Afford Anything - Making Money as a Voice Over Actor with Carrie Olsen

Episode Date: April 18, 2016

#21: Carrie Olsen started podcasting with her husband, then dipped her toe into the voice-over industry and is KILLING IT! For more information, https://affordanything.com/episode-21-making-money-voice-over-actor-with-carrie-olsen/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I think what's funny and awesome, which I want to bring up, is that she learned about voiceover on a podcast, and then now she's on a podcast talking about how she got this job. It's the voiceover pyramid scheme. Welcome to the Paula NJ Money Show, a podcast about growing wealth and financial freedom. Your host Paula Pantz is a world traveler who built financial freedom through real estate investing. She runs the website, affordanything.com. Host Jay Money is a husband and father of two, striving for financial freedom. He hates real estate but loves to blog for a living over at Budgets Are Sexy.com.

Which one resonates with you? Grab a beer and find out as you listen to the Paula and Jay Money Show. So we've got some old friends on the show today, not old as in chronologically old, old as in we've known them for a long time. Yep, Carrie Olson, the better looking half of the duo Derek and Carrie. for all those financial blogger podcasts or people that might have heard of them before. She's got an amazing story and I love this interview that we did with her. So first of all, Derek and Carrie, the couple, have kind of been around the financial blogging

and podcasting scene for a while, which is how we've known of them. But Carrie recently decided to do something amazing. She became a professional full-time voiceover actor. So she makes, I don't want to spill the beans, but I'm going to spill the beans. she makes these days about $10,000 per month recording voiceovers from her home. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. And on the show, we get a cover how she does it, the pros, the cons, how you can get started, insider scoop. We make a new website and business off of the show.

We do, yeah. It was just a lot. Honestly, this is like one of my favorite interviews we've done. I had a lot of fun, at least, on it. Jay came up with his million dollar idea. during this interview. Yeah, yeah. You better pay attention to all of it.

You're going to be amazed and loud. Not really. But you will learn all about getting paid to talk, which is as simple as that. But that's what it is in a nutshell. So, yeah, if you are interested in finding out more about a side hustle that you could start and a side hustle that could potentially become a full-time gig as it did for Carrie. And particularly if you're interested in, you know, Carrie talks about how this is not just a side hustle, but it's that became a full-time gig, but also it's something that she does from home.

She balances it with being a mom. So there's a lot of kind of themes that go into this hustling, location independence, entrepreneurship, and fear. We talk about fear and procrastination and fear of success and how to deal with all of that as well. So there are a lot of very meaty themes that come through it. Yes, meaty. Now let's get to the meaties and the potatoes. All right. Let's do it.

Hey, Carrie. Hi. How are you? I'm doing great. How are you? I am excellent. Jay Money, are you on the line? I am.

I was waiting for you to see how I'm doing. How are you doing, Jay? I'm doing good because I like talking to Carrie and I like talking about making money. So, Carrie, for the sake of the listeners, what is voiceover acting? Basically, anywhere that you hear a voice and sometimes it could be live, sometimes it's live announcing, but most of the time it's recorded voice. So on television, radio commercials, in the grocery store, in toys, you know, you push a button in the toy talks. You know, a voice actor got paid to do that. So voiceover is actually everywhere.

And I think the more that you are thinking about it and aware, the more you start to hear it absolutely everywhere. Is the voices on, let's take like Buzz Lightyear, for example, for some reason, like that guy popped in my head when you're talking. On the movies and then in like a plush toy, is it the same voice and actor? Are they different? It could be. Sometimes they're different. So there are people who do voice matching. There are people who get paid to sound like celebrities.

Oh, wow. Again, for the sake of the listeners, just to keep their interest, let's like skip right over into the meat of it and then we'll go into the details. You make a full-time living as a voice actor? I do. And is it a good living? Yeah, it's good. The range of income that you can make as a voice actor is vast. It's huge.

So there are people who are hobbyists and literally just make little projects on YouTube or whatever because they love it. They just love doing voiceover and maybe they make some money from it. Maybe they don't. There are people who get on casting sites and they actually pay to audition for jobs. And then there are people who are on with giant agencies and make millions. So the range is huge. I do well. I don't make millions yet.

But hopefully that's going to happen someday. Are we allowed to ask you how much you make sense for our money show? You are allowed to ask that. Yay. Wait, wait, tell us how much you make in the last year and then tell us how much you make like, you know, or what like an averages per spot. And I know like that all varies and all that stuff. Just to give like people an idea of like the potential.

Sure. So it totally varies. My first couple jobs I got, the first one I got was a $400, say I made $450 to do a two-minute narration. That was my first voice ever job ever. And two minutes, that was the actual recording, but it takes you like longer than like two minutes to do it, right? Like I know people are like, oh, well, that's easy. I can talk to a two minutes. Right. Yeah. How long does it take to do a two minute spot? Okay. Yeah. So that's hilarious because now it doesn't take me much, it doesn't take me long to do a two minute spot, especially if it's a client that I've worked with before. And, you know, we kind of have a reputation with each other. And I know what to expect from them and they know what to expect from me. That first job, though, I probably recorded it at least 18 times. I obsessed over it because it. It was my first job ever.

And, you know, I was like, it has to be perfect. And they had these weird time restraints. So I gave them like eight different versions. So anyway, it can vary, you know, maybe 30 minutes to an hour, if it's a, if something you're familiar with, depending on the editing or even less. Let's see. So that was my first job. The third job I ever got was a national radio campaign. And that job I made, I think, about $18,000 within three, four, four or five months.

