Podcasts

Intro: Hello and welcome to A VO’s Journey. My name is Anthony Pica and this podcast is all about helping the new and upcoming voiceover artiste grow their business and sidestep all the crazy things that I seem to step on. Today’s episode is very exciting. We are on number 121, and we are going to be interviewing today acclaimed voice actress, Jessica Taylor. She has worked with all sorts of companies, from IBM, to Nature Made, to Universal, all sorts of places. What I find really cool is that she has actually only been doing this for a couple of years as well. I’m very excited to be joined by Miles Chicoine from Voquent as always. So without further ado, let’s do it.

So we are so excited to be here. We have an incredible guest. Her name is Jessica Taylor. She is an actress turned voice actress who is doing some amazing things. I was on her site and I am blown away by just in a short amount of time – I won’t give too much away because I’ll let her talk about it. But the work that she has done and the businesses that she has worked with is really amazing and inspiring. I am joined with my co-host and wild man across the pond, Miles Chicoine.

Miles: Hey, how you doing?

Anthony: Always a man of many words. Thank you, Miles. I would like to say hello and thank you to Jessica for joining us on A VO’s Journey. Hello, Jessica.

Jessica: Hi. Thank you so much.

Anthony: Absolutely. Well, I guess we start off always asking everybody, kind of give us a background of where you come from, who you are, and what you’re doing in this voiceover world.

Jessica: Okay. Well, thanks for having me. This is pretty exciting. My first podcast appearance.

Anthony: You’re famous now.

Jessica: I know.

Miles: First of many.

Jessica: Gosh, that’s great. So yeah, I guess I feel like I’ve had – I’m like a cat. I’ve had nine lives. I’ve done a lot of different things. I grew up in Minnesota and in high school I did just loads and loads of theater. I never even took chemistry because I read the book… Everyone’s like, “Why aren’t you taking chemistry?” I said, “Well, I read the book and it says I don’t have to. So I’m going to take band, theater and choir. Yeah, I don’t need chemistry.” So I did lots and lots of theater and then I was going to go to college for musical theater. I was accepted to a good handful of prestigious programs but at the time, my family wasn’t in a position to send me to those really expensive schools.

I was like, “Well, it doesn’t mean I can’t act.” So I still ended up getting involved in theater. I came to Colorado then I got an agent and I did a fair amount of corporate work, mostly stage work; everything from Shakespeare to musicals and I loved it. I really loved it. I was going to move to New York City and more fully pursue that whole dream, but then September 11th happened in 2001 and it really just changed everything about what I wanted in life. It made me really think deeply about what was important. I think what I decided at that time was it was important for me to have a family. So I put these feelers out to see if there was anyone out there for me and I met somebody like a week after that. Had our first date one week after September 11th. We ended up getting married and having three kids. So there was a reason for me to stay in Colorado, and that was it.

I stepped away from theater at that point, and I also have always had a very strong entrepreneurial drive, you could say. Always looking, “Well, how can I monetize that? How can I make money with that?” It’s like this great challenge, this business challenge. So at that point I ended up opening a spa. I had gone through massage therapy training to support my acting habit because I insisted I would never wait a table. I worked on lots of famous people. Bernie Mac, if you know him, I worked on him in his hotel room. I was like an on-call for comedians and for NFL players. So I had a really thriving massage practice and I ended up hiring massage therapists and opening a spa. I taught one of Willie Nelson’s daughters how to give massage with her feet which is another random fact about me.

Anthony: Now that’s what I’m talking about.

Jessica: Yeah. I ran this massage spa for 10 years. What I learned is that I loved the business. I loved having a business; strongly loved it. I ended up closing it because I had my first son, and that was in 2008 when the market crashed. Massage was basically the first thing for people to be like, “I don’t think I need a massage this week.” So I took that as a sign of like, “All right, I’m going to stay home with my kids and close this business down,” which is what I did. I stayed home for 10 years with my kids, basically. We moved overseas during that time. We lived in Prague for three and a half years and then we came back to Colorado three years ago.

I saw my youngest getting ready to go to kindergarten and I thought, “Okay, it’s time for me to pursue something that I’m really excited about” and I had criteria. I was like, “It got to be creative. It needs to have something to do with acting. It has to be entrepreneurial,” because that was just another fire that I had to feed. “It had to be incredibly flexible;” that was my third criteria. I had one more. I had to be able to make good money in a short amount of time because I have limited time. It’s kind of a tall order. I guess I don’t make too many compromises, you could say. I would say I stewed on this problem for a good year and a half. Like, “What is it? What is it?” Then my mom met a woman through her boyfriend and she’s like, “She’s an audiobook narrator. Do you want to meet her?” I was like, “I think I do.”

