From $5 a Holler to KILLING IT with AUTHENTICITY: Troy Holden
Paul (00:02.243)
Joining me today is a guy that I first got to really sit and spend some time with over last weekend at VO Atlanta. We've known each other for probably a couple of years, but just never really had a chance to talk in depth. And we got the chance to share a meal together. And I thought, well, hell, let's get this guy on the podcast and see what he's really all about. Uh, my, my new friend, Troy Holden.
Troy Holden (00:24.19)
Uh oh.
Paul (00:26.659)
You may know him from another VO podcast, which he hosts with one of actually my students, Jake Sanders, along with Charles Coates and Alden Schoenberg. That's another VO podcast available, of course, wherever you get your podcast. Please welcome to the podcast, the VO Pro Podcast, Troy Holden. How are you, buddy?
Troy Holden (00:34.764)
you
Troy Holden (00:45.324)
Hey Paul, I'm great, man. It's good to be here. And like you, I'm glad we had a chance to catch up and chat a little more this last year. You know, you feel like you get to know so many people in this industry, but you don't know them and you want to connect with them. But when there's a thousand of us going five directions, it's hard. So when you see somebody at a table and there's an open chair, sit down and talk to them. There's your chance.
Paul (00:57.921)
No.
Paul (01:07.907)
Yeah. Yeah. And that's exactly what happened. I think it was Saturday night at, uh, at VO Atlanta. And yeah, you're right. I mean, if you, if you had to do a thousand people, five people at a table at a time, uh, you'd be going to VO Atlanta until July. So, uh, it's long enough as it is, dude, uh, we got to, we got to converse a little bit the other night over, over a drink and a meal. And that to me is the best way to get to know somebody. So, um, you know, I want to dive in and get to know a little bit more about you and maybe some grounds.
Troy Holden (01:11.498)
Yeah.
Troy Holden (01:18.828)
Yeah. Yeah. Right.
Paul (01:37.603)
didn't cover the other night. You're just outside Nashville, right? Is that where you're from or you were a transplant?
Troy Holden (01:45.036)
Um, I was born down below Nashville in a town called Murfreesboro. And, uh, we lived there until I was about 11 ish, not, no, actually about eight. Uh, we moved down to a place that surely I could have gotten rid of this Southern accent, Atlanta, Georgia. And then we moved to Dallas, Texas, and then we came back to Nash, the Nashville area. So I had no chance to get rid of it. So yeah, born, bred, raised here, never lived anywhere except other places that people talk.
Paul (01:49.731)
Hmm?
Troy Holden (02:14.508)
this. So yeah, yeah. And, uh, you know, between here and you go from here down to Chattanooga and you've got Montego mountain and all that connects across it's beautiful. Uh, Tennessee's beautiful country and, and I'm seeing a big change in the way, and this is odd in the way people talk here. Now the kids are growing up with a lot more transplanted people, so they are not as, uh, overblown with Southern accent here.
Paul (02:15.555)
So you're a kid of the great Smoky Mountains.
Paul (02:26.969)
yeah that's gorgeous country
Paul (02:41.859)
you
Troy Holden (02:44.524)
with the younger generation. So I think there's some truth. I'd seen this posted on the internet that the Southern accent is going away and that's possible. I think I see that every day and a lot of people like, Oh, it'll never go away. Well, it won't in the Appalachians and places like that. But in these more areas like Nashville that are growing and all these people coming in, it is going somewhat away. It's different.
Paul (03:07.811)
I think you're right. I think it's transplants. And I also wonder if it's the effect of the digital world that we live in because kids grow up with the screen in their face now. Right. So I wonder how much impact that has. So we started talking the other night and I asked you how you got into voiceover. And of course it was a like myself, it was a long and winding journey. So yeah, how did you for the folks of the, for the benefit of the folks watching and listening now.
Troy Holden (03:16.328)
Right, right, makes a difference.
Troy Holden (03:29.638)
Yeah.
Paul (03:35.459)
How did voiceover get on your radar? Because the story you gave me was not the one I expected.
Troy Holden (03:40.684)
Well, oddly it started as a very young child. When we moved to Atlanta, I was a baseball fanatic. I loved baseball, loved to play, loved to go to the games. My dad worked for a company, had season tickets to the Braves. And you're talking 1972. We're going to see, yeah, they suck. Fulton County Stadium, 40, 50 ,000 seats and there's 3000 people at every game.
Paul (03:55.971)
the Braves. When they sucked. Yep.
Troy Holden (04:07.692)
And the ushers knew us by name, you know, they'd bring us down, we could sit behind the dugout. But I got to see Henry Aaron play a lot of games. You know, the Reds would come to town and I wanted to go to every game when they came in to see Johnny Bench. He was my hero at the time. So when I would go home and I couldn't go to the game, I listened to the games on WSB and it was Ernie Johnson, Milo Hamilton, not Ernie Johnson, Jr.
