stuff and Ilistened to people on the air
and they threw me on a show on anational network, being 18
years old or 19 actually 19years old, no experience, yeah.
And he's like you know themusic well, you know, I, I
didn't really even even havetraining.
(07:04):
They just kind of threw me onthe air.
Wow.
Victor (07:08):
You were live, like broadcasting.
Oh live, this is all live, thisis another state.
Mike Paine (07:12):
Totally live.
That's wild.
Rob (07:13):
The first time you got on was there just like dead air, or
you just jumped right in?
Mike Paine (07:17):
I just jumped right in and did it.
I thought, oh, I still got allthe tapes from the early days,
the earliest days.
I got a lot of tape.
But well, now it's digital, butyou know tape.
Victor (07:27):
I'm so old, oh my God.
But.
Mike Paine (07:30):
I've heard, I've read about these.
Victor (07:31):
Yeah, yeah, it's a square, yeah, and there's two
circles in the middle andthere's the brown stuff
Chris (07:37):
on the bottom.
Mike Paine (07:38):
Yeah, the first, like I think the second month,
not barely the second month in.
I was filling in because theywere taping some Ozzy Osbourne
interviews down the hall,pre-recorded.
They're going to have five ofthe whole week's worth of Ozzy
doing whatever he was going todo.
I was like, oh cool, ozzy's inthe building, maybe I'll get an
autograph later.
I did, which is fun, yeah, nice.
(08:00):
But all of a sudden he walksinto the studio completely
unannounced.
They're like, well, he's here,he's live, might as well, just
do something, live to promotethis stuff and have fun with
whoever's on the air.
Again, I had barely been on theair two months, 19 years old
and in walks, ozzy, you knowjust, hey, how you doing.
You know one of those?
Yeah, ozzy.
Chris (08:19):
Yeah.
Cesar (08:22):
I know the later.
Ozzy, yeah, I know the later.
Mike Paine (08:24):
Ozzy, yeah, yeah.
And and it was one of thosethings where the the all these
record execs and and networkexecs were peering through this
little porthole window in thestudio and and, believe it or
not, I didn't have any nervesCause I I earlier in the day I
heard a horrid interview from alocal DJ.
He was awful, yeah, and he justI'm just going to say he sucked
(08:46):
and I thought I could do itbetter than that.
And I got my chance and Ithought you know what?
This is my chance, I'm going todo this and, with all these
people looking in the littleportal window, I'm going to nail
this thing.
And I did it.
It was great.
And the president of thenetwork's like who's this 19
year old kid that's doing?
Who is he?
He's producing a morning showthere and what is going on.
(09:07):
And he talked to the my, mybuddy, who was the program
director.
He's like make this guyfull-time, let's find a spot for
him.
And then I got a spot and ittook.
It really took off from thereand I had my own full-time show
and then I was setting uppromotions and interviewing all
kinds of people and doing livebroadcasts and jumping on stage
and introducing people andthat's where the radio thing
(09:29):
took off and still doing voicework through the network and
other stuff.
Rob (09:32):
So, going back to that interview, there was no prep.
No, because it's the thing thatyou posted online, right?
Yeah, it seemed like you justhad it ready, yeah.
Mike Paine (09:40):
Yeah, absolutely.
There was zero.
There wasn't even a warning, itwas just Ozzy just walked in.
Victor (09:46):
And you weren't like nervous at all, no, I was.
Mike Paine (09:48):
I kind of knew in my own head what to prepare for.
It was one of those thingswhere it was like I heard the
interview go so badly on the youknow the traditional rock
station in town and I thought Icould do better than that.
We just talked about being inthe movies and weird stuff like
that, just whatever.
How does a photo shoot work andintroducing songs and yelling a
(10:12):
lot and just goofy stuff.
Towards the end of the year Igot a Christmas card from Ozzy
and Sharon.
Victor (10:17):
No way, I still got it no way.
Chris (10:19):
That's awesome.
Victor (10:21):
Have you ever been starstruck?
Mike Paine (10:23):
I don't know, I mean me.
No, I guess Okay.
Victor (10:27):
I've only been starstruck once, really.
Yeah, I had met JamesGandolfini.
Oh okay and I was a huge likeSopranos was my life and I could
not say anything to him Like I,literally, I was just like hi,
I, literally I was just like hi.
Mike Paine (10:46):
It's different kind of just approaching someone cold
like that than people walkinginto the studio or just going to
a show where you know you gotto, even in a situation where
they used to have this recordconvention called the Concrete
Foundations Forum, which is aweird name for a hard rock heavy
metal convention, but they hadit in L in la every year for a
few years and going out there,uh, in the radio days and just
(11:07):
people, famous people werewalking past all the time, I
mean just major names and likelemmy from motorhead would walk
by and he'd just sit down andjust start talking and it was
just like you know, hey, how'sit going?
We talk about girls walking byand jimmy hendrix and what,
what's favorite, what hisfavorite drink is, and just
random stuff.
It wasn't anything about howdid the album sound and how's
(11:28):
that new record come.
It almost was never like that,because everybody does that and
I figured you know what I'mgoing to do, something that
nobody else does.
I'm just going to talk topeople.
It was a lot of these people.
They didn't have anything to do.
I mean, some of them didn'teven have a ride from the
airport.
I had to go pick them up.
(11:50):
So you know, the record labeldropped the ball.
It was like the band sepultura.
They were a couple of members,they they were at the airport
and they're like mike, we don'thave a ride, nobody's here, what
do we do?
Chris (11:56):
I'm like, I'm kind of so we went at mexican food and went
out their hotel room and andjust talked about music it was.
Mike Paine (12:04):
And, and they faxed me later, uh, when they got to
New York and said, yeah, hey, itwas great having Mexican food
with you and hanging out, cool,that's awesome, it's funny.
And now, looking back on it,you go how does this, did this
happen?
It's like a.
It's like a movie, setconstantly but in real life and
it wasn't even like it didn'tstill doesn't seem real, it's.
(12:25):
It's surreal.
I mean, how did all this stuffhappen?
And even the stuff I missed isa good story.
All of a sudden, I was exhausted.
I worked like till two o'clockin the morning, then production
and other stuff, probably likethree or four in the morning.
So by like nine or 10am I'm out, I'm, I'm gone, I'm asleep,
yeah, and my answering machinegoes off and I'm out, I'm gone,
I'm asleep and my answeringmachine goes off and I'm like,
(12:45):
yeah, whatever.