So I was in Minnesota with her and I went and spent a few hours seeing what the voiceover lifestyle was all about. I was really blown away at how it nailed all of these things for me. I left two hours later and I was like, “That’s it. That’s what I’m doing.” The choice was just made. That day I immediately started pursuing what I could. I remembered that I had a massage client of the spa for many years and she was a top voiceover artist in Denver. I had mentioned to her several times when I was her therapist that I was interested in that. It was something in the back of my mind. She goes, “Well, you need to let me know.” And I said, “You know what? When my kids are a little older, I’m going to let you know.” So I sent her a message and emails like, “I haven’t talked to you in like eight years, but I think I need to do voiceover.” And she said, “So funny, you should send me an email because I just let go of my position of being a voiceover agent at GoVoices.” I was like, “Wow, okay. Well that is very serendipitous.”

She just had decided that the agent lifestyle wasn’t for her. It was too much. Nine to five; so it was a very amicable separation. I said, “Do you want to coach me?” She said, “Yep, I want to coach you.” And I said, “Great.” So I took a few classes at the Denver Center with groups of people which was really valuable to hear other people read at the same time that I was reading. To have that class experience instead of just one-on-one with a coach, I think that was a good way to start. So then I coached with Tia for maybe six weeks and finally she was just like, “Okay, you can record a demo.” So she and I picked copy and then we went to my local studio here, recorded my commercial demo, and recorded a narration demo. Then the next week I submitted it to GoVoices, they had me do a callback, and they signed me. It’s just like when I say this waterfall thing; everything just really happened for me. I took that as a sign that I had chosen the right thing. It felt very affirming.

Then about six weeks after I signed with them, I booked my first big job. It was a really big job for Nature Made and I was the voice of all of their pre-roll. So they had a whole pre-roll campaign. So that whole thing about making a lot of money in a short amount of time, I fully fulfilled that. My husband has a big career, I should say. He’s an IT professional working for a big company. So one day I said to him, “I need you to watch the kids tomorrow because I have to go record.” He’s like, “Well, I’ve got this meeting and this meeting” and all these years I had been the mom at home. So now the roles had really reversed. I told him how much. I was like, “Well, this is how much I’m going to make tomorrow” and he was like, “Ok, I’ll figure it out” and that was it. He was like, “Okay, wow. I thought this was going to be a little hobby for you.” I was like, “I guess it’s not. It’s going to be a real thing.” So that was a fun day. We celebrated.

It has just been things like that. I’ve just been working. I audition, I’m coaching, working on new demos, working on my brand. I think in some ways they say, “Give a busy person something that needs to get done.” I think because I’m busy, if I have 15 minutes, I’m just super focused on the one thing that I need to do right now and I think that actually helps. I hope I kept that short.

Miles: You’ve got an amazing story. I’m just thinking that the fact that you got signed so quickly is obviously tremendous. That’s something that a lot of voice actors all around the world aspire to achieve. I know it’s different depending on the country. There are some countries that have really big prolific networks of agents and agencies, and then there are other countries where there’s really only a few. So if you’re going to get into the voice acting game, there’s a good chance you’re going to be doing it completely on your own. But you just got stuck straight in with an agent which is amazing. That’s obviously, I would say quite a blessing in many ways because there are people who will work five to 10 years and they’re still looking and still hoping for the big break where an agent is going to recognize them and pick them up and take them under their wing and start bringing more food to the table, so to speak, to work on.

Jessica: Yeah, absolutely. I fully acknowledged that I was just lucky to have had that contact with Tia and already have that great kind of mentorship with her. It was just lucky that she had just left. I know she put a good word in for me because she and I had been coaching together. I think that’s one of the lessons that I’ve learned so far and I would say I’m learning that… I’ve continued to see this pattern that the places that you invest your time and money, I think they need to be places where you can get that back. So for example, maybe producing demos with a place that because you’ve worked with them and if they enjoyed working with you, you will then get work from them. So being really strategic about those decisions and how you’re spending your money and hoping that it’s going to come back to you.

Anthony: Awesome. I love that story. That is so cool. What’s really interesting is I think there’s – I’d love to talk to you about this. I know we have questions. But there’s an interesting divide I feel with voice actors, especially with more and more new voice actors coming into the industry with many of them, “Should I search for agents or should I go in on my own? Do I become a union member or not become a union member?” So I was wondering from where you are right now, are you a part of the union or are you a non-union?

Jessica: No, I’m non-union.

Anthony: Okay, great.

Jessica: I’m happy where I am right now.

Anthony: Wonderful.

Jessica: I’ve got more to learn right here, I think.

Anthony: Absolutely. That’s fine. Then from question too, would you say that you book the majority of your work through your agent? Or do you find a lot of work on your own?

Jessica: I do both actually. I have about six agents now. In trying to keep with my goal of making good money in a short amount of time or I like to say full-time income on part-time hours, I really try to focus on quality auditions. My strategy with getting a good number of agents is that I want good auditions coming to me. I don’t have time to chase jobs on pay-to-plays and audition 15, 20 times a day. I don’t have time for that. So for me, I’m focusing on – My strategy has been to coach so that I’m really skillful when I am auditioning and I’m not wasting those great agent audition opportunities. But I am also marketing on my own, making my own contacts, and I have a good handful of clients who come to me directly as well.

