The VoiceOver Hustle: Recent Episodes
Steve O'Brien
Voice acting is difficult, marketing your voice over career is REALLY difficult. Each week join Steve O’Brien, 20 + year voice actor veteran, as he talks with industry and business pros who give advice on “cracking the marketing code” to give your voice over career the boost you need.
Matt Surges' credits include major brand commercials, animated TV shows to numerous indie video games, audio dramas, and podcasts.
Most recently, he can be heard as Aree in Star Wars Young Jedi Adventures on Disney+,
and as Chet in Boss Baby: Back in Business on Netflix.
As a theatrical actor, his credits include numerous regional productions in both California and New York. Most notably, playing the role of Neil Kellerman in the US National Tour of Dirty Dancing.
www.vospark.com
Nadia Marshall is a full-time voice actor, opera soprano, and lead generation expert.
She has worked with clients like Square, Lexus, Pandora Jewelry, LinkedIn, Deloitte, and others.
She is also the creator of the course Lead Generation Blueprint.
nadia@voicesbynadia.com
www.voicesbynadia.com
Twitter handle @voicesbynadia
Thomas Helfrich is the CEO, and Founder of instantlyrelevant.com.
He has over 20 years of experience in consulting, marketing,
and entrepreneurial executive coaching.
He has mentored hundreds of startup founders worldwide,
spreading his magic touch.
Today he's talking about how clients can find you!
https://www.instantlyrelevant.com/
(314) 954- 6900
Tom Aglio is a voice actor based out of NY
and is best known as the voice of AT&T Fiber.
He also voices for brands like WatchMojo, McDonald's, and iHeart Media
just to name a few.
He’s a direct marketing and performance coach at Abacus Entertainment in NY.
tomaglio.com
thevoiceoverhustle.com
steveobrienvo.com
Jeff Williams has been in VO since the Spring of 2020.
From the time he made his first dollar in VO to one year later, he was able to make $100k.
Now he and Andy Field are creating a course for beginning VO actors.
He talks about his road to success in a short amount of time.
jeffwilliamsvo@gmail.com
https://www.jeffwilliamsvoice.com
https://www.thevoiceoverhustle.com
Steve@steveobrienvo.com
https://www.steveobrienvo.com
Portia Scott is the Director of Voiceover for Coast-to-Coast Talent Group –
and is the only African American woman in Hollywood heading a major department
in the same discipline. Most recently, she has secured talent roles in Academy Award® winning animations: “Toy Story 4”, “Abominable”, “Into The SpiderVerse”, “Shazam”,
“Pixar’s “Cars 3”, “Inside Out” and the Golden Globe-winning “Rise of the Guardians”.
In the gaming industry, she has casted roles for Blindlight, Blizzard, EA Sports, Bio Ware, Lucas Arts, Epic Games, Naughty Dog, and Ubisoft.
DM Portia on Instagram @ctcvo to get in contact with her.
Matt Cowlrick voice over career spans over 20 countries,
utilizing multiple accents and through a variety of genres.
He's been the commercial brand voice for major companies like TD Bank, BabyBel,
Scrubbing Bubbles, and VistaPrint,
He’s voiced promo campaigns on AMC and Paramount+
and played lead and recurring characters on series like My Little Pony,
Marvel Superheroes, and the Littlest Pet Shop.
Plus, he’s an expert at direct marketing managed through a CRM.
Dan Lenard has specialized in E-learning, corporate,
and documentary narration for the last 20 years
He’s a recognized industry expert and consultant of home studio setups & problem-solving,
specifically in helping voice actors new to the industry,
or seasoned pros, with little or no self-recording experience.
He is also Co-Host of the weekly live webcast
Voice Over Body Shop with George Whitham.
And a Founding Board Member and President of the World Voices Organization.
dan@danlenard.com
homevoiceoverstudio.com
danlenard.com
www.voiceoverbodyshop.com
world-voices.org
Mel McMahon-Stone is an entrepreneur, broadcaster, voice actor,
and specializes in promoting local businesses.
She’s the founder of Indiana Owned,
a website that promotes local businesses in the Hoosier state.