And I hear this weird voice andI'm like what, who's?
Please don't play pranks on me,I'm so tired.
One guy, steve, that worked atthe network interviewed David
Lee Roth and he had Dave call myanswering machine and go hey,
mike, what's going on?
It's David Lee Roth and he didthis whole Daveave thing and
he's like sorry you couldn't behere, maybe go hang out later.
(13:07):
Hey, all right, the whole davething did the whole dave thing
dead on.
And I thought at first Ithought it was a joke and then I
found out later on that heactually interviewed dave and
he's just like hey, can you?
Victor (13:18):
can you prank this guy?
Can you just give him a?
Mike Paine (13:21):
call and to find out it was real, it was, it was
going.
I'm.
Why did I sleep through that?
Or another time Lita Ford wasgetting interviewed and she said
to the host Dave, not that Dave, another Dave, where is this
guy that likes to go shoppingfor cowboy boots?
That would be a fun time andthat would have been a fun story
(13:42):
, but no, I slept through that.
I mean a couple of bad onesthat I slept through that I
regret.
Those were two of them.
Victor (13:49):
Yeah, did they like try to like get you to go out, like
hit the town with them?
Mike Paine (13:53):
Yeah, sometimes I mean it wasn't like the wild
movie thing where you'recrashing cars and trashing hotel
rooms and stuff.
A lot of times we just hung outat like Denny's or something,
you know, it wasn't that exotic.
Yeah, that would be awesome.
What would they order, I wonderyou know what the limited late
(14:15):
night menu moons over my hammy.
I mean, what else is there at?
Victor (14:16):
Denny's three in the morning.
You know, when you did like theradio thing, did you feel that
you needed to put a persona oflike I need to change my voice
in a certain way or I need totalk in a certain way?
Mike Paine (14:28):
Oh yeah, well, their format was designed to be
yelling and screaming over likesound effects and drop ins and
stuff and zany cartoony notcartoony, but like really over
the top, someone who would beunbearable as a real person.
You know, if you, if you heardsome of my stuff, uh, you look
my stuff up on youtube and lookup crazy mike pain z rock and
(14:50):
you'll hear these interviewsgoing oh my gosh, that guy's
like way over the top.
Even some of the bands are likewhoa, that's a lot too early
for me to do that.
And and some of the record,people were like how do you do
that?
How do you turn it on and off?
I thought, and I said it's just,it's part of the record.
People were like how do you dothat?
How do you turn it on and off?
And I said it's just part ofthe gig.
You can't order a pizza likethat going hey, I want a pizza
with pepperoni and mustard.
(15:11):
That doesn't work.
And I even told them I'd be atotally awful person if I just
yelled and screamed at everybodyall the time.
Victor (15:21):
Yeah, you have no voice.
Mike Paine (15:25):
Even when I blew out my voice.
There's one time I blew out myvoice, bad, and this is stupid.
I wouldn't try this at homekids and I still went on the air
, didn't take any sick time offthe home and the uh production
director wanted to do a promofor a post live concert you know
credits and stuff and he wantedme to be a like a mob type dude
and he's like hey, yeah, theguy who was on the board was tim
and, uh, joe was the guy thathe held the mic at the at this
(15:49):
concert.
And then all of a sudden he getsa call going all right, we
can't afford to hire new voiceactors for this.
And he's like no, that was mike, he's been sick.
You haven't heard all week.
He can barely talk I thought itwas a new, some new voice actor
they hired.
You should have gotten a secondpaycheck out of that.
Victor (16:05):
Yeah, seriously, no, that wasn't me, that was Ike,
that wasn't Mike.
Yeah, sorry.
Mike Paine (16:11):
Before I got hired full time, I was three different
people and I got threedifferent paychecks.
That's why the president of thecompany went wait a minute,
you're three people.
This isn't going to work.
We can't pay you three timesand send you three W, whatever
forms back then.
Victor (16:23):
Did you guys do like callers as?
Mike Paine (16:25):
well, Like did you get like callers all the?
Victor (16:26):
time it was people like vetting them, or it was like no,
we are vetting Our vettingprocess.
Mike Paine (16:32):
Back then was hey Z rock, don't swear, that's our
vetting process.
I'm sure that was effective.
It was effective.
Yeah, I rarely had people onlive live, but we kind of it
wasn't that severe and harshback then.
I'd have band members call upand just say, hey, mike, you
want to talk?
Oh okay, sure, why not?
I got time.
And this one guy would juststart swearing and like, phil,
(16:55):
we're on the air, you can't dothat.
We got to play nice and he'slike, oh, okay, but you know you
can't throw the F-bomb aroundon network radio and not have
someone get upset about it.
I did that, I, I draw.
I said shit once in the verybeginning and the program
director called me up and he waslaughing.
He goes that's the funniestthing you've ever done.
Don't ever do it again.
Rob (17:17):
Got it.
That's a great boss.
Mike Paine (17:19):
Yeah, he's the one I sold the guitar to.
Rob (17:21):
So from radio, what was the transition into voice acting?
Was that just kind of seamless?
Did you just find new avenuesor did you make that decision or
just kind of rolled into?
Mike Paine (17:31):
it.
They kind of all, up until 2021, went step by step and I was in
both all the time anyway.
So I I went from the network tovarious other stations and then
I was a traffic reporter forlike 11, 12 years.
Not the kind in the helicopter,just the voice.
Yeah, because you know me in ahelicopter.
(17:53):
Nah, not going to happen.
Yeah, I'm not going to.
Chris (17:58):
It's not when I think I'm .
That's not me, never is goingto be me.
Mike Paine (18:16):
So yeah, putting makeup on me is not going to
work, so yeah, and then justdoing voice acting, I really
decided about know you couldtalk to anybody anytime,
anywhere around the world.
That's when I really jumpedback into it and thought you
know what?
I can really do this a lot morewith worldwide clients, because
I worked the other nine to five.
I talked with people all overthe world and I got to jump on
(18:38):
the competition because I'm up,they're not, you know, most
everybody here in the States areup at you know two, three in
the morning and they'll say, andhow to make sushi?
And it's like, all right, yeah,I do it in a couple of minutes
and send it out.
And they're like, oh yeah, theclient instantly approved, let's
start it.
And it's huge, oh great, let'sdo it.
Rob (18:59):
Do you have to?
Is it like those unionized orassociated?
You have to get into thosethings, or how?
Mike Paine (19:05):
does that work?