Miles: I was going to say you can actually maybe dispel to a degree at least a myth, Jessica, which is that if I get an agent – I say hypothetically, obviously. But if I get an agent, I don’t have to market myself anymore. I just let the agent go take care of it because that’s what the agent’s job is; it is to market me. Maybe it’d be fair to say that’s a misconception. But there’s a lot of people who have aspirations to get hired by an agent because they think that means that they can spend all their time focusing on their performance and focusing on the creative aspect of doing what they do and not having to look for work and look for new opportunities and build their own brand independently because they think that that’s what the agent is doing and that’s how they’re earning their cut, so to speak. What’s your take on that?

Jessica: Well, if you go to any agent’s website, you’re going to see loads and loads of talent. So I don’t think it’s possible for any single agent to wake up and say, “I’m going to service all of these talent today.” If I look at the whole picture of a full-time career doing this, there’s going to be a pie chart and I’m going to focus this amount of effort here and this effort here and hopefully with every decision, I’m honing in on a strategy that brings me a return on my investment in time and money. So I think building the relationship with my agents is definitely part of that strategy. Wanting a good working relationship I think that that’s reciprocal and that will come back to you. But yeah, I definitely wouldn’t be comfortable in my mind saying, “Yes, here. You be in charge of my career.” Nobody’s going to do that work like I will.

Anthony: Absolutely. So where are you finding these places or other work besides things that are coming from your agents? Where do you search for work?

Jessica: When I got started right away, I signed up with Voice123 and Voice123 was great for me for a while. Then when they changed the platform, it just strangely – I don’t understand really why. I’m the same person. I was submitting the same auditions. If anything, I was only improving my skills. It just didn’t make sense to me. So I let go of that. That experience was actually a great blessing. I think I was relying on that because there were so many audition opportunities and it feels like you’re accomplishing something when you’re auditioning. You can keep really busy, like feeling really busy with that platform. So when I let that go I was like, “Okay, this is great because it’s forcing me to figure out what’s going to bring me work without using a pay-to-play.”

I was with VOPlanet for a year. I booked one job off of that which from what I’ve heard is actually kind of a miracle. I think there are just so many incredible talent on that site. You have to get in on the auditions right away and that’s not really how my life works. I like the auditions from agents because you tend to have a slightly longer timeframe. You might get 36, even 48 hours so that works well for me. You asked me where I’m getting the work so let me focus in here. Bodalgo is a great source for me. One of my coaches says I have a good American sound that doesn’t have any of the things that people overseas dislike about an American accent.

Anthony: I really like that you said that because I think that happens a lot. I get a lot of work from overseas, actually. 60 to 70% of my work comes from overseas. But that’s a very interesting thing about what – Did your agent or the person who’s talking to you tell you some of those things that people from overseas don’t like? Or maybe Miles knows. Tell us a little.

Jessica: Yeah. Maybe Miles knows.

Miles: Well, I think everybody is obviously seeking feedback. You can never get as much feedback as you would like to get. When we ask customers, “Did you like that recording? Why did you pick them?” It’s so difficult to get answers. It’s one of the most frustrating things is. Obviously there’s a lot of people who whether they’re auditioning or shortlisted or considered or whatever, as part of a group of options. People would like to know, “What can I improve? What didn’t work and what did work? Why did people pick me?” It’s actually really, really hard to get that feedback; it’s incredibly hard. It’s actually something that we’re going to be addressing very soon on Voquent and we’re going to enable peers to actually provide feedback to each other.

I think that in some ways is more valuable because it might be a little bit more raw, but at least it’ll be from somebody who actually knows what they’re listening for. The unfortunate reality is a lot of work gets done where the person who is commissioning the work don’t really know what they’re doing. They’re putting irons in fires and they’re just doing everything they can. They’re just throwing mud in to see what sticks and that’s going up the chain to somebody else who is making a decision. So many people who are involved in the process of commissioning work are actually so far removed from the selection process and actually understanding what they’re looking for and why. We had one today. Somebody asked and said, “We need a Gaelic accent.”

Anthony: Yeah, I saw you post it on social media.

 Miles: But we had to spread out the options because we weren’t actually sure because the client wasn’t sure whether it was actually Scottish Gaelic or Irish Gaelic and there’s a big difference. It gets confusing as well because believe it or not, Scottish Gaelic – pronounced ‘gal-ick’ – is actually what’s called Gaelic. But both variations actually come from Irish Gaelic and Irish Gaelic is actually referred to as Irish, even though everybody speaks English mostly in Ireland. So it’s easy to get confused. But yeah, I think long story short is we can never get enough feedback. But when we do get it, it’s something that we do try to pass on and we do try to say, “Hey, by the way, this is what we learned and this is why they really liked you.” The problem is even when you do get feedback, it’s usually like, “Oh, they were just great.”

Jessica: Can I add something to that? I recently posted in a voiceover group about what I’ve since coined my “home sound advantage” because I started noticing that I was booking a lot of work for Midwestern companies. I wouldn’t say most people would say, “Oh, you are so obviously from the Midwest.” But I think that it’s almost like a subliminal message. It’s still there.