You know, it was a few months. And I still book work off of that job. That's an ongoing campaign. So that was my R-E-I job. And then, let's see, sports company? R-E-I job? Yeah, R-A-I. Oh, R-E-I, the Swaydaler. Your first job was like a huge, like, sports retailer? Wow. Yeah.

That is incredible. Wow. That was actually my third paid voiceover job. Oh, my gosh. That's not typical. Most people don't get national campaigns right away, but for whatever reason, it was in the cards for me. And that's what happened. okay with it. So last year, 2015, as you both know, we traveled the country a long time. So I thought that I'd made a lot more on voiceover, but I actually, through my voiceover work, I only made about

$30,000 because we were... Oh, only $30,000. Yeah. Because we were on the road half the year. And so it was hard to be consistent with that stuff. We were planning on make a bunch of money with our book. This year, 2016, the first quarter has been amazing. I don't know what my exact numbers are, but I know that there have been $10,000 months. Oh, man. Do you think that you're going to make around the 30,000 within the first quarterish already? I think so. I know we were on track for that at least two months in.

That's awesome. Yeah. So what is that? So 30 times far. So you can go, if everything goes fine, like as is, let's say for the end of the year, you'll make $120,000 doing voiceover. Yeah. If everything repeats us off.

That's incredible. And how long, let's go into like your story, like how, like, How long have you been doing this? Like, I've heard of voiceover stuff. I mean, just from, I don't know. I watched that movie. In a world. Yeah, in a world.

Which I don't know how accurate it is. But yeah, tell us how you got started and just, yeah, exactly that. My husband and I, Derek, we podcast and we've been podcasting for years. And that was kind of my first introduction to being behind a microphone. And I really loved it. I had a downtown abbey podcast and Derek and I podcast about marriage and money. Yes, Downton Avenue. Wait, you had a Downton Abbey podcast? Yeah. Like where you would watch the episodes and comment on them?

Oh my gosh, yes. That's really, you know, it's really popular. There's a West Wing one that's coming out now. And they're going back to all the West Wing's and talking about it and bringing actors on the show and everything. Is that like a thing? Oh, it's totally a thing. Are you familiar with the podcast answer man, Cliff Ravenscraft? Yes, he had a lost podcast. Yeah, that's how he got started with Lost. Right. Wow.

And your husband, Derek, was doing this too? Well, Derek, let's see. Derek and I had a Breaking Bad podcast for a while. So, because we actually, we were really into podcasting and we got hired by a company called TV Talk that is no longer around. But they paid us to just do commentary on different television shows. Wait. Wait. Oh.

Watch TV. You're kidding me. Okay. No. Let's get it. Can I ask ballpark? I don't know if you can disclose it. How much did you make for watching television shows and podcasting about it?

I'm in the wrong business. Well, so we made, we made $90 per episode each for hosting. And then Derek also produced podcasts, and he made way more than I did. He made way more than that for producing them than for hosting them. Wow. And so, and did you just have to record or were you also responsible for doing all of the editing and uploading the Libson and all, you know, all of the behind-the-scenes work that goes into a podcast as well? Yeah.

Well, Derek was one of the producing. So he did some of like the editing and that side, but he got paid additional for that. Oh, so you got 90 bucks an episode just a host. Jay, that's better than you and I get. Yeah, I'm quitting, Paula. Actually, I'm going to wait until we get all the tips from Carrie and then I'm going to quit. This show goes offline. Well, like I said, though, that network isn't even around anymore.

So you'd have to find someone else to invest. Okay, so Carrie, so you and Derek were earning money, earning some kind of side hustle money as television podcasters. Yeah, so television podcasting. And then my actual job, my 8 to 5, I was in the e-learning industry. So I was developing online courses and hosting webinars and just really into e-learning. And I got the opportunity to narrate some of my own online courses. So that was my first, like actual, you know, not podcast related, just real voiceover. But even doing that, I didn't realize that there was a whole industry. industry of voiceover. I just thought people who are in e-learning or in car sales kind of just did

their own commercials and did their own stuff. So that's what I was doing. After Derek and I had a baby in 2014. And yeah, Amali, I was looking for ways to work from home more. And so we were experiment, you know, just looking around and hadn't really found anything. But on my commute one day, I was listening to a podcast. You can hear a common theme of podcast throughout all of this. I randomly turned on a show that I'd never heard of before, never listened to. It was called The Go For It Show, hosted by Tyson Webb. I didn't pick this episode because of the content. I just, whatever the latest one was, I turned it on.

It happened to be an interview of a woman named Allison Steele, who's a voice actor. So I'm listening to this on my way to work, and I'm just blown away by, you know, what she does. And he asks her what a day in her life looks like. And she's like, well, I get up and I go to yoga. Then I come home and I check my email for script. that may have come in, then I go into the voiceover booth that's in my house and record scripts for national TV and radio and hang out a little bit, you know, take a break. And she's got two twins that she's a mom to. So she works from home. She's a mom. And I thought, this is incredible.

She said at the end of the episode that she offers coaching. And I called her up. I bought a consultation, started working with her. And literally within weeks had booked a voiceover job. And it was just all, I mean, it was history after that. And that was the 450 dollar voiceover job for the two minute spot. Yep. How much does it cost for a coach? Because I know that you've, I've read your stuff and you've written for Budgets Are Sexy before. And like having a coach and a mentor was like really like instrumental to you.