Voice acting I've done it on myown since the beginning of time
when reel-to-reels were things.
But yeah, I'm an indie personand could I be union, I suppose.
But then it kind of limitseverything.
You can't do anything else,virtually anything else that I
do.
Everything I've done is on myown.
(19:26):
I still do games.
I still do audiobooks.
I've done 56 audiobooks.
Oh wow, chris has read three ofthem.
Cesar (19:32):
I've done 56 audiobooks.
Oh wow, Chris has read three ofthem.
Rob (19:35):
He's a big audiobook guy.
He's a big audiobook guy.
Yeah, he doesn't talk, he justlistens.
Really that's okay though.
Mike Paine (19:45):
Chris, you would look at my repertoire and go,
okay, you've done everythingfrom like horoscope stuff to
strength training, sexy poetryto all over the map.
Victor (19:56):
Have you done any Korean voice work?
Maybe Chris has.
Mike Paine (20:01):
That would be a fantasy of mine, that I'd be a
polyglot and I could speak about30 languages.
I would be the richest man inthe world.
Rob (20:10):
You just got to like dub over those like Squid squid
games movies.
Victor (20:13):
You know like why?
Rob (20:14):
why are their voices so wild every time you get like a
dub, it's like the guy you'relike, that guy doesn't even look
like that they just pick randompeople.
Mike Paine (20:23):
A lot of times they have in-house dubbing.
Just think of the old school.
We're talking old, old school,like the old speed racer
cartoons.
They had like three people inhouse that did all the voices.
That's kind of like and likethe old kung fu movies where
they had like three people inhouse, it's like, okay, here's
the one female voice, let's haveher do all the kids and the
female voices, and then the twoother guys were all the same
(20:44):
voices and they were australianon top of that, so it sounded
kind of what sort of likeresearch or practice have you
done to try to like perfect yourcraft Voice?
acting.
I kind of just have always doneit with a little training.
I got back in 1987 and wentfrom there, learned how to
project my voice, learned how toemphasize certain things and
(21:07):
how to read a script whenthere's no direction.
I mean, I get that a lot, whereI just go here, here's a script
and I'm making a video and myclient wants a voiceover.
I have no idea what and I'lljust pick up the piece of paper
that I print out or look at it,analyze it for a couple seconds
and do it.
I don't even need to pre-readthem.
I could just rip them off andvoice them instantly.
(21:27):
I don't.
I don't even prep a lot oftimes just because I didn't know
that sounds.
Oh, that's amateurish, it's not.
I've been doing it so long andread so many scripts.
I can see them coming readingthe first sentence.
I can see them and see how it'sgoing to go and it's like all
right, oh, it's like this.
Okay, boom, let's do it.
Cesar (21:42):
So let's say, for somebody that's like trying to
get into the work, what wouldyou recommend for them like
first timers?
Mike Paine (21:54):
For first timers, I would recommend going online and
searching for voiceoverpractice scripts and there's
like thousands and thousands ofthem out there.
Just start doing those.
And also listening to actualstreaming television, whatever
forum, whatever medium, onlineYouTube.
Listening to actual commercialsand actual explainer videos and
things that you're interestedin.
Or, if you're interested ingaming, listening to some of the
voices and how they do it anddon't mimic them, just kind of
(22:16):
see how, what their style is,okay.
So if you've got, let's saysomething, that's how to you
know how to connect yourBluetooth speaker.
It would be a lot moresimplistic and kind of run of
the mill, but not boring, thanit would be if you're like a
drill instructor in a uh, youknow, an rpg game or something.
So totally different approachand just practice with it.
(22:37):
I would say, start with there'sfan dubs everywhere where you
can.
Just, you know there's peoplejust playing around, it's for
free and it's great experienceon dubbing as well as just voice
acting, and it's not sillyvoices, that's the the oh.
Uh, if you do a simpsons voiceCause no one's ever done a
Simpsons impression I meanthat's not voice acting.
Victor (22:56):
I, we don't want to see your up.
No, no, no.
Nobody wants to see that.
Mike Paine (23:01):
The one time I was a traffic reporter and the
station that carried it thepeople on the air couldn't care
less about traffic, and neithercould I, honestly.
So I did, I, I did all theirtraffic reports as hank hill and
it was just ridiculous, nice,nice, traffic's bad.
Yeah, I can't do it anymore,but I I really I need that for
(23:23):
my wage.
And I studied and I actuallystudied hank hill and watched
all the king of the hillepisodes.
I could, yeah, and and got hismannerisms down and it was like
Ooh, you know the one, the one,one other guy I filled in for um
Fred Winston.
He's a well-known, legendary DJ, uh, in the Chicago area, and I
(23:44):
filled in and did traffic forhim and I'd be the Greek waiter
and he just wanted to do this,this bit with the Greek waiter
doing the traffic and just like,push this the traffic reporter
out of the studio and wanderedin going hi, traffic is uh, how
do you say, bad no, no, too manycars, too many, so yeah and
(24:07):
it's just stuff like that thatyou just come up with and it's
fun.
That's the radio side of things,the creative part.
So many people get so focusedon this.
Oh my God, what am I going to?
Just have fun with it?
I mean, I still do that now.
How?
Rob (24:21):
do you project your voice?
How do you like develop yourvoice?
Because I've got like thatnasally, you know, like young
Ray Romano, Like it's.
You know people read it.
They're like yeah, right, Likeit's people read it.
Mike Paine (24:32):
They're like yeah right, we all have a nasally
thing that's just called wakingup in the morning.
I mean seriously, or waking upfrom a nap or whatever it is
it's like, or getting justtrying to wake up.
It's not so much that, andthere's no such thing as a
perfect.
I mean I've got the whole oldschool announcer-y thing going
for me, but other than that it'snot like it used to be, where
you had to sound like this to beon.
(24:54):
You don't have to do thatanymore.
Victor (24:56):
Like a 1920s radio guy.
Hey everybody.
Mike Paine (25:01):
No, you don't have to sound like that anymore.
That's amazing.
Yeah, you just sound like you.
And now, with the advent of AI,so many people say I want to
hear real voices and they wantto hear emotion, inflection and
attitude, and that's somethingAI doesn't have.
And we've all heard the reallybad YouTube videos with AI in
(25:23):
them and they're cringy and somethat are passable sort of, but
no emotion at all.
It's just a cold dead read andnobody wants to hear that.
So that's why I think that it'skind of cool that when you go in
there and go, yeah, I can dobetter than that, and that's
kind of it.
