A (0:00)

I think it's a really important question that we probably don't ask ourselves enough. And it's not jealousy, it's not envy or anything like that. And she's telling me what to do and bossing me around and pushing me. What are you doing that you're not on any of these commercials? She's staring directly into my soul and telling me what to do right now. And I don't know how I feel about that.

B (0:23)

You're a voice actor. You're an entrepreneur. You're a veopreneur. Welcome to the Everyday Veopreneur podcast, your guide through the business of voiceover.

A (0:33)

What is it they say the definition of insanity is? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Let's talk about your marketing. Are you doing the same thing over and over and over again, not getting the results that you want, but you keep doing the same thing over and over again, hoping that at some point it's going to be different? Maybe it's time to do something different. Voiceover Marketing Playbook is going to be back in January, and I would love to be able to have the opportunity to work with you on your marketing. Head to voiceovermarketingplaybook.com now. Get on the wait list, get a free marketing guide, and be the first to get notified when Playbook comes back. Voiceover marketingplaybook.com Are you on the edge.

B (1:08)

Of your seat yet? You should be.

A (1:11)

Who's pushing you? I think it's a really important question that we probably don't ask ourselves enough, and it's something that I've been thinking a lot about lately, which is why I thought, you know what, we got to sit down, we got to make a podcast. We got to talk about this. We got to talk about who is pushing you. I think that what we do as voice actors sometimes can be very lonely and isolating, where we're in our booths by ourselves all day long. And, yeah, we get some interaction and we get to have some conversations on social media, and that's good and that's, you know, it's helpful. But who are the people who are actually pushing you? And I think even that concept is sometimes misunderstood because I think that we think that that means we've got to have, you know, I got to be working with a coach in order to be getting pushed, or I've got to be in a workshop in order to be getting pushed. And that's certainly part of it. I'm part of what inspired this, this whole line of thought for me. Is coming back from Mavo and spending a weekend attending some of the sessions and, and feeling challenged directly and indirectly by some of the things that I learned there. But it really got me thinking about who's pushing you and how are they making you better in your business. So I want to walk you through a few of the different examples from my own business and hopefully that will help you to identify maybe there are some people who can push you in yours. So the first example that got me thinking about this was the World Series. Obviously I am a Red Sox fan. It's no secret, everybody knows that I'm a Red Sox fan. But I have also been a Toronto Blue Jays fan since birthday and that is just by default of being Canadian. So having the Toronto Blue Jays in the World Series was pretty exciting for me because I remember when the Jays were in the World series in the 90s and I had all the posters in my bedroom and it was a, it was a big deal and you know, touch them all. Joe. Like I will always think about that stuff. So it was really fun for me to be able to sit and watch the World Series. And I was watching it with my 13 year old daughter who was all excited. She's wearing her jersey every day and she's wearing her Blue Jays foam finger. And she was sitting there fidgeting with her baseball bat there, or rather her baseball that she got from the, one of the first Blue Jays games that I ever took her to. But as I was watching the game in Canada, there was something that was really interesting that was, that was happening and that was the fact that every single promo was Mike Pongratz. And I would say probably about a third of the male commercials during the World Series broadcast were Mike Pongratz. And then the other 2/3 of the commercials I think were Matt Frank Fogarty. And so what happened was watching the World Series here in Canada, on every single commercial break, I am hearing Mike Pongratz and Matt Fogarty. Now I love both of these guys. I consider these guys to be friends. You know, I've had the opportunity to work with Matt Fogarty. He's been on the podcast Mike Pongratz. He doesn't know it yet, but he will be on the podcast. Mike and I worked at the same radio station back in the day. But as I'm sitting there watching baseball and listening and my daughter's sitting beside me and I'm like, oh, there's Matt again. Oh, there's Mike again. Oh, that, that promo, that's Mike. Oh, that commercial, that's Matt, to the point where even my daughter started to recognize their voices. And after a couple of games of that, there's a part of me that's like, dude, why are you not on any of these commercials? What are you doing? What are you doing that you're not on any of these commercials? And that was something that pushed me, and it pushed me in a good way. I celebrate the success of Matt and Mike and love the fact that every time I turn on my tv, I hear them. I've often joked that you literally, like, literally cannot watch television in Canada without hearing Mike Pongratz. I think he's the promo voice of every network almost. But there was a part of me that's like, why are you not doing that? Why aren't you on any of those commercials? What are you not doing that you should be doing? Or what are you doing that you could be doing better in order to have access to some of those opportunities