Miles: Yeah, you never shake it really.

Jessica: I mean, you have to speak somehow so you’re going to sound like where you’re from in some way but it’s not so much that it’s distracting. But I think it’s like the home sound advantage and I keep booking things through that are in the Midwest easily. I’m not auditioning which that’s a dream come true. So that was one thing I was suggesting other voice talent may want to look at. Like, where do you come from and approach production companies in that part of the country or that part of the world where you might have that automatic sound.

Miles: Yeah. Well, what you’re picking up on there, Jessica, is I think absolutely so important. The authenticity of an accent is what more and more people are looking for. This is something that is not like a recurring theme. This is absolutely what people want. It actually forms the entire basis of how I ended up being part of what created Voquent. It was looking for authenticity, and authenticity at a detailed level is so viable. It was so funny because when we started tracking all these different accents, people would say, “Do people really want that accent? Really? I thought they wanted standard, modern, general, you know? They want that kind of all-rounder.” And I said, “No. People do want that. Of course, yes. If you can do that, you can perform what could only be classified, I guess as modern and standard American.” And that’s going to sound like a lot of different things. Just like British RP will sound like a lot of different accents, but it’s kind of a home county’s accent.

Your actual accent, your conversational accent, your accent that you formed when you were probably about 13 or 14, and it’s just kind of stuck with you and no matter where you live, that always sits in the background; that’s your roots. That’s actually the most valuable accent you got because it’s actually the one that’s completely authentic and there’s people who want to draw on that. They want to communicate to an audience that’s either there that also speaks that way, or wants to communicate with an audience that feels that voice speaking in that way to them. So they feel that they’re being communicated to by someone with that background.

It’s amazing how many people say, “Don’t give me whatever accent. They have to actually be speaking that way. I don’t want somebody who says they can do a great imitation accent.” There’s still a market for imitation accents, don’t get me wrong. Some people are incredibly talented at sounding extremely authentic. You would never know what country or part of the world they’re from. They can do all these things. They’re incredibly talented. But I have to be honest, every time when it comes down to the person who can speak in 10 or 15 different accents against this person who really can only speak in two which is their kind of articulate posture version, and then their native one of where they’re more grassroots accent, that’s it. That’s what people are going to go for every time. So it’s really interesting to hear you say that.

Jessica: Yeah. I think maybe that’s part of what this – When people say, “They were just great.” It’s almost like something that they may not even know why they were drawn to that particular voice because it is that – It’s like, I don’t know. They just sound right.

Anthony: I agree. And the connection, that’s what this whole thing is about. Is we’re trying to connect with people and I think we are all led by that connection. I want to keep us going here. This has been great so far. I do want to move on to some things; also some practical things. I know I do this and I’m going to ask you like I do everybody else. I want to talk quickly about your opinions and your thoughts on rates in our industry right now and all the things that are happening and what are you seeing happening. So I think one of the questions we had is approaching rates. Should you approach rates differently when dealing with non-exclusive agencies or production companies? I guess the question on this is, compared to when you were on Voice123 and your stuff on Bodalgo to where you’re working with agents and stuff, where are you seeing those rates right now? What do you think about the kind of – I don’t know if you’d say battle of rates going on in our industry, but just rates in general? Your thoughts of rates.

Jessica: I think that is probably an area I’m still working out for myself just because I haven’t been in this that long so I don’t have that long history to compare. I hear people who’ve been doing voiceover for 20 years and, “Oh, those were the good old days.” I’m like, “Well, I don’t know what the good old days were. These seem pretty good to me.”

Anthony: I have to tell you before you go on too. This is tricky because I know you hadn’t said you hadn’t listened to some of my podcasts so you have no idea how I feel about rates. So I know you’re probably like, “Well, what should I say?” All I have to tell you is say whatever you feel and that should tell you about me. So I like that if you’re still working it out too.

Jessica: Yeah, I’m still working it out. I mean, as far as whether we should negotiate on rates more if we’re working for production companies; just from as a business person, yes, I think so. I meant to say this in the last question. I would say my biggest source of work right now is directly from rosters that I’m on and that has been fantastic. They have set rates and those rates are probably less than I would charge if I were charging the client directly. But to me, just business-wise that makes sense. They’re coming to me directly with business on a regular basis that mostly I am not auditioning for. So, yes, to me that makes sense. It’s okay for me to accept less money than emailing 25 times back and forth with a client trying to work out, negotiate what we’re going to come to. That takes time; that takes effort. I prefer the direct route, so I’m okay to take a little bit less.

Anthony: That’s awesome. Great question. We have a lot of the new people who listen to this podcast as well and there’s so much noise out there always about like you said, people saying it should be charged this and things should be charged like that and if you charge this, it’s wrong. But I love how you mentioned a business because we are in a business and that is reality. I know from Miles you have always a different perspective because you’re on the other side of a business that actually manages the in-between between companies and actors. So I don’t know if you want to chime in on this.