Like how much does it cost? Like why is that? Like do you recommend other people if they want to get started to do that? Yeah. So the range can vary. I would say on average it's probably about $150 per hour. That's probably what most, around the average of what most coaches in this. industry charge. Although there are some, you could probably find some cheaper. You can definitely

find some more expensive. I think Allison was $150 for the first one-hour consultation. I don't know if her rates have gone up since then, but I definitely recommend having a coach because the industry is totally different. It's just other from anything else I'd ever done. And if you don't know the industry, then it's just going to be a mystery to you and it's going to be really hard to be successful if you just don't know the ends and outs. So little things like equipment, you know, that's an obvious question. What do I need to get started? But also things like, you know, the third job I ever booked was in a recording studio. And I'd never been to a professional recording studio. How do I conduct myself? How do I know the different things to do? So Allison was great about, okay, here's a checklist. Don't touch the microphone. You know, just amazing stuff like that. Because if you really want to piss off an engineer, start messing with the microphone. So she just gave me, you know, a bunch of tips and, you know, just other things in the industry, like the first consultations. was just, I took notes for an hour on just what voiceover is and all the different little things that I need to know about it. Yeah. And I feel like if you get a good one, they give you like,

they tell you how it is and just like, here's what to do. Don't worry about this because you read stuff online, especially anything with making money and fast and, you know, easy and quote, you know, all that stuff. And you never know like if they're trying to sell you something, if they're trying to, like, how long they've been doing it. Whereas like, I feel like coaching one-on-one, like you can get a sense if they're like being real and you click, you know? Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, totally. It's so important to know if you click, like you said, that's really important.

But also to look at the coach's body of work and see if they're actually working. Like, are they any good? Listen to their demos, see who else they've coached and what their, you know, if they have testimonials or what the success rate is of their students. So, yeah, it's really important to pick someone who's reputable, who's actually in the industry. And like you said, it's going to leave out all the fluff. Don't stress about these things that you may have read horror stories about. That's, you know, the chances of that happening are zero.

But here are the things you really need to know to get going in the industry. Right. And I have to say, too, like, for people listening, like, you're not in New York City or L.A. Actually, I don't know where you are right now, but when you started, you definitely weren't. Yeah, where do you live? Well, I live in Kansas City, Missouri. Okay. But the amazing thing about voiceover is that it's mobile.

So I'm actually in Oklahoma and my in-laws for a month right now. Derek and I are both from Oklahoma. and we have like a wedding and my daughter's birthday and our niece's first communion. And we were going to have to make like four trips to Oklahoma in April. And we thought, well, just pack up and stay there for a month. So I'm in a converted closet in one of my in-laws' spare bedrooms right now. And that's where I'm setting up to do my voiceover work. And that's where you're talking to us.

Nice. Yes. Can you walk us through? You've talked about you had an eight to five job. You were attracted to voiceover because it was a way to make good money from home. when did you reach the point where you realized it was okay to quit that eight to five job? For me, it was probably earlier than what is advisable. But because I, you know, I got some jobs really early and I booked a national campaign really early,

Derek and I looked at each other and we were just like, it would be silly not to see what could happen with this. You know, if I'm making this in a matter of months, and I was only auditioning on the weekends and when I got home from work. So our logic was if I could audition all day, as opposed to just, you know, an hour a day, which was what I was basically doing at that point, the income potential would just increase from there. So it was about four months from when I started getting training to when I put in my notice at work. Wow, that's very fast. It was fast. And I think that's an unusual situation. And like I said, I wasn't making millions when that happened. You know, last year was a $30,000 a year. So it's not like, you know, I quit. And then everything was amazing. A lot of people choose to kind of transition out of their jobs slower than that. And, you know, I think that that's fine. But we just took the leap because we're that kind of people. Yeah.

And I got to tell you, like, Derek, I mean, A, he like adores you, like your husband. Like, he, every time I've seen him at FinCon or we've hung out and we've slept in the same room, like on hotels. FinCon is a, for the listeners, FinCon is a financial blogging conference. Yeah. I don't know. He just loves you. And I remember him getting excited. Like, I've never seen someone get excited for someone else.

Like as much as he has. Like you're so into it. And he told me from the beginning, he's like, yeah, like, you wanted to spend, you know, $100 or $150 for a coach. And I'm like, who the hell is this girl? And 150? Like, I'm a budget guy. You know, like, what is that?

But he, like, believed in you and he saw how excited you were. And he supported you. And I thought to me he's like a gentleman. And I think the respect he has and the support is really good. And obviously in any industry you're trying to help, you know, start like that's key. So, oh my gosh. Yeah. It's a good one.

I think so. Yeah. And it's funny too. like we watch TV and he's like, let's pick out all of the times that we hear voiceovers. And they are everywhere. Everything is a voiceover. It's incredible. And we start laughing.

We're like, how much did that person get paid? How much did that person get paid? Oh, Carrie can do so much better for that. Well, yeah, it's funny. I'm talking about hearing it everywhere. So I get auditions every once in a while for like late night talk shows. You know, the bits that they do on those that are maybe they're doing a parody of something or making fun of a product and there's a voiceover in it.

So like you're Jimmy Kimmel's and you're, you know, Jimmy Fallons, all of those shows. I get auditions for those types of things. So it's everywhere. Wow. You know, we should actually get your clips and find a way to splice them in here if we're allowed to or if you're allowed to. Yeah, we can do that, right? Yeah, I think so. I mean, they're broadcast anyway.

Hey, everybody. It's Steve, that guy who does stuff for Paula and Jay. Carrie was nice enough to send us some samples of our work. We're going to insert them right here for you to listen to. This is how evening on the first camping trip of the season sounds. And this is the sound of a mountain biker putting his new gear from RIEI through its paces. The soulful sounds of acoustic guitar can melt the blues away. Isn't it time to upgrade your axe to a sweet Takamini guitar that's looking great and playing even better?