in order to be able to get on those commercials? And so those two guys who are not in my house, you know, who I'm not having conversations with on a daily basis, they don't even realize it cost them nothing, but they're pushing me. Those are two guys who are pushing me in a good way, because I look at what they've accomplished, and I don't look at it with jealousy or envy. I look at it with, man, how do I get up there next to those guys? You know, how do I get to be in the commercial break that also has Matt and also has Mike? And so they're pushing me. And so that's one example of somebody who I look to. And now I think about that when I'm in the booth and I'm trying to audition or whatever it is that I'm doing to try to get a little bit better that they're pushing me now to take that a step further, I've been working with Brad Hyland, and Brad's been doing some commercial coaching with me. And I've talked to Brad about the fact that you cannot watch television in Canada without hearing Mike Pongratz or Matt Fogarty. And as we've worked through some of the auditions, I think, man, I think Matt actually did that spot. And so I've been working with Brad because I want to try to improve my commercial reads so that I can get better, so that I can have access to those opportunities, get myself into those same breaks. And so hearing Matt and hearing Mike, it pushed me, and it kind of pushed Me towards Brad and finally making the decision that it's time to do some coaching again and time to get better at this thing that I really want to do. And now Brad is pushing me, and Brad is pushing me to get better. And I'll tell you what, it is not always comfortable when you are working with a coach who calls you out for some of the things that you're doing or not doing, depending on how you come at it. But I am so grateful to have a coach that will do that. I think sometimes we find ourselves in situations where. And this is probably partly a byproduct of the society that we've created for ourselves, but coaches are afraid sometimes, to tell you the truth, because if they say something that they somebody doesn't like and that person goes and starts smack talking them on the Internet and then cancel. Culture sets in, and the whole thing is just. It's not good. But it's led to situations where I think sometimes coaches aren't always willing to be honest or maybe not wholly honest. And so when I did my intake with Brad, you know, before I actually bought the coaching sessions and, you know, put my. Put my credit card down, as it were, that was one of the things that I said to him. I said, look, I need to know that you're going to be honest with me. I need to know that if I suck, you're going to tell me, dude, you suck. I need to know that if I do something that's dumb, you're going to be like, what the heck were you thinking? Why did you do that? I need to know that if I do something that doesn't make sense, you're going to be like, why did you make that choice? I just need to know that you're going to be honest with me. Forget who I am. I'm not Mark Scott. I'm just some goofy voice actor who's trying to figure this out. And I just need you to be honest with me. And Brad said 100% that he would be completely honest with me. And there's a part of me that's now wishing that I hadn't asked Brad to be completely honest with me. Because sometimes Brad gets really honest with me, and I'm like, dang, that kind of. That kind of stings a little. But it's because he's pushing me. He's pushing me in a good way. He's pushing me to get better. It's no secret at this point that I am back on Voice123. I originally signed up for the platform in 2008. And I think that my membership lapsed probably sometime around 2016, maybe, maybe. Maybe even sooner. It's been. It's been probably about a decade since I've been on Voice123. But Brad wanted me to have access to more audition opportunities so that we would have more things that we could work on. So he really encouraged me to get on voice123. So I said, okay, fine, I'll get on voice123 doing it, because that's what my coach says. And I'm going to trust my coach. I'm going to trust the process. Well, one of the other things that Brad said was if you want to get on Voice123 and you want to succeed on Voice123, you got to have the optimized profile. Okay, well, I told him straight up, I'm not going to optimize my profile. I don't have time to optimize my profile. I don't understand how to optimize my profile. So that's when Brad connected me to Samantha Damiano, who, by the way, is a cyborg. She knows this. I've told her that she's a cyborg. So Sam's been working on my Voice123 profile. I knew that some of my audio was old, but it never occurred to me how old some of my audio was. And I think maybe that's just a byproduct of age. Time passes differently the older that you get. I also think probably it's a byproduct of just straight up being busy and being busy in my business, being busy in my coaching, being busy with my family, with my kids and. And those demos that you've got that you're like, oh, you know, whatever did those a couple of years ago or whatever you come to find out. One of my demos was 12 years old. I had no idea that my demo was 12 years old. How did I find that out? Because Sam has been pushing me. She's been pushing me to get more clips to be able to better optimize my voice 1, 2, 3, profile. And so this is one of those moments when the student becomes the teacher because Sam signed up for playbook, done a little bit of coaching with her, trying to help her get her business up and running. And now here I am sitting on zoom calls with Sam, and she's telling me what to do and bossing me around and pushing