Miles: Yeah, I’d be happy to prod the hornet’s nest a little bit and let some of the listeners out there get angry or whatever. I think the thing about rates is that there is no such thing as the right rate and there is no such thing as a fair rate actually, because a fair rate implies that life is fair and that all things are equal and that people are equally talented or equally experienced or should have equal opportunity. We don’t live in that world. We live in actually a very competitive world where it’s more competitive than ever because people can be located anywhere and working from anywhere offering their accent and their capabilities and their sounds to the rest of the world at whatever price they like; whatever they feel like.

So there are sites out there that of course had – Their key value proposition has been ‘get it cheap.’ “If you want a cheap voiceover, come here. We’ll get you your best possible value for money.” So their focus is on giving the customer whatever they’re looking for at the lowest possible price and obviously trying to get the best possible quality at that price. Then of course, there are other agencies and organizations and intermediaries of all kinds who might price themselves up and say, “Well, when you go with us you’re getting more curated voices, you’re getting more experience, you’re getting more talented.” So all the rates are moving around all the time. But I think the thing is, is that… You’ve actually said something really important as far as I’m concerned, Jessica, which is that you’ve differentiated between what you would charge to a non-exclusive agency or a production company with a roster as you would direct.

There’s some people who have a school of thought that says, “Let’s just keep it flat all the way no matter what and that will help maintain better rates worldwide.” If everybody just keeps it flat and says, “No,” because nobody knows who the client is. We’re in this crazy place now where you don’t know if you’re dealing with someone when somebody says, “Hey, I’ve got you shortlisted for an opportunity here. What do you think?” You might know at the end, of course, but you don’t know at the initial point of inquiry whether you’re talking to the client, or somebody who’s talking to the client, or somebody who’s talking to somebody else who’s talking to the client. Or maybe even more chains, more mouths to feed all the way up. I think that’s where it becomes difficult because you think, “Well, if all I’m doing is lowering my rate for people who are all taking a cut, then really we’re all driving the rates down.” Then the customers at the end who were prepared to pay more start thinking, “Well, if I can just remove a few of those middlemen, I can probably get this done even cheaper.” Thus the whole thing starts to become a global race to the bottom.

So I think rates is definitely an issue in terms of pricing and how to price it at. But I think being aware of who you’re dealing with and understanding what competition you’re up against and what the circumstances are and having a rate that works for you is everything. If you’ve got a rate that says, “You know what? I like that. I could feel comfortable with that. I don’t need more than that,” then fantastic. I think it’s about supply and demand. If you’re in a situation where you’ve got so much work, why would you need to price yourself out of an opportunity? If you need it, then… But then if you don’t need it, why lower your rates and do people favors when you just don’t need to? You’re busy enough. So I think naturally, these things define themselves for people and that’s how they figure it out.

Jessica: Yeah, absolutely. I feel the same way. My whole thing is I don’t have a lot of time so I don’t need to be the bargain. I’m not the bargain.

Anthony: And that’s great. That’s just like the same with any business in the world. You have high end and you have low end and there’s nothing wrong with either. It’s who we are. I think that in itself speaks volumes. I really like that discussion. I always ask it because it’s a big thing.

Miles: I want to say something, Anthony. Sorry. When you say low end, I think it’s really, really important for anyone who’s listening to this. If you’re starting early and you don’t have a background in the acting experience, you don’t have an agent, you’re trying to get into the game, maybe you’re grinding away on P2P sites or something, just remember this. If you do low end over and over and over, you’re not going to stay low end. You’re going to get better and you’re going to build your demand more. That’s a fact. So you mustn’t look at low end as the end point. You got to look at that as a starting point. If you’re starting out, you got to start somewhere. The biggest mistake though that some of the people make is they think that they need to start at the middle end because they’ve been listening to people who are trying to protect their own rates who’ve been doing it a long time. They price themselves out of work because they’re not actually competitive enough given their skillset and their background and other people are going to get picked because they’re pricing themselves out of the market. That’s where the problem exists.

Anthony: I totally agree. Any industry, I mean in anywhere, you start at the bottom and you work your way up. I will say to people too – and I say this often. I love that you said that because I often say when I was – I’ve done theater my whole life too, Jessica. An adage in the theater I often say, “You don’t add an extra show until your other ones are sold out.” So the point is you’re not going to continue to raise your rates because one day you were bored or you do what you do when you’re so… That’s just the adage I live by. When you’re so busy, then you raise your rates because it’s supply and demand just like anything else. I do think that’s big and I do think that it’s also another thing to note that we are working with companies all over the world that might be freelancers or one person like us and they want a voiceover and we have to decide whether we want to do a voiceover for them or only for large companies too. I think that’s a huge thing. I do tons of work that I don’t know – I might deal with one or two people. But like you said, I don’t know sometimes how big the company they work for is or not. So I mean, that kind of goes to it. I want to ask you Jessica, just some kind of concrete advice. So if you are giving advice to a new voiceover artist coming into the market and trying to look at how to get their first job, what advice would you give them? I get that question a lot. I have a lot of people who always ask me, “Hey, I’m just starting out. How do I get my first job?”