They say beauty's only skin deep, and you're only as beautiful as you feel. At nature's bounty, we know beauty comes from within. Over 100 characters and habit every dream tab. Let's learn, play, create, and explore. Dreamtab. Introducing Swiffer Steam Boost, powered by Bissell. Steam-activated cleaning pads penetrate deep, remove dirt that mops can leave behind.

Don't just clean your floor. Boost it with a new Swiffer Bissle Steam Boost. And your voice, it changes depending on what it is. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, so I have fortunately just a neutral, like Midwestern accent, which is a request a lot. You know, you get a lot of just neutral North American accent. If you happen to have a southern accent or a foreign accent

and you want to be competitive in the broader market of voiceover, it would be a smart thing to either get like an accent reduction coach or take some sort of class, something like that, to work on your accent. I know of people who've done it without a coach before, but I think that's pretty rare, and it's faster if you can find someone to work with you on that. And then, of course, there are the jobs that require accents. So there are things that I've applied for that either it was neutral American accent, but there was a piece of Spanish in it or, hey, we actually need this son in a British accent. And I've gotten jobs like that before, too. So if you have an accent, you can get work, but it's good to be versatile. If you have a broad range and can do multiple things, then that's the best case scenario. But you do get requests sometimes for we want someone who sounds like this. It's best to just work on your neutral North American accent. If that's that's what you're going for, the kind of broader range. But if you can be open to doing other

types of things, if you can do those things well. When you look at a script, how do you determine what words to stress, what words to de-emphasize? Do the people who are commissioning the work instruct you on doing that? Is it largely a matter of your interpretation? And if it is a matter of your interpretation, do you end up having to go back and forth a lot so that your tone can reflect the tone that they're trying to create? I love this question, and it's complicated. So I would say right off the bat, one of the first things you'll learn in a voiceover class or a lesson, if you've got to coach, is to picture your audience. So you've got to analyze the script and decide who it is that you're talking to. And it shouldn't just be a demographic. It should be one particular person. So the point of voiceover is that, you know, it's not like in the old days when you're doing all this radio announcery thing. It's all intimate. You know, it's just me talking to you. You're my best friend. So everything you hear on the radio these days or most of it, radio and TV, it's just like, hey, We're just talking and we're friends. What's so funny about that is it's hard to do.

Once you get a piece of paper in front of you, you start reading like a crazy person. And it just sounds unnatural. So the first thing would be picture a friend, picture who your audience is, and then who are you in that story. So it's a lot of acting. It's a lot of analyzing the script and figuring out who you are in that story, what the messages that you're saying, why you're even talking in the first place, and then who you're talking to. And then there's a method of marking up your script so you can mark it up. And for some people, that's really helpful. What I found through my voiceover class that I teach is that there are some people who it's

really helpful for them to get really micro and get into the details and stress, you know, like mark up every word. This, I need to make sure this, you know, I pull this out and I back off here and I pause here. And then there are other people who are much more big picture macro people. And they just need to know what's the point? What am I talking about? What's my overall goal in this? And then they can just read it and it sounds natural for the most part.

There might be a few tweaks they can make here and there. So I think there are different learning styles. And then as far as interpretation, sometimes the clients get super specific. So they'll have words bolded and, you know, things underlined. And they'll say in the description or the sides, we want it to sound like this, this and this, excited, energetic, upbeat, and curious or whimsical. Sometimes they're just kind of out there adjectives. Yeah, but you just kind of have to figure it out.

And other times they give you nothing. And so it's totally up to you to bring. life to it. And in those cases, it's another place where versatility comes in because you have to be able to think on your feet. If you don't have any direction, maybe you can read it one way in a totally laid back sarcastic way. And then there's another way you could go with it. And it's kind of like earnest and warm. And you have to be able to go there. Specifically in directed sessions, if the client doesn't know what they want. So a directed session is if they're actually either in the room with you or on the phone with you directing you as you're reading, they might. Yeah. So on

the spot, they might say, okay, give me three takes that are different and you just have to go for it. Oh, wait. I want to do that with you right now. Okay. Can you say welcome to the Paula and J. Money Show in three different ways? Okay. Welcome to the Paula and J. Money Show. Welcome to the Paula and J. Money Show. Welcome to the Paula and J. Money Show. Oh, that is funny. Yeah, you were way different on that last one. I like that.

You know what is funny? Do you remember that Seinfeld episode where Kramer's like, these pretzels are making me thirsty? These pretzels. And then you like messes up and I don't remember the rest. But that's like one of my favorite lines for that show. That is awesome. You know what's funny too?

Like the more you talk, the more I'm like, oh, wow, there is a lot more to this. Like, because in the beginning it's like you just get paid to talk, right? But then you go through what it entails and there's so many more layers. I mean, like blogging or podcasting, right? Like, oh, you're just getting on that thing and talking, you know, but there's so much to it. So I'm glad that you're going into it and explaining all the things to think about. And going back to one of your, when you're talking about the different dialects and whatnot, I know with building stuff online, it's good to like kind of focus and like try and own like a certain niche or be really good at one thing at least.

And you can be fine with other things. But like we talk about money, right? that's like our niche. We don't talk about like other stuff that people might not care about. For voiceover, is it good to specialize in one thing or is it kind of better to be brought or does it just depend on, you know, how it goes? Yeah, I think most voice actors kind of have their go-to thing that they get hired for regularly. But for me, like I've, I'm working on a project right now where it's in a British accent. And my British accent isn't great, but this particular client likes it and they keep hiring me for it.

