The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Grant Johnson of Grant Johnson Voice Over

Episode Date: November 3, 2023

Grant Johnson of Grant Johnson Voice Over Grantjohnsonvo.com Show Notes About The Guest(s): Grant Johnson is a voiceover actor who helps independent creators bring their stories to life through his voice. With over 10,000 projects under his belt, Grant has lent his voice to commercials, animations, and more. He is passionate about storytelling and uses his voice to captivate audiences and make stories come alive. Summary: Grant Johnson, a voiceover actor, joins Chris Voss on The Chris Voss Show to discuss the importance of storytelling and how to bring stories to life. Grant shares his journey into voiceover acting and the various aspects of the industry. He explains the role of AI in voiceover and the ethical dilemmas it presents. Grant also provides insights into sound design and using voice to enhance visuals. He emphasizes the importance of acting skills in voiceover and offers tips for improving communication and storytelling in personal and professional life. Key Takeaways: Voiceover actors bring stories to life through their voices, lending their talents to various mediums such as commercials, animations, and audio books. AI in voiceover presents ethical dilemmas related to compensation, control, transparency, and consent. Sound design involves adding layers to voiceover, including sound effects and modifying sound waves to create different environments. Acting skills are crucial in voiceover, as they help convey emotions, inflection, and depth to the story. Effective communication and storytelling are essential in personal and professional life, allowing individuals to connect, inspire, and educate others. Quotes: "Not everybody can read a script. Not everybody can act." - Grant Johnson "Storytelling is about learning about yourself, learning about others, and learning about the world around you." - Grant Johnson Biography Grant Johnson is a voice actor helping independent creators bring their stories to life by lending his voice to 10,000 projects from commercials to animation.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com.

TheCrisVossShow.com. There you go, folks. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the show. I just do it different every time. So there you go. You've got the opera later. We were joking before the show about how our current guest we have coming on has got a little puppet or a Muppet.

He was talking about his fascination with the Muppets. And we've joked that we should do the whole show in opera singing, where everybody, myself and the guests, have to do the whole show singing operatically. Is that even a word? But now I've got a new idea. We should have guests come on where we

talk with puppets. Me as a host, I ask questions with a puppet, and then the guest has to answer a puppet. It would be like Sesame Street, only grown-up style, which I don't know if it's very grown-up. Avenue Q, I think, is the closest to that. There you go. There you go.

Some say I'm a puppet, and so that may explain a few things, especially when my bum hurts. Anyway, we have an amazing gentleman on the show with us today. And as always, we're going to be talking about some amazing things that are going to open your minds, brighten your world, and make things better. Because if you've watched the news lately, it's not that great. So the beautiful part is we bring you great. We give you that special feeling of all the wonderful stuff that's out there. We're going to talk about storytelling, which is important for personal life and business. So you don't bore your family and friends like you do now. Folks, you out there, you know who you are. If you don't think you're the boring one,

it's probably you. And how to bring your story to life. These are important for business and life for telling brand stories as well. And maybe for how to entertain people and be better socially and all that stuff. And we're going to be talking to a wonderful gentleman about that. But before we get to him, we want to guilt and shame you as always twist the knife and suggest that you refer the show to your family, friends, and relatives. Call them up right now. Grab their phone and just download the Chris Foss show onto it. Subscribe them on the iTunes there. Give us a five-star review. Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrisvoss, youtube.com, 4chesschrisvoss,

linkedin.com, 4chesschrisvoss, and chrisvoss1 on the tickety-tockety channels there where those kids do all the weird dancing and stuff, and I still don't understand it. He is an amazing gentleman. Grant Johnson joins us on the show with us today. He's a guy who does voiceover or a voice actor, as they like to call it in the official business world. He is a voiceover actor helping independent creators bring their stories to life by lending his voice to 10,000 projects from commercials to animation. And we're going to learn how he does it and why he does it and how to be better at using our voices maybe and telling our stories as well.

