← Everyday VOpreneur® with Marc Scott
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I kind of stopped trying. That's the truth. I kind of stopped trying. Don't overthink it. Do the thing. Thank God Brad is patient. I have said for years that I am not a commercial voice actor. I get goosebumps when I think about that vision. I'm telling a better story now. It's Fireside chat time. We haven't done one of these in a while, so I thought it was time to do a Fireside chat on the podcast. And I've got something that I wanted to talk about. And I think, think I hope that this is going to be helpful. I want to share three things that I did to start booking commercial. Now, some of you are probably thinking, well, big deal, I book commercial all the time. Fair enough. For those of you that know me, for those of you who have followed me for any length of time, you know that commercial is something that I do not typically book, or at least I should say have not typically booked. It's a genre that I've struggled with a lot and that has changed in the last few months. And there are some things that I have done to make that happen. In fact, at the time that this episode goes live, I will have three different significant campaigns running in Canada, which, just to be clear, I've never had one really significant campaign running in Canada. And so to have three running simultaneously, um, it's validation that the things that I'm doing obviously are working and that makes me feel pretty good. And so for those of you who may be struggling in the genre or trying to figure it out, I. I just wanted to share a little bit of my story, hopefully as an encouragement for you. So three things that I did to start booking commercial. So let's go back to the very beginning and. And I have said for years that I am not a commercial voice actor. Okay, I've said that going back to, I don't know, like what, 2008, 2009, when I first started recording voiceover. And I said that because I was primarily booking non broadcast. So I booked a lot of elearning. I literally branded myself as the explainer guy for a number of years. And I felt like I booked every single explainer video that landed in my inbox. I have done a ton of corporate video. And so for all of those years, when I said I wasn't a commercial guy, I wasn't trying to say anything bad about myself necessarily. I was just making an observation. I'm not a commercial guy. I'm a non broadcast guy. The problem was somewhere along the way that started to become my identity. So even though I knew where my money was coming from in the non broadcast space, and I doubled down on the non broadcast space and I never had any regrets about that because of what it did for my business and what it meant for my business somewhere subconsciously. I guess in the back of my head, the more that I told that story that I'm not a commercial guy, I really started to turn it into a self fulfilling prophecy. And I actually saw myself as someone who couldn't book commercial. And so I kind of stopped trying. That's the truth. I kind of stopped trying to. I did a commercial demo a bunch of years ago. It was nominated for a voice arts award. I thought, great, this is awesome. That demo got me a couple of different agents and the result of that was that it didn't still get me any commercial work. And so I could never understand why. And so looking at it from a business standpoint, I'm thinking about, okay, where is my time going? And I want my time to go where it is going to generate the maximum return for me. Well, the maximum return for me is coming from the non broadcast space, not from the commercial space. So why even bother actively trying to pursue or participate in the commercial space at this point? It's not where the money's coming from. It made logical sense in my head, but I didn't realize what that narrative was actually doing to me. Actually convincing me I'm not a commercial voice actor. Yeah, I've booked some regional stuff and some local stuff from time to time, but nothing big and certainly nothing national. I have a vision in my mind. I can close my eyes and I can see the vision. We like to have family movie night every once in a while. And we've only got probably one or two family movie nights left in us because the oldest is going off to school in the fall. And she also has a job, which makes it very difficult because she works a lot. But when we have family movie night, I set up a table downstairs in the basement. We bring in pizza. Everybody gets to pick the kind of pizza that they want. And then we all sit on the couch in the basement and we watch a movie together. And we sit and we eat our pizza. And so we have this family movie night. This vision that I have in my head now is all of that, except instead of watching a movie, I turn on the TV and start a show that I narrate. A show on Discovery or a show on History Channel or A and E or whatever network, Nat Geo, whatever. But it's a show that I am the voice of, and my kids don't know it until the show starts. And so we're all sitting there with our pizza and all of a sudden the show starts and daddy's the voice on the tv and everybody's like, oh, my gosh, this is so cool. I can literally. I get goosebumps when I think about that vision. And when I close my eyes and I just see that vision in my mind, that is what my end goal is. So in reverse engineering that end goal, I realized that I was going to have to get good at commercial. And maybe you're wondering how those things