Marc Cashman is currently represented by numerous talent agencies around the country.
In addition to his production schedule, he’s taught undergraduate and graduate students at USC, UCLA, and California Institute of the Arts, and instructs voice-acting at all levels.
He also coaches voice actors worldwide, produces V-O demos,
and pens online columns for Backstage.
marc@cashmancommercials.com
https://cashmancommercials.com/
Robert Marshall is Sound Designer | Mixer | audio engineer
who has mainly worked in audio post for advertising.
His work includes clients such as Microsoft, Kelloggs, Nintendo,
as well as Super Bowl spots for Budweiser.
For 20 years he has worked for various post houses in Chicago
until he started SUM1 Audio Post.
In 2005, he was one of the original founders of Source Elements,
who makes Source-Connect, which continues to refine remote post-production workflows.
source-elements.com
support@source-elements.com
He’s a motivational keynote speaker and veteran voice-over artist
who has given life to countless animated characters in movies, commercials, and TV shows, including The Jetsons television series.
As a broadcaster, he has entertained on some of America's biggest and best radio stations
in Los Angeles and San Antonio. He was inducted into the Texas Radio Hall of Fame and included in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, as one of the Top 100 Radio Personalities of All-Time.
www.voiceoverhustle.com
www.steveobrienvo.com
www.sonnymelendrez.com
Crystal Washington works with organizations that want to leverage technology
to increase profits and productivity!
As a technology strategist and certified futurist,
Crystal takes complex social media, app,
and web topics and makes them easy to understand and accessible for everyday people.
Crystal’s clients comprise Fortune 500 companies including Google, Microsoft, and GE.
As one of Forbes’ 50 Leading Female Futurists,
she appears weekly on season two of the Emmy nominated show, Life 2.0.
She is regularly called-on by major television networks as a tech expert.
And she’s is the author of the books One Tech Action and The Social Media Why.
crystalwashington.com
Carl Bishop is a Voice Actor who has appeared on national commercial campaigns:
for Comcast Xfinity, Gillette, Head and Shoulders, Bayer, and more.
He's also works on the 'other side of the glass'
as a Sound Designer and Audio Post Mixer creating audio branding for ABC News,
and mixing commercials, and film.
He is a loyal husband and once (and future) cat dad.
Because life is a series of cats.
@ufoundcarlbishop Instagram
@thecarlbishop Twitter
www.thecarlbishop.com
www.thevoiceoverhustle.com
Hugh P. Klitzke is a voiceover coach, director, and producer.
He teaches the conversational read, self-direction, the commercial read,
and directs auditions.
For nearly fifteen years he was the Voiceover Studio Manager at Buchwald, New York.
To date, he has directed over 125,000 auditions and counting.
Along with private coaching and teaching classes, he is writing two books.
One compiles the ideas he explored in his blog, the other is on the conversational read.
Sabra May is a film and screen actor, voiceover artist, standup comedian, and storyteller. She can most recently be heard on Cyberpunk 2077 and in The Bridgewater Podcast.
@sabramay on Instagram
https://sabramay.com/
Write your intro for the show and for the show notes: short bio, 2 or3 of your many accomplishments.: Mike Lenz is a full-time SAG-AFTRA professional audiobook narrator, voice talent, actor, and podcast producer. Mike is an accomplished audiobook narrator with more than 145 titles narrated to date. With titles in genres ranging from Fiction, Entertainment, Science, and Children’s to Christian, Business, Self-Help and History, Mike loves bringing non-fiction and fiction stories to life with his engaging, confident, and trustworthy voice. Mike narrates for many of the major publishers including Tantor, Blackstone, Highbridge, Gildan, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, Harper Collins, and many others. As a voice actor for more than 15 years Mike has worked with clients such as Xerox, Hershey, Dell, Microsoft, Paychex, Sotheby's, Clorox, Bayer, Coca-Cola, Novartis, and many more on commercials, eLearning projects, real estate videos, corporate and web-based videos, and brand imaging. Mike has also appeared in regional and national television commercials as an on-camera talent. Mike is a Voice Arts Award-nominated podcast producer, and the creator of Podcast Snap, a podcast consulting service, He has worked with The Wonderful Company, Xerox, and Brother Printers, as well as others, helping his clients with every step of their podcast creation and production. Mike is also the author of ‘Paid to Talk - A Journey Into Voice Acting’ and is a frequent speaker at Learning and Voice Over conferences. He currently lives in Saratoga Springs, NY with his wife and 4 children.