And then I have an urban girl. that I do. And then what's another? Oh, so my college age stuff, I get hired for that quite a bit. And kind of my R-A-I stuff was along that vein, too, which is kind of young and laid back. And then my K-Mart spots are kind of that as well. Yeah, so that's a new campaign that I got in 2016. Good for you. It's Steve, that guy who does stuff for Paula and Jay. Back again, they requested that I insert the K-Mart commercials here. And since it's become very clear that Carrie Olson is much better at doing voiceovers for the show than I am. I better kick it up a notch.

So get ready, folks. Hold on to your hats, strap down your kids. Here we go with a pair of Kmart commercials featuring Carrie Olson V.O. Attention Kmart shoppers. Love rocks when you shop at Kmart for Valentine's Day. Two for $3 peeps is a no-brainer. But how many will it take for Diego to stop looking at his sister's diary? Find out. And look who's peeping. Attention Kmart shoppers. Make this Easter a real blockbuster.

And now, back to your regularly scheduled program with Paula and Jay Money. I want to hear some of these others now. I know it's probably no one because like probably because we're on a podcast too. So it's like the perfect way, you know. Right. Can we hear Urban Girl? Yeah. Yeah. So you don't want to talk to Urban Girl. Oh, that is so cool. That's great. Does it get weird? Like what if I wanted to try and do Urban, right? And I'm a white dude, right? Pretty much like, like someone described me as a valley girl, actually, the other way. So me and Urban don't mix all the way. Like, is there a rule where like I'm not allowed to go that route or I have to be careful or I shouldn't even apply? Is there like that weird kind of racial stuff on this or not because I could be awesome at it and you'd never even see my face if we're just, you know, doing radio stuff. Right. So that's one of the beautiful things about voice. over is that it does not matter at all what you look like or what your background is. And a lot of voice actors, if you look at websites, don't even put their pictures up there because they don't want to

have, they don't want their clients to have any preconceived notions about what they can do based on how they look. On some of my social media presences, I don't have my picture because I've actually been described as a valley girl too. And I'm not a, yeah. Wow. So it's really more about your voice, but you do have to be able to pull it off. You know, if you're, you know, a white guy doing urban stuff and it's awful. Yeah. That's, you know, I mean, it's the same though. If you were black guy doing urban stuff and it was awful.

It wouldn't matter. If it's awful, it's not going to be good. And you're not going to get hired repeatedly for that. Maybe I can just specialize in doing it badly for like shows that need bad, bad ways. That is hilarious. What a great idea. Yeah. You know, there's like bad art.

I saw some museum that's literally like a museum of bad art. And then it makes it awesome because it's just a museum of bad art. And, of course, bad, you know, can depend. Maybe that's a niche that someone could start that's listening to this. Do, like, your horrible accents and then try and get spots landing that. But then, like, what keeps actual good voice actors from just doing it poorly and taking away those jobs? You know, you're getting into details, man. You're making it too complicated.

I just want someone to do it. Jay, I think you have to go where the demand is. You know what? I'm going to make demand. Carrie, can you talk about when you quit your job, I mean, when I hear that you quit your 8 to 5 after four months, the big message that comes across to me is courage, bravery, or a lack of fear. Because when I hear from my readers on Afford Anything.com, when they email me and talk about the things that are preventing them from going from point A to point B, one of the big themes that I keep hearing is it's a lack of confidence, it's a lack of courage, what if I'm not smart enough, what if I'm not good enough, what if I fail? Did you deal with that? And if so, how did you pull through it? You know, I didn't deal with it as much as maybe even as much as I should have.

I was really, really excited about it. And of course, as Jay said, I'm married to a financial blogger and we talk about that a lot. So it's something that Derek and I had been discussing for years about getting me home from work. When Voiceover came along and I loved it and it looked like there was potential for me to make a career out of it, I was gung-ho. And with our background, with our blog and our podcast, I was pretty confident in my marketing ability. So even though all of my work early on had come from auditioning, I felt I had the marketing ability to just get out there and make it happen and all I needed was time. So in my mind, my job, my H-Fi was holding me back from getting out there and making the connections that I knew I needed to make if I wanted to

make a go of it. And when I quit, by the way, I still was on as a consultant at my job. So that was still kind of, There was a thread of, you know, if I needed to go back, I probably could have. And my skills are pretty marketable as far as, you know, e-learning development. So we had things to, well, not necessarily fall back on, but there were other possibilities of me getting rehired if a voiceover was a total bust. But I was totally gung-ho about it. I just, I could feel that it was time and that I could make it happen if I had the time to work at it.

Yeah. That's really good, too, because having the passion and like, and you know there's times or you don't feel like doing something. But like when you're on, like you're on fire, like you just got to run with it and do it as best you can. And if it burns out later or fails, it doesn't matter like you're just, like it's like the perfect timing for you to do it. And passion and you line those two things up like you're doing now.

I mean, it's crazy and you're seeing crazy results from it. Kind of following that thread, did you ever deal with procrastination or any of those issues? Because, you know, again, what I hear from a lot of readers and what I've also dealt with myself is that when you leave the structure of an eight to five or a nine to five environment and all of a sudden your whole day is free for you to do creative but unstructured work, procrastination can come into play. Absolutely. Early on, I would say I was hustling. You know, there's kind of that thrill of when you have to make it or, you know, you're not really there yet and you're chasing this thing.

