Emma O'Neill: Homeless Student, Yoga Guru, Top Voice Actor

Paul:

So, I'm going to be honest, today's guest is really just a cheap excuse for she and I to catch up because we were both at VO Atlanta a couple of weeks ago and we can get a chance to talk.

So please welcome to the VO Pro podcast, my dear friend, one of my best friends in this business and in the world. I look up to her. I love her. She is one of the most accomplished people in our business that you will ever come across. She's a multi award winner.

SOVAS, One Voice, and apparently a recent Reed Awards winner as of a couple of nights ago. We'll talk about that. Please welcome to the VO Pro Podcast, my dear friend Emma O 'Neill-Harte.

Emma:

Hello. It's good to see you too. And yes, VO Atlanta is always so completely insane that you're like...

Paul:

One of the great things about doing this podcast is, and I've had this experience multiple times so far, you know people in the business, you sit and chat for... You know, when you're lucky, an hour here and an hour there, but you never like, it seems like until this happens, you don't often talk about your story. And doing this is where I get to learn people's actual voiceover story. So if with your indulgence, we can start there. I don't know anything about how you got into this business. So give us, give us the goods, the, the reader's digest version.

Emma:

Back when I was young, I've been doing this for a long time. I. was placed on stage by my mother, in diapers, and it kind of went from there. Um, fell out of love with acting. Cause I went to an academy program and they beat the love of it out of you basically. Um, and left for a long time. And when I came back, I found voiceover through a friend actually, and she was like, you know, the typical, you've got a great voice. You should do voiceover, but knew I had an acting background. And I was like, what do you think? What's voiceover? I didn't know it was a thing. I hadn't a clue.

Did not register in my brain that the voice is on, that I was hearing were actually people doing jobs. It was just people speaking. And so for my birthday, I was gifted a USB mic and a set of headphones, which I still have both of, and a voiceover class, like with one of the big coaches in Toronto at the time. I think it's still around actually. And just for context, how long ago was this? 2009, I think, was when I kind of first kind of stuck my foot into the puddle that was what I was looking at at that point.

And I went to this class that was with Mike Kirby and I was like, wait a second, I get to act, but I don't need to look a particular way. I don't need to dress a bit. I can do this in my, yes, sign me up, sign me up. That's when I met Ellie Ray for the first time and just the, the, the entity that is Ellie Ray. Talk about a hurricane.

Yeah, I fell head over tea kettle for this thing. And it took, I mean, it took a while. Like I, I did a lot of coaching, and I did my first demo in 2011. I think I got my first agency. I talked about this with Dave Fennoy the other night that I submitted to the agency in 2011 and I got an email in 2013 or something saying you've been shortlisted for the agency. Um, please respond with this information. And I thought it was spam. Like did not respond. I was like, and then about two weeks later, I got another email saying following up.

And she was like, oh, whoopsie. Here you go.

Paul:

Our friend and your fellow Canadian, Dervila Traynor, had much the same experience, right? It was years from her submission to the time that they actually reached out.

Emma:

Yeah. So, you know, then at that point I was just doing stuff like I was doing IVR and telephony and, you know, things for friends. But I was a full -time yoga teacher, so I wasn't really pursuing it. It was just something that it was like, if it kind of arrived, I entertained it and loved it and had fun with it, but really didn't understand the business side of things at that point.

Like I was still very much like, I am an actor. Even though I was a business person running my own yoga company, it was, it, it just wasn't the right time. I didn't connect the two. Yeah. And then when I, you know, filled out the correct information for the agency and then they added me to the roster I booked in the first week and it was just, it just skyrocketed.

Paul:

So, explain for those of us in the States, uh, Derv has said to me before, there are really only about three main voiceover agencies in Canada, which, you know, coming from the States boggles my mind. How exactly does that work?

Emma:

There are a ton of agents. There's a ton, a ton, a ton, a ton, a ton, a ton, but there's three main non -union agents. Absolutely. She's correct. There's Vox Talent, not affiliated with Vox Talent LA. There is, um, Tada with Tanya and there is P &A with Roger.

And they're kind of the, they're the most established agencies. Vox has been around for the longest. Um, and they just kind of, because they just kind of have the market on all of the companies, because when companies find out it's like, oh, well, we need a voice actor. Okay. So we'll just go to Vox talent. So then they just kind of lock in with Vox and they hire the talent exclusively through Vox talent kind of thing, or through Tanya or whoever.

But yeah, in general, there are three main, there are a bunch of other ones and then there's a ton of union agents and agencies. So yeah, there's three and you're with one of the three.

