VOCS 077 | Coffee with Paul Schmidt

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Voice Over Coffee Shop | VOCS 077 | Coffee with Paul Schmidt

Host: Andrew Morrison
Guest: Paul Schmidt
Release Date: June 14, 2024

In Episode 77 of The Voice Over Coffee Shop, host Andrew Morrison engages in an insightful and candid conversation with his good friend, Paul Schmidt. Paul, a multifaceted voice actor, coach, and business strategist, delves into his journey in the voiceover industry, his personal struggles and triumphs, and the innovative approaches he employs to thrive in a competitive field. This comprehensive summary captures the essence of their discussion, highlighting key points, notable quotes, and actionable insights for aspiring voice actors and industry professionals.

---

1. Overcoming Anxiety and Personal Well-being

Paul opens up about his long-standing battle with anxiety, shedding light on how it influenced his professional and personal life.

• Managing Anxiety:
  Paul shares, “[...] I am a staunch decaf guy. And the reason is I've talked about this once or twice. I've got anxiety and caffeine is like throwing gasoline on that shit. So I stick stringently to decaf” (01:34).

• Discovery and Treatment:
  Reflecting on his journey, Paul explains how his partner identified his anxiety, leading him to seek treatment. “[...] within 10 minutes, the guy goes, yeah, I think she's right. It's anxiety. He put me on 10 milligrams of Lexapro, and within 10 days, my life changed” (02:16). This treatment significantly improved his quality of life, transforming his irritability into a more manageable state.

• Unexpected Benefits:
  Paul discusses the nuanced effects of managing anxiety, noting, “When you don't have that anxiety, there takes a little more willpower to get going in the morning because that anxiety has a positive side to the coin, right? It motivates you” (04:18). While he no longer misses the anxiety, he acknowledges the discipline required to maintain productivity without it.

2. Entry into the Voiceover Industry

Paul recounts his initial foray into voice acting, transitioning from a radio career to embracing voiceover work full-time.

• Starting in Radio:
  Paul began in radio, handling audio production and creating commercials. “[...] we commonly call the radio read. [...] I started to realize that the stuff we were getting in from agencies and from national was better and it was different. And I discovered this thing called voice acting” (05:28).

• Pursuing Voice Acting:
  Influenced by Sandy Thomas’s book “So You Want to Be a Voiceover Star”, Paul sought to break into the industry. “[...] I spent better part of two years trying to break in. And what I found out was that if you weren't in New York or LA, if you didn't have coaching, [...] the world has changed quite a bit since then” (05:28).

• Going Full-Time:
  Realizing the potential to market directly to clients without needing agents, Paul made the leap to full-time voiceover work in 2018 after nine months of strategic planning. “[...] it took me nine months to go full time. And that's not common. And to be quite honest, it was too fast even for me” (08:01).

3. Diversified Voiceover Work

Paul outlines the variety of projects he undertakes, emphasizing his focus on corporate and commercial work.

• Project Breakdown:
  “50 depending on the time of year. Sometimes depending on the time of the month, it's 50 to 60% corporate stuff” (10:35). His portfolio includes explainers, product demos, commercials, and museum documentaries, with notable projects like content featured in over 250 aquariums worldwide.

4. Effective Marketing and Outreach Strategies

Paul shares his approach to marketing, highlighting the importance of personalized yet efficient outreach.

• Email Marketing Philosophy:
  Paul emphasizes brevity and value, stating, “Don't waste people's time, don't beat around the bush, right? Get to the point” (13:09). He advocates for understanding client segments and providing meaningful content tailored to their specific needs.

• Automation and Efficiency:
  To manage extensive outreach, Paul utilizes automation tools. “[...] you have to automate your system. I don't see how you can do it at scale and not use smart automation” (16:52). He advises grouping clients into target segments to streamline the personalization process without overwhelming effort.

• Balancing Prospecting and Content Consumption:
  Paul recommends using tools like blog aggregators to stay informed about different industries efficiently. “[...] use a blog aggregator to, you know, pull this information in for you automatically and then spend, you know, 15 minutes every day reading up on that audience segment” (16:45).

5. Integrating AI into Business Operations

Exploring the role of artificial intelligence, Paul discusses both its benefits and limitations in the voiceover industry.

• AI Tools Utilized:
  Paul incorporates AI for tasks like first draft editing on his podcast using Riverside’s AI features, which “[...] chop out all the silences, to chop out all the ums and us” (23:10). While he finds AI useful for initial drafts, he acknowledges the necessity of human oversight to ensure quality.

• Future Aspirations with AI:
  Committed to leveraging AI effectively, Paul is studying to become a certified AI prompt engineer to enhance his business efficiency. “[...] I want to learn how to run this stuff and use it for my business, to make my business more efficient, faster, things like that” (24:33).

6. A Day in the Life of Paul Schmidt

Paul provides a structured glimpse into his daily routine, balancing content creation, voiceover work, and personal activities.

• Weekly Schedule:

  • Monday: Identify weekly topics and draft initial content.
  • Tuesday: Finalize drafts for video production.
  • Wednesday: Focus entirely on shooting and editing content.
  • Thursday: Publish and promote content, including blog posts, videos, and newsletters.
  • Friday: Catch-up day for any pending tasks or planning for the upcoming week.