Paul (04:14.987)
Man.
Troy Holden (04:33.132)
And those guys influenced me and I started hearing the commercials played during the game. So I would get out my cassette recorder and I would get the newspaper and I would read those commercials. I would try to narrate the games. I would give the sports scores. I did that all the way up through high school. Even I even had, you know, like a DJ station in my room, dual turntables. I wanted to go to radio and I went to middle Tennessee state university, went into mass comm.
I found out what you made in radio and I immediately switched to get a business degree. I said, I will starve to death. Yeah, I said, I'll starve to death. This is crazy. You're going to work yourself to death. And after that, after I got into school, my dad opened his own business. He was in the garment supply business, industrial sewing equipment. That was back when the United States had sewing factories.
Paul (05:06.307)
Smarter than I was you were.
Troy Holden (05:24.428)
And that was what he did. He catered to sewing factories in Tennessee and Kentucky. So he talked to me one night and he said, I've been offered this line of products. Do you want to come to work in the business? And I did, I did that for about 13 years. And then I transitioned into the automotive world at Nissan and Smyrna and went into other tier companies later as a general manager. And I opened up like three Greenfield operations in the automotive business.
So when COVID hit, I was at one of those suppliers and they said, you know, hey, we're bringing people back to work. Da da da da da da. We want to make videos. You've got a pretty soothing voice. You think you could narrate the videos, you know, like stay six feet apart, do this, do that. And I said, sure, I could do that. So they throw the videos together. We write scripts. I record the videos on a headset mic. You know, it sounded terrible, but the HR lady ended up going and buying. I don't remember what it was. It was an MXL.
Paul (05:56.611)
you
Troy Holden (06:24.18)
and it sounded a lot better. And I was like, hey, that's pretty good. And she said, you could make a living doing this. And I said, well, please explain to me how, because I am burnout with automotive. And when COVID happened, I was really burnout. I mean, I was a logistics manager in the middle of all those supplier shortages. So, yeah, yeah, yeah, I did, I did.
Paul (06:41.973)
So hold on one second, you look the HR lady in the eye and said, I'm burnt out? Wow, you must have been burnt out.
Troy Holden (06:50.22)
And she also was in that condition. She'd been doing it a long time and we were really close. And she said, I'll do anything I can to help you do this. And she kind of pointed me to some YouTube videos and this and that. And that's where it started. Like a lot of people, I just dug in and self -taught. And then I took the wrong path for a while. And then I realized this can't be how you make a living. This is ridiculous. And then I started finding all the people that were
Paul (06:59.855)
Okay.
Troy Holden (07:20.168)
more legitimate, I guess is the way to put it, that I could rely on and trust. And I luckily had the sweetest guy in the world that lived very close to me. His name is JJ Wilson, who had been in voiceover for 40 years. His dad was the person that Howard Stern came in and took over for on NBC radio. I mean, he was, he had that background from his whole life. And I find out JJ's only an hour away from me. So we started having breakfast and.
Paul (07:42.851)
Well.
Troy Holden (07:47.308)
He just took me under his wing and mentored me and brought me into he and Linda Bruno's group. And it went from there. And that was when the path changed and I realized I can do this and I can make.
Paul (07:52.547)
Yep.
Paul (07:58.051)
And JJ is one of my favorite people in this business, man. He is the embodiment.
Troy Holden (08:01.164)
He's awesome and God bless him. He's been through a lot the last year or so with his health. And I think about him every day and try to check on him at least every few weeks. He's had a tough time. Yeah.
Paul (08:08.033)
Yeah, I gotta reach out because it's been over a year since he and I have chatted. So I will absolutely do that. So through all things, of all things, the HR lady at your company says, hey, you can do this. You evolve and get into a relationship with JJ professionally. What happens next?
Troy Holden (08:20.734)
Thank you.
Troy Holden (08:25.1)
Yep. Well, from there, it became I'm still working full time. I started setting a target of how can I do this for a living? And 18 months from the day I started, I turned in my notice where I was working and we're going full time. And that was all because of my wife, who I came home one night and I said, you know, I've been there.
Paul (08:37.269)
you
Paul (08:47.163)
Wow.
Troy Holden (08:52.78)
Six years on my, I knew it was my last stop. I figured I'd be there till I retired. And I had always had 4 .5, five on all my reviews. They hand me a review with a two on it. And I'm like, I know I'm burnt out, but I have not lost my sting. I was coming in, giving it all I had. You know, I was there when nobody was there during COVID, putting all the stickers on the floor, moving all the cafeteria tables, making sure all the trucks came in and got unloaded. We were piling inventory up everywhere. And.