When I coach people with voiceacting, I say that I said can
(25:45):
you do better than this?
Oh, yeah, well, then do it, youcan do it.
So, rob, the answer to yourquestion is yeah, go do it
Seriously.
I mean, it's not thatoverwhelming where you can't you
get a microphone, get a setup,get some headphones and start
going right away.
It's not this.
You got to train for 50 yearsand you know, go through the
(26:07):
matrix and you know dodge KeanuReeves and there's a labyrinth
and you got to get the secretgreen crystal.
It's not all of that.
I mean, there's some peoplethat will have you believe that
it's not all that you know.
Victor (26:19):
Can you share with us any like vocal warm-ups, if you
have any?
Mike Paine (26:23):
Yes, I actually teach this because a lot of
people don't know how to warm up, believe it or not.
No, what I do to warm up is thesimplest thing.
It's what all the surveycompanies do with food tasting.
They take a bite of cracker anda drink of water between every
food tasting.
It cleans the palate, it getsrid of all of the mouth
(26:44):
impurities and the mouth noise,which is a benefit, and it's
actually the simplest thing.
And yeah, you can do the teawith lemon or honey as you're
talking more.
But bite a cracker, drink awater and sit for a minute and
then boom, you're ready to goand I mean, I've got my water
sitting here.
It's just a mug of water rightnow, I don't do anything that
complicated and a piece of pizzaand a cup of coffee before you
(27:12):
go into the studio.
Nothing dairy, nothing coffee,nothing that'll mess up your
palate and make you all clickyand choppy.
Nobody wants to hear it likeyou're chewing.
Chris (27:24):
Chris, interesting.
Victor (27:27):
Now they send you the stuff and you record it on your
own and then just send it in asyou complete it.
Yeah, oh, okay, so you don'teven go to the studio anymore.
Mike Paine (27:35):
I haven't been to a studio in 100 years.
I mean, yeah, I do everythingremote.
I work with companies all overthe world and coach students all
over the world.
I had a student last week whowanted to know how to narrate
his YouTube videos better, likewe're just talking about and he
said are you available now?
And beauty of the internet, whyI am?
I am right here.
(27:56):
How about five minutes Do youhave?
So we set up a zoom thing andin five minutes didn't know a
thing about him and he justshared his information and I
said okay, let me watch yourvideo with you.
And I pointed out things withthem and said here's what you
need to do and here's where youneed to.
You know you've got a goodstart.
You already know what you'redoing and kind of fine, tuned
him and off, he's running, andnow he's doing his YouTube
(28:17):
channel.
So there you go.
I mean it's.
It sounds simpler than it is.
It was a lot more detailed, butthat was kind of how it worked.
He just he's an Australian.
Rob (28:31):
He's like can I?
I'm going to go with this one,or I'm going to use this, or you
just tailor it to every job.
Mike Paine (28:35):
Yeah, it depends on if I get no direction.
I kind of have have to playcreative mindset and what would
this script sound like and whatshould it sound like?
Usually those are theexplaining something, a product,
a service, uh, ABC company isthe best company in the world
and here's why One of those kindof things and other than that,
(28:58):
like my own demos some peoplehave like one or two demos of
their voice.
I have probably a hundred and alittle over a hundred.
I have niche reels everywherefrom, like a pirate voice to a
Santa voice.
I have a, you know, a maleenhancement voice I have.
There's a separate maleenhancement voice.
Victor (29:14):
I have a male enhancement voice I have.
There's a separate maleenhancement voice, there is.
Mike Paine (29:18):
There is, it's the late night infomercial voice
that you see at about 4 am.
Is that eugenics?
If you need a blue pill, here'swhere to get yours for only 68
cents a yeech.
The late night on ComedyCentral, when you're watching
that rerun of whatever for the50th time and yeah, that
(29:42):
commercial comes on, that's yeah, I've done some of those, not a
lot, but a few of those.
Rob (29:47):
How do you get like?
You just practice like dialectslike German, like you get those
German ones or Jamaican, youget all the yeah, yeah.
Mike Paine (29:55):
you just watch tons of videos and try to like say
those words yeah, I do a ton ofwork with chinese companies and
they don't give youpronunciations for the proper
names and places.
So I have a folder.
I have a folder in a libraryfull of pronunciations so I can
refer to that.
And there's websites out therewhere you can check out and just
(30:18):
type in the name and watch thevideo.
Or there's a website calledForvo F-O-R-V-O where you type
in a word or a name or a placeand it'll give you the
pronunciation from people inthose countries.
So that helps me a ton and I'llcome up with like uh, if some
German company it's like well,whoa, whoa, and I hit the brakes
in the script, going uh, Ican't say that, what is that?
(30:40):
So I look it up and go, oh,okay, and figure it out.
And there's some accents thatsound hacky and I can't do them
and I can't pretend to do them,like if I tried a Jamaican
accent, that'd be embarrassing.
So yeah, and there's sometimesI get requests for things like
can you do a?
Uh, the voice of a Norwegianboy who's about seven years old?
No, no, I can't.
Cesar (31:04):
No way.
Victor (31:04):
Eight years old, maybe seven.
I draw the line.
Mike Paine (31:07):
I did have to do a voiceover for for a commercial
in the radio days for a circusand I had to be the voice of the
five-year-old kid and it was soembarrassing I'm like I kept
trying to tell him I can'tlisten to my voice.
Do you think I can pull off afive-year-old kid's voice?
And the line was I still have aline somewhere, it's like and
I'm here to watch the big snakeand that's about how it sounded,
(31:29):
and they're like that wasbrilliant, it was.
Are you sure?
And here's this commercialplaying all over the area.
I want to see that big snake.
So embarrassing yeah.
Victor (31:45):
You got to put out the cigarette.
I got to see this big snake andyou know what?
Mike Paine (31:49):
The client's happy?
The client's happy, yeah.
You like that I had one clientsay okay, I want you to voice
this talking house real estatescript, fine.
And I get to the first line andit's like hi, I'm Stephanie
Smith, Whoa, all right.
So I can't do a female.
(32:11):
And I contacted them and said,okay, maybe you sent the wrong
script, or is this the rightscript, or should I change the
name?
And they're like no, we wantyou to say hi, I'm stephanie
smith.
In those words, okay, hi, I'mstephanie smith.
And this house on one, two,three is just beautiful and they
loved it.
Chris (32:24):
Okay, I don't know if stephanie smith's gonna feel
about it, but all right are anylike particular gigs that you
look for over the like one theother.