• Adaptability:
  Paul notes, “Sometimes I'm on track on that schedule, sometimes I'm not” (25:57), highlighting the dynamic nature of balancing multiple responsibilities.

7. Building and Managing VEO Pro

Paul elaborates on VEO Pro, his comprehensive platform designed to support beginner and intermediate voice actors through education and community.

• Origins and Evolution:
  Initially launched as the VO Freedom Master Plan, VEO Pro amalgamated courses, coaching calls, and a community into a single platform. “[...] last June, we moved them all under one platform... I'm now studying to be a certified AI prompt engineer because I want to learn how to run this stuff and use it for my business” (29:30).

• Features and Offerings:
  VEO Pro includes:

  • Courses: Covering essential topics like VO Rates 101, VO LLC setup, and VO SEO.
  • Community Engagement: Interactive mixers and peer-led workout groups to foster real relationships and combat industry loneliness.
  • Mindset Training: Over four and a half hours of audio-only content focused on developing a confident and effective business mindset.

• Target Audience:
  “[...] VEO Pro is for beginner and intermediate voice actors who are trying to level up their career” (33:27). The platform prioritizes community over content, ensuring members support each other’s growth.

8. Lessons Learned and Advice for Aspiring Voice Actors

Paul offers valuable insights drawn from his experiences, emphasizing perseverance and proactive marketing.

• Persistence in Marketing:
  “[...] you have to let people know you're out there and people won't just line up with wheelbarrows full of money on the front step” (39:31). Paul stresses the necessity of consistent outreach to build a thriving voiceover business.

• Empathy and Support:
  Realizing the struggles many voice actors face, Paul advocates for helping others as a path to collective success. “[...] one day you might be able to help them” (38:19).

• Overcoming Early Success and Setbacks:
  Paul recounts a pivotal moment when a major client retracted, causing a significant income drop. This experience taught him the importance of client diversification and resilience. “[...] within three years I was making more money than ever. That was a huge feeling of self-satisfaction” (43:06).

• Letter to His Past Self:
  If Paul could advise his earlier self, he’d affirm his path and encourage patience and gratitude, recognizing that not everyone achieves rapid success. “[...] you were on the right track, maybe show a little bit more patience” (38:19).

9. Personal Interests and Work-Life Balance

Beyond his professional endeavors, Paul shares his hobbies and the importance of maintaining a balanced life.

• Fitness and Sports:
  Paul enjoys staying active through gym workouts, golf with his son, attending baseball games, and following his favorite teams, the Orioles and Ravens.

• Social Activities:
  He finds joy in visiting jazz clubs like Reveley in Richmond, fostering personal connections outside the voiceover realm.

---

Connect with Paul Schmidt and VEO Pro:

• VEO Pro Website: veopropro.com
• YouTube Channel: Search for "VEO Pro"
• Social Media: Various platforms under the VEO Pro handle

Paul Schmidt’s candid discussion on The Voice Over Coffee Shop offers a wealth of knowledge for voice actors aiming to enhance their careers. From mastering personal well-being to implementing effective marketing strategies and leveraging AI, Paul’s insights provide a roadmap for success in the evolving voiceover industry. His emphasis on community, continuous learning, and resilience serves as an inspiration for both newcomers and seasoned professionals alike.

---

This summary encapsulates the key elements of Episode 77, providing a comprehensive overview for those who seek to benefit from Paul Schmidt’s expertise without listening to the full podcast.

Transcript

[Andrew Morrison]

Voiceover Coffee Shop, episode 77.

[Voiceover Coffee Shop Host]

Welcome to the Voiceover Coffee Shop, where we give you a glimpse into the world of the biggest voice actors in the industry over a delicious cup of coffee. And now, here's your host, voice actor Andrew Morrison.

[Andrew Morrison]

Hi there. My name is Andrew Morrison and welcome to the Voiceover Coffee Shop, where we start our day with some of the finest names in voiceover. If you would like to get to know me a bit more, feel free to check out my website. It's andrewdmorson.com in this episode, we have a very good buddy of mine, Paul Schmidt. Now, this is generally the part where I usually give you a list of credits and accolades to give you more of an idea of who I'm chatting with, but this one's going to be a little bit different. Paul is just a really good guy. He's one of the greatest conversationalists I know and I could honestly talk to him for hours. He is one of the most brilliant business minds in the industry. He's a coach, he's an actor, he's a realist. He's a guy who is just a wealth of information from his YouTube channel, Veo Pro, to his course, Veo Freedom, which is truly geared to make this business easier to navigate to. Look at me, I'm making a laundry list again. Just know I got a lot from this conversation and I hope as a listener or a viewer, you get half as much value as I did.

[Paul Schmidt]

How are you doing today, Paul?

Dude, I couldn't be any better. I'm so thrilled to be here. Thanks so much for having me on.

Yeah, man, thanks for coming. So how do you take your coffee in the morning?

This is one thing that people don't know about me. I am a staunch decaf guy. And the reason is I've talked about this once or twice. I've got anxiety and caffeine is like throwing gasoline on that shit. So I stick stringently to decaf and I drink it, like, going out of style. So you.