connect. Any of the big name, reputable agents that are probably going to get me access to those TV narration projects that I want, my understanding of it is that they are less likely to take me on specifically or exclusively for TV narration. They're going to take me on as a commercial voice actor, and then I'm going to get access to those TV narration opportunities. So in order to get access to the TV stuff, I need to get good at commercial. So I finally had the driving why that I needed to wake up and start to figure out this commercial thing. Reverse engineering that goal. I want to get a really good agent for commercial who's also going to get me access to TV narration. Well, in order to get a really good agent, I've got to have a really great commercial demo and I probably got to have some commercial bookings. Well, in order to be able to deliver a really great commercial demo recording session and to get some commercial bookings, I'm definitely going to have to do some work on my commercial reads and so start to reverse engineer all the pieces of the puzzle. Right? This is when I started to figure out the path that I needed to take. So the three things that I did to start booking commercial number one was I found the right coach. What I don't need and what I didn't want was somebody who was going to listen to my reads and say, mark, you're doing great, or mark, your stuff sounds so good. Which is what I would often get. And I would get frustrated by that because on one hand I've got these coaches telling me your auditions are great, but on the other hand, I'm not booking anything in commercials. So if my auditions are so great, but I'm not actually booking, something is missing somewhere along the line and somebody's not telling me what it is. So rule number one for finding a great coach for me was I needed somebody who was going to be completely honest with me, no matter how much that might hurt. I needed somebody who was going to be completely honest with me when I talked to Jay Michael about doing a demo. Because I want to give myself the best possible shot at getting on with one of these agents. So the best possible shot means best possible demo. JMC demo, no brainer. Had a conversation with Jay Michaels, said, I'm going to do this demo. Who do you think I should coach with? And he knows me and we've talked many times before. And so he suggested that I have a conversation with Brad Hyland. Well, I know Brad. Brad and I are friends. We've known each other for many years. Very first question that I asked Brad when I got into our first session together, kind of the intake call or exploratory call, are you going to be honest with me? Like if I suck, are you going to look me in the eye and tell me that I suck? And he said yes. And I believed him. And I was a little bit afraid because I mean, if you've met Brad, he looks like a great big gentle teddy bear, but he's still a pretty big guy. And you know, he can probably put me in my place pretty easy, which is exactly what I needed, by the way. And so Brad's superpower was his ability to pull my head out of my butt. Because for the first little bit, every time Brad tried to direct me or every time Brad said something, I had a comeback. I had a comeback for why it didn't work or why it wouldn't work or why I've tried that in the past. Or like I just. Guys, I had a really bad attitude. Like, thank God Brad is patient because I had a really bad attitude in the beginning. I'm not going to lie. And that attitude was bad. Built up from years of frustration from not being able to book commercial and not understanding why. So you got to remember at this point, I'm still trying to put all the pieces of the puzzle together. But Brad helped me pull my head out of my butt and get out of my own way to be able to just relax and do the thing. And I don't know that there were any major magical breakthrough, ground shattering moments necessarily from a performance standpoint. Certainly tips and tricks that I picked up along the way. But the biggest thing was just him helping me get out of my own way. I just really, I needed that. I needed to see myself in a different way. I needed to stop going back to all of my old excuses what happened in sessions a year ago or five years ago or 10 years ago didn't matter. My booking history, it didn't matter because we were trying to do something different. So I needed to stop coming back to my past and all of these references back to my past. I just needed to shut up and start auditioning for commercial believing that I could be a commercial voice actor. Brad was always honest with me. He was firm with me when he needed to be. He put me in my place when he needed to in a gentle, kind, loving Brad sort of way. But he was the perfect coach for me. He really was the perfect coach for me and I will be forever grateful to him for putting up with me. Because I was not an easy student in the beginning and I fully own that I was not an easy student in the beginning. Something else that I did in the midst of all of this was I took Callie Mashinsky's Finding youg in take two. It's about a 15 minute class and it's one of the best 15 minute investments I think I've ever made in my career. Show of hands, if you struggle with what to do on the second take of an audition, like, honestly, it has always been an issue for me. That one 15 minute class from Kelly Mashinsky totally transformed my approach to take twos. And when I took what I was learning from that class with Kelly and what