Paul:

Got it. And you, I'm guessing are not ACTRA. I am not. Okay. Are you SAG -AFTRA?

Emma:

Not yet. SAG makes sense to me. ACTRA does not.

Paul:

So back to your journey, you start to get some coaching, you sign with, I'm sorry, which agency?

Emma:

Vox. I'm Vox.

Paul:

And things start to skyrocket. What happens next?

Emma:

I slowly start to build my business with voiceover and started to like, I think when I first signed with Vox, I was like, I don't need a home studio. Like, I'll just come into the studio and record. And they were like, yeah, no. So I had a storage box stuffed with mattress foam and my $150 USB mic.

I was good to go. I recorded nationals in that thing. I made that thing work. It doesn't have to be fancy, it just needs to work. And so it did. And I worked with that for a long time. And I think in 2015, I upgraded my mic to a Scarlett. That's actually, I think that was when I met Elena and...

Elena's a total, like she's a tech head, right? So she's an audiophile because she's a musician. So it was like one of our first play dates was that I was upgrading my interface. Like I was getting, you know, I was moving into the Scarlett solo instead of just using a USB mic. It was very fancy. And she was just laughing. She was like, how are you doing the things that you are doing with this Lego kit that you have slapped together? Like that doesn't make any sense because she's so like.

You know, she should own shares in Universal Audio with the number of plugins this woman has. She taught me a lot about audio and I started to learn much more just having someone who was well versed in it. Helene has been a musician since she was 12 and she is a perfectionist in everything that she does and she's really, really smart. So it was instead of letting other people do it for her, she wanted to learn how to do it and just has developed it from there.

Paul:

Where I last celebrated you was last August in Dallas at One Voice and you won the best, I believe what the category was, was best PSA? Yeah, best PSA radio. Best PSA radio for an organization in Toronto that helps to serve homeless men. Talk about that if you would.

Emma:

Haven Toronto serves elder homeless men. There's a, I mean, worldwide, there's an issue with homelessness. But in Toronto, the elder male population, it's quite disturbing to see how many people are living on the streets. And Toronto is a really expensive city. And it's insane. It's an insanely expensive city. So, and it was something that was, I actually booked the first session through Facebook, because an engineer that I knew, posted about this, hey, there's a PSA audition opportunity. Would you audition for it?

And he was like, I mean, the rate's PSA, I don't expect you to do it. And I was like, of course I'll do it. Why would I not do it? Work is work and PSA's help people. And that's what I want to do. Like I'm here to serve. Like that's my, you know, I get up every morning. How can I serve today? That's what I do. And I auditioned for this and I booked the job and the producer writer, Dave, he's a hoot.

Lives in Toronto, but he was working directly with Haven. And so we started doing these campaigns for them and they had never really done radio campaigns. Even before when they had done radio campaigns, they had just used staff in -house. And when they started using... Dave's an amazing writer. The pieces are always written really, really well. So they connect really quickly. But their donations started to increase exponentially as they started using us. But it was also, for me, it was a

I connected well with it because I was homeless when I was in my early 20s. So it was something that I was like, I know what this is like. I know how hard this is. So the connection to copy was easy for me.

Paul:

And if I'm not mistaken, you won both a One Voice Award and a Syllabus Award for that same PSA, correct? Yeah. Well, that's just amazing. And it's a testament to your talent and skill and the hard work that you've put in in the last decade.

Emma:

Thank you.

Paul:

If you don't mind, it's not every day I talk to someone who spent any part of their life homeless.

Emma:

I was in university and again, as I said, Toronto was crazy expensive and universities, you know, like university is not as expensive as it is in the U S but it's still, it was outside of my reach and I was on, um, assistance like Ontario, uh, OSAP Ontario student assistance plan or something. And.

The funds didn't come through.

And so I was lined up to live in residence. Like I had a room booked in residence and I had the, um, the next semester to pay for. And it was like, I only had enough money to pay for one. I didn't have enough money to pay for both. And my parents were not fans of me going to university. So we were not, uh, my mother was like, if you're going to be an actor, just act. Like, I don't understand which.

She had a point really, but I was a stubborn 19-year-old, 20 year old, and I was going to get a degree. And so I didn't, I wasn't financially supported by them at all. They didn't really have the funds anyway, but they didn't because they weren't, we didn't see eye to eye on what I was doing. I couldn't reach out to them and ask. And so I didn't, and I ended up living in the arts part of the school.