I'm. I mean, I usually just drink my black. I used to have some kind of oat milk creamer that tastes like oatmeal cream pie cookies. And it's really, really good. But. But yeah, no, I've just been drinking it black. Are there any other things that you do to kind of mitigate your anxiety, like diet or do you have to be, like, super specific about how you address that or.

So, yeah, I do. I do treat it with medication. And I'd be honest with you, Andrew. I didn't for 55 years, I didn't know I had anxiety. I always perceived it as irritability. Right. I just thought, okay, I'm a cranky person. That's the way I am. And I was dating somebody at the time and explaining my general sort of mood. And she said, that's anxiety. I said, no, it's not. It's irritability. And she just kept, you know, hammering the point. She said, that's the way I perceive it too, and I get treated for it. And she literally dug into my health insurance, found a telehealth doc, and within 10 minutes, the guy goes, yeah, I think she's right. It's. It's anxiety. He put me on 10 milligrams of Lexapro, and within 10 days, my life changed. And when I say my life changed, I mean the quality of my life changed. That irritability, that feeling like you're constantly getting poked with a fork was gone. And even my son, who was like 14 at the time, 15, he noticed it. And it's just like, it's the one thing that I've done that has improved the quality of my life more than anything else. And so, yeah, and look, I'm totally aware that my anxiety manifests in me. Anxiety manifests in different ways for everybody, right? And so there can be oftentimes a different solution for everybody. Lexapro works great for me. It may not work for the next person, but I'm just grateful that it does for me. And, you know, if I can talk about it a little bit and maybe somebody says, you know what? Maybe I should get this checked out. Yeah, you probably should.

Yeah. Well, are there any, like, side effects that come with your anxiety that you have found have been beneficial and kind of give you like a. I almost want to call it a superpower, like.

Yes. And that's the strange thing. And that was. That was one of the things that kind of threw me for a loop when my anxiety is high. In other words, before treatment, right. I was a get up early, get rolling early, let's, you know, jump on the day. And what I found out was, you know, once I started taking the medication, when you don't have that anxiety, there takes a little more willpower to get going in the morning because that. That anxiety has a positive side to the coin, right? It motivates you. It fuels you. Sometimes it scares you out of bed, Right? Yeah. And you have to. You have to be a little bit more disciplined when. When that's in check as opposed to when it's not so, yeah, there's definitely, definitely. I won't say I miss the, I don't, I certainly don't miss the anxiety. I do miss being able to get up and get rolling early. I really enjoyed that. And now I have to push myself a little bit more.

Well, how did you start in the voiceover industry? I think you used to be a radio guy. I think you had told me that in passing. But like, but how did you get your start in finding VO as a career?

So, yeah, that was it. I started in radio. And of course when you're on the air they have you do production, right? So the radio station sells commercials, somebody's got to produce those. It falls on the DJs and nobody teaches you how to do it. They just, you know, show you the room, you already know audio production. They show you where the music beds are and the sound effects and hand you a script that was written by a 22 year old account executive. And you know, it has the phone number four times and the family owned and operated and the www.six times and you got to make soup out of that. And as a result, you know, what happens is what we commonly call the radio read. Right. Terry Daniel has a great line. He says everything, everything sounds like an urgent weather update. And it's not, it's not voice acting. And I started to realize that the stuff we were getting in from agencies and from national was better and it was different. And I discovered this thing called voice acting. But that's the, that's the thumbnail version of how I got in, which was through doing production at the radio stations. And I, you know, I really tried to make a run in 1998, 99. And I bought this book called so youo Want to Be a Voiceover Star, written by a guy named Sandy Thomas. You can find him on LinkedIn as Thomas voice imaging. And at that time Sandy was like, he. You couldn't swing a dead cat without hearing a Sandy Thomas spot or seeing one on tv. He had so many national campaigns. And we actually wrote to each other. I wrote, wrote a letter, remember letters? And he was very supportive and very inspirational. And look, dude, I spent better part of two years trying to break in. And what I found out was that if you weren't in New York or la, if you didn't have coaching, right? And coaching was only live and in person then in New York and la, and if you didn't have representation and you weren't union, you didn't work, right? Well, you know, thank God for me the world has changed quite a bit since then. And when I found out that I could, oh, I can go after my own work, I can, I can sell directly to client. I don't need an agent, I don't need like, holy mackerel. The gloves came off and that's when I decided I want to do it full time.

So what did you start initially doing? Were you just sending a bunch of cold emails, trying to find yourself work? Did you get like, did you get a demo around that time period? Like, what was that transition from realization to practice?

So I, you know, in the meantime, in that 10, 15 year span, I had come off the air and had gone into sales. I was a digital sales manager for a group of what are now Odyssey stations. They used to be called Intercom.

Oh, okay, yeah, yeah.