Welcome to the show, Grant. How are you? Thanks, Chris. Glad to be here. It's wonderful to have you as well. And it sounds like you're coming from your set there. I noticed you've got some soundproofing on the walls there and all that sort of good stuff. Yeah. your set there i noticed you've got some soundproofing on the walls there and all that sort of good stuff yeah yeah i've got a little bit more treatment than what i would have had it uh basically earlier on in my career because that's one thing that you you kind of have to learn

yourself is you know how sound treatment works and it's not just oh i need to have something that can record me yeah it's we see that a lot podcast and podcasting everyone's like yeah i bought a five dollar mic from the uh dollar store and uh or i'm using my phone and uh i'll just publish this shit and and then they wonder why no one listens to their podcast i've listened to some podcasts some people like hey listen to this podcast i was on chris and i'm like have you heard the audio on that it's unlistenable j. It's like running screech things across my chalkboard. So Grant, give us your dot coms. Where can people find you on the interwebs?

Sure. So my website is grantjohnsonvo, like in voiceover.com. And so people can hire you for voiceover. Give us a 30,000 overview of all the different aspects of uh what you do yeah voiceover it's a it's a wide variety of things that you can get into nowadays just because there's so many different places that people are going to be advertising and and making content on so any any place that you've ever heard anybody talk for the most part you could find a working voice over

so tv radio over the top which is basically the streaming services like netflix and and hulu those kind of things um streaming radio getting work in audiobooks um anytime you call a business and you get like a phone tree the ivr system that, that's going to be a voiceover. All sorts of things like that. Whenever you're watching somebody like who has a webinar or an e-learning module or all of that kind of stuff, that's all voiceover. Audiobooks, animated film, all voiceover. It's quite the business. In fact, animation has kind of really saved a lot of Hollywood careers and stuff.

The animation of TV, I mean, some of those voiceover actors for some of those TV shows, like I don't ever watch them, but you know, the animated ones. Oh yeah, like Mila Kunis. She gets paid like, yeah, a quarter million dollars an episode. Yeah.

And they've been doing it for like 20 years. I think animation TV almost has a longer run than the seven-year run of most sitcoms so there you go um so people can reach out to you they can hire you say hey i want to do this thing for you i guess if i ever get sick we could just hire you to do the voiceover for the show pretend to be me and we'll just play like a video in the background of me talking and people like why doesn't his voice and mouth sync yeah that doesn't match yeah which is pretty much every other show anyway really when it comes down to yeah that's a good question i'll wing it first is ai changing your business and helping line that up with voices and mouse and everything else? Yeah.

So the thing about AI is that right now there's a lot of ethical dilemmas on the side of the professionals, the people who've been in this game the longest. And really it boils down to kind of four or five things. I can't remember exactly. I'll list them off and then we'll figure out which one it is. But basically, the things that they're potentially wrong with using AI currently include the likes

of compensation, control, transparency. There's one other one. Copyright? No. I'll look it up because it's the NAVA transparency. There's one other one. Um, and these are all on copyright. Um, no, it I'll,

I'll look it up because it's the NAVA. Um, I know there's a big strike that was going on with all this stuff. Um, over AI in Hollywood where they were concerned about their images being used and being paid for it. And I guess kind of one of the deals was, uh, the Hollywood studios are starting to do a thing where they were starting to being used and being paid for it and i guess kind of one of the deals was uh the hollywood studios

are starting to do a thing where they were starting to you know keep these files like with with han solo i guess the the studios back i think it happened with over the crow when he died and they needed to be able to finish the film and so what they've started doing is creating these huge libraries of all of the facial movements and body movements of of actors right so they can just you know they they recreated who was the gal from star wars and she was in like two or three star wars films afterwards yeah so that's that's actually the one that I forgot, it looks like. Oh, yeah. So consent. Carry? Consent, yeah. You need to be able to consent to the work that's being done. So there's some of these projects where people, they'll do what you just explained.

They'll take a 3D rendering of the actor, and they'll record as much as they need to in order to get the visual side and then there's ai nowadays that if you have a three second clip of somebody talking you can basically mimic their entire range of their voice wow so you need to be able to consent to what kind of work is being done and that also includes things like nsfw work you know stuff that's not safe for kids yeah you need to get compensated for the work you do. You need to have some level of control, which again kind of ties in with the consent piece, and then transparency, making sure that all of the companies that are using AI to generate content

are letting people know how they're arriving at it and whose voices are getting used in the composition and all of that stuff. There you go. And if you ever see the Chris Voss show on, you know, my head on a swivel on some OnlyFans channel, it's not me. Wing, wing. No, I'm joking. People, if you Google me and OnlyFans, like, there's something wrong with you.