And that is a really motivating place for me. Early on, I was, I wouldn't say there was a whole lot of that. gung-ho. But when the job started coming in, it was more of a regular thing, and I could kind of tell, okay, if I audition this number of times per week, I can pretty much expect this number of jobs next week. I definitely started to get a feel for some of that. And particularly after I started my course, it's a weird thing, the psychology of being self-employed. And I don't know if it's self-employed in particular, or, you know, it goes into other realms as well. But this like fear of success thing and this am I good enough thing and imposter syndrome thing, you know, why am I even here? So not here like on earth, but like in this industry. But yeah, definitely had some of that

come into play. And Derek is great about walking me through that because it can be debilitating. It's good to have a support system and to focus on why I do what I do is huge too. But I definitely fall prey to a lot of those things even still. Two questions for you. One, have you ever failed? miserably at anything voiceover? There's one job that I know of most of the time, for me, you don't know right off the bat if anything has gone wrong. So you can be in a session. The client says, great, we're done.

And you're done. And sometimes in my mind as a voice actor, I'm like, oh, my gosh, did I do okay? How was that? They didn't really say much. Am I sure this actually went well? Right. And most of the time it does. But I know of at least one time when I did a spot for someone and I went later on to

listen to it. like they had posted it on YouTube and it was someone else's voice. Oh. Wow. They paid for that though? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I got paid for the job, but they just, they were like, uh, we were really feeling that.

So they replaced me. Was that person good? Oh, they were fine. They were just going for a different feel, which is fine. And, you know, it could have been something where they came back to me and said, this was fine, but can you do it a little bit more at beat? Like the person who they got was just way happier and more at beat than the read I did, which is something I could have done, but they didn't give me the opportunity.

They were just kind of like, well, we don't want that. We want something else. And that's fine. And then there was a time when I was so excited. It was my first national television promo. Oh my gosh, so excited. And it was going to be on, let's see, NBC News, NBC News. And, you know, we don't have cable, which is ironic because I should.

be watching television as part of my work. But we go over to a friend's house. Actually, we don't have a TV at all. We go over to Friends House and we're watching NBC News to wait for my thing to come on. We watch for like two or three hours and it never comes on. And the next day I call my agent and I was like, hey, what happened? And they said, oh, they pulled it at the last second. And that's not necessarily anything because of me. Like that's how those stations go. Like a lot of times it's just go, go, go, last second, put something else in, plug, you know, take this thing out. So that was disheartening.

Did they play it at a different time or no, they didn't even, they didn't even do it. No, they actually canceled the whole segment. So the promo that I was promoting was for a segment. The segment itself got pulled, so they pulled the promo. Yeah, yeah. It's funny how all the different places are. It's just, it's mind-bott. I'm sure like everyone listening, like this podcast will go off.

And then you'll hear it like everywhere around you. going back to the procrastination thing. Like I know with writing or podcasting, one way to stop procrastinating is just to actually start writing. Like, even if it's gibberish, you know, or podcasting just start talking and pray something good comes out or delete and keep going. In our show, we have bloopers all the time

because it takes me like 13 times to like say something, you know, correct. If you wanted to be a voice actor and you're stuck, could you, in a sense, just like apply nonstop? Can you just, not apply. Audition? Audition. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can you just nonstop?

Like, is there places to go where you just audition, audition, audition, and play the odds? So at least at the very least, you're auditioning. Yeah, that's a fairly new thing in Voiceover. I'd say over the last, gosh, 15, 20 years. But yeah, there are sites called informally pay-to-play sites, which means you pay a fee, either monthly or annual fee, to make a profile on these sites. and then you get auditions that match your voice profile emailed to you,

and you can audition as many times as you want to as many jobs as there are. And sometimes there are dozens that come in every day. So, yeah, so those sites, the big ones are voices.com, voice 1-2-3.com. There's one, like a German-based one called Badalgo. I believe it's B-O-D-A-L-L-G-O. I've booked work off of it before, but it's not as you won't get as many offers as you do on the bigger ones. There's one called the Voice Realm.

dot com. And then there are sites like Upwork, Fiverr, I have to throw Fiverr out there even though I I don't work on Fiverr and it's, you know, doing a voiceover for $5 is, you know. Yeah, that's different. Could it be a good start for people? Like if I wanted to, let's say I'm going to create bad voices.com, right? I'm going to go with my killer idea and I'm going to practice doing Fiverr or I guess someone would have to hire me.

Let's assume they do. Is that a good way to like? practice at least, even if you don't get stuff? Or is it just lame? Yeah. So in theory, I would say it's lame. But in practice, like, I know people who've done it. I know people who have gotten their start on Fiverr. And, you know, some of them started there and they don't do it anymore. They kind of use it as a springboard because you have to start somewhere. And then there are people who claim to make a living doing voiceovers on Fiverr. So I don't know exactly how that works. I guess you have to upgrade a lot because it takes a long time to edit, to record and edit something

quality takes a long time. I can't imagine getting $5 for it. There are people who claim to do that. So I don't judge anyone else's business model unless they're doing something dishonest. If you want to get a start on Fiverr and you know, you've weighed the pros and cons, you know what you're doing, you know what you're getting into. Go for it. So, yeah, with your badvoices.com. Yeah, I'm going to go register before this podcast goes live. If you want to hire me to do bad boys overwork, $5, the first five people, boom. You know what? Jay, you might be selling yourself short. What if you're an excellent voice actor? Yeah, I don't know.