me in a good way. And I needed her to do that because in the couple of weeks since Sam has started working on my voice 1, 2, 3 profiles. I added something like 40 new samples to my profile and most of that is new audio. I went through and cut a bunch of audio for corporate based on projects that I worked on. I cut probably a dozen or more audio clips from the docu shorts that I've recorded. I produced a brand new telephony demo for myself. I produced a brand new real estate narration demo for myself. All of these things are things that if I had actually sat down and thought about it, I would have realized, dude, you should have done this, you know, five years ago, six years ago, eight years ago. But I wasn't thinking about it until Sam came in and started pushing me, pushing me to get new clips so all this new audio gets created. Sam puts me up on Voice123 and I go from being non existent on that platform to within a day or two. I'm ranking page one, two or three for almost everything that we would want to be ranked for. All because of the work that Sam is doing, the optimization that. And not just the optimization that she's doing, but we wouldn't have got there if she hadn't been pushing me to get new clips and get more samples. You need more audio. So do you know what I was doing this week? This week I was spending a little bit of time every day in the office working on my voice amplifier because my Voice Sam player hasn't probably been touched since the day that I put the Voice Sam player on my my website. And I didn't again realize how old some of the audio was on some of those demos. But now that I've got all of these new clips and some of these new demos that I've made because Sam has been pushing me, I was like, okay, well, I can't let this go to waste. So I'm taking some of the things that she did from the profile optimization keywords and things of that nature, porting that over so that I can refresh some of the demos and some of the samples that are on my voice amp player, but also adding a whole bunch of new audio that wasn't there before. All of these things happen because I have someone who is pushing me. You listen to the podcast or you come on the YouTube channel, you watch Free Advice Friday. Maybe you're an active participant in the Veopreneur group, maybe you follow me on LinkedIn and for a lot of people it's the other way around. I'm pushing them. I'm challenging you to do more. I'm challenging you to market more, to send another email, to make another connection, to get back into your CRM, create another social media post or add another piece of content or all of these sorts of things. And I'm challenging day in and day out. And every once in a while, somebody will send me a message. Actually, it probably happens more often than I think, but I'll get a message from someone and they'll be like, why are you calling me out? Why you gotta attack me? Why are you coming after me? Because they think that the things that I'm posting are for them, and they are. But so much of the things that I post on social media, and I've said this before, it's me calling myself out. Now, I may not do it by name, I may not directly say it, but so much of the stuff that I post, it's from the internal monologues that I am having with myself to remind myself to do the thing, to remind myself to take the step, to remind myself to make another contact, to create another piece of content or whatever. And so I'm very much used to being the one who is doing the pushing, but I wouldn't be able to do it as well if I didn't have people who were pushing me. So I come back to my original question, which is, who is pushing you? Who are you inviting to have a seat at the table in your business, directly or indirectly? Obviously, I am having direct interactions with Brad through coaching. We're doing sessions together. We're on Zoom. He's pushing me through auditions, helping me to try to improve my reads. And there's a very direct communication there. Sam and I have direct communication through email. Every once in a while we jump on a Zoom call. But then Matt and Mike are pushing me just as much. But we don't have any direct communication at all, really. Maybe the occasional email or the occasional social media exchange or something like that. They're pushing me and they don't even realize it just because I'm so impressed with what they're doing. And I want to use that as a model. I want to get to that level. Ryder did the keynote at Mavo. And I mean, I knew who Ryder was. I knew of him. Never had a conversation with him before, never had the opportunity to see him speak or anything like that. And I sat through his keynote and I was like, this guy's pushing me. This guy's pushing me. Because so much of this guy's story makes me think about myself and my story and the fact that he was like I think he said he was 14 years until he achieved the level of success that he was trying to achieve in his business. And I'm thinking like, okay, well let's see, I went full time in 2012 and it's now 2025, and I start doing the math and I'm like, oh, next year is going to be my. Maybe next year will be my year, you know, 14 years or whatever. But listening to how hard that guy works, listening to, more importantly for me, his mindset and his attitude, the mentality that he brings to his business, that was pushing me. That's a lesson that I feel like a broken record learning on repeat. I know all the things about mindset, I talk about them, I teach them, but I still have to remind myself every once in a while I need to check myself. Every once in a while I need to examine my attitudes. Every once in a while I need to be self aware of my self talk. And every once in