Mike Paine (32:36):
Well, sure, yeah, I love to do games, I love to do
apps, I love to do stuff.
That's stuff that's fun andkind of challenging.
I voiced the.
I voiced a D-Day tour inNormandy, france, and that's
very cool.
That's very cool.
Museum voice, theEnglish-speaking voice of
museums around the world.
(32:56):
Just odd things like anaquarium, aquarium announcements
for the dolphin show in China.
You know, just, please takeyour seats.
You know that kind of stuff.
It's just quirky but weird, butcool.
There's.
I did an airport, airportannouncements, in-flight
announcements for a couple ofChinese airliners.
(33:17):
So that would be weird if Iever got out there and heard
myself do the announcements.
Victor (33:21):
I was just about to ask you like have you ever just
accidentally ran into your ownvoice?
Mike Paine (33:25):
Yes, I did when I was doing a radio station in
suburban Chicago.
We were voice tracked and werecorded things ahead of time
back then, and they still do now.
But uh, that was kind of a newthing back then.
So, uh, I recorded all mytracks for the weekend and then
my wife and I went to the seven11 and my show was on cause they
(33:46):
had the station on and I'mtalking to myself, and and then
I said, yeah, I'll have a coupleof uh Cokes and something and
whatever we bought.
And he's looking up at thespeaker, looking at me, looking
at the speaker looking at me,going, oh, that'll be $4.76.
So it was weird.
And then you hear the speakersthat they get by the gas pumps
(34:07):
because they have the radiostation, and then we're
listening to me talking our wayout of the gas station.
It was weird but different.
I guess it was cool.
Rob (34:21):
I mean kind of weird.
I remember when we first didthe podcast and then we would,
you know, listen.
I listened to the episodes.
At first I couldn't listen tomyself, oh yeah, but now, yeah,
now I'm just like yeah, whatever, and it's just like a regular
thing.
Did you run into that?
Or do more and more people runinto that?
Mike Paine (34:33):
Yeah, I mean, that's a lot of it is getting over
listening to yourself.
You know it's.
Once you're comfortable withyour own voice, then that's one
of the biggest hurdles toovercome being a voice actor or
radio personality or TVpersonality or anything like
that.
So, yeah, it's just a matter ofbeing comfortable with who you
are and going hey, you know whatI can do this, so what you know
(34:54):
?
No big, Don't over-criticizeand don't overthink it.
Cesar (34:58):
Are there any like current voice actors, now that
you're like oh man, he's good orshe's good, or like?
That you kind of listen Otherthan you.
What kind of question is?
Mike Paine (35:08):
that.
No, besides me, a couple ofgood ones.
One of them he's done tons ofvoice acting and he was my
intern actually at Z Rock isKyle Hebert.
He's awesome.
Kira Buckland is one of thebest known voice actors out
there.
A couple other ones are.
They're really good, but thosetwo are great.
So yeah, and me.
Rob (35:27):
Yeah, I got to imagine it's like a small community of like
you guys all know each other,Like you know, you hear a
commercial and you're like oh,that's a good one, he did a good
job.
Mike Paine (35:40):
Yeah, like what is a good voice actor it's.
It's a blessing and a curse tohave a good ear, and now I've
not only me but my wife has.
We have such good ears withlistening to hacky edits and
terrible flubs and stuff.
We just heard a weather, aweather forecast, this afternoon
and she said the weather systemtoday is going to be potent.
So, oh God, did you say potent?
How old are you?
(36:00):
Don't say potent?
And uh, there was a commercialhere in Chicago that ran for a
plumbing company, for HVACplumbing company, for years, and
it says, uh, uh, abc plumingroofing and HVAC, whatever it
said pluming.
And it ran for years and no onecaught it Pluming instead of
plumbing.
Really, in the third biggestcity in the country, pluming.
(36:24):
And you let that.
Nobody caught it.
The client, the producer, thestation nobody for like three
years.
It's still on YouTube somewhere.
I still laugh at it.
Victor (36:34):
Listen, plumers are high in the air.
Yeah, plumers are killing itright now.
Rob (36:39):
They can charge anything they want.
Mike Paine (36:40):
Yeah, I'd like to get paid for plume.
Victor (36:44):
So I don't know if it's something that I did or
something that I looked up, butfor like a while, instagram was
like giving me ads for, likevoiceover schools.
Are those legit or are theyworth it or like, in your
opinion, the short answer ismost of them, I'm just going to
say, are not.
Mike Paine (37:03):
It's the old.
Remember the old modelingschools where they would have
the things at the Holiday Innand, oh well, you could be a
model too.
All you need to do is buy ourphoto service, which is like
$900, and take pictures with ourphotographer and then, yeah,
it's.
Broadcasting schools are thesame way.
They still are out there.
That'll say, oh, you could beon the air.
(37:24):
No, you can't.
I mean not with no training.
You just jump on the.
They give these people, theytake their 25 grand and or more
for some of these tuitions forbroadcasting school and it's
horrible.
I mean with the voice actingthing.
There are people out there thatare legit.
Probably.
I don't really know anybody elsethat teaches stuff.
I don't really honestly carethat much.
I do my own thing.
I don't pattern myself afteranybody else.
(37:45):
I tell the truth.
I shoot from the hip.
I don't gatekeep.
I don't have any secretinformation hidden behind a cave
with seven keys to open thedoor.
I'm honest, I'll tell you whatlike just now.
I'll tell you guys, whateveryou want to know.
I mean seriously, I don't haveany problem with that and I help
people from all walks of lifewith my coaching.
(38:12):
So I've had people from verybeginning to just buying a new
mic to people well, on their waythat have done stuff before and
they're just thinking I need to, mike, I need to know They'll
have specific questions.
Mike, I need to know thebusiness of it.
Where do I find clients?
Okay, let's do that and I'llset up a course.
It's, you know, 30 bucks for 30minutes, so we'll talk for an
hour.
I usually give them the extra30.
What the heck?
So, yeah, for 30 bucks, I'lltell you what I need, what,
everything, everything.
I know it's not a big deal.
I'm not out there to you knowthese people that pay, you know,
(38:34):
two, three, four grand for onedemo reel.
It's like I don't know aboutyou guys, but I don't have
several mortgage payments toblow on a demo reel.
Victor (38:43):
For something that's not even guaranteed right Like
you're not guaranteeing me work.