What do you think for my Valley Girl voice on this podcast? Who does it better shot? Me or Paula? Do I have to answer that? You can answer nicely in both cases. I love Paula's voice. I think it's, yeah, it's smooth and it's nice. And I imagine you probably get that a lot. I do. Thank you. Yeah. And Jay, you have great energy, which is huge. to be able to do things upbeat. So maybe you could find a really cool niche doing that kind of stuff. I have a, what is it, a face for radio or a voice for, a voice for radio? That does make sense.

Thank you for playing along all of our cool games here. I love it. If someone wanted to get started, let's say, you know, anyone listening, they're like, dude, Carrie's awesome. I want to be just like her. I want to make money, right? Like, this is like the dream, right? doing something fun that you care about, that's flexible and getting paid. What are three things

that people can start or what do they need to do to get out the door and see if it's something they're going to enjoy? As we talked to about before, I think having a coach is really, really important, just to have someone to guide you kind of as a mentor, to give you information and to learn from. So I think that's huge. Practice is absolutely huge. And that's another one that people, I think a lot of times, you know, they get these rose-colored glasses on thinking that, oh, voiceover, you know, I've been talking my whole life. I never need to practice talking, right? So they underestimate how much practice it actually takes. So if you find yourself thinking, well, what's the minimum I can do to get in? Your mindset's probably not in the right spot and you're

probably going to quit after a certain number of months. But if it's something that you love and you, you know, you like to express yourself through story and, you know, with your voice, then practicing should sound fun to you. And so you can get, actually just use your iPhone. If you don't have a microphone yet or, you know, smartphone, whatever you've got, your computer's internal mic, and just practice recording yourself. So listen to commercials on TV and on radio, on different channels, different stations, different times of the day to get a feel for what's out there. You can transcribe commercials off of the radio and TV or even magazines and just practice reading them. So practice, you can have others listen to them. And then also you should,

once you've got a coach and you're practicing, you can start auditioning. I would say, talk to your coach first to see, you know, what your goals are. Some people start auditioning because they just want to see what's out there kind of as more practice with actual scripts. And some people want to because they, you know, they're actually ready to start booking work. So depending on what your goals are, you can join one of those sites I mentioned earlier and start auditioning. And I actually have a course that I offer called the voiceover success intensive that is a great kind of combination of those things. So there's the option of group coaching. So we do Skype workout sessions where we get together and you actually

actually get coached in a group, which means you get to hear other people read and you get to read as well and kind of and get feedback. And then there are online modules you can go through and watch that just have their six modules, everything you need to know, and there are things being added to them regularly. So it's a great introduction. And it's, it's kind of that fluff-free, narrowed-down version of, you know, because if you get out there and just start reading, you're going to find all kinds of things. And this is kind of the need-to-know information. Yeah, and that's what I was going to ask you. Like, if I wanted to read, like, or is there a certain podcasts or blogs that you like to read that are good for this stuff that are just like

helps like blogs about it right not trying to sell you anything or anything but that are just like the inside scoop do you follow any or do you know of any yeah so um a great site is voiceover extra they have guest posts from different voice actors with just a great wealth of information they were one of the first ones that i started following when i first got into the industry and just read a ton of stuff there and they also do webinars the webinars the webinars are paid, but I think they're $40 on average, and they are topical. So they had one on narrating audiobooks that I joined. They had one on improv, I believe, at one point. I'm actually a member of a kind of hilarious, an online voice actors improv group. Oh, wow. I didn't even know that

existed. I thought all improv was physical. I didn't either. Yeah, so this is, it's all online, and it's all voice actors. It's pretty interesting, very, very niche. And do you just meet on Skype? or Google Hangout or something to do improv? Wow. Yeah, we meet on Skype. Yeah. Because people all over the world, actually, there's a guy in Australia who meets and actually the lady in Italy. So it's pretty cool. Which is another, you know, again, cool thing about voiceover. You don't have to be anywhere physically most of the time. So there's that. Then one of my favorite podcasts is called voice acting mastery. And it's hosted by a guy named Crispin Freeman, who is mostly an animation guy. but a lot of what he says is also relevant to the commercial side of voiceover as well.

And he just interviews every once in a while, but he's been in the industry for a while and just a wealth of information on the business side of voiceover and on the psychological side and on your branding. It's just really, it's great. What else? There's a book called Voiceover Legal, which is written by a voice actor who's also a lawyer. And yeah, so he goes in depth into, you know, different things about incorporating your business. and different things you might run into as far as like impersonating a celebrity. And yeah, different problems that you can run into with things like that. So that's a great resource too.

Is that one like the parody stuff? Because you see it all the time. Like isn't there that rule if it's an obvious parody, it's okay. But if there's like a great area there or something or are you not sure? Yeah. So I think the rule is if you are pretending to be that person and it's believable. So like you're pretending to be someone and you're claiming something. something like I am Morgan Freeman and I love this product. And then, and it's believable. And maybe

there's something goes wrong with that product or Morgan Freeman doesn't want to be associated with that. You know, then there's an issue. But yeah, I think if it's clearly making fun and parodying something, that's different. But if you're making out to be someone and you're claiming to be that person and then making assertions on their behalf, I think that's where you can run into trouble. Yeah, because I would imagine a lot of, like, it would be so much more expensive to hire Morgan Friedman than someone else that sounds like him, right? So I imagine there's a ton of that crap going on, like maybe not in the big areas, but in the small areas. And I'm sure that's a whole other world that's just your lawyer friend there has a ball with. Absolutely. Well, I know sometimes

I just see ads where the model in the ad looks very much like a celebrity. So I'll kind of do a double take where I'll kind of like look at the ad and I'll assume that it's a given celebrity. And then I'll look a little bit more closely and I'm like, no, no, it's not. That's just a model who looks like that person. But it's not that they're claiming that the celebrity is so and so. Like they've made no claims about the name. This is just what the person looks like. Yeah, that's interesting because can you trademark a look?

