you're watching in the c suite on princeton community television entrepreneurship month and you know this time of year and during this economy people are thinking about either starting up or scaling up their existing businesses so it kind of got to thinking and i decided i wanted to launch a new series it's going to be called make money talking and essentially it was really set up for professionals to figure out how they can actually use their voice to figure out how to generate some additional income and so the series is going to kind of feature a couple of things we're going to talk about how to kind of get started and or land new business in three specific areas as a professional voice artist professional speaker and professional pod caster so i'm excited the way we're going to kick off this series we're going to start with the professional voice artist and i have a phenomenal guest on deck his name is george washington the third he's a professional voice artist with an impeccable reputation in the industry he cut his start way back about two thousand and three or so and i'm getting this wrong he'll correct me  about two thousand and three doing some narrative bits in corporate america kind of peaked his interest and he decided to do some of his own live demos and so now fast forward years later and he has an unbelievable portfolio he does voice over for video games television shows local and national ad campaigns even those voicemail messages for brands from everywhere from nike e s p n i'm going by memory courtyard ain't donal's the list goes on and on so i'm excited that he's here with us today and we're going to do a couple of things we want to use his and kind of tap into his expertise he's here share advice is that here is a consultant he's going to see or his advice and his experience to help people who are thinking about how to get started how to kind of create your own demo and then we'll wrap up with some tips and some advice o addition and how you can kind of land you are so without any further delay i'm going to welcome george washington the third to the show and i'm awesome thank you so much for being here i really appreciate it did i kind of get that right yeah you know usually with my show stories i usually have the guest kind of go into their whole back story but we have so much ground to cover that if it's ok with you i'm a fast forward through all that stuff and just kind of go with the bio that i gave i'm going to tell everybody if they want more information about george go to video evolution dot com and click on bio you can hear some samples you can check out some videos so i want to just jump right in george and i guess i want to start here i think we hear commercials all the time and we probably hear those voices that are behind it and i don't know if people will really understand what's going on to make those things come to life i wonder if there are any myths or misconceptions that you could come to dispel that you found just getting into this industry has that as a place to start that's a good place to start there are a couple of there's the assumption that there are only a handful of people doing it and that's that's not true there's only a handful of voices you recognize interesting there are a lot of people who do this on a regular basis they are all over the country they are not only working in their own towns like for instance there are people who do commercial work and things like that that are in their own towns but many of the things you may do don't show up in your own hometown area of people here in charlotte who will say well we're going to hear you sometimes i can't say well unless you're in another town your work already here be you know currently i do some commercials for one of the local grocery chains harris teeter in conjunction with the panthers so there are some things that i do that some people can hear a lot of times you'll be working in your commercials airing in california somewhere like i do stuff for the fantasy springs resort casino so unless you're in that area  right and so that means people even understand there are sold much voiceover work out there there because you think every single radio and television market in the united states uses voice over there are some things that are limited in that smaller markets are going to many of those radio stations will use their own talent they don't have access to the people who get you work like agents or sometimes don't use agents in order to engage people  but when i have a class that i teach for my campus at the connecticut school of broadcasting here show here in charlotte and i haven't go over the list of places that they hear a human voice and i tell them all of those places are done by real people somewhere so it's not that there isn't work it's just that you don't know how to get it that's interesting so that kind of leads me to come up to home studio alternatives things down but i want to stay on this path because that's intriguing to me i had never thought about that how does one even go about my jump around now but that's ok how do you even especially when you're getting started how do you even go about finding these type of opportunity well the thing is there's a there's a process you have to follow and there's not the same for everyone because there are transition out of radio jobs into voice over ok who transition out of different positions into doing voice over grand scale of things you have to do a couple of things you need to get a coach you need to practice a lot you then need to make a demo and you have to distribute that demo somewhere so you can't really it isn't something you can just break into you got it the misconceptions that you have to get rid of because there are people who think well i can read so i can do it well no because it isn't just reading it is voice acting there have to be able to do as far as interpret and copy and interpret and direction that will let you be successful at it it isn't just pick up the piece of paper and go you know i've had people ask me when can i start doing things for national geographic and my answer to them a lot of time is probably never yeah isn't just of ill will for anybody but there's a lot of other things that