Jason Acquisto has been a voice over actor for over 25 years, he's a long-time radio nerd, and a veteran of media sales and marketing agency client service. Currently, he's the Marketing Manager for McFarling Foods, Indianapolis. Family man, Cardinals fan.
Rich Such has worked both sides of the mic, as a VO talent and as a studio engineer.
After graduating from Ball State University Rick went to work for Caboose Productions where he met his business partner Brice Bowman. Together Rick and Brice would open Earshot Audio-Post. With Rick's many years in the business, he imparts tons of practical advice for voice actors; no matter their experience. The Voice Over Hustle is proud to welcome Rick Such to the show!
Entrepreneurship can be something that you feel compelled to do.
But even, solopreneurs need help sometimes.
Our guest today has hired virtual assistants, is a podcast host on The Nice Guys on Business … I voice their intros, commercials, and foolish lines,
The Nice Guys on Business has over 1,200 episodes—and almost 4 million downloads.
He’s also the co-founder of Turnkey Podcasts,
in fact, they are one of the reasons I’m a podcaster,
He’s also a voice talent, and has still kept his day job!
Strickland Bonner welcome to The Voice Over Hustle!
Liz Atherton is a veteran of the voice over talent business.
The founder of The Atherton Group Talent Agency,
one of the most successful boutique agencies in the business
and sold her interests 3 years ago to focus on CastVoices,
a premier online tool and job opportunity platform that just launched.
She is most proud of her 4 grown children and her love of people.
Quite possibly the nicest person in voice over.
Ann Richardson has been narrating since 2008. She has won 3 Earphones awards, narrates for most of the "big" publishers, as well as many independent pubs and individual authors. She teaches intro to audiobooks at Voice One academy in San Francisco, and on the new Narrator.life site with a stellar faculty of instructors.
Emmett Andrew is a professional audio tech, radio pro for over 12 years. Working for companies like: Emmis Communications, Sweetwater, and Learfield Sports. He consults on audio and studio and an Author of the book VO Studio Companion.
What is your marketing specialty or what would you like to discuss. And please, be specific.(e.g. branding, email marketing ... etc.): Gear!
Lee Hargitt has been a wealth manager with Thurston Springer in Indianapolis, Indiana since 2000. Lee is an Investment Advisor Representative and holds Life, Health, and Long-term care insurance licenses. Investment advisory services offered through Thurston Springer Advisors.
www.thurstonspringer.com
Priscilla McKinney is the CEO and Momma Bird at Little Bird Marketing.
They are the home of cage-free thinking and the creators of SOAR -
a digital content marketing program for predictable lead generation.
It stands for: STRATEGIC, ORGANIZED, ACCOUNTABLE and REPEATABLE.
She is also the host of Ponderings from the Perch, —
the Little Bird Marketing company podcast.
She also consults on digital transformation and they offer courses —
akin to couch potato to 5K, but for LinkedIn.
www.littlebirdmarketing.com
priscilla@littlebirdmarketing.com
https://blog.littlebirdmarketing.com/
https://podcast.littlebirdmarketing.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/priscillamckinney/
Bobby is a proud SAG/AFTRA member working as a VO talent most recently for campaigns including Nintendo, CDW, Cox Communications, and the Food and Drug Administration. He’s represented by Grossman Jack in Chicago. He is also the podcast producer for Business Made Simple. Each week the show reaches 150,000 business professionals and entrepreneurs with over 16 million lifetime downloads. He lives in Nashville with his wife, two children, and overwhelming Star Wars collection. Instagram: @officialbobbyrichards
Facebook.com/MarketingWithTim
YouTube.com/MarketingWithTim
www.MarketingWithTim.com
tim@marketingwithtim.com
Tracy Lindley is an expert at making connections and finding work on LinkedIn, without using their premium services. Tracy is the mother of four kids, 11 years old and younger, she lives in the Kansas City area. She entered the VO industry in 2014 and quickly grew to a 6-figure business by the end of 2018. She’s the voice of Amazon Pharmacy & Realtor.com and has had the pleasure of working regularly with clients like Google, Microsoft, Whole Foods, Walmart, and Sherwin-Williams.