Mike Paine (38:51):
You're just saying I'm just going to teach you a
few things and then send you out.
And the guys that come out andsay, oh well, if you get my demo
reel, you're going to get knowa big company, if they promise
you that, just run the otherdirection, because that's not a
thing.
It's like the broadcastingschools that say you'll be on
the air and in a big city in notime.
No, you won't.
It's not how it works.
(39:12):
Forget my story.
My story was before theInternet and everything else and
that was just a crazy path thatactually somehow worked.
I say that don't do it, becauseI did it somehow and naive and
whatever it was, but it worked.
And you know, my naive naivetegot me there and my talent kept
me there.
I guess.
Rob (39:31):
You're voice acting, you're on the radio, you have all
these, you know clients.
You're coaching.
What time do you wake up in themorning?
What does your day look like?
Mike Paine (39:39):
What time do I wake up in the morning?
Yeah Well, I get my goal on andI drink my coffee.
No, honestly, I work the othernine to five, so I get up at
1130 ish in the morning.
I mean, it sounds like I'm aslacker, but when you sleep at
six, that's not that.
You know not that much.
So I work with people on theother side of the world, so
(39:59):
usually my day is, you know, theother nine to five, and it's a
lot easier to deal with peoplethen and I don't have this whole
big motivational sayings on mywall in front of me that say go
get them.
And you know life is about acup of coffee and your attitude.
I don't have any of that.
I don't need science to tell mehow to do my day.
(40:20):
I do it myself.
Rob (40:22):
So, for the scripts coming in, I mean, do you need?
Are you running the businessyourself?
Do you have to get a manager?
Do you have to get represented?
Like, how does that work?
As far as just finding you, howdid they find you?
Mike Paine (40:33):
Well, I have my own website.
I have a lot of freelancersites that I'm on and the
customers that I have clientsthat I've been with for a long
time they know me and you knowwe exchange emails and stuff
like that too.
So I've been with some people10, 12 years plus and they just
say, hey, mike, they'll come outof the blue.
I'll not hear from them in sixmonths and they're like hey,
(40:54):
mike, how's it going?
Hey, can you do this for me?
And I work with people from youknow, all over the country and
the world and something like.
There's a wood flooring placethat teaches people all about
wood flooring and the genesis ofit and how to install it, and
it's the biggest wood flooringplace in the country.
And they won't pop up foranother several months, but when
they do, they throw me a bunchof scripts and I do all their
(41:15):
training videos.
So it's one of those coolthings that's like.
You know that doesn't soundlike it sizzles off the screen,
but it feels so cool to be ableto do something like that.
And I just finally got an agent, actually for the first time in
my life a month ago, and it'skind of a trial thing, but you
don't really need an agent.
I haven't gotten any parts orgigs from it yet.
We'll see what happens.
(41:35):
But you know, it's one of thosethings where you can do it
yourself.
Now you don't.
It's not the old school.
You have to be represented by atalent agent and you have to
have them do this, and you haveto join the union and you have
to.
Yes, you can and you could doall of those things, but that's
not a guarantee and that's notthe only route to success.
A lot of indie people have greatsuccess and can make a living
(41:58):
for it at living with doing this, and I do it and other people
can do it, and there's varyingdegrees.
I mean, you could have this asa side hustle.
That's the thing to do.
You could have this as a.
You know, it started as a sidehustle and develop it, and then
maybe you'll get better andbetter at it and get bigger and
bigger and you may not need thatextra job.
You know that kind of thing.
So, yeah, there's so manydifferent roads you can take
(42:20):
with this, which is the beautyof it.
I mean you don't have to gowell, you have to go this route
and that's the only way you cango.
It's not like that anymore.
Victor (42:28):
What's the most common problem I guess students kind of
bring to you?
Mike Paine (42:33):
Lack of confidence in their own voice and being
able to project on themicrophone and knowing that
voice acting is all acting.
Even if it's just churchannouncements or a voicemail,
it's all acting.
You're playing a part, so youhave to be an actor.
It's not just doing imitationsand that's kind of doing
something from SpongeBob is avoice from SpongeBob is.
(42:56):
In a voice acting career youhave to be able to have depth,
you have to have versatility andknow what your strengths and
weaknesses are.
And if you find your strengths,start with your strengths and
then work outward from there andthen kind of see where.
I mean I did stuff that I don'tprefer to do.
I mean for me, fictionaudiobooks I like do.
I don't mind doing them, butI'm much stronger at the
(43:19):
nonfiction stuff.
That's just my thing.
It doesn't mean fiction is bad.
I just found out that I didsome fiction.
It worked out all right, butI'm better at nonfiction.
Victor (43:28):
And that's like consuming, because you have to
do like characters for likedifferent.
Mike Paine (43:32):
Yeah, I mean, there is one series of audiobooks I
did.
I had to.
I was at 11 or 13 characters.
I had to keep straight at alltimes.
Cesar (43:40):
Whoa of books.
I did.
I had to.
I was at 11 or 13 characters Ihad to keep straight at all
times.
Mike Paine (43:43):
Whoa, that's tough.
And then then the first personnarration on top of that.
So you have to go from a three,three-way conversation and keep
it all straight and keep it allbelievable.
So what you do is you take asnippet of each individual voice
and sometimes they won't comein until, like the, you know,
the werewolf is in book one andthen doesn't come back until
book three and it's like what isa werewolf?
(44:03):
I don't how long ago was thatso?
you keep a snippet of werewolfand you just title it werewolf
and point of reference and go,oh, all right, so all right.
Then you stop and do thewerewolf voice.
And I say werewolf because Idid a weird series of audio
books that was kind of liketwilight meets 50 shades of gray
.
It was very unusual it was itwas fun.
(44:24):
It was a different experience.
I thought I'd dip my toe in thewater for that.
It was like mostly twilightishand then all of a sudden it'd
get a little racy in spots andit's like I kind of came out of
that field but all right, that'sthe
Chris (44:35):
same book?
Mike Paine (44:36):
yeah, ask the narrator yeah, it was the
narrator, it was like somethingto do with the office supplies
and yeah.
So, yeah, that, yeah, and someof the stuff you don't expect is
like, like, one of my biggestselling audio books is how to
play cornhole, go figure.
Victor (44:53):
You're the cornhole.
Cesar (44:58):
We should have led with that.
Rob (45:01):
When, when you do like, like deals like that, like audio
books, is there royalties withthat?
Or is it just one on?
Yeah, I wasn't sure how theyusually do it.