Like, seriously. No one wants to see that. So, Grant, tell us how you uh got into voiceover so it's kind of your story and run through in life and what's down this road so ever since i was young i was really connected with storytelling and and different things like you know watching all sorts of media i've watched pretty much you know tv shows and movies ever since I was ever since I can remember really and you know since then it's it's been a matter of you know getting introduced to the real world and people saying hey you should be thinking about a career so when I was in whatever it was junior high or high school I

decided well I really like cartoons and all of this stuff and and part of that is just you know being able to make it and we need people to do that so that was kind of the first iteration of me being like i want to do voiceover so what does that look like and back then my understanding because i didn't really have people around here who do it professionally for a living. So I had to do some of my own research. And back then, the research was, oh, they've got theater degrees and programs at these colleges that I can apply to. So let's try getting into one of those and see if that teaches me anything about it. And from there, I learned out how to act, but I didn't learn a lot of the intricacies of the

voiceover industry. So it took me almost an entire decade after that to really continue to look into things and for sort of the perfect storm to develop where it was a marriage between now the technology is at a point where everything works. There's a lot of opportunity online because everything needs voiceover. And me being in a position financially where I could say, hey, I'm going to get additional training specifically for voiceover and get a commercial demo put together and do all of those things that anybody who's in the voiceover industry would tell you you should have done, you know, as soon as you wanted to start getting agency placement or hired for work.

Do you want to be an actor? Was that maybe your first love? You're trying it first yeah i i i think the the first sort of uh exposure i had to voiceover was watching cartoons growing up you know there'd be a a bugs bunny commercial or not commercial but like a bugs bunny cartoon on and uh i i did the what's up doc for my grandma and she loved it so kind of stuck and you know that that's that's i think something that's been you know ingrained in me since since i was that old is just sort of seeking approval and attention and doing it with funny voices so i would imagine that acting probably you know your education with acting probably helped with your voiceover because yeah it's kind of what you're doing like i'll even see like those guys in the voice acting booth like the hollywood movie stars and stuff and they're kind of you can

see they're kind of acting out the part in in the in the thing yeah which i think probably comes through in the voice yeah absolutely the the one that i always go back to because it's probably my first actual memory of voiceover was watching the opening scene to mrs doubtfire and you've got robin williams standing there in a recording booth and and he's reading the part for the bird and the cat and then the bird starts smoking a cigarette and it was a commercial for you know some some cigarette company in the movie and he's like i can't do this well there you go and so that helped inspire you huh all right here i thought it was the woman in the dress no i'm just kidding uh the uh

and then you as we mentioned before in the early part of the show you've got a little puppet behind you and and so you've been always down this road so uh you you you become you you delve into being a voice actor and um and and do all this stuff um what um what are some of the influences you've had or people that you've looked up to other than maybe robin williams yep robin williams is a big one another one that i constantly mention is jim carrey just for all of his zany antics and you know the characters that he'd portray in shows his voices too mm-hmm and then as far as strictly voiceovers there's people that they run the gamut I mean anytime that you look up voice actors that have been working since the 90s you've got the

likes of Billy West Jim Cummings Robings rob paulson debbie dairyberry uh jennifer hale there's all of these wonderful wonderful actors that they've honed their craft and they've been doing this so long that you know you could probably look up and they've got you know thousands of credits between all of the different shows and games and and things of that nature that they've been a part of and it's just it's it's really inspiring and i think, and things of that nature that they've been a part of. And it's just, it's, it's really inspiring. And I think that was one of the things that I took away the most growing up

is just, it's, it's really, it's really interesting to, to see these characters brought to life, you know, with just a voice, because,

you know, when we think about it, a lot of communication is visual. So when we lose 80% of the message and that gets put in later, how do we still convey the crucial part that we need to be able to provide in order for the story to really come to light? There you go. So you talk about storytelling and why it's important, and that's part of what you have to do when you're using your voice is tell a visual story. Tell us about what that means and how to storytell the right way. best way for me to kind of go over this is to really boil it down to the basics it's something

that i i learned from a book that's by an author called christopher booker and this is a seven basic plots so uh i want to say that uh it took inspiration from an earlier book about 36 different dramatic situations by i think his name's carlo uh gotzi but um he was back in i think it was the 1800s or something and then uh mr booker writes this book and simplifies down to seven plots obviously it's not all encompassing but there's enough overlap in the story that you can say okay this one follows this storyline for the most part um you might even have a combination of several different ones going because you've got subplots and all of that kind of thing, but the seven basic plots that are outlined in that book are overcome monster