I was learning from Brad and put those things together, I instantly started auditioning better. Instantly started auditioning better and instantly started auditioning with greater confidence, which was so much of this for me was finding that confidence. The third thing on the coaching side was doing Hugh Klitsky's open session. When Hugh asked me to do the open session, I said, I don't want to, but I'm going to. And I wasn't trying to be rude. I told him straight up, I'm like, the idea of doing your open session hot seat scares the ever loving crap out of me. Like, it is literally one of the most intimidating thoughts that I've ever had to do that. And if you were watching the open session that I did with you, you would have saw my face was beet red the entire time. I was sweating profusely. Like, I was so nervous. But Hugh said something that really, really impacted me. He said that he only needed to help me find that last 12 to 16%. All along I thought I was, I don't know, 80% away from a winning audition. Optimistically, 60, 65% away from a winning audition. But when Hugh said, mark, you're so close. We just got to help you find that last 12 to 16%, that was huge for me because I can't tell you how many times I've had a conversation with somebody in a coaching session where I have literally said to them, look, you might be this close. This close. And it's just that one little thing that you start doing differently that makes all the difference in the world. And apparently, that's what I needed to hear, too. I could tell everybody else, but you know how it is. We're too close to our own stuff. We need to hear it sometimes from outside people. So the combination of Brad pulling my head out of my butt and helping me to get out of my own way. Kelly's finding you in take two course, which helped me just immediately start submitting better auditions because I immediately started submitting better second takes. And Hugh helping me realize that I was this close. This close. I can't tell you how much of an impact those three things had. So that's number one on the list of the three things that I did to start booking commercial. Number one was I had to find the right coach, or in my case, coaches. I had to find the right people to take me there. The second one, if you haven't watched the conversation that I did with Andy Roth on the podcast, you should go back and watch that conversation with Andy Roth, because what that conversation was was a genuine struggle. The genuine struggle of me trying to figure out commercial. I didn't know Andy. I'd never had a conversation with him, and I'm pretty sure Andy didn't know who I was. But a number of people had recommended that I should get him on the podcast, that he's amazing, great casting director, brilliant teacher, brilliant director, et cetera, et cetera. And so when I invited him on the show and he agreed, I was like, perfect. But because I didn't know him, I wasn't really sure how to approach the interview. And so what I ultimately ended up doing was I sat down and I thought, okay, you're trying to figure out this commercial thing, and you're struggling really hard here, so just be vulnerable and ask the questions that you want to ask, because chances are, if these are the things that you're thinking, they're the things that somebody else is thinking, too. And if you watched that episode, you may recall I asked him a question about, how do you fall in love with auditioning again? And that was a. That was a authentic, raw moment for me. My coaching business in the pandemic exploded in a way that I had never anticipated. And I really wasn't ready for, and it was amazing because I love working with voice actors, but at the same time, the time to be able to manage that had to come from somewhere. And it ultimately started to come from my voiceover business. And so oftentimes it wasn't until way at the end of my day when I would have the opportunity to do some of my auditions and particularly some of my agent auditions. And so let me tell you that at 9 o' clock at night or 9:30 at night, after I've had a long day in the studio, doing coaching sessions, podcasts, running social media, doing my own marketing, working on jobs for clients, whatever, all the things that I do by 9 or 9:30 at night, the last thing that I felt like doing was getting into the studio and auditioning. And often I would feel resentful about it. And it wasn't specifically that I was resentful about the act of auditioning as much as it was just like, I'm tired, It's at the end of my day, I just want to go sit down, I want to hang out with my wife, I want to relax, I want to read a book. I really don't want to do this audition right now at 9:00 clock at night or 10:00 clock at night. And that started out innocently enough, but it really did turn into a resentment towards the auditioning process. Like fall frig right, you shut off the studio, you walk out, the computer's turned off, you sit down and then you realize, oh crap, I didn't do that audition. I got to go back and do that. Oh, now I got to go and turn the studio back on. I got to fire the computer back up and. And I started to get resentful about it. Not a good place to come from when you are trying to audition. Not a good place to come from desperation. Not a good place to come from. I have to book this or I don't eat, I have to book this in order to feel validated. When you, when you come from these, these negative energy spaces, sense of desperation, sense of resentment, whatever