Mike Paine (45:11):
Yeah, exactly, there's various ways to do that.
With ACX, which is a websitethat handles all the Audible
books, you can either do royalty, royalty share plus or paid per
hour, and a lot of people shyaway from the royalty because
you are rolling the dice.
I mean, I've done audiobooksthat have sold one copy.
You got to do a little researchand think about I do nonfiction
(45:34):
, stuff that sells, that's nevergoing to go bad Workouts,
recipe books, how-to books thataren't time sensitive.
Like you know how to start up,your windows vista isn't going
to sell any copies right now, soyou know, it's coming back.
Rob (45:49):
It's coming.
It really was the best windowsit's due yeah, so you know.
Mike Paine (45:53):
Or super niche ones like, uh, which parks are the
best in Columbus Ohio?
I mean, I think six peoplemight be interested in that.
Is that going to sell a lot?
For me, no, and it's royalty no, but other stuff yeah.
I mean, the how-to stuff isgreat.
And again, these are thingsthat I just tell people.
(46:14):
I don't hold these secretinformation.
So, yeah, the answer to that isI like royalty, especially the
shorter titles, because youcould build up a resume really
quickly.
And you know, 56 audiobookssounds good and it is.
And the way I did that is, atfirst I took everything
literally going, you know,judging by the some of the weird
stuff I voiced.
But then you kind of find yourlane and go, yeah, these do well
(46:38):
and these sell.
And then, years later, I mean Istill get sales from stuff I've
done 10, 12, 13 years agoSometimes when I'm like
preparing for the uh, for anepisode right, I'm going through
, I'm going through my script.
Cesar (46:49):
Perfectly fine, yeah, I, we start recording.
And I get stuck on some ofthese words.
The other day I couldn't saywhat was it?
Mike Paine (47:04):
Uh, emancipation proclamation yeah, do you have
any tips?
Or like, have you ever get like, do you get stuck on some words
as you're reading it?
Or like, how do you get throughit?
The one word I hate the most iscommunity.
It always sounds like you'resaying me, I get stuck on that
one all the time.
There's certain words that thatwas the biggie, but there's a
couple of words that pop up andyou're just going it doesn't't,
it doesn't sound natural as aword to begin, like community is
a second.
So I don't, and that one Ialways have to stop.
(47:25):
I flub that word all the time.
I'll be honest, I do.
I flub that one.
You just kind of got to stopand kind of reset it and go okay
, I'm just going to do thesentence again and just kind of,
there's sometimes I just just Istop a script, I'll walk away
from the computer for a whileand come back and drink a water
and come back and go all right,now I'm clear, because I'll I'll
flub it five times in a row,going all right, this is getting
(47:46):
.
Cesar (47:46):
This is too much, let's just start over again yeah so
it's normal, caesar I'm gonnawalk away from you guys, or just
you need to drink your, youneed to eat your cracker and
drink your water.
I I'm going to start doing that.
Victor (47:58):
You're over there drinking your protein shake.
It is protein shake.
Rob (48:02):
Yeah, it's not going to help you.
Mike Paine (48:03):
Protein shake and a pizza and you're over here
thinking you're going to get itdone or you get the giggles and
you just read something thatsounds funny and you're like
okay.
That's like the first time Iread that NSFW series and I
started reading some of thelines.
It was normal and then all of asudden it's like what?
Are you doing with those officesupplies?
A ruler?
No, okay, hold on.
I got to all right.
(48:27):
I had to kind of clear my headand go all right, let's just do
it in a voice.
Victor (48:34):
I got to take this seriously.
Did you ever miss the radio?
Mike Paine (48:39):
I do miss the in-person thing when it was fun
back then and now it's all kindof like pretty much three
corporations on almost all theradio stations and radio isn't
what it was I mean.
Now it's podcasting obviously,so it would be fun to do that.
I mean I'm going to have one ofmy own pretty soon.
Victor (48:59):
Oh nice.
Do you have a name for it,should we be looking out for
something.
Mike Paine (49:03):
It's Rock your Confidence I'm sorry, rock your
Voice Confidence from Pain.
And it's about teachingself-confidence and finding your
inner voice we were talkingabout a little earlier, and
voice acting is probably 75%confidence training and 25%
technical.
And I have so many people justsay, mike, I just want to talk
(49:25):
about you know how to talk onthe phone to people or how to go
to a meeting and talk tosomeone.
It's, there's nothing to dowith voice acting.
So I thought you know what?
I might as well start doingthis.
I mean, I'm doing it anyway.
I might as well just have apodcast about and see what
happens.
Victor (49:40):
Maybe I could help some more people, who knows?
Yeah, I see a lot of like.
I mean, obviously we don't havethe setup for this, but, like
I've seen other podcasts, whenthey're like they're looking for
that viral moment.
Like share me that story that Ican, that you didn't want to
tell.
Mike Paine (49:54):
I got a story for you, a real quick story.
Go for it that.
I've for you a real quick story, go for it that.
I've.
Probably only people that knowme know this story.
And uh, I was at the uh heavymetal convention, the concrete
foundations forum, in 91, 1990,1990 and uh, I was interviewing
dave mustaine from megadeth andhe had all kinds of weird.
(50:15):
I was just asking him hey, dave, how's it going?
How's tour going?
I heard you had did a kind of apre-tour gig in Fresno and that
was one of our affiliates.
How did that go?
It's like what are you high?
And he, just out of nowhere, hehad all kinds of attitude and I
asked him a couple morequestions.
He had this, this attitude andthe guitar player at the time,
(50:44):
marty Friedman, I knew him fromother bands and I just started
talking to Marty and I said,yeah, marty, you know you have a
guitar song that Megadeth neverhad before.
So I got I got a littlecombative with Dave and then it
became a big thing and then Iheard it.
He was he was kind of shit,talking me at different places,
like uh, one of one of uh myfriends in Kansas city at the uh
show they overheard him shittalking to me and it's like,
well, I asked him simplequestions, I didn't do anything.
So then it became a thing on theair and I started honestly,
probably a bad idea, but he gotme a little annoyed so I said oh
(51:07):
, I've got a new demo from thevocal demo from Dave Mustaine's
new Megadeth album.
Chris (51:12):
I play a baby crying and you know, this is on national
radio and you know you know, I'dhave like a baby going.
Mike Paine (51:21):
Oh, maybe I could interview dave mustaine next
week.
I think here's a preview, youknow so and then it finally came
to a head when it was the clashof the titans tour.