Hmm the quest the voyage in return the rags to riches the comedy the tragedy and The rebirth well, that sounds sounds like my life on wednesdays on pocket tuesday or wait any sense that's not a that's a horrible joke chris sometimes they just make up shit and it just doesn't work so there you go but that's maybe funnier that way i don't know but yeah um. And the interesting thing that I think about all of them is that even though they aren't all the same story, most of them do follow a similar sort of plot development. So it's kind of a roller coaster that you go on. You know, you always see kind of a graph sketched out of people saying okay this is what this is what a plot looks like um but the way that uh again christopher booker has it in the in in that book is you've got sort of the initial phase it's a call to action or whatever you want to call it

where the the protagonist is introduced to the idea of whatever it is that they're up against or has some reason for branching out and going off on this adventure and from there we transition to a dream state which they're kind of naive or uh oblivious to to the world around them and and the potential pitfalls that they might uh run into but but they're also kind of impervious to any damage during this phase like nothing bad ever happens in this phase it's always afterwards so then we've got the frustration phase this is when they're actually introduced to the troubles in the world and and they have to go up against you know possibly the the big bad and and they basically just just get uh you know life lessons handed to them one after another and and that takes them from the frustration phase into the nightmare phase which is um as

they're going through the nightmare phase this is kind of the the valley of despair so to speak this is the time when you know all of the pieces are kind of not not just not fitting together they're going off in their own separate ways and it's like how are we ever going to reach the point where we can overcome this but something happens either in in that phase or transitioning into the next phase which is sort of the resolution of the story which everything kind of comes together the bad guy gets foiled or if this is a tragedy it's going to be from the perspective of the bad guy and we're going to say oh look there's nothing left here so i'm gonna either you know wish to die or or yeah everything just kind of fall apart so you just described my first 10 marriages but but the the thing about the the tragedy plot line is that it's always something that the the main character could have avoided but it they chose to do it instead so once again yeah

there you go uh so this is pretty interesting man man. Do you coach and counsel companies or people on how to do voiceover, tell better stories and things like that? I'm certainly open to the idea. It's not something that I've done in the past, but like I said, it's something that's been with me my whole life and something that I'm really, as you can tell, I'm very passionate about it. You know, brands have to tell stories. Leaders have to tell stories.

Leaders have to know how to lead. Part of their, you know, knowing how to lead is about communication. And so using their voice in authoritative ways, that sounded really fascist, authoritative ways. You always do what i say or else uh i'm doing my mussolini there it's not very good um but uh you know empathy uh communication uh communicating passionately uh also being able to tell a story because you get your message across you know and inspiring people to go to the next thing. So there's a lot of this need in the business world because I know some business people that are just like bots,

robots are like, you know, we should do what everyone says and they will be fine. You know, uh, you, you know, that Elon Musk could use a personality,

you know? Yeah. Uh, that might be good. Uh, something that doesn't involve lots of, uh, too much, uh, whatever sort of acid he's's on i forget what it's called yeah well and the kind of interesting

thing to me if you if you think about it most businesses were started for a reason right it wasn't just that people wanted to make money it was that they wanted to make some sort of change in the world and when you look at it from that lens and you say, okay, take me back to that moment. What was it that you found? And you said, Hey, this needs to change because that can kind of guide you into one of those seven different plots and say, okay, I was maybe just trying to do something for money. And then let's say you're an insurance agent, you go and you try and sell an insurance policy and they say, oh, let's think on it.