a while I need to change the narratives. And so even though I was just another guy sitting in the room at Mavo, Ryder was pushing me. And I needed that push. I had the opportunity to have Kelly Mashinsky on the podcast a couple months ago, and I'd never had a conversation with Kelly before, so I was grateful that she was even willing to come on the podcast because I honestly figured she had no idea who I was was. And I wasn't sure if she would accept my invitation. But I'd been following her on social media and seeing some of the things that she was sharing on LinkedIn and she seemed like somebody who would have a ton of value to add to the podcast and to my audience. And by the way, she was somebody who had a ton of value to add to the podcast and to the audience. And if you haven't listened to that episode yet, go back and listen to that episode. But I had the opportunity to have a conversation with Kelly face to face at Mayvo, and it was really nice to be able to sit down and talk to her. And we talked about a few different things, but she doesn't know it, but she's pushing me. Some of the things that she said in our conversation were pushing me. She asked me, why are you not on my roster? And I admitted to her straight up. I'm like, look, my commercial demo was really great in the day, but it's old and I'm not as proud of it anymore and I'm not sending it out. Which is why I've been in the process of working on a new one. And so she was pushing me. And so I made a commitment that when my new commercial demo is done, I'm going to send it to Kelly and hopefully she'll take me on her roster. And that. I don't know, that carrot on the stick. I don't know. How do you describe it? That thing that is in front of me is what is pushing me to put in even more effort when I'm working with Brad and put even more thought and consideration into the demo that I'm ultimately going for. And so there's all these different people who come in and out of my life in different capacities and at different seasons and in different ways, but they're all pushing me. And I want to acknowledge those people for pushing me, but I also want to make sure that I'm always willing and open to be pushed. And so, again, I come back to my original question, which is, who is pushing you? Have you ever sat down and actually thought about the people that are pushing you? Do you have a Matt Fogarty or a Mike Pongratz that is in your life that you maybe don't have any direct communication with, but every time you turn on the TV and you hear one of their spots or you hear them on a show or you see another narration that they've done or whatever, and you're like, man, I want to get to that level. And it's not jealousy. It's not envy or anything like that. It's just. I don't. It's not even. I don't even want to say that it's competition, because for me, it's not about competition. It's just about. I want to play the game at that level. I want to play the game at that level, and I want to be in the same spot break as those guys and say that I was. And I want my kids, when I'm watching the World Series with my daughter, I want her to hear daddy on the tv, on the commercial or promo or whatever. So do you have those guys or gals who are pushing you? Do you have the coach like Brad or like Kelly, who's pushing you? And do you have a colleague, somebody like Sam, who has no idea and she's going to listen to this episode? And I can almost imagine what the email is going to be like when she actually hears this episode, because I'm obviously not telling her anything about this, because part of it is just a test to see whether or not she actually listens to the episode. But do you have that colleague like Sam, who's pushing you. And maybe they know it or maybe they don't, but they're pushing you and it's making you get better. It's making you do the thing. It's making you try harder. It's making you try something different. Right before I sat down to record this episode, I recorded an interview with Cynthia Depando. And that's going to come out after this episode that I'm recording right now. And Cynthia said something at the end of the episode which was just so stinking simple and yet so stinking profound. She's like, just be open. Say yes to things that pushed me, that pushed me in that moment. That, like, I felt the push in that moment because I will be the first person to admit that. Pretty comfortable, pretty set in my ways. My wife would say I'm stubborn, but obviously I don't agree with her on that. But I definitely am somebody who has gotten comfortable. I feel like I know my role, my niche, all that sort of stuff. But then I hear Cynthia sitting there. We're looking at each other on the screen and she's saying, be open. You know, say yes to things. And I know she was speaking generally, but that was one of those moments when I was like, she's staring directly into my soul and telling me what to do right now. And I don't know, I don't. I don't know how I feel about that, but the reality is that I feel like, yeah, that's probably exactly what I needed to hear. And I know she wasn't speaking directly to me, but she was. And so here she is on my podcast and she's pushing me. Find those people. If you want to level up your business, you've got to have people that push you. In my talk at Mavo, I talked about complacency and the dangers of complacency. And I shared some real honest to goodness examples from my own career. Moments where I've gotten a little too comfortable and a little bit too complacent and how that's had an impact on my career. Don't let yourself get there. Don't let yourself get comfortable and complacent. Make sure that you've always got someone who is pushing you.