So, it's like at night, I remember there's a story here called No Frills. It's a grocery chain and their grocery bags are yellow plastic or were yellow plastic when you had plastic bags. And all of my stuff was in these yellow bags. And I would keep them in the lockers that was at, in the fine arts department. I would keep them in the lockers. And then at night, as the janitors were going through, like cleaning the different rooms, like the different study rooms, I would find the one that they had left unlocked.

And I'd sleep there. Or if I couldn't, I'd sleep in the theater or I'd sleep somewhere. So it was always, I would change spots all the time so that I wouldn't get caught. And I did that for three months. It was a challenging time and very, very scary because you're not safe.

So I finished fourth year and I finished with a minor in kinesiology, as you do coming from acting. You go into sports science. Why not?

Paul:

Biochem wasn't available?

Emma:

It wasn't at the time. No, no. And I was the only one that was willing to dissect the cast. So that's, that's how that happened. And it ended up working to my advantage because I became a yoga teacher. And as a yoga teacher, you need to be able to stand in front of people and be entertaining. But at the same time, it's helpful when you know the anatomy and the structure of the body. Um, and I kind of fell into that. I was a gym bunny. I was very into working out, but I had, uh, from university, I moved back to Ireland. I'm from Dublin.

Paul:

And I didn't know that about you.

Emma:

Yeah. Born and…

Paul:

And this you also share with Dervla Trainor.

Emma:

Yes. We're probably cousins in fact. Because her grandmother's, yeah, her grandmother and my grandmother… we’re pretty sure we are actually cousins. And I decided to go back to Ireland. I wasn't planning on moving back. I went, decided, I was like, I'm going to go, you know, visit family and friends, people I haven't seen for a long time. And I kind of was, I decided I was going to go for the summer. And I arrived in Dublin and booked myself into a bus tour to see the four corners of Ireland. Because like anybody, the country that you live in, you rarely travel around.

You go to other countries to vacation. And it's like, in Ireland, I'd never been anywhere. I'd never been to Cork. I'd never been to Galway. I'd never been around the country. So I decided I was going to do that. And when I arrived at the pickup spot to go on said tour, there was a guy standing there with a handful of cash. And he's like, yeah, it's been canceled. Sorry, here's your money back. So now what do I do?

So it was close to Stevens Green, it was close to Grafton Street, which is one of the main touristy areas of Dublin. And the family that I was staying with, my mom's best friend, one of Bibi's daughters was working at Captain America's, Captain America's Bar and Grill. So I went in to say, I'm like, hey, the tour's been canceled, what are you doing? She's like, I'm just getting off shift, let's go for a pint. So we went for a pint.

Dangerous to do in Ireland because it doesn't get dark until around 11 o 'clock at night. So you have no concept of how long you've been at a bar. And by the end of that session, as you like to call it in Ireland, it's a drinking, it's a session. It was a great session. Jesus. I had a job at Captain America's and I had decided that I was going to stay in Dublin for a little while. Went to the gym. This is a long story, but went to the gym, was going to the gym.

And hated going to the gym there because everyone was always standing outside smoking. And the door was always open. I was like, oh my God. And one frustrated day leaving, I saw a sign on a post. Yoga class decided I was going to go to a yoga class, went to the yoga class and kind of from there fell into teaching. Like worked with this woman for a year, fell into teaching cause she made me teach and then ended up going to India. And for, so for 10 years between going to Ireland and coming back to Canada and starting voice acting.

I lived in India, I lived in Thailand, I lived in Australia, I lived on Maui, I lived all over the world teaching yoga and working as a body piercer because that was one of the other jobs that I decided to do in Ireland because I was tired of seeing people with bad nose piercing so I decided I was going to fix them.

Paul:

Are you Walter Mitty because you've had so many lives before voiceover? It's kind of crazy. Having that experience or having those multiple, multiple experiences and multiple cultures. How does that inform you as an actor?

Emma: On many different levels, because I'm able to pull from a bigger pile of characters. When I lived in India, India was life -changing on so many different levels. There's so many lessons that you learn living in a third world country and recognizing that in North America we have so much crap that we don't need. Like just so much crap.

Living in these big palatial homes, why do we need that much space? Like, we just don't. And living in India, seeing and bearing witness to and being part of this incredible culture, people are just happy. They're happier. And it's like, you'd have foreigners, because I lived there, the foreigners would come in and be like, you know, but they don't have a television, they don't have this, they don't have that. And I'm like, then they don't care because they have each other.