Jessica: Well, I think first you have to ask, “Do you have any skills?” Hopefully if they’re starting from a base of having done some training and have something to offer. Then at that point… My very first job was through Voice123 and I felt like that was a great way – I know everyone has different opinions about this. But for me, it was a great way to get a little bit of feedback on the auditions because that’s how the system was initially. It’s a great way for me to be like, “Oh, they like that one. Oh, they didn’t” and to get a lot of experience seeing different scripts. I know some people say, “You shouldn’t use a pay-to-play to practice.” But for me, I think that we practice differently when there’s something at stake than if there isn’t – Than if I’m just in my booth reading. When there’s a job on the line, I think psychologically it’s a different process than when there isn’t. So I feel like a pay-to-play could be a good place for a person to get their first job and to get a base of experience.

Anthony: Great. Thank you so much. Miles, I’m just going to keep moving here so we can keep going. I love the questions. This is a good one. What would you say are the top three most common mistakes that you think less experienced voice actors make when approached with an opportunity? Or you could even say – I don’t know about the opportunity, but just common mistakes that less experienced voice actors make period in this business.

Miles: Or could make.

Jessica: That’s tough for me because I’m not really in a position to hear other… Okay, here’s one that I think I did make for a while, and that was a fear of losing out on the job because I bid too much. That happened to me yesterday. I still have like when they say, “We went with someone else.” Then I’m like, “Why was it? Was it because of…? Did I quote too much?” So that kind of anxiety about losing out on a job. But I think the greater perspective is that there really are so many voiceover jobs out there and that’s the thing that I’ve learned over time. Before, I had this mentality of scarcity. That there are five jobs and there are 8,000 people looking for them and that’s all there’s going to be today. So just having an attitude of abundance that more’s going to come to me, it’s going to be okay.

Anthony: I love that.

Miles: I got to ask a follow-up question to that, Jessica because I think that’s really interesting. When you’re hearing someone come to you and say, “Hey, I’ve got a job. This is what’s happening.” How easily do you feel you can get a sense of whether someone really just have come to you because they know that you’re capable of doing the job, or they’re listening to your material because they think you’re capable of doing the job. But really they’re working with a fixed price. It’s not a factor where if you basically say, “Oh no, I’m not going to do that for double the budget,” you will lose it because you know that it wasn’t about whether or not you were capable of doing the job. They knew that. It was just about whether you were willing to do the job for that price.

Whereas there are other jobs where people – It’s particularly when you’re being cast for a higher end job and there’s a lot more consideration going into it where the negotiation is really secondary to finding the right person. In many cases when somebody’s working with a better budget project, they’ll even pay over the odds to get the person they want. So it’s very, very rare that someone looking for the right voice is hunting around in the bargain bin for a deal because it’s the priorities. How easily do you feel that you’re able to determine the priority of your prospective client?

Jessica: That’s a big question. I don’t know that I am able to tell.

Anthony: I just want to chime in here on both of that. What’s so interesting about this discussion and about us doing this with a person who – Miles runs from a different perspective than we do. Miles is so interesting because so many of the questions you ask are amazing and wonderful. But it is so neat to listen to because I know from my perspective as a voice actor and as an actor, and probably Jessica’s as well, we don’t necessarily get to that point where we’re thinking of those things because we don’t hear that stuff. We do our auditions, we do our best to connect with the client, and they either hire us or don’t. We might get feedback, like you said. That’s really interesting, Miles.

Miles: We don’t take it personally because we’re in a situation where we know we’re probably one of many different organizations that have been reached out to, to find out if we can solve a problem which is to find…

Anthony: Are you talking about price? Trying to figure out exactly what…

Miles: So there’s a variety of different scenarios where client will say, “I’ve got a budget. This is the amount.” That might be enough for the average, it might be barely enough for a low end, or it might be plentiful and it’s going to gain all kinds of auditions and exciting opportunities as a result because there are so many people who are going to be interested in the work.

Anthony: Okay.

Miles: Then there’s other people who don’t know what it should be priced at, but they do have a cap in their head or they do go back and find out. So they’ll say, “I need to know how much this kind of job is going to cost.” Then you go, “Well, average, low end, high end. That’s it.” As soon as you go high end, almost all of them are like, “All right, we’ll go low end to average; average top line.” I’ve had TV commercial companies who do this constantly. They don’t just work with voice actors. They work with actors and they work with everybody; people who work in broadcasting. And every time it’s immediately like, “Oh yeah, the job is 450. 450 is as high as we’ll pay.” “No, no.” “Okay, 475.” And you’re like, “What are you doing? You’re nickel and diming me over 25 bucks? Is it going to make any difference?” No, it’s not. It’s all about who you want to pick. Once we know who you want to pick and maybe who you might also like to have out of this collection of potential options, that’s when we want to know where you’re at with them.