it is, it's not a good place to come from when you get in the booth. And I know this, I teach this, but the struggle was real for me. And you know me, I've always been authentic. And so I really did genuinely have to try to figure out how to fall in love with the auditioning process again. And so one of the things that I decided to do in 2026 was I decided to scale back some of my Coaching, particularly some of the individual coaching that I was doing. I'm not running a Mastermind group in 2026, and I've run a mastermind every year since 2019. But that was a huge time commitment for me, and so I made the decision to scale back some of my coaching so that I could have more flexibility in my schedule, so that I could have more time to devote to my voiceover business again and doing some of the things, accomplishing some of the things that I wanted to accomplish. But what that allowed me to do was it allowed me to submit my agent auditions during the day as they came in, not having to come back into the studio at 9 or 10 o' clock at night, and then going through the transitions that I went through working with Brad and doing Kelly's class and doing the hot seat with Hugh and realizing that maybe I am a commercial voice actor and maybe I can do this. And you put all of these things together. And I was coming into these auditions from a completely different headspace, and I really was falling in love with the auditioning process again. And I really was starting to see it's the subtle change in language from I have to submit this audition to I get to submit this audition. This is an amazing opportunity, and I get to submit this audition that's gonna make a profound difference. When you walk into the booth, let me tell you, that is going to make a profound difference. And so that was the number two thing that I had to do. Three things that I've done to start booking commercial number two. I had to learn to love auditioning again. I had to stop seeing it as a nuisance. I had to stop seeing it as an inconvenience. I had to stop seeing it as something that I had to do and start seeing it as something that I get to do. And I walk into the booth so much more relaxed now. And there's no question. And I can go back and listen to some of the auditions that I was submitting in 2025, and I can hear in those auditions now listening to them, honestly, I can hear. I guess maybe there's some sarcasm you can hear. You can sense resentment. There was just this. They were coming from. There was an attitude. There was an attitude in them that was not a good attitude. I mean, maybe if it called for that, But I can hear it now. I didn't hear it at the time, but I can hear it now going back and listening again. And so the auditions that I'm submitting now in April of 2026 versus the auditions that I was submitting even, you know, In September of 2025, they're. They're night and day differences in my auditions because I learned to fall in love with auditioning again. You don't have to. You get to. Somebody wants to give you this amazing opportunity to be the voice of their brand, you get to do that. Think about it that way, and it's going to make a huge difference. The third thing that I did, and I've kind of been talking about it throughout, but the third thing that I did was I changed my narratives completely outside of this podcast for the purposes of this fireside chat that we're having right now, you're never going to hear me say I'm not a commercial voice actor again. Because even though that was an innocent enough statement repeated enough over a long period of time, it became a truth. Not intentionally, but it became a truth. And I really, genuinely started to see myself that way as not a commercial voice actor. And I don't want to see myself like that anymore. I don't want to think like that anymore. Does that mean that I'm going to book all the commercials? No, of course not. But does it mean that I'm going to believe that I've got a honest, legitimate shot at every audition that I submit that I feel like I'm a match for? Yeah, I do think that way. And when I started thinking that way about my commercial auditions, it impacted all the other auditions that I was submitting as well. Narrative plays such an important role in all of this. And this is something that you've heard me talk about so many times in the past. You've heard me have this conversation with other people on the podcast. I've done entire episodes about. About this very topic. But sometimes, again, we're too close to our own stuff. We need to have the ability to step back, and we need to have people on the outside that we trust who can see through us and speak to us and help us figure some of these things out. And I just realized that I had some narratives around commercial that were not serving me whatsoever. And it was time to make those narratives go away. And when I made those narratives go away and started replacing them with better narratives telling a better story, it made all the difference. Go back to what I've talked about at the beginning of this episode, the visualization. I close my eyes and I see us sitting on the couch, and we're all eating our pizza, and the TV turns on and daddy starts narrating the show. That's a story That's a story that I tell myself. That's a story that I'm going to continue to tell myself until the day that it finally becomes true. But I'm not just saying it. I'm feeling it. Like, even when I said that to you just now, I can feel the energy. I can feel the