And then went from there to a technology company selling high end custom websites. And so the transition for me actually had to do with that second job because I was, I was successful at it. I was pretty good at it. At one point I sold a $1.7 million website to EY, the accounting firm. And we were building that site out and one of the project managers said, hey, why don't we do an onboarding video for the people, the constituents of ey, they're gonna be using this site. And I said, well, great, I've got a home studio. I had, I had kept side clients the whole time from my radio days. Hey, you know, you did our radio spot, would you do our cable spot? And then they'd come back for other things. So I had still had the home studio, was still doing voice work occasionally. And I said, well, I can, I can do the audio and I can do the voiceover. And we did that video and they loved it. And they came back, they had us do two more. And for me, Andrew, it was the context of doing this work that I absolutely loved within the work that I didn't love at all, but was paying me pretty well. And I went, you know what I gotta like, even for my own mental health, man, I gotta find a way to do more voiceover because this just brings me joy. And so thank God for that sales training in the interim because I knew what I had to do, right? I knew I needed better tools, I needed better processes, I needed to further develop my messaging, I needed, quite frankly, I needed to up my demo and website game too. So I spent six months building that plan and, and then when I started executing on that plan, it took me nine months to go full time. And, and that's not common. And to be quite honest, it was, it was too fast even for me. I really should have hung on a year and a half, two years. So that was, that's how I got into it. I've been full time for the last six years, since 2018.

Congratulations.

Thanks, you too.

So what, what kind of work do you actually focus on? Because I mean, I've seen like your name in awards and I know about your coaching and stuff, but I don't know what kind of voice work you actually do.

Yep. So 50 depending on the time of year.

Yeah.

Heck, sometimes depending on the time of the month, it's 50 to 60% corporate stuff.

Okay.

So, you know, explainers, anthems, product demos, you name it. About 20 to 25% is commercials, local, regional, national, and then the rest is just dribs and drabs. The occasional documentary. The. Yeah, I do some museum documentary work, which is. God, I love that work because one of the last pieces I did was a piece that is showing in 250. 50 or 260 aquariums worldwide, including the National Aquarium in Baltimore, which is where I'm from. So knowing that it's playing there is kind of a nice thing for me. But yeah, I mean it's, you know, 5 to 10% of it is just rando. Right. It could be. I still even occasionally get an occasional ivr piece. Right. It's just drips and traps, so. But mostly corporate and commercial.

Okay. And what cold outreach methods are you using outside of email to generate business?

Outside of email, I don't do a ton. LinkedIn is my number two platform. I don't seek work through social media. I find social media incredibly useful for building peer to peer relationships within the voice acting community with colleagues and with coaches and demo producers and service providers and what have you. I've never found it effective for getting me work and so I use that on, on the VO pro side to build community around that. And occasionally, you know, if I get a, you know, a high profile job or something, I may post that on social just to remind everybody, hey, I still do this for a living. You know, thank God, because you know, the VO pro side is a labor of love, but it takes a lot of time, you know, so thank God I've got the voice work to be able to sort of, sort of subsidize that as well.

Yeah, well, when you are email marketing, how are you providing value within those emails? Because I mean, there's that. It's, it's difficult to, I want to say, be Be spartan about it and get to the point and not be me, me, me, me, me, but also provide value to the clients. Especially when you're trying to go eight, nine, follow ups later. Yeah, so how are you finding, yeah.

Point number one, I think is brevity. Don't waste people's time, don't beat around the bush, right? Get to the point and after the first reach out or two, once they, they know you, once you know they have access to your demos, your website and all that stuff, staying in touch is crucial, right? Follow up is crucial. I often say you can't do one sit up and expect to be fit, right? You got to develop that relationship over time. The key to that, I think is to understand each audience segment that you're pitching, whether it's general video producers, maybe it's elearning or instructional design people, maybe it's a healthcare video producer. You got to understand that segment. And to do that, one of the best ways I think to do it is to consume the media that that target consumes. In other words, if you're pitching to healthcare people, so start reading healthcare blogs, start reading video production blogs, right? Start to understand what their pain points are and you know what, occasionally ask them because everybody's a little bit different. So you've got to provide value in every single communication. It's not about you looking for work, it's about how can you be consultative and how can you provide value to that person. And at least you know you're not always going to hit the mark, right? But at least if you can position yourself as thinking about them first and trying to understand their world and trying to understand their problems and pain points, you will still get credit for that, even if it's a little clumsy, right? So don't be afraid to maybe be off the mark a little bit. But by concentrating and focusing on the client and not on yourself, you're going to get, you know, the lion's share of the credit for that and you will differentiate yourself.

Well then how do you balance that? Because you've got the time that it takes to prospect and send, say you're doing like 50 emails a day and then you also spend all of that time consuming the content they consume. And we work in a wide range of fields, so that's a lot of different concept content. And then you also have to do the job. So one, how do you manage trying to learn more about their industries and absorb all that? And two, how do you send that to them where you're letting them know that hey, this reminded me of you and it might be valuable to you without it almost turning into like a newsletter sort of setting.