are that's interesting so voice acting versus voice over i don't know people i mean so acting is you kind of have to and you have talked about this because you've gotten opportunities and they've given you direction on how they want this kind of to come out it's not literally just reading words off a page it's a certain level of personality that i would imagine that you know that you bring to it but do they also give you direction on what they're looking for yes they do what will happen is either if you record it recording it by yourself then sometimes they will give you some direction and always your auditions are almost always by yourself so they're going to give you some outlines about how they want to be so once you're actually doing something with someone in session they're going to tell you this is the kind of approach we want this is the sound we want less announcer e more like a real announcer guy next door your body right a coach things like that and so your job once you're in session is to figure out how to interpret what they say and make that a part of your performance interest and that's the challenge and if you you know for people who have been in music or been in theater that's an easier transition because you've been told that you need to do this or that or make it sound like this or that so you've heard it before where people who have never done that kind of thing before that's new to them and so when they get some kind of direction that says sound like this or sound or what you're doing this you may not already you may not have the tools to interpret that into your performance that is why you got it i understand  totally so you mentioned four things that kind of want to go back to it and i heard you say get a coach and there were a couple other steps can you go over those steps again just that i think that that will be helpful or people that just you know just getting started i think they can just jump right into essentially you're going to need you you need to get a coach you need to practice you need to make demos and you need to distribute the demo so when you're in acquiring a coach there are all kinds of people in the industry who say their voice coaches are voice over coaches i'm not one of them out of people who are and i know people are good at it right to find a reputable coach to work with and people say well why would you need a coach well my answer is always been serina williams has a coach tiger woods had a coach or no he said coaches right if you think that you are better at what you do what this that you've never done before than what they are it's something they did for their entire lives and they needed coaches go ahead but yeah libya's we all get into bad habits we all get don't we not all of us can recognize the mistakes that we make so you need somebody else to be able to tell you this is the way you should interpret that this is how you get in that in that mood this is how you interpret that feeling what you're doing wrong i'm glad you brought that up and well we'll jump into this later so we'll come back to it coach versus agent coach is helping you become better at what your craft is an agent is someone who may help you get work down the road to different people right ok got it see get a coach what was a next step you need to get a coach and you need to practice now here's a practice practice working with approach they're going to give you scripts to work on ok we'll work on those scripts and even when you're not working on those if you are brand new to this the very simplest thing you could be doing is reading aloud you need to read aloud and get to what it feels like to say things out loud just i grew with that paper and get there one thing that people don't they don't understand how important it is to be able to read cold so they're going to be times where you get a script you don't have a day to look at it you may get it and you have to read it in an hour interesting question and up for this time and you get the script five minutes before it starts so you have to be able to read that script and interpret it in a fairly quick and fairly short amount of time yeah you have to learn how to read in a way that for instance being able to look at words say them and have your eyes move ahead to the next words and not be concerned with what's coming out of your mouth and yes i totally understand that i totally get that yeah yeah yeah teleprompter reading a teleprompter is a new skill for a lot of people and i were boys over is that you got to be able to get on past those words that you've seen already and get down to the next thing and second half of the segment george well enough that demo piece and before we get to that if you know what i mean by that like one of the things people need to do to work on a demo before we go to a break ho studio i'm sure there are expenses and we can probably do a part two to this whole show because i've seen you on your set up and i've seen some work that you've shared about it but i want to talk about alternative because i don't know if that's feasible if people have the money if they have the capacity if they're tech you know to operate at all any alternatives that people can look to to just say you know i want to do this i don't want to invest and put the host and the house well the bottom line for anybody who's going to be you is you have to be able to record at home period so then surely you have to get there yet there and maybe that means you don't know every technical aspect of everything yeah the very simplest thing is you have to have a microphone you have to have an interface that connects to your computer you have to have a computer you have to have software in order to make that sound you're making into something that can be manipulated got it was that the very basics after that you have to be in a space that doesn't echo you know how people always love to sing in the shower right and it's great because it reverberates that is opposite of what you need to be successful in voice over right one of the simple things that people can do if they're going to do if they want to practice and they want to record themselves in a in a quiet place a closet full of clothes if you want it has clothes on both