Paul (09:17.347)
you
Troy Holden (09:23.308)
And the person who was over me was never there pre -COVID. And then all of a sudden now they're there all the time and everybody's coming to me and I don't think he liked it a lot. So, uh, the message when I came home was she, she said, just go in tomorrow and resign. And I said, well, I don't want to just cut it yet. I'd like to have some time to prepare. It was October. She said, well, tell them you're retiring December 31st. And that's what I did. And that gave me three months to prepare.
Paul (09:37.539)
you
Troy Holden (09:53.228)
So, you know, was it enough? Probably not. I would have loved to wait it another year. But, you know, there's always a bigger plan and it worked out fine. Yeah.
Paul (09:54.811)
It did work out fine. You mentioned sort of as you put it going down a wrong path. Tell me about that and then tell me about how I guess JJ was responsible for sort of redirecting you. Talk about that a little bit.
Troy Holden (10:17.112)
Yeah, he was because I didn't realize there are different worlds, I guess, if you look at it in a way in VO. And I was down this path of cheap work because there were a lot of people pushing that on Facebook and Facebook groups. Just go here and go here. And in all honesty, in 2020, you probably could have jumped in that way and made enough money to start paying for coaches and doing that. You can't do that anymore.
Paul (10:18.851)
All right.
Troy Holden (10:46.668)
There used to be X number of people on these platforms and now it's like five times that and you cannot progress and get out of the hole. Once you go in there, you're gonna be depressed, you're gonna be sick and you're gonna be, you know, you'll never get out. I was fortunate that immediately, you know, I think I got onto my first platform in August. I got a job the second day I was on the platform and it just kept going.
Paul (10:50.467)
you
Paul (10:57.583)
Right.
Troy Holden (11:12.748)
Now, yeah, it was some cheap work, but luckily a few months later, as I ran into the right people, I knew to take that money and invest in good coaching. I knew to take that money and make sure my room was better. My equipment was better. And I slowly took those steps, you know, with tutelage from JJ and Linda and, and with coaching from them. And then them pointing me to here, here, let me help you go to this person to get some better work and get out of this hole. But there.
was if you have to do this other to get you by just shut up about it don't talk about it and get out of the hole as fast as you can that advice helped me because I needed that extra money to pay for what I wanted to do but on the other hand I didn't want to pollute once I learned what rates were and how it was so quickly within a few months I was out of that hole pretty quickly I had a couple of agents I started
reaching out to people direct and right or wrong, I started getting those four or five decent clients I had cultivated off these crappy platforms and went, look, if they throw me off, they throw me off, but I'm going to, here's my email address. Come to me direct, you know, and let's, let's do this the right way. And I still have most of those people, you know, luckily, and they're paying me 10 times more than they did back then.
Paul (12:16.131)
That's
Troy Holden (12:39.276)
and they didn't mind paying it. They knew. They knew better. But they also knew if they could find somebody that could do the work and it was really top quality work and we were dumb enough to do it for cheap. And you know, we talk about this all the time. Freaking get educated as fast as you can on this because I left tens of thousands of dollars on the table because I didn't know any better. It's tough.
Paul (12:58.347)
Right. And so, you know, so many times I talk to folks that maybe, you know, let's just call it what it is. They get down the fiber rabbit hole or the upwork rabbit hole.
Troy Holden (13:10.384)
Yep. Yep.
Paul (13:15.651)
yet they cling so dearly to this idea that, well, either I'm new or for whatever reason, I have to charge these bargain basement rates. You mentioned earlier, you didn't go into radio because you knew it didn't pay Jack, right? And even on the platforms that you were on in those days, you knew that like, this is not a means to an end here. I'm going to just keep spinning my wheels. What's that mindset shift that people that are so
Troy Holden (13:21.932)
Right, right. Right.
Troy Holden (13:37.728)
Right.
Paul (13:45.375)
you know, so dearly hanging on to bargain basement rates, what's the mindset shift that they have to make to now know and stand up for their worth?
Troy Holden (13:49.452)
I think a couple of things have to happen and the big light that went off for me the quickest was I want to work less and make more. You're never going to do that on those platforms. You're going to work your ass off. And this is a God's honest truth and I'll be transparent to anybody that asks me. There are over 5 ,000 YouTube narrations out there with me. 5 ,000.
That's a lot, but I had about three clients who would send me two to three of those a day. Now here's the upside. I became an editing genius quickly. My brain and my eyes learned very quickly how to work together because if you're getting paid, and these were usually six to eight minute narration, sometimes a little longer, the crappy stuff. Here's the top 10 things you can buy on Amazon this week, you know, junk.
Paul (14:28.507)
Yep.
Paul (14:36.739)
Right.