Well, I think when it's well targeted, in other words, again, going back to the, let's say the healthcare video producers, right. If you're going to send them something that's well targeted, then I think you're, you're hitting the mark as far as being able to manage all that time. You've got to get your outreach system down to. You can't spend all day reaching out. Right. If you're going to send 50 emails that can't take you three or four hours, right. That should take you half an hour, hour tops. And that other time you're not going to spend all day consuming media either. Right? Because that's not sustainable. But if you're targeting a new segment of the audience, a new target market for you, let's say it's instructional designers, then, you know, take a couple of hours, go through and find 3, 4, 5, 6 instructional design blogs and aggregate them. Right. Use a blog aggregator to, you know, pull this information in for you automatically and then spend, you know, 15 minutes every day reading up on that audience segment. You'll start to understand their pain points and it will yield fruit in your messaging because you'll understand that target segment a lot better.

Okay, and so for those emails, are you like automating them so that way you could send like 50 and 30?

You absolutely have to, because let's say you're going to pick even if it's half that, Even if it's 25 new people a day and you're going to follow up with them four, five, six, seven times. You can't rely on an Excel spreadsheet or post it notes or a string around your finger to make sure that those follow ups go out on time and that nobody gets, you know, falls through the cracks. So yes, you have to automate your system. I don't see how you can do it at scale and not use smart automation.

Well then how do you automate follow ups while still creating a connection without them sounding generic?

Because they are going to sound a little bit generic. Like you can't personalize everything for everybody because you only have eight hours, 10 hours. Okay, let's get crazy and say 12 hours in a workday, you're going to spend four, five, six hours every day marketing to everybody. That is not possible. Right. And if it, you know, if you try to do it, you're going to burn out first. And secondly, you're not going to have any time to do any paid work that comes in. So, yeah, you can't treat like every precious snowflake as such, Right? You've got to, you've got to group people into target segments, right? That's how modern marketing and advertising works. Yes, it's becoming more personalized, but the other side of personalization is creepiness and manipulation. Right? And I've gotten those emails, right? People, you know, hey, I noticed you went to blah, blah, blah. And look, the information that we have on people is accessible to anybody. You're not showing anybody anything, really, when you throw in personal details, hey, I saw you went to, you know, Auburn University. Well, you know, everybody's got access to your LinkedIn. Everybody's got access to your biographical information. You're not differentiating yourself. And it comes off as, dude, you've been in my bushes for a week. Chill out. Right? It comes off as creepy and manipulative. That's why I said, get to the point. People understand that people are out there to have conversations around problems and solutions. If you get to the point, you don't waste anybody's time and you're direct and polite and professional, then you advance your cause because you give that person the option to say, it's not a need. I have no thank you. Then you can move on.

Well, speaking of solutions, what are personal things that you do to expand your own personal capacity to solve bigger problems? Like what? What are different personal growth things that you seek out?

I'm not sure I understand the question. Can you clarify that for me a little bit?

So we, we're problem solvers. At the end of the day, we are collaborating with a company. It affects the whole company, not just that video producer that we reached out to. What do you do to broaden your capabilities so that way you can solve bigger problems for bigger clientele and bigger companies? How do, how do you level yourself up and evolve yourself? What kind of content do you consume? What kind of different things do you do to make yourself 1% better every single day?

Gotcha, gotcha. I understand that now. So one of the things I like to do is to try and have actual conversations with people. In other words, when there is a project, let's say, on the line for, let's say it's a new customer, I try as often as possible to have an actual conversation with them around it and also respecting how they like to work. Some people like to jump on a zoom call. Some people prefer to work through email. Some people, I've got one or Two clients that even prefer text, okay, so let me meet you where you are. But I try to have a personal conversation with them to deepen that relationship. Number two is I try to, in as much as I can, be as low drag in the service providing process as I possibly can. I try to do the basic things under promise over deliver. I always try and set proper and clear expectations. And so I'm always looking at my messaging and reviewing it and trying to figure out, okay, how can I get the same job done? Be a little lower, lower maintenance for the client so that they have a smoother, more enjoyable, easier, hopefully more fun experience. And it's not just about providing the service, it's about the experience of providing the service. So if I can make their job a lot easier, a lot less high touch, high drag, if I can take something off their plate for them, if I can provide another solution, in other words, if I can provide audio production or if I can, you know, put them in touch with somebody that may solve a problem that I can't solve, then I'm always trying to keep my eyes peeled for that. So I hope that answers your question.

Yeah. And with you having all of those conversations and getting to know their further pain points outside of voiceover, what have you noticed as shifts in other markets that have kind of slowly impacted ours like, like through building, you know, if that makes sense. What are new pain points that you feel that your clients are developing?

I think one of them is, you know, let's face it, a lot of clients, a lot of prospects in our business, and I think outside of our business, certainly they're experimenting with AI right? In our business, obviously that has to do with AI voices. And I can't speak for AI outside of voiceover, but I'm hearing a lot of anecdotal evidence right now that clients are trying it, they're not having a good experience, and they're crawling back to the voice actor going, hey, we're sorry, man. You know, we actually value what you do even more now because we're starting to understand how difficult what you do is. Right. And how highly trained, most good voice actors are. So, yeah, I think that's, that's one of the shifts that people are starting to make. That's a. I don't know if that's going to be permanent, but it is. Certainly in, you know, mid-2024, we're starting to see some slap deck, slap back to AI And I think it's positive.

Well, do you integrate AI into any form of your business?