And it's much more about family and about helping each other and about just being happy with your lot, being content with where you are and living your life. And it's, so living in that space is one of those that I still, I'm not a collector of things. I'm a collector of experiences. Because things are just things.

I cull once every six months, but I'm much more interested in experience and travel and seeing the world through somebody else's eyes, which helps me when I'm creating character, when I'm in the booth, because I'm able to, if Emma can't connect to the words on the page, I've got somebody else to pull from to be able to connect to the words.

Paul:

Let's talk a little bit more about VO because this is also something that I don't have a good feel for with you. Do you also market your services directly to clients?

Emma:

I do. I watch you. And you inspire me every day to do better with marketing because I do rely heavily on my agents. I have many, many agents. I'm heavily represented and very grateful for that. But it is at the end of the day, it's my responsibility to build my business and build my brand. So I try to surround myself with people who inspire me to do so, you being one of them. I mean, how many times have I emailed you? Hi, Paul, help.

Paul:

I'm just thankful we're in the same time zone. Thank you.

Emma:

But yeah, so now it's, it's actually one of the things that I for 2024, I've been much more proactive with that. When I got my, my business email at ONeillVO .com, I transferred, like I imported my contacts from my Gmail into this contacts list and left them there as imported in on said date. Like that's literally the folder.

And I'm oh, there are hundreds of contacts that I have not reached out to in four or five years since I got the email. So now it's on, it's my weekly, I must do is go through 10 of them a week, research them, make sure they're still actually doing what they're doing and that the email is still live.

Paul:

‘Cause if that folder is that old, that was pre -pandemic.

Emma:

I do, I organize a minimum of 10 per week, research them and reach out to see, and it's been, I've got, I've gone through like 60 or something and each week if I send out 10, I'll get at least four responses back. So that's super high. And the reason is you already have a relationship with those people. It may have been dormant for a while, but you're reviving that relationship and that's super smart.

Paul:

Let's talk… I say there's four pillars to finding work in this business. That's representation. There's direct marketing. There is the pay to plays or the freelancer sites. And then there's social media. Are you on any of the pay to plays?

Emma:

I am. I cannot get arrested.

Paul:

Can't get arrested on the pay to get arrested. This blows my, well, on one hand it blows my mind. On the other hand, it doesn't. And I'll tell you why. You're a ridiculously accomplished voice actor. You multiple award winners. You are an actor's actor. You come from that background. You've been around a hot minute and yet you can't get arrested on the pay to place. Why do you think that is?

Emma:

How do I say this? Because it's, it's not about discrediting anybody or saying that, you know, like I'm better any of those things. It's that like, I've just started coaching now. So it's, I'm, I'm offering career consults to people and performance coaching to people. Cause apparently people think that I have something to offer. And one of the things that I'm hearing, cause I'm asking people to send me samples of jobs that they've already done.

And the audio quality is they're recording into a Blue Yeti on their kitchen table, and yet this is what is being hired. So, I think that if it's from a client side, that if it's good enough, it will work. And I think there's a possibility it's also to do with rates and what people are accepting as rates.

Paul:

I would think it's a probability.

Emma:

So because especially when it's quote by voice actor, um, I was speaking to somebody the other day, a casting director, and she had said that she actually had used to pay to play because she was, it was a wide net. She was like looking for really something really specific that she just feels like, I don't know anyone who fits this. So I'm going to cast a wide net. And she put all of the information on the casting of like, this was the rate and this was the usage and this was the session fee. And this is what

And she said the number of actors that came back and said that they would do it for half of what she was offering, they just wanted the job. And she was like, why would you even say that? Why? Why are you selling yourself short?

Paul:

And this is the current state of the pay to place, right? Quality does not matter. It is, I mean, it's no longer a race to the bottom because we're there now. And I mean, I think the folks that.

are talented and are trained and are working, are going to continue to work with or without the pay to plays. And you are a prime example of that. And I want people to understand that if you think that the pay to plays are going to be the answer to building your business, you know, J. Michael Collins and I had a conversation a few months ago. He said those days are long, long, gone.

Emma:

They they, back, back in the day they were, it was the place to be, it was the place to find clients.

Paul:

Let's talk about the fourth way, social media. Tell me about your approach to social media as it relates to growing your business.