It was uh slayer, megadeth, uhanthrax and alice in chains and
we were all hanging out.
We're shooting hoops in theback.
You know, anthrax great guys, Ilove them.
(51:42):
Uh slayer, everybody was just Ididn't know allison changed
that well, but uh, mostlyanthrax, we're just shooting
hoops in the back and dave's allprepared and he's walking past
and he's just scowling and andstaring at us and gives me a
look, and then everyone's likedave, dude, come shoot some
hoops, what's up?
And he's just like he's, he'sbetter now.
I think those were in his dayswhere he was uh heavily
(52:05):
influenced by outside sources,let's just say I think so yeah,
yeah, yeah, I've heard stories.
I'm sure that was like the normfor a lot of stuff, though yeah,
so that was a whole thing andme and dave mustaine and and
that it kind of ended therebecause I left, I let it alone.
It's like I'm not going to keepthis thing going.
Victor (52:22):
I understand something.
I can't stand about the radioand it's partly the reason why I
stopped listening to just likeregular radio is morning shows.
I don't want to hear peoplejust talking about nonsense
every morning, I'd rather justlisten to music.
Mike Paine (52:38):
Oh yeah, the morning , the old morning zoo and the
old school.
You know the chuckle hut, as Icall them.
They it's, it's cringy, it's,it's forced bits and you have to
.
You know they're like let'scall the bakery and see if they
have donuts.
Oh God, please.
No, really, they're scripted,those are scripted.
No, really they're scripted,those are scripted.
(52:59):
Everything's scripted.
Now, I mean, a lot of it wasscripted too.
I couldn't stand that.
Just so hacky and contrived andnon-genuine.
It's like a bad audition for acomedy set.
You just go oh, that bombed,that didn't work.
So yeah, I haven't listened toregular radio in a thousand
(53:23):
years.
I've had uh serious xms and sofor I was one of the first ones
to get it and I've listened toit ever since, because I we used
to have the theory of in theradio days, in the hard rock
metal days, to get in, get out,say what you got to say and get
out real fast.
It's not, you know, be funny,be fast and get out.
And there's some people thatlove the.
In 1979, tom Petty washed hiscar with a chamois and he used a
(53:48):
wax that wasn't turtle wax Like.
Why do I care?
Can you just play Tom?
Cesar (53:52):
Petty.
For God's sake, I don't careabout his car.
Mike Paine (53:55):
I don't care about what you bought for groceries
today, just play the song.
And he just wanted.
I don't care about what youbought for groceries today, just
play the song.
And it's just play the song.
Yeah.
So I never liked that, I alwaysliked the, and there's some
stations that do that.
On SiriusXM it's like boom,boom song done, great, awesome.
Even better if there's lesswords than that.
Hey, here's a cool tune, loveit, it's great, sounds good, bam
(54:16):
, right into it.
Victor (54:17):
Mike, thank you so much for joining us.
I loved having you on.
If someone wants to reach outto you, where can they find you?
Mike Paine (54:22):
Well, first of all, thanks, guys, I really
appreciate it.
I love being here, Talk to youguys anytime.
If you want to get a hold of me, I'm at Mike Payne.
That's P-A-I-N-E coachingcardC-A-R-R-Dco.
You can find me on.
You can listen to my stuffsoundcloudcom slash, Mike dash,
Payne dash show YouTube.
(54:44):
You can find me at Mike Payne,P-A-I-N-E 6287.
And if you Google search orYouTube search Crazy Mike Payne,
Z-Rock you'll be able to hear alot of my old wild interviews
that have been remastered and Iremastered and it's been posted.
So, yeah, you can hear some ofthose, some of the weirdness
that I did back then.
And the podcast man and thepodcast I'll be on
(55:05):
motivatingradiocom and mypodcast is coming soon, so be on
the lookout for that.
I will be everywhere, even moreeverywhere than I am now.
Victor (55:14):
Well, if you need four guys to talk about insecurities,
I got you, I got you,definitely.
Rob (55:20):
Yeah that I need to hear you want four.
Chris (55:26):
That I need to hear.
Mike Paine (55:28):
But thanks guys, this is great, this is awesome.
Victor (55:30):
Thank you Thanks a lot.
All right guys.
Final thoughts.
Chris (55:36):
Chris, that was really cool.
That was a pretty goodinterview.
There's some stuff that he'smentioned about the field or
that industry with the voiceacting there was I have no idea
like I have no idea what that.
You know anything about thatfield, so it was pretty
interesting to hear what he hadto say about it and then all the
ins and outs about in in thatindustry.
(55:57):
So, yeah, I had a great timeyeah, I had a great time, cesar.
Victor (56:02):
I had a great time and I didn't know about, did everyone
have a great time here I had agreat time as well.
Cesar (56:06):
I'm messing around Chris.
No, I really wanted to talk tohim about Because I'm thinking
about potentially doing a littleside voice acting and I wanted
to get some tips and strategies.
I think the biggest takeawaythat I got from this was when he
mentioned it's 75% confidenceand that I got to work on.
25% might be technical, whichanyone can get, but that 75%
(56:27):
confidence thing it's big and Ithink that's one of the biggest
key takeaways I'm going to takeaway from this.
Other than that, like thecrackers, that's a good little
tidbit to know Crackers andjuice or crackers and water.
But yeah and Rob.
Rob (56:41):
Reading about Mike and you can tell he's a professional
comes in, obviously, theconfidence, but it's the energy,
Things that I feel like aretaught, but he just does them
better.
It's funny to hear, though,stories about like he still
struggles on certain words or hegoes through the same types of
things that we got to go throughand continue to go through, and
(57:03):
we ran into a lot when we firststarted, but just got to jump
right in, Like you said.
You know there are, there iscoaching, there is ways to
perfect your craft, obviously,but yeah, it was great to have
him on, you know, talked aboutradio, talked about his, his,
how he got into it and how hestarted.
I mean it just seems like thatis a right place, right time for
(57:23):
the time type of deal and Imean, as a 19 year old kid going
through all that, it's prettyawesome we want to thank you for
listening, but wait before yougo.
Victor (57:33):
I want you to find that share button and send this
podcast to a friend and let themknow that you have found the
podcast with the funniest andmost handsome people on Spotify.
Also check out our YouTubechannel at I'm Not Dumb, but
Podcast for more fun content.
Until next time, stay curious,see you later.
Mike Paine (57:57):
Cranking it up on Xerox looking for trouble.
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