Absolutely, yeah. AI editors. I use Riverside for my podcast. Cool. Riverside has a function now which will essentially do my first rough cut for me. Right. So if I do an interview like you and I are now, I've got that video file and I can use AI within that platform to chop out all the silences, to chop out all the ums and us. Now it does require me to go back and tighten things up a little bit, but it does save me a lot of time. Right. And so, God, I use it for first draft writing for quite a bit of what I do. Again, you've got a fact check AI, you've got to make sure that your final output is in your voice. But it's a great writing assistant. I've tried to use it for things like generating images. I've not had a lot of luck. I get a lot of wonky stuff. Much the same as I think maybe some voice producers are going. Well, I tried an AI voice and it didn't quite hit home. I'm having that experience with images. I have in fact taken the step. I'm now studying to be a certified AI prompt engineer because I want to learn how to run this stuff and use it for my business, to make my business more efficient, faster, things like that. So that's one of the things I'm doing to try and level up and.

Where do you go to like research different AIs to, to integrate into your business? Because everybody's selling some kind of AI product right now and there's a lot, there's a lot of noise to kind of get through what will actually assist me and what can be five solutions in one.

Yeah, there is a lot of noise. I don't have a formal process for being able to reach research that stuff if something catches my ey. And I realize that's a vague statement, but I'll jump into it. I've played around with Bard, for example, and then what's the. Gemini is the Google product and occasionally.

Gemini is the new Bard.

Is the new Bard. Sorry. So occasionally I'll jump into one of those platforms as an alternative to for example, ChatGPT. Chat GPT is my. I've got some time invested in it now, so I've got a backlog of conversations in there. I'm a paid user and so I've built sort of some institutional knowledge and with that, with my version of ChatGPT, I've got some add ons and plugins that I've plugged into that. So that's my main platform. But I Still jump over to Gemini every now and again just to get a little bit different experience, find out what's going on there, and just kind of keep myself as much informed as I can given my limited time.

You do a lot in the day. Like, I know no two days are the same, but like walk me through like a general day in the life of polish me.

So it varies literally from Monday to Friday. Mondays I'm trying to identify my topic for the week as far as my VO Pro content goes and get my first draft written for VO Pro. I often will do it myself. I don't like this week. I used some AI help to get the first draft written, but I'm not sure I'm still experimenting with that on the VO Pro side because, you know, they're not the stuff that I'm talking about. AI isn't even educated on, right. Because a lot of these issues have come up in the last year, in the last six months, in the last three months. So it's not as helpful to me. But for a pure writing assistant, sometimes it's helpful. So Monday is I'm trying to identify topic and get a first draft done. Tuesday, firming that up, trying to get the final draft done so that all I have to do on Wednesday is to shoot and edit. Sometimes I'm on track on that schedule, sometimes I'm not. But Wednesday, I don't even take any meetings on Wednesdays because I'm pretty much engrossed in getting the, the video done. And I publish on Thursday mornings. I'm promoting the blog on Thursday mornings, the video on Thursday mornings. I do my newsletter on Thursday mornings more often than not. And that's that, you know, some of that content relies on what's going on in the topic of the week. And then Friday is if I have a quote unquote free day, then that's where I'm, you know, doing any catch up that I need to do. Maybe if I'm really good, I'm identifying a topic for the following week, planning the following week towards the end of Friday. And then the voice work, I've got blocks for auditions, I've got blocks for getting paid work done. Sometimes I have to move those around depending on what's going on. That always takes precedence over the content creation because that's the main part of my business. So I'm fitting in the, the VO Pro stuff and the content creation. I have a schedule for it. But there are some days where I don't start writing until Wednesday because Monday and Tuesday have been Voiceover heavy. And that really puts me behind the eight ball. And there's some. There's some long Wednesdays occasionally.

So do you ever outsource any. Any of, like, your lead generation or work or, like, any little things like lead generation?

I don't, because I feel like I want to know who I'm going after, and I want to know, you know, I'm. I'm very particular about who I go after, so I don't outsource that. I don't really see a day where I ever might, because I've got. I mean, I've been doing this for way longer than I've even been in voiceover, so that's kind of inherent to how I operate. So I don't outsource that. I was working with Umberto Franco, who I think you know. Yes, I do, who is one of our voiceover colleagues, who's a fantastic video editor, and he was doing some video editing for me for a while. We no longer work together, and I'm still sad about it. I hope to maybe work with him again one day. But he does amazing, phenomenal video work, and that helped, especially it helped me early in my YouTube channel because I didn't have a great process nailed down firmly yet. And so the time that Umberto's work saved me was quite significant. Now that I've got my process screwed down a little bit more, I don't have as much a need, and maybe that'll change one day. But where I. Where I can, I do try and offload things, but I'm a little bit of a control freak. I don't delegate as well as I could. And so that's. That's a little bit of a character flaw and something that I've got to work on, too. So, yeah, I probably could delegate much more than I do.

Gotcha. So walk me through what VEO Pro is, because I have an overall idea. I know it's community. It's also life. Life access to you. It's a number of different things. So, like, walk me through, like, what was your original inspiration behind VEO Pro and what it has evolved to?