And then find out within the week that one of the spouses passed and now you have new motivation for doing a better job than you did before this happened. Well, that's a compelling story. And that falls into again, kind of the Re the rebirth plot line because that was something that it it follows kind of the same plot of the tragedy but you're not going to stop there the story doesn't end you've got the redemption arc and that's that's what the rebirth kind of takes you through is the redemption arc of the story

yeah and so the stories are important and knowing how to tell them act them out um you know uh using your voice is so important you know i i grew up an introvert so i didn't talk much i mostly watch people um and when you grew up like i did you're watching all the people going what the fuck is wrong with you um and uh then i you know i had to become ceo of my companies i had to communicate i had i had uh exploit i don't know what i'm talking about i'm just making up shit now um i had to tell stupid jokes like that one uh but i had to communicate with my with my business partners with my uh board of directors with my investors with my employees with the vendors people you do business with

uh you know there's that there's pretty much you you know i became a big mouth people always like how do you how did you look gonna fall in a podcast i like to talk i've been a big mouth all my life you know being a ceo you don't you don't really you can't just sit in a corner and like i'm not gonna talk to anybody this week even though i run this place um and so you you have to jump into but using your voice in a way to inspire people motivate them educate them tell stories is super important and uh i'm always trying to get better at it um and it probably will always be something i'll try and improve so i like what you talk about in this thing how do you how do you bring depth through sound design and using your voice to your visuals what are some different maybe tips or

tricks or or how can you talk about how you know to replicate that yeah so um one of the things that i guess i've i've told other people about sound design is that when it comes to building sound design, you have to think about all of the different ways that not only we make sound, but also that people have used it in the past for their own messages. So a lot of media, you've got sort of the primary, you know, the main actors, so they've got their voices and that will generally be the the main focus of whatever you you're listening to but then beyond that you you have to start adding in the layers and that's some of the things that you're going to see there you've got sound effects so that's going to be you know if there's supposed to be a tree or if there's a door opening

all of those things there's going to be different tree or if there's a door opening for us, all of those things. There's going to be different effects that you can do to the sounds to get other things to kind of come out. So take, for instance, the T-Rex in Jurassic Park. When you listen to them talk about how they made that, it's a combination of things like redwood trees and an alligator and a lion and a baby elephant. And you just layer each of those sounds on top of each other and kind of adjust it a little bit, you know, this way or that way based off of,

you know, do you want certain frequencies to be brought out in this sound or, or possibly deadened so that you don't hear them? Do you want to make it sound like the source is going to be closer or farther away than it actually is? And there's ways that you can modify sound waves so that they have that kind of an effect. And then also sound, it's just vibrations, right? So when we talk, our vocal cords are vibrating and then it sends out, you know, waves in the air and then the air that gets, you know, translated through our ear into something that we can actually comprehend. And knowing that, you know, you can also adjust things with sounds so that it makes it sound like it's in a different

environment so that would be like reverb is kind of the the big thing there when it comes to uh ways that you can you know change the sound and then it'll make it sound like you're actually in like a cathedral or or maybe a bathroom or you know just some other place other than where you are based off of how the sound is responding to, to that input. So that's what I need. I need a anti-bathroom thing so that like, you know,

I usually voicemail messages because I'm like, not, not, not on phone voicemail, but on like messenger. Oh, so, cause I'm too lazy to type.

Right. I don't have that kind of time. And, uh, plus, you know, I have giant ass fingers. And so,

uh, and I come from the old world where you you know if you like people you call them you're like hey how's it going like all my friends we call each other and and stuff but you know there's some people in this world seems like a lot nowadays like oh my god talking to people is scary you know you know what's uh you know danger danger stranger danger yeah like you know me man what the hell we're friends on facebook but i like i like talking to people because i can hear their inflection because i've been you know i've been bad sometimes when i write somebody and you know if the inflection is not there they think they're like did you just insult me and you're

like no i was telling a joke okay and and they don't get it so i like i like inflection more as a comedian but um being able to have that conversation have that intonation your voice the inflection and stuff uh i imagine that's kind of hard to develop for people yeah yeah so the the way that i guess it was explained to me if if you have a background in music it's a lot easier to get into something like voiceover than it is for somebody who's you know never sang because people might tell you oh well you've got a great voice you should do voiceover and well first and foremost the the thing that you want to focus on with voiceover is the acting because again that's that's the basics that's the way that we can get people to actually believe that we're coming from one frame of reference or perspective or anything like that versus like

oh this is just some guy reading a script like anybody can read a script, not everybody can act. And, and being in music again, uh, the way that that helps is it helps you sort of understand the difference in pitch. So, uh, not, not just pitch, but then there's also volume. So being louder or softer, uh, having a certain timbre, so making your voice sound one way versus another. And that's kind of a distinction between you know if you're using chest voice or if you're using head voice or maybe the mix mixed voice which is between the two adding different kind of textures like people say oh