Emma:

I think social media is great for growing your business. I think that it's when used correctly, it's really beneficial. I book off Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn all the time. I don't think it's as complicated as people make it out to be. It's just about having a presence and being yourself. Like,

You see my, you know, I post my daily walk videos or my, you know, voiceover round table recaps. And it's like, you know, I've got, at least today I've got my hair done. Like generally it's like, we've got my hair dragged back. I've got a pair of glasses on, I probably have broccoli in my teeth. Like I'm just, woo, here I am. Um, I think it's just about authentically being yourself and presenting a service. It's not about pitching yourself necessarily. Um, I think that people respond more to an organic conversation versus.

Cause I know personally, I despise when I accept a connection on say LinkedIn and immediately my inbox is hit with here are all of my links and here's all of my stuff and la la la la. Like really? Like we're not going to have a coffee conversation before you're in it. Like, no, let's have a conversation as a person. And I actually had a really good, um, tip given to me by my, uh, by Rider during the conference.

But I was talking about how, especially with Voice Over Roundtable, we have fantastic guests. You have been a guest on our show. I have had the honor, that's true. And a lot of, sometimes I'm not connected with our guests on LinkedIn. So, I'll connect with them, obviously, that's when I'm starting to pitch the show. And then their contacts, because it's LinkedIn, are then available to me. And I will always ask permission, like, are you cool if I reach out to a couple of people that you are connected with?

People generally don't care, but you know, I just feel it's the right thing to ask. And because LinkedIn has changed the algorithm, they've changed what you can do on the free profiles. I used to always send a note. If I had the option to send a note and send a personalized invite, I would. Whereas now I don't really have that option and I'm just like, connect, connect, connect, connect. And then they'll... people will accept the connection. And I'm like, I said to Mark, like, well now what do I say?

Because now I'm connecting with like these big wigs at big studios. You don't need to say anything. Just continue to post your work, continue to post interesting content and they will reach out to you if they are interested in reaching out to you. And it is the truth because I connected with one network on LinkedIn, didn't have a conversation with this person at all. And then.

Three days later, got an email. Hey, we'd like you to audition for our new streaming service. Do you have an agent? Yes, here's my agent. And I auditioned for one of the major networks because of a LinkedIn connect button.

Paul:

And Bob's your uncle, right? And that's how it can be effective. And as you say, uh, uh, correct. How do you manage, uh, that sort of approach and balance it with building relationships because voiceover as for all of its positives, it's the most amazing community I've ever been a part of, it can partially because of that become an echo chamber. How do you manage that versus trying to build relationships with people that are actually hiring us?

Emma:

I try to do both. I think with relationship because I'm an introvert and people always laugh at that, but I definitely, I'm absolutely an introvert. I'm not. Yeah.

I'm not like, at Atlanta, like the first one that I went to was the first one where we met and it was, I, that was a forced thing. Like I made myself do something that was really uncomfortable because I knew that there would be benefit and my God was there benefit on so many different levels. Um, but I deal much better with people one -on -one. So I try to establish like with LinkedIn. So it's like if, you know, I connect with somebody that I don't know.

I don't talk to them about voiceover. I don't talk to them about what is happening in the industry. It's like, I'll see it. I'll find a random picture of like, I got, I ended up signing with my New York agent because we talked about photography because he takes amazing pictures. And I connected with him. I had met him at VO Atlanta one year and then connected with him on social media. And everyone other brother, obviously after a conference is emailing agents and asking for representation and how do I get onto your roster and all of the stuff.

And I chose not to, I chose to follow them instead on Instagram. And he posts these incredible photographs. And we, for whatever reason, struck up a conversation by email. And I told him about my dad being a photographer as well, remembering when we would go on family vacations, getting up really early with my dad because he was an architect.

So, he would want to go out into the cities really early in the morning so that he could lie down into the, in the middle of the street and take photographs of the buildings lying down and things like that. And so we started this conversation and because of that conversation, he invited me to the roster.

Paul:

And this is why I say you think you're in the voiceover business. You're not. You are in the relationship business. You best serve yourself and your business and this industry when you become a professional friend collector.

Emma:

Yes.

Paul:

I'm really glad we got a chance to catch up. I learned so much about you and confirmed what I've always believed. And that is you are one of the great human beings in our business. You're a huge asset to this community and I love you. And I can't wait to see you again in Dallas.

Emma:

The feeling is mutual. My friend, you are an amazing human. I love what you do. I love how much you help. I love your strength and your conviction. And I love that you just will not back down on anything. Like it's just, it's like, yes.

Paul:

For better or for worse.

Emma:

No, really, it is always for better. Always for better. And I, for one, am super, super grateful for everything that you do. So thank you for what you do.

Paul:

Likewise. Emma O 'Neill-Harte, it's been a pleasure and we will see you soon.