Marc Preston has spent the last thirty years working as a professional voiceover talent. He’s voiced countless projects on his journey, from national advertising campaigns, to network promos and everything in between. Beyond his work on the mic, he’s spent a fair amount of time on-camera. From the time he was seven years old, he’s appeared in a variety of film and television projects. He also spent time as a major market radio talent, as well as hosted his own national syndicated show on the ABC Radio Networks. For the past two decades, Marc has taken this bank of experience and shared it with hundreds of voiceover students from around the world. As a voiceover coach and consultant, he’s worked with a variety of talented performers. He’s been sought out by numerous films and television actors, and been instrumental in helping them to effectively bridge their acting skillset to voiceover. Marc embraces every opportunity to “pay it forward” and be of service to talent at every level of experience. He founded and oversees one of the largest social media portals in the world for voiceover professionals. “The VoiceOver Community” (and Facebook group of the same name) provides a daily resource for thousands of talent to connect, collaborate, learn and enjoy a sense of community with fellow voiceover professionals. In addition to his own efforts, Marc has also been honored with the opportunity to collaborate with the Society of Voice Arts and Sciences as a Juror for the Voice Arts Awards. Marc believes in always being a “working student.” Learning and evolving as a professional talent is important. Equally important to Marc, is the opportunity to mentor, contribute and help raise the bar for an industry that has given him so much over the past three decades.
Our guest today hires foreign talent, which in this case is American voice actors. He oversees 40 people at the audio department at Spread Films in Traunstein, Germany Michael Fürmann.
Mary Killelea is a driven and successful woman with 20+ years of marketing experience. She spent 16 years as a successful entrepreneur helping small businesses with web design and SEO and more recently has held a variety of marketing strategy roles for Intel. She is always perusing her passions and these days you’ll find her working on her 2bBolder podcast, A podcast she recently created that features successful women sharing career insights for the next generation of women in business and tech.
Morning show host and program director at B105.7 in Indianapolis and licensed therapist for couples and individuals on Indy's south side. Sean Copeland shares insights into how you can deal with the stresses of working alone, the rejection of losing auditions, and working alone.
MARC CASHMAN is one of the few people in the commercial production business on “both sides of the glass”—as an award-winning Radio and TV commercial producer, as well as a working voice actor. Voice President of Cashman Commercials, Marc creates and produces music and copy advertising for Radio, TV, and Internet, and has won over 150 advertising awards, including the prestigious CLIO, on behalf of hundreds of ad agencies and clients across the country. Voted one of the “Best Voices of the Year” by AudioFile Magazine three times—and an Audie winner—Marc is a veteran voice actor with over 40 years of studio experience in Radio, TV and Internet commercials, foreign film dubbing, animated series, video games, and narrating over 200 audiobooks. Author of one of the best-selling books on voice acting, “V-Oh! Tips, Tricks, Tools and Techniques to Start and Sustain Your Voiceover Career,” Marc is currently represented by numerous talent agencies around the country. In addition to his production schedule, Marc has taught undergraduate and graduate students at USC, UCLA, and California Institute of the Arts, and instructs voice-acting of all levels through his classes through The Cashman Cache of Voice-Acting Techniques in Los Angeles, CA. He also coaches voice actors worldwide, produces V-O demos, and pens online columns for Backstage. Marc is also a guest speaker at Advertising Clubs and Broadcasters Associations throughout the U.S. and other countries and has been a Keynote Speaker or Master Class instructor at VOICE 2008, 2010. 2012 and 2014; VO Atlanta 2013, VO Mastery 2017, and WOVoCON 2018 and 2019. He’s been interviewed in dozens of newspapers, magazines, radio, TV, and Internet podcasts.