sides that is the mother of the most sound absor see ways to do it perfect her biggest concern with recording isn't just what happens what sound gets into the microphone from outside your house because almost nobody has a sound proof house the biggest problem is your voice hitting us hitting a flat surface or non absorptive surface and coming back into the microphone because that's what causes a boxy sound so closets avoid that because the thickness of the clothes absorb almost everything i've got it going to go into a closet sometime and listen to how dead that is with the exception of the ceiling but for the most part kozel absorb everything so that's the simplest way if you're talking about doing some kind of way to control sound in you're going to record it that's a great tip and it's practical so i think that's the other part of it i want to make sure that we weren't so high above the fray that most people like us too much so this is a good starting point down it and put back together so that might be factor there are other things that people can get that are going to cost around two hundred dollars or so but if you really want to start trying it you can try it in a closet excellent thank you that's a perfect place to take a break and what i'm going to do i'm going to use this opportunity to showcase a demo let people hear your work as told them how awesome you are so let me pull this up let's see if this everything wants to cooperate with me here i'm so we're back everybody welcome back to in the c c we are here with a new series called make money talking it's new series that i'm working on to help people try to figure out how to generate some additional income just using your voice and we're focusing on three specific areas how to get started as a professional voice artist professional speaker or professional podcast or today's guess who's helping me kick this series off is george washington the third he is phenomenal  professional voice artist so what i liked about that and the reason that i wanted to share it each one of them to your point about voice acting had a different element of your voice it's not just the one size fits all approach to just getting a script and reading it i want people to hear that it kind of solidifies what you mentioned a few minutes ago georgette's and that's one of the things that you get to when you are where you are you work with a coach and you create the demo and the demo has to show different aspects of what you can do they can't all be the same yeah i like that on the second half of the show we talked a little bit about hosting the alternative some not going to go back to that but for people who are thinking about this demo right because that's kind of the first thing that you have to do you mention the first couple of steps get a coach practice practice practice but you're practicing for that demo and i would imagine the demo is what you're going to use so that people can hear you work at your portfolio correct so tips around kind of what people can do to get the best demo and get the most out of their well i'm going to tell you this is where you're going to  people will wonder what it's going to take to do these things and there's expense involved obviously there's expense in getting your quitman and expenses in your coaching then you're going to pay demos are not cheap they're going to cost you between a thousand and three thousand dollars and in order to do a demo you have to have you need to do one for whatever area you're going to be working in so most of course artists have a commercial real so for regular radio and television commercials they may also have a narration demo i cannot stress enough never make your own unless you are a trained audio professional was done voice over and the kind of audio production that would be necessary to do it never make your own the then is you don't know how to mix music into this process and make it sound good you don't know how to do sound effects you don't know how to flow the thing so it goes from one piece to another smoothly and correctly people often will go onto what we call the pay to plays like voice one two three or voices dot com and use something they've made themselves and put that up as their demo and i will be frank most of them aren't and if you do that you can poison the well in other words if somebody sees your name and associate it with a really bad sounding demo yeah chances are they're going to give you a second chance to come back with a better one i mean let me ask you something about their we say garbage garbage  mean do you mean even more than that it is more than that i mean i have heard some that are the quality is so bad that people assume when we talk very briefly about equipment people assume that you know i've got a microphone on my laptop i've got the little mike in my you know that i can use on my computer and that's what they'll use and write the record it in their house with traffic know where the kids downstairs are in oh somebody outside and doing those things and not you know sometimes not put music on it or put music on it that is inappropriate or too loud or too soft and it's not really working and they will put this out as their professional example of their work so you get it when it's time to invest in a demo you need to do the real thing and invest in this is going to i mean this is i've told you before the assumption is that this can be done easily and cheaply on the grand scheme of things  you i mean there are things that you get over time of course you don't buy the most expensive microphone you can buy whatever game there are microphones that people like in some studios you see like the norm and you eighty seven that's a thirty one hundred dollar microphone you don't need that go out of the gate i mean and use a much less expensive one for this purpose but this was my first voice over microphone and it was one hundred twenty dollars as you got it better and you earned money at it then you upgrade your equipment turnaround every investment you invest in you're in your business so let's pay down the stairs in the three thousand dollars because again you kind of said don't do this on your own so how is someone helping you put this demo together