So this is. This, admittedly, will be a little convoluted. Okay. So the VO Freedom Master Plan is our signature program, and that was how I got on this side of the business in the first place. And that includes three things. It includes an online curriculum, it includes weekly coaching calls as a group, and it includes a community. Right. And when we started the master plan, that community was originally a private Facebook group. Right. But I always knew that Facebook was not the answer. First of all, Facebook's a toilet. You know, it's full of not just, you know, sex and religion and politics, but, you know, it's full of ads. There's not a whole lot of functionality in the Facebook groups. I always knew that wasn't the answer, but it got us on the board and allowed us to come together as a community and to exchange information and ideas and help each other. So the core idea was fine. Last June of 2023, we moved off of Facebook, by the way. The community was on Facebook. The course was on a platform called Thinkific. So we had two different platforms, two different logins. We had those integrated for a while. It was still a pain in the ass. And last June, we moved them all under one platform. So the courses, the community, even the weekly coaching calls are all done within what is now called VO Pro. So that's the, the name for the community and the business education that we do. That said, the master plan students have a walled garden within that community. There's content and access to stuff in there that only they see because it has to do with the master plan, the marketing curriculum. Once we moved it all under, under one roof, I now realized I had the ability to open the community up to people that weren't ready for the master plan. Either they're too new or in some cases, they're too accomplished. Right. So we could open this plan up. We could offer other courses that weren't part of the master plan, like VO Rates 101. We've got a new ebook called VO LLC to teach you how to set up your LLC. We've got a VO SEO course. We've got workout groups, peer led workout groups that happen every month in different areas like audiobooks and commercials and such. We have now four and a half hours of audio only mindset training, visualization training to help develop your mindset and to help you with, with your just being able to be a more effective, more efficient business person. So there's a lot that we do in VEO Pro that we couldn't do a year and a half ago. So the master plan is a walled garden within a larger walled garden called VEO Pro. That makes sense.

Yes, it does. I'm curious because, I mean, you've given me lots of little nuggets on the value adds of it, but what value does VEO Pro add to that segment you mentioned? For people that are too accomplished? Like when somebody is in that level of their career, how are you adding.

Value Then, yeah, to be honest, those are not. That's not the sweet spot for VO Pro, Right. If you're. If you're, you know, Karen Gilfrey, if you're K Best, if you're. To really take it to an extreme, if you're Terror Strong, right, You're. You have no use for VO Pro. It's for. VO Pro is for beginner and intermediate voice actors who are trying to level up their career. And the best part of the community is the community. Right? Because, again, you're away from all those distractions and you're, you know, when you got a little skin in the game, when you. When you're paying a few dollars every month to be a part of a community, you're with people that, you know, they're there for a reason. They're there with a purpose. They want to get better, they want to participate. They want to make each other better. That's the best thing about Veo Pro. The courses are great. People get a lot of value out of them. People get a lot of value out of the workout groups and the mindset training and all that stuff. But at the end of the day, they're there because they enjoy the community. They get a lot of value out of the community and the interactions that go on there. We do things like we've just started doing what we call Veo Pro mixers, where people can just hang out for an hour and really get to know each other in a much more granular way than they can throughout through their keyboard. Right?

Yeah.

And we do those on Zoom to make sure that we can break people out into very small groups and they can really honestly start to develop real relationships because we're all so geographically dispersed that, you know, it makes it difficult sometimes. And loneliness is one of the worst parts of this business.

That's true. So. So what. I mean, I don't want you to give it away, but, like, what is, like, kind of the. The. The. The curriculum per se? Like, like, what. What are you teaching in, like, the.

Actual marketing curriculum in the VO Freedom master plan? Yeah. So there are eight modules. The first one is essentially an introduction. The second one lays out the marketing principles that we use because you need to know why you're doing what you're doing. I like just to tell people to do stuff for no reason. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense. So that's what module two does. It gives you. It's kind of like marketing 101. It gives you five basic principles of marketing that lay out why we do what we do for the rest of the program. The third module is actually our longest module, and it is on mindset because if we don't have that screwed down properly, Andrew, we can't develop confidence in our business. And if we don't have confidence in our business as artists, it bleeds through into the booth, man. You know, that lack of confidence, that scarcity mentality that bleeds in. And so if we don't get our mindset right, it affects everything we do. It affects how we message with clients and prospects. It affects how we negotiate. It affects how we onboard and set expectations with clients. It affects how we stand up for our worth. And again, if we don't. If we don't have that confidence in the business side, it bleeds into the artistic side as well.

Gotcha. So what do you do outside of the booth? What are the things that you enjoy doing to, like, get out of those four walls?

So, in no particular order, I try to stay fit as much as possible. I'm in the gym. I've been struggling with it lately because I got sick in. I was sick for all of December and January, and it wiped out my energy. I mean, to the point where, you know, even. Even on the anxiety meds, I get out of bed fairly easily. Not for the last. Since. Since January. And I started taking a new supplement, which is helping with that. And I've been in the gym pretty consistently for about the last week. Again, secondly, is golf ideally with my son. That's my happy place is on a golf course. That is not to infer in any way that I am an accomplished golfer. I am not, but it's great fun for me. It's some of the best times that I've ever had with my son have been on the golf course. And so we love to play whenever we can. Like to take in an occasional baseball game here in Richmond. We have a double A team called the Flying Squirrels, and my son and I are making plans to get out to a couple games this summer. I'm a huge Orioles and Ravens fan being from Baltimore, so I follow those teams pretty closely. And I love getting. We have a great jazz club here in Richmond called Reveley. And yeah, so I enjoy heading down there occasionally, too.