energy bubble up inside of me. I get little goosebumps on my arm. I am so connected to that story and what I need to do to turn that story into an actual, real moment. I'm telling a better story now. I am a commercial voice actor. I've got multiple commercial campaigns running right now. My agent is probably as surprised as I am, which is awesome, by the way. And I'm going to lean into that to find some new agents so that I can get access to even more opportunities. And I'm going to do all of these things that I've set out to do so that I can tell that story of the couch and the pizza and the show. I don't know where you're at in your business right now or what your struggle is right now, but I hope that some of this helps you find the right coach. Let yourself go with them. Maybe that should be part of that, too. It's not just about working with the right coach. It's about letting yourself be moldable. Right? They are the potter. You are the clay. Listen to what they have to say. Take their feedback. Don't push them back constantly. Don't have a response to everything they say. Just be open and moldable with the right coach and that will have a huge difference. Learn to fall in love with the auditioning process. You don't have to. You get to and be so, so cautious, cognizant, aware of the stories that you tell yourself. Our words have power. Our thoughts have power. And even when you're saying something innocently, if you say it enough times over and over again, you can never be sure how it's going to influence and impact you long term. That innocent statement of I'm not a commercial voice actor. I'm an e Learning guy, ultimately convinced me that I couldn't be a commercial voice actor. I didn't do it, didn't do it on purpose, but I did it. But I've recognized it now and I'm able to fix it. So those are the three things that I did to start booking commercial. But you know me, whenever I have three things or five things or ten things or whatever, there's always gotta be a bonus thing. So of course I have a bonus thing for you as well. And the bonus thing was simply this. I stopped trying so hard. I stopped trying so hard. I am more relaxed in the booth now than I think that I have probably ever been. Now, does that mean that I go into every audition that way? Nope, it does not. Ask Brad. I called Brad all in a panic last week. Brad, I got this really amazing audition opportunity from my agent. I cannot find the pocket. I'm struggling so hard on this one and I just can't figure it out. Can you. Can you jump on a call with me and Brad jumps on a call with me and we walk through it, do a couple of takes. Ultimately, the one take was almost exactly what I had recorded previously on my own. But I just had a little bit of self doubt still. I'm still a baby in all of this. I'm still learning, but by and large, I have never been more relaxed in the booth. I'm walking in and I'm coming from a place of confidence. Not arrogance, not cockiness, not ego. Just a place of confidence of, yeah, I'm good enough for this, I deserve this opportunity and I can book this job and I think I would be great on this spot. And all I have to do is just be me. Don't overthink it. Do the thing. Sounds very familiar, doesn't it? It's. I feel like there's this guy who's been typing that as a response to comments on social media for a decade now. Don't overthink it. Just do the thing. Maybe I just needed somebody to say it to me. So, guys, I hope this has been helpful. I hope you've enjoyed this little fireside chat. I'm excited to be on this journey with you. So often what you see on social media is the best representation of what a business looks like, but it's not necessarily an accurate representation of what a business looks like. And I've always tried to be pretty transparent about sharing the ups and downs and sharing the struggles. And I don't ever want you to think that this comes easy to me. I don't ever want you to think that I'm booking everything that I'm putting myself out there for. I don't. I don't ever want you to think that, you know, this guy's got no. No problems. This guy's got no struggles. No, he's got all those things along the way. As I've gotten older and wiser and surrounded myself with really good people and built an incredible network, I've just put people in my corner who are able to help me work through some of that stuff like Brad was able to do and Hugh and Kelly in this particular instance. And I'm grateful to my agent, Tada Voiceworks as well. They've been. They've been incredible patient with me. No doubt submitted a lot of bad auditions probably last year especially submitted a lot of bad auditions. So it feels good to be submitting and booking again. Feels awesome to make them some money too. Finally. I feel like I owe them. Been with them like a decade. But anyway, bottom line is struggle is real, but there are ways to push through it when you recognize it. Just be careful about those narratives and those things you say. And I hope that you have the opportunity to find a coach who is amazing is as amazing for you as Brad has been for me. And I hope that you were able to take a class that's been amazing for you as Kelly's finding you in take two was for me. And may you have the opportunity to sit on the hot seat and have Hugh Klitske speak conversational into your soul. Because I'm telling you, those are all things that were difference makers for me as well. Thanks so much for checking out another episode of the Everyday Vopeneur podcast.