We don’t want to hear how much you’re prepared to pay for someone that you’re not sure you’re going to select yet. We wouldn’t go in a situation and say, “Let’s go out and ask a hundred voice actors if they’re available for a job and we don’t know what it’s going to pay, and find out what they all think it should pay. Then get their feedback on it.” That’s like a living hell for an agency. There’s no way they’re going to do that. So really you’re trying to feel people out for what they’re prepared to pay and how interested they are in the quality of what they’re looking for. Some people come back and say, “Look, this is how important the quality is. This is what the job is for. We know that’s an average rate. We’re not going to pay any more than the average so the budget is capped. That’s it. That’s what you got to work with. If you go more than that, we’re just going to go somewhere else.”

As soon as you hear that you go, “All right, okay.” So as soon as you’re working with this, you’re then talking to a bunch of other people and saying, “All right guys, this is where it’s at.” There are some voice actors who are fantastic to work with and they just go, “All right, okay. I can do that.” Or they say, “I can’t.” There’s nothing wrong with saying, “I can’t do it for that rate.” There’s absolutely nothing wrong. You just say, “No problem.” That’s it. “It’s okay. Thanks for letting me know. Moving on.”

Jessica: Yeah. It might be different one week versus the next.

Miles: Exactly.

 Jessica: It might be a really busy week and then the next week they would’ve said, “Oh, I would do that this week because I don’t have anything else going on, so no problem.”

Miles: The worst bit though is when they say, “No, how dare you? How dare you insult me with that rate? How dare you?” Then you’re in a situation where, “Well, this is what the client’s…” “This is absolutely disgusting. Terrible. You should be ashamed of yourself even asking someone of my stature and my experience and my capability to perform at that level.” Sometimes when people are referring to this – I’m not talking about low paid jobs. Some of these jobs are actually very well paid in the eyes of – I’d say 80% of the market. But for them, it’s still not enough because they are at that level. There’s a lot of different emotions that are driving these things. So I think that sometimes people get emotional and they take things personal and that influences their ability to keep a nice solid momentum of work. I believe that the people who get the most work are the ones who are the easiest to work with. Being easy to work with isn’t about being cheap. It’s just about being a really good friendly communicator and being concise about what you can and can’t do as in when the opportunities come up.

Anthony: Absolutely. I think that’s a good point to piggyback to the last two questions or so because we got to wrap this up. But going back, Jessica because I wanted to ask you – and I think you said this. But when we asked you about the three most common mistakes, you listed one. But one thing you said and that I think is a common mistake, especially for new people, is you said one of the very first things you did was get coaching. You could talk about it too. But just quickly, I think coaching is another big mistake that many new people come in – What’s interesting is even famous actors, people who’ve been doing this their entire lives continue to get coaching. So I don’t know what you think, but I think that’s probably a big mistake people make is thinking they don’t need a coach or they want to skimp on that.

Jessica: Yeah. That blows me away that anybody thinks they don’t need coaching. You can’t take the skills from working on stage or working on camera and translate them to voiceover other than your creativity and your presence and kind of that X factor stuff. But I mean, there’s so much between different jobs that I’m tapping into different things I’ve learned whether I know it’s going to be on TV and there are images involved, whether it’s going to be on the radio. Then just the quality of various reads; coaching is just one of the most important things. One trend that I noticed when I decided, “Okay, I’m really going to focus on my agency auditions -” And I think I went 60 or 70 auditions without booking anything. I was counting obviously.

I was like, “What is going on here?” I had just landed this really big thing and then I was like, “Do I suck all of a sudden? What happened?” I guess I was expecting the gravy train to keep coming and it didn’t. So then I was like, “Alright, I need to get into coaching.” I started coaching with Nancy Wolfson about six months ago and she has totally rocked my world. She’s amazing, worth every bit of everything that I’ve given her which is a lot. But once I started doing that, I felt like I actually had so much more skill to offer every audition. I began booking more and booking the agent auditions because I had heard so many voice actors say, “Oh yeah, I have agents but I don’t really book anything through them.” I was just thinking, “Why do they say that? What does that mean?” I was like, “I don’t want it to be that way. I want to book the jobs through my agent. Those tend to be the best paying, the most enjoyable jobs.” So I was like, “That’s going to be my focus. I need to be at the level where I can book those jobs on a regular basis.” To do that, I needed more skills. So I had to pursue more coaching

Anthony: You know what I do love and I think it’s awesome to have you on this show, Jessica, for a variety of reasons. But one is that you and I both have started a couple years ago in this and we both have theater background but I don’t have any agents. I do this completely full-time booking work on my own. You are using agents wonderfully and making a lot from them. So I would say that’s probably the other mistake is thinking there’s only one way.

Jessica: Yeah, absolutely. There are so many different ways. It just depends on who you are, what your skills are, what your lifestyle is like. I would guess that you and I have probably different lifestyles. You probably have a lot of time. I have like compressed bursts of time that I can use to do voiceover with. So you have to have a different strategy.

Anthony: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I want to finish this out where I ask this question of everyone who’s on the show. The question is, if you had to start over again today in voiceover without any of your contacts, without any of your friends, negating all the learning curve when it comes to equipment and everything, but just starting out brand new, what would you do?

Jessica: What do I have again?