Awesome sauce, man. So if you were to write yourself a letter and send it back to when. From to yourself at that point where you were transitioning to try to go to VO full time, what would you tell your past self?

You're on the right track. What you're doing is going to Work. And when I say what you're doing, and that is the Making the effort to market directly to clients is going to be what's going to build your business. And honestly, you know, one of the. One of the epiphanies that I had early on was, a, I was able to go full time very quickly, and B, I had a lot of success in the early years, more so than most people. And it took me a while to figure that out because we always look at the world through our own lens, right?

Yeah.

And I started to realize that there are a lot of people struggling out there. And then. And I tell this story often. I was. Three years ago, I was reading through the State of Vo survey, and I realized, okay, 50% of us make less than eight grand a year. 75% of us make less than 40 grand a year.

Right.

Then the other thing was they asked voice actors how often you're reaching out to market your services, and 75% said, less than three times a day. And I went, well, duh. I mean, we're not making any money because we're not reaching out to people.

The only way you can build a business is to tell people about your stuff. That's it. That's it.

And that's a mistake. Honestly, I think that is not certainly limited to voiceover. The biggest mistake I think most new businesses make is they throw the doors open and they expect people to line up with wheelbarrows full of money on the front step. And that's not the way it works. You've got to let people know you're out there and people you know of. One of the most common thing I hear is, well, you know, I think about marketing, but it makes me feel icky. First of all, if you're icky about it, you're doing it wrong. Second of all, if feeling a little icky is what you're letting get you in your way of building a business and living your dream, quite frankly, get over it. Right. Figure out a way to do it, not feel icky. And that's what we teach in the master plan. But if I could write a letter to myself, I'd say you were on the right track, maybe show a little bit more patience. I think that's a trap that we all fall into. We want it to happen. We want it to happen now. And I think in my specific case, it did happen pretty close to now. Right. So to be a little bit more grateful for that and to understand it a little bit earlier that not everybody's going to have that success and that, hey, guess what, one day you might be able to help them. Which I didn't see coming, you know, three years ago, four years ago. And that's how I ended up going down that rabbit hole. That ended up being the master plan. And VO Pro was, I'm like, why are we so goddamn passive about finding work? Right? Yeah. And that's, you know, I uncovered a whole bunch of stuff. I ended up talking to 69 voice actors in 75 days to try and figure this out.

Did you ever find that being full time really early and really, really fast, was that ever a detriment in any way?

Absolutely. Six months in, I had a handful of the way I was able to make the jump ultimately was I booked like 30 grand of work in a week. I think it was 40 grand within 11 days. And so I had a couple of a few big contracts for recurring work. And I was like, I'm not going to be able to get all this work done if I keep the full time job. And so I made the jump and six months in one of those gateway clients, we had a call and they said, my God, we love your work. We've got this down to a science. We had done like 50 videos together and we were jamming and they said, we've got four more lines of videos we want to do with you. They literally said this verbatim in the call, Andrew, the work is virtually endless. And two weeks later they called back and said, the CEO wants a younger sounding guy. Thanks very much. And so half of my income went out the door overnight. I did not have the diversification in my client base that I really needed. And I struggled for months and months. I started driving Lyft, I got a little help from family. I did whatever I had to do to not go back to a full time job because I knew if I did that then my time would be limited again. And I knew the time was valuable to be able to find new clients and get my client base a little bit more diversified. And it worked out. And so within three years I was making more money than ever. I made never in any job. And that was, that was especially going through that adversity and getting past it. That was a huge feeling of self satisfaction.

That's cool. So where can people find you and where can people find Veo Pro?

So Veo Pro is at Veopro Pro. Veopro Pro. And then I'm all over socials, usually as some permutation of Veo Pro couldn't get the consistent handle across all the socials, but I think on YouTube the channel is Veo Pro. Some permutation of that. If you search Vo Pro on the socials, you'll find me.

You'll find it. Thank you for coming on, man. This has been.

Dude, I'm glad we got to catch up. Am I going to see you in Dallas this year?

Yeah, you are absolutely awesome.

I'll see you there.

[Andrew Morrison]

This conversation was enlightening, informative, and so incredibly raw, to say the least. And I really hope you enjoyed Paul's real take on how to build relationships, build a business without fluff, and really just be an authentic human being in your own unique journey through Void. If you'd like to join Veo Freedom, you can visit veopro Pro.

[Paul Schmidt]

Thanks for listening and I'll catch you in the next one.

[Voiceover Coffee Shop Host]

Thank you for listening to the Voiceover Coffee Shop. For more information on guests, new episodes and more, be sure to visit veocoffeeshop.com and our YouTube channel or your favorite podcast streaming platform. You know you want to.