My Story

  Allow me to tell you a little bit about myself and how I happened to stumble into this

wonderful career that has actually changed my life in so many amazing ways.

This all started back in the 2005-2006 years.  I was working at the time as an airline

pilot.  Of course we were always talking on the radio and making passenger 

announcements.  So between that and my singing in bands for many years, 

I was quite comfortable with technical hookups and talking on a microphone.  I was never

scared of public speaking.  Even as a young boy I used to do magic shows in front of 

rather large (200-300 people) crowds and think nothing of it.   In fact, even as a young 

child (4-5 years old) I would sneak off with my dad’s (I’m sure at the time very

expensive) reel to reel portable recorder and have my own little talk show for hours.

So imitating and mocking people I heard on the radio or TV was just a natural thing

for me.  In the process of doing that I would sometimes play movie trailer guy in front

of my friends.  They would more often than not say something like “you should do that!”

Yeah, I said, I’ll get right on that.  I’m sure there’s no competition in that field.  Besides,

at the time Don Lafontaine pretty much had a lock on that job.  And the digital  recording

age was JUST coming into existence.  My wife was another one who kept telling me 

I should do it.  Then I had some friends in the radio world who said I should get into 

radio because they liked my voice.  Soooo   Finally I decided I would give this a try.

I decided to sign up for a couple “pay to play” sites online.  Voice123 and Voices.com.

I did some auditions and kicked it around for a while.  I experimented with several

approaches to the audition processes and before I knew it I had a couple of jobs.  

Low paying at first but jobs none the less.  Then one day I got a job for a relatively 

large sum.  At least for me at that time it was a nice chunk of change.  The job was for 

a college.  They wanted to do a “phone session” with me.  OK … first time for that one.

I had no idea what or how to do it.  I had a crazy rig setup to make it happen.  I’ll tell 

more about that sometime in future classes.  I spent about an hour on the phone with 

them as they directed me in the recording process.  I got off the phone.  Edited the 

file.  Sent it to them with an invoice for $500 and bingo, gig complete.   I remember 

thinking to myself, “that was a pretty good gig”!  At the time I chalked it up to just being

a fluke.  Probably wouldn’t happen again.  I was happy with the $100 jobs.  So I kept

thinking of this as a part time side gig.  Meanwhile I was working on another business

venture that I was sure was going to make me rich.  Mind you this is all after I left the 

airline career because of another business that I thought was going to be a big hit.  

Turned out that the 2008 economy hit that business harder than it could withstand.

So that’s why I was left trying to piece together some way to make a decent living.

I started looking into audio books.  Got one gig that turned out to be a very poorly

written book.  Really discouraged me on the book thing for a while.  

Finally, while I was working on a music project for a movie, I was going into my studio 

really early every day for almost a year.  During that time I would do some music 

recording for an hour or so and then take a break and do some auditions.  

Every day I would do 3-4 auditions.  Within about a month, I started getting regular jobs.

Like … real jobs.  And I started counting on the funds coming in.  But still, I didn’t think 

of it as a full time long term job.  It wasn’t until after about another year of doing it off

and on, that I realized … DUH … this is a gig that I should probably take seriously and

at the very least give it a serious try.  And so it was.  I paid for the higher subscription 

for the “pay to play” service and I looked into some other audition opportunities.  

Sure enough.  This turned into a rather lucrative career that I seemed to have some

talent for.  That was about 5 years ago.  Since then I’ve seen my income grow to 

much more than I was ever making as an airline pilot.  It has enabled me to have the 

flexibility in life to be home and take vacations when I want to, and even take my work 

on the road if necessary to do things with family that I otherwise would have had to miss

out on.  So of course, like everything else I’ve done in life, I found myself teaching and

coaching others on how to do this.  Seems like there were always people asking me

how they could get started and I love teaching.  Eventually I decided to start writing a 

book.  And in the process of doing that I was encouraged to offer training online.

So here we are today.  I’m working on training material and coaching programs.

Not surprisingly, this process and writing the book go hand in hand, as much of the 

material is the same.  So it’s been a huge boost to the motivation and flow to getting

both done.  I truly hope that I can help more people get into this wonderful career.

Whether its for a part time side job or a full time career.  It’s a great skill to develop

and always take with you no matter where in the world you live.