 Anthony: Let’s say you just have your equipment. So you have your equipment…

Jessica: I have my skills

Anthony: For some odd reason.

Miles: All your agents, all the contacts, every roster you’re on just suddenly disappear.

Anthony: Everything you’ve build. For example, you mentioned just like – and I realize it too in what Miles was saying. Is it’s easy to say no to work that’s low paying when you have repeat customers that pay less. I always remember that myself when I’m talking to other people. So let’s just say we take all that away and we take away your name or your reputation and you’re just starting off from scratch, where do you start?

Jessica: I would start again immediately trying to get onto rosters.

Anthony: When you say rosters, can you give us an idea of what you’re talking about?

Jessica: So production companies, audio production – Mostly audio production companies maintain lists of voice talent who they work with on a regular basis. So when they have a client come to them and they say, “We have a project we want done. We’re looking for a female sound, 30 to 40.” They have a handful of people that they send to that client and they say, “Here are the people we have on our roster” which means you’ve auditioned for them or you’ve gone through their vetting process. They’ve listened to your studio, they know that you’re available the times that they record and they’ve said, “Yes, we want you to be on our roster, on our list of talent that we suggest to our clients when they’re coming to book a job, when they want to have a job done.”

Anthony: How do you find these? Is it video – There are all types of video production companies and all types of…

Jessica: Yeah, there are tons of production companies. I know that the ones that I’m on tend to be mostly audio production. Google audio production. You could even audio production roster, voice talent roster, voice roster.

Anthony: That’s a really good tip because I think most of us or most people really are focused on the video production.

Jessica: Yeah. And I think there are a lot of companies who are just focusing on audio.

Anthony: It’s probably going to be popping up more and more now as well.

Jessica: Yeah. My strategy is I want the work to come to me with as little effort, as few auditions as possible because I like to do the work. Not always the auditioning, but… Fewer auditions, more working.

Anthony: I love it. Could you give us real quick just an idea of the kind of business in a real nutshell that you’ve booked?

Jessica: I’ve done work for Nature Made, for NBC Universal, Potawatomi Hotel and Casino, United Airlines, Adidas. I’m sure I could come up with more.

Anthony: That is awesome. You have IBM on your site?

Jessica: Yep. I’ve done IBM.

Anthony: I had to ask this because Miles and I were kidding about this. On your website – It’s jessicavo.com if anybody wants to go check it out. You have a knee with a…

Miles: You got to tell us about the knee.

Anthony: What’s up with the knee?

Jessica: That’s so funny. This is good feedback. When I was doing my branding – I really did it myself. I read Celia Siegel’s book and I really thought about those questions and I journaled on them. For me, I really enjoy looking at stock photos. I looked at thousands of pictures probably for weeks. I was looking for that one picture – you know they say picture is worth a thousand words – that one picture that would just kind of epitomize how I feel about myself and what I feel like I put out and I kept coming back to jeans. I was like, “It has to involve jeans.” So I was looking at all these jean images. Where I live – I live in Boulder, Colorado. It’s a very relaxed, casual place. I could virtually walk outside in my pajamas if I wanted and no one would look twice. So when I saw that picture – and actually the original version of that picture has a smiley face written on the skin of that knee. That was the first image that I used. Then my coach Nancy said, “You need to get rid of the smiley face.” So then I changed it and I modified the colors that went with it.

Miles: Nancy is pure class.

Anthony: I guess Nancy must get the jeans too.

Jessica: You don’t get it?

Anthony: That doesn’t mean anything. I just…

Jessica: It’s okay.

Miles: I get it.

Jessica: What does it mean to you?

Miles: Now that I see that, I get it now.

Anthony: When you say the story why you have the jeans there, it makes perfect sense.

Jessica: It’s like casual, natural, comfortable, easy to be with, easy to work with, laid back.

 Miles: Accessible.

Jessica: Thank you. Authentic. Not trying to put anything on.

Miles: It’s a kind of a relaxed familiarity isn’t it?

Jessica: Yeah, I think that’s what I was trying to put out there. But what’s with the knee? That’s what I’m going to take. I’m going to feel like…

Anthony: Leave it to me. What’s with the knee? Jessica, thank you so much for being on the show. This has been incredible. The time that you’ve given us, I really appreciate it. I guess like we said, if you want to learn more about Jessica because we do have media companies and things that also listen to the podcast. It’s jessicavo.com if you need to find her there. Jessica, thank you so much for being on the show.

Jessica: Thank you. I really appreciate it.

Miles: Thanks, Jessica.

Jessica: It’s so much fun talking with you guys.

Anthony: Alright, well you have a good one and we’ll talk to you later. Bye-bye.

Jessica: Bye.

Anthony: Well, thank you so much Jessica for being on the show and Miles, as always. It is an honor to have had the opportunity to interview you. Again, if you want to find out more about Jessica, you can go to jessicavo.com. She has an awesome website. You can listen to demos as well as see the amazing ‘acclaimed me.’ Thank you, Jessica. As always, have a wonderful, wonderful day. Peace.