this has like a rasp or a gravelly sound like okay so what does that sound like and how do you do those things without making it hard on your vocal cords because there are some things you know you can make any sound you want but can you do that for hours on end and not kill your voice yeah yeah that's true i guess suppose if you could do certain voice like i've seen some of the different people that do those voices like man of the hill and the simpsons and stuff and i'm like how do you do that for a long time it's gonna be the the best one that i know of is i think it's maurice lamarche um he does a lot of belches and it's like he the way that he's described is it's like tube and throat singing so like the thing where you've got like kind of the weird sort of

like rumbly kind of growl thing going on in your throat. And then you just started like making weird shapes with your mouth and that's how it kind of plays out. And so he used that for the belch in elf when, when, um, Will Ferrell's at the dinner table and he takes that long belch after drinking soda or whatever it is.

That was Maurice LaMarche. That is crazy, man. So, uh, do you do any impressions? long belch after drinking soda or whatever it is that was marie slimarsh that is crazy man so uh do you do any impressions or do people need to learn to do impressions i certainly do do some impressions um i i'm a big fan of jim henson and all of his work so i've done my best to try and learn how to do kermit the frog you know everybody that's one of the ones that oh hey there you go whoa you got me there and um he's also got you know ralph the dog he's he's a little bit more gruff but he's uh he's a piano player and and he likes making music and then you know he's also got cantus and and the other ones but um yeah a lot of a lot of the ones that Jim Henson does

kind of sound like Rolf, but then you've got some sort of other texture or thing going on. That one is, I think... Was that Jim or was that... I want to say that was Frank Oz. It might have been Frank Oz. But I might be

conflating that with Animal. I know Animal was Frank Oz. He was one of my favorite characters that with Animal. I know Animal was Frank Oz. Yeah, Animal. He was one of my favorite characters on the show. I don't know. He's crazy. Crazy dude. So there you go.

So how can people apply some of the stuff we've talked about, some of these techniques and different things into their life or projects they're working on? How can people apply it in their own lives um i think the the best thing is again just kind of understanding why you're telling different stories and and you know is it you're trying to connect with people are you trying to inform people about stuff and you know once you have that in your mind then you can kind of take that and say okay from here because I'm trying to educate somebody we want to make sure that everything can be heard right so we're going to use kind of a neutral tone of voice something that's not going to be you know too loud or too soft we want to be kind of right in the pocket and we want to make sure that we enunciate well, but we also want to emphasize the words that are going to be the ones that they want to know so that they don't have to keep rewinding.

Oh, wait, what did he say? I kind of fell asleep there. mind if you're you know giving a speech or or a presentation and you know in real time just knowing that okay this is why we want to emphasize these words is because these are powerful words these are important ones that we want people to remember when they leave here and you could coach speakers too i know a lot of speakers that i have as friends that do speaking and you know part of his storytelling telling great stories when you speak but also it's the inflection of how you use your voice i know a couple speakers they just yell the whole time which i'm not sure if they even inflect but i think they do but there's usually a lot of yelling

going on and and even you know something like that you know if if they do just their full volume the whole time there are some techniques that voiceovers use that i know just you wouldn't learn about them in everyday life one of them is straffonation straffonation yep so i think i got that once from hooker in thailand yikes but it's a good callback joke it uh yeah it's it's a it's a way for you to kind of feel the back pressure like when you're um when you blow through a straw the straw has some resistance and and what it does is it allows you to kind of feel how much force you need in order to get to a certain pitch or a certain volume and it allows you to reproduce that sound a lot easier and a lot more reliably and you don't kill your

voice doing it the back pressure i don't even know if that's what it is i'm just making up stuff uh there you go uh so there you go you know people don't learn this stuff uh you know being engaged with people being social if you want to keep your your, your significant other, if you're dating, if you're just in business, you want, you know, your employees to think, or maybe your fellow workers think you're interesting, you know, maybe for better prospects of getting promotion. Maybe you want to be the CEO of your company. Someday communicating is everything and then using your voice is even more important because uh anytime you can make it more animated make it more three-dimensional right you know you're going to stand out and like you say people are going to listen they're not going to fall asleep on you um and it's so important i remember years ago one of my girlfriends i would come home with all you know all the stories of

of the day and all the weird employee things that happened. You know, I believe what Bob did today. Yep. And, uh, and, and so I would, you know, and throw her with all the stories and she would laugh and then I'd be like, so what happened to your day? And she'd be like, nothing. And I'm like, you're a, you're a Delta flight attendant who, uh, goes, uh, all over the country.