for the thousand or three thousand help me understand what that what he looks like here is contact someone who does demo production they will help you with some scripts they will help you you will work with them and say these are the scripts i want to use they will hire or your voice makes your voice in with sound effects and music and master it so that it sounds good and send you back the finished product perfect i want to use the last couple of minutes of the show because a couple of other things that pop into my head because i like the way that we've kind of done the trajectory and i'm going to i like to reiterate things a lot so you started off with getting a coach don't try to kind of do this thing on the fly practice practice practice work with someone who can help you put together your demo is going to question a couple of dollars somewhere between a thousand to three thousand somewhere in there but it's an investment it's a business because eventually going to have to get a home studio like that just par for the course you're going to need to do it so before we wind down we talked about a coach but i also put the term agent because once we get through all these things and you've got the demo can we talk a little bit in the next minute or so about marketing and finding a job and how an agent can help you and or whether you should try to do that thing on your own any thoughts about that both they're ok since you're not market yourself as a matter of fact many agents will take you on if you're not doing some of your own marketing so interesting ultimately you're going to need a website you're need someplace hosting your be you're going to need a logo you're going to need something that says this is you got it you didn't want to see that you're making an effort on your own agents then if they take you into their roster they will send you titian's they will send you know additions that match your abilities they'll say ok you know gender those sorts of things you record the auditions and you send them back and go on to the next one that is the extent and agents then also will negotiate the rate and then you pay them they get paid well actually they pay you for it neither get twenty percent of your job twenty percent of the price of the job so the money comes out your proceeds not on the front end dishing it out first you'd never pay an agent up front ok now many agents want you as a voice artist to have done some stuff on your own which is not it you have your own website you know a logo you need to have some things developed that are about you so that when people are looking for someone like you they can find you one of my agents who's in texas always likes the fact that i have and i have an e mail that goes out every week but  hey i'm out here here's something cool about space and science and if you need me i'm available and so basically you are descending and i we haven't used that word but i think that's the word we need to use you are descending for this role for this part pretty much correct that is what you are most of what you're doing is looking for work because themselves may not take long i had a job yesterday that was a one line job and three four times in a row on three different sets and we were done that you know that pays x amount i'm times like i did a lot of work for the national museum of african american history and culture so i'm one of them is for the tour there that those were two and a half hour sessions ozomatli once again it runs the gamut you know people need to if you think about the kind of voice over there is there are it takes a lot of effort to find those different kinds of jobs for instance if you like audio books there aren't a tremendous number of audio books egypt's but there are some you want to do promo voicing which is people who do the coming up on s those kind of people there are agents who are specifically for that but they're primarily in los angeles you know and york so large areas i love it this has been so much and i was hoping it was comprehensive and we kind of went from but that's ok i feel like we did it but we did it at a level of with you if you're just getting started they could follow along with that so thank you so much for that advice before we wind down we're going to wind down now any resources that you can refer people to that they can go and get more information please absolutely one of the things that has happened as works over has become democratized by high speed internet equipment that you can have at home is that them number of resources that you can get online in order to further your career have a blossom so you can look for edge studio there in new york you can check them out and studio dot com ok you can check out the global voice acting academy  a you look for them there they have a lot of resources online excellent gravy for the brain they're actually holy they're actually located in england but they have a lot of stuff going on here too which help with training and resources for getting better at ok world voices way we call it wove oh it's world bash way says dot org and it is a group of active voice actors who preach other but to help promote us as an industry and out of kind of outside of the idea of being represented by for instance sag aftra there are plenty who are but well voices is doing their part for making things better for all of us  excellent thank you so much this was informed i was learning as i was listening so i'm sure that the people who were listening in on this and those who will hear it are going to get as much out of it as i just did george thank you so much for your time as fifty other places you could have been today you're here with me to help launch this series might make money talking thank you so much i really really appreciate it my pleasure thanks all right everybody i know it was a phenomenal saw hope you had some pads and pens and you took some copious notes but thank you for tuning in feel free to visit our website stays in sex dot com will have more information about this will have will actually list the resources that george mentioned and we look thanks for tuning in if you'd like to be a guest or support the show visit staging exacts dot com for bookings and sponsorship