Dani States has been a full-time voice actor since 2014. With nearly 20 years of corporate marketing experience, Dani dove into voice over with little training or knowledge of the voiceover industry. But, she did know “business” and quickly began to apply her business acumen (along with LOTS of training) to her budding voice over career. Fast forward to 2021, Dani has built a robust voice over business, regularly voicing campaigns on Pandora and Spotify, as well as commercial and corporate projects for clients like Robinhood Investing, Hills Bros Coffee, Frigidaire, WebMD, National Safety Council, Intel, AbbVie, Publix, and many others.
In addition to her voiceover career, Dani is the founder of VOICEOVERVIEW, a business tracking, and management system built specifically for voice actors. She applied her business experience to create a site that helps voice actors set goals, track those goals, and build their business.
Ben Ericsen's story is a case of an internship paying off in a big way.
While studying for his Bachelor of Science degree in telecommunications
from Ball State University, Ben spent the summer of 2004 interning at Earshot Audiopost.
During the summer of 2006, Ben was hired full-time,
and since then he has had the pleasure of recording, sound designing,
and mixing hundreds of projects for radio, television, film, video games,
and other digital media.
Emmett Andrew is a professional audio tech, radio pro for over 12 years. Working for companies like: Emmis Communications, Sweetwater, and Learfield Sports. He consults on audio and studio and an Author of the book VO Studio Companion.
Greg McGuik is producer and engineer of voice over projects, musician, and composer. He’s also a bit obsessed with keyboards … he got his first synthesizer in 1979 before he got his first car. As a musician, he plays with The Woomblies, Jenny DeVoe …. and has opened for Yes, Kansas, Little Feat, Big Head Todd & the Monsters, and others. He’s been a full time, commissioned composer for over 20 years, writing for clients like Rolls-Royce, RCA, Purdue University, the Indiana Pacers, DISH Network, the Hoosier Lottery, and others. Honing his craft as a Music Director, writing, producing, and composing, at Bennett Innovations for many years, in 2016 he branched out on his own … and works at his custom build studio with his two assistants (dogs): Suki and Izzy.
David Wood has been a successful broadcast executive, audiobook narrator, the voice of the Age of Ideas podcast, and certified dog trainer. These varied career paths have put him in the position of hiring talent and being the hired talent. His experience in hiring has given him great insight into getting hired. He says his dog training business taught him how to get more repeat business in voice over.
Katy Smith is an account manager with KM&A, a marketing agency based in Indianapolis & Tampa. From the accounts she leads to the causes she supports; Katy is dedicated to doing good things for good people. With passion, persistence, and a lot of cherry tomatoes to snack on (yeah, you heard that right) – she leverages her expertise to transform regional and national brands alike.
Lou Diamond is a speaker, consultant, best-selling author, and podcaster... He is also CEO of THRIVE, a company focused on helping brands become even more amazing through the power of connecting. When he isn’t speaking or working on his top-rated Thrive LOUD podcast, he is watching his kids grow up too fast, obsessing over how bad his sports teams are, listening to country music…and playing some ‘not-so-great’ golf. Lou Diamond lives in New York City, New York with his family
Doug Sandler is an entrepreneur and podcast industry leader. His book, Nice Guys Finish First is a #1 ranked Amazon Best Seller. As a podcast host of The Nice Guys on Business, Doug has interviewed, Gary V, Arianna Huffington, John C. Maxwell, and dozens of celebs. Doug is a nationally recognized speaker, writer, and founder of TurnKey Podcast Productions, providing podcast production, editing, and launch services. His Nice Guys podcast, with over 1,000 episodes has been downloaded 3.5 million times, in more than 175 countries.
Kevin Robinson is a passionate award-winning programmer, consultant and coach - with multi-format success all over the country.
Kevin specializes in strategic radio cluster branding alignment,
building lean-forward tactics, focused marketing,
and deeply experienced with legacy and entry-level talent coaching.
Known as a trusted talent coach, Kevin is the only personality mentor who’s coached three different morning shows on three different stations in the same major market to the #1 position.
Kevin is an Indiana native - living near Zionsville, Indiana with his wife of 35 years, Monica. Kevin founded Robinson Media and a partner with Audience Development Group.