You're meet hundreds of people you're on three different flights i mean these days you definitely should have some stories right uh and i'm like you got nothing if she doesn't have the story somebody else has it on tiktok now that's probably true yeah um the uh and so finally i got bored with her because i'm just like i told her at one point i'm like honey i'm gonna pay someone to kidnap you i really want to do this people don't call the authorities on me um i'm gonna pay somebody to kidnap you and just kind of hold you for an hour and let you go and just so that i can get a damn story out of you and stories are the you know we talk about this a lot on the show as a callback but stories of the owner's manual life collecting stories telling stories it's how

we interact with each other um it's uh it's how we learn from each other and so being able to tell a good story is good but being able to use it with your voice making things interesting and enlivening the story and giving it that i don't know what the right word is you may know better giving that reality that play out, if you will. Yeah. Yeah. It's going back to what you said there. It's storytelling when you boil it down.

It's really just learning about yourself, learning about others, and learning about the world around you and how it works. And being able to relate to that stuff. Because if you can't relate to something, you're going to be a lot more skeptical or a lot more adverse to putting yourself out there and being like, oh, well, why should I do this? Because I don't know anything about it. It's all foreign to me. Yeah. And the more interesting you make,

the less sure you have to worry about being the boring person. Because no one likes the boring person. You're at a party with them and they start talking to you and you're just like, I'm going to throw myself out of this window if this person keeps talking to me, which is basically how most of my dates go. So being interesting, having a great voice, having voiceover skills, learning to act, learning to animate, this is all great stuff. I mean, I can see you coaching so many different people on top of your busy voiceover work. You do audiobooks, I think you said, and you've worked on about 10,000 projects. Do you want to tease out anything you really enjoy doing? Well, I haven't worked on 10,000 yet, but the goal is to, before I leave this world, there will be 10,000 things for people to listen to.

Okay, I read that wrong. So give us your final thoughts as we go out and pitch out to people to reach out to you and see if they can do business with you. Yeah. Again, everything comes down to building a relationship. I know that I'm not meant to work with everybody. But again, if I'm going to be doing 10,000 projects over the course of my life, I need people to help. And if you're one of those people who feels like this would be some sort of a mutually beneficial relationship, I would love to help you with whatever it is you've got going on. If that is,

you know, your own commercials, because you need to get the word out about your products, or if you've got a product that's in development, but you need voices for it because it's some sort of a media thing and you need voices for that to, you know, really put the characters together and tell the story the way that it's meant to be, I'd love to help out. Again, my website, that's grantjohnsonvo.com, VO as in voiceover. And if you follow that link, that'll take you to, I've got my commercial demo on there. I've got my contact information and I've got my social media channels. So, and if you don't want to do that in order to find me on social media, my social media channels. So, and if you don't want to do that in order to find me on social media, my social media handle for voiceover is always going to be at Grant Johnson VO. There you go. And I guess you, uh, give some advice on tips on your YouTube channel.

I just pulled it up here. Me? Yeah. I guess you give some advice and stuff on your YouTube channel as well. Yep. I've got one of my talks on there About, that was the one I was telling you about That I kind of went over some of the Storytelling in sound design So I did that talk for some indie game developers Awesome sauce Awesome sauce

Well Grant, this has been very insightful And hopefully we taught some people to not be boring Eh? Because I know a lot of people that need to not be boring. Yeah. There you go. So thank you very much, sir. We really appreciate it.

Thanks for having me on, Chris. There you go. And thanks to my audience for tuning in. We certainly appreciate it as well. Go to goodreach.com, fortuneschrisfoss, linkedin.com, fortuneschrisfoss, youtube.com, fortuneschrisfoss, chrisfoss1 on the tickety-tockety over there.

Thanks to my audience for tuning in. Be good to Voss. Chris Voss won on the tickety-tockety over there. Thanks, Samanis, for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time.