You can't help what you look like, right? Right, exactly. If I happen to look just like Jennifer Aniston and then I want to be a model, can I get sued for looking like Jennifer Aniston? Yeah, I bet you could if you try to go as Donald Trump. You know, that guy's getting all on you no matter what you did. Oh, gosh. That's a whole under. Let's see if you bring up his name, that's when you get a lot of media and stuff if he goes after you.

So maybe he'll go after us and blow us up in a good way. Probably, right? Yeah, for sure. Well, man, this is like I seriously like, I'm literally when we get off of this, I'm going to go and try and do something voiceover stuff. Like, I'm going to practice. Okay. I love this. That is so funny.

I hope that it takes off. I want to hear some examples of what you would do. The thing is, like, with good voiceover, you can do a range of things. But with bad voiceover, I feel like it really opens up. You could interpret things so many different ways. Like, how would you even choose how you would decide to do it poorly? I know. I guess it's maybe like the parody thing.

You have to go, like, over the top where it sounds like you're being not good on purpose or something? Right. I don't know. I think there's something there, though. You know, I once actually, confession time, I once actually bought a, like, voiceover type of class on Udeme. What? I did. Yeah. Because, and not that I wanted to learn how to be a voice actor, it's because I'm narrating. So two things. Number one is I'm creating a real estate course for the readers of afford anything.com, which means that I'm typing out a script and then narrating each of those scripts. So I wanted to learn how to be better at narrating my own scripts, my own real estate information. And then, you know, some people have suggested that I also read my blog posts out loud

and present that in like an audio blog format, which is one of those things that's kind of down the pipeline maybe in late 2016 or early 2017. So again, I just wanted to learn how to be better at narrating the things that I write. Yeah, that's interesting. So I bought this course and, you know, kind of skipped over all of the parts of it that deal with the industry because I don't care about that. I have one very specific goal in mind. And I got to the point where the part where they talk about how to actually read something

that's written. And they had all of these exercises where they would present sentences and stress different words of it and ask us to read it out loud to ourselves because it's an at-home course. They'd ask us to read it out loud in all of these different ways. And I was just thinking about it too hard and trying to. hard and I sounded so unnatural. Will was like, man, you sound like you speak as a second language, like writing in your primary language.

This talking thing is just something I learned how to do. Exactly. This talking thing is just something. Yeah, it was about like that. You can be on the bad voices.com. But I love that you said that. Isn't it funny how, like, we're talking totally naturally right now, but you put a piece of paper in front of somebody and a microphone. And for some reason, there's some, like a weird switch that goes off in our head and we can no longer sound conversational.

Yeah, exactly. I just feel like I need to talk like this all of a sudden. And, Paula, you know there's actually a podcaster now that does exactly that. Like, he's found, like, he took one of my articles, blonde on a budgets article. He's taken, like, a lot of these sites that are out there, all from different niches. And he's reading him out loud to get over his fear of, like, talking and like, I forget what the email said, but it was like, it helped him. But then also you can learn from him just talking. And so it's interesting to hear your words come back, you know, especially me.

Like I put like, ha ha, and I bold and I have smiley faces, right? And so it's interesting to hear someone repeat it, especially someone that's not you. And people like it. People have signed up to my son and said, yeah, I heard your stuff. talked about out loud and people like it. So I think you should, I think you should do it. Try it. Do one or two of them. That sounds like a good idea. So I go for it. Yes. All right, Ms. Carrie. Well, thank you so much. Yeah, thank you so much. Where can people find you if they want to get to know you or learn more about you? Yeah, so you can go to Carrie Olson v.o.com. So I'm going to spell all of

that out because there's a million ways to spell carry and two ways to spell Olson. So it's C-A-R-R-R-R-I-E-O-S-E-N-V-O-O-S-E-O-S-N-V-O as in voiceover. And I talked about some of the places where I booked work and the pay-to-play sites and things like that. I actually made a cheat sheet of all of those places that I've booked work and kind of my thoughts on them. And if you want those, you can text V-O as in voiceover, just said two letters, V-O to 3-1-3-13-1, and I will email you that cheat sheet. Say that text again that you send it into. It's 3131313. 3131.

3131. Wow, that's a mouthful. That's like a warm-up exercise, like red, leather, yellow, leather. 3131. And on your site, like you've talked, like you do, so you do coaching with multiple people on Skype, do you do one-on-one and do you have courses? Like if someone that likes your personality here and they want to like book carry, how can they do that?

Yeah. So I do my voiceover success intensive class is the online class. And then you also get routed into my, there's a private Facebook group that we have so you can interact with me there. And I do monthly Q&As there, live Q&A's. So if you wanted to chat with me, that's a way that you could do it. And then on our group coaching calls, I'm there. I don't do one on one. For one on one, I refer them to my coach, Alison Steele. What I can do, this is, I don't know if we want to list any more links, but at Carrie Olson, VO.com, I can put. information there. Perfect. For your listeners. Yeah. I like that. Okay, good. So I'll put my cheat sheet and some other stuff that we've talked about at Carrie Olson, VO.com slash money. Perfect.

That sounds great. All right. Thank you so much. Have a good day over there. Thanks for talking with us. You too. Thanks a lot. Thanks.

Hey, guys. Thanks so much for listening to our show. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe and leave us a review. Thank you. I literally just bought Bad Voices.com. Did you really? Yeah.