Troy Holden (14:48.524)
I doubt you can even find most of them anymore. But the thing was I got so fast at them, if they were paying me 25 bucks a piece, I could make a hundred bucks an hour easy. I thought that was okay. It's still not okay. But my gosh, it paid for so many things and taught me so many things. And I kept my mouth shut. I didn't advertise. I was doing all that and it paid the bills. I'm not saying you can't take some of that in some form or fashion and up your career.
Just don't advertise it. Don't make it a part of where you're going with your long game. Let that light bulb go off like where I'm at now. My goal is I'm going to, I try to get into the studio fairly early, 7 .30 or so, sometimes earlier. And my goal is by 11 o 'clock, I'm done usually. Auditions are done. If I've got work in the bucket, it's done. If something comes in in the afternoon, I'm coming back.
but I couldn't have done that two years ago or a year ago. I finally got to that point where I can stay on my ground. I know what to do. I took your course on pricing and that helped so much because I know now how quickly, just bam, bam, bam, I can put that price out there. I know quickly if I'm on voices .com, that's not right. I'm either not auditioning or here's what it should be. And when you get to that point and you know your value,
Paul (16:05.635)
Yeah.
Troy Holden (16:15.5)
and you need to learn your value quickly. Just because you're new doesn't mean you're not valuable. And a lot of people believe that. If you have learned and you've put the time in and you're valuable, oh, I haven't booked anything yet. It doesn't matter. Are you educated? The first doctor that does his first surgery gets paid the same as a guy that's doing his hundredth surgery. And that's the way I look at it. I like the doctor analogy a lot. And I look at baseball players sometime, because I love baseball, and I'm like,
poor guy in the minor league's not making nothing. He's beating the road just like the guy in the majors. He's not making nothing, but then it breaks and you catch on to what's going on. Oh, this is what it's like. And that's what happened to me when those lights go off. This is what real voice actors are getting paid. And I'm just, I'm real. I can do this, you know? So you got to get past the mindset.
Paul (17:06.101)
And I think what allows you to say, I can do this is your training, right? You know that you're competent, that you're competitive, that, you know, we're never going to win them all. Hell, you know, you're in the hall of fame if you're booking five out of a hundred, but my God, you know, you've got to book five, right? You've got to book one. And that training is so important. When did that light bulb go on for you?
Troy Holden (17:12.812)
Absolutely.
Troy Holden (17:18.284)
Right.
Troy Holden (17:23.692)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was probably during my first year full time, I think I was still struggling. Um, and, and then I started getting hired for things that I didn't expect. So I booked a job through an agency for Yellowwood and I got paid a lot of money to say, absolutely.
Paul (17:35.971)
Great.
Troy Holden (17:54.188)
That was it. That was all I said. And the check came in, I said, they're gonna pay me, they paid me that much for one word. Why would I record 1500 words for $10? Why would anybody do that? So it went off that, it's not like I've made it, it's just that I know what I'm doing now. And from there, it just got better. I mean, I had a really good year with one agent and a lot of the stuff was regional and whatever. And then this past year,
Paul (18:05.731)
Right.
Troy Holden (18:23.34)
Although it was based on my accent, I was referred to an agency in New York that they couldn't find somebody for Pfizer to do the southern region of the U .S. on an explanation of a medication. I thought, well, I'm not, you know, I can do the hard words, no problem. And so I auditioned for it and I booked it and that was my first SAG job. That was another nail, you know, in the board to say, you can, you are, you're there. You just have to keep working at it.
The hard thing for me has been to understand that I am what I am. I can't be somebody else. I can't book what you book. I can't book what Jake and Alden and Charles book. My voice is different. And if I try to be something else, then my authenticity goes out the fricking window. I book the heck out of video games, which surprises people. I do all kinds of crazy, you know, voices, all kinds of villains, all kinds of, you know, reptiles and crap like that. But.
Paul (19:07.651)
And you know what?
Troy Holden (19:22.604)
You don't hear an accent in that, but in my natural voice, I can't compete if I'm not me. I'm not gonna get passed up the chain in the audition, because they're gonna go, it's too reedy, or it's not connected. And I have to connect as me, or I don't connect. So that's another big white bulb. And that's a hard one. Right, right.
Paul (19:37.923)
you
Paul (19:42.127)
That is a light bulb and it's, and it's just as true for Alden and Charles and Jake and me. We can't be Troy Holden either. Right. So it cuts both ways. Uh, let's talk about that accent because I think there's a mindset thing here. You could, Troy, either choose to look at that as an asset or a liability. Tell me how you look at it and how maybe that's evolved from the time you got in the business.
Troy Holden (20:04.426)
Mm -hmm.
Troy Holden (20:09.432)
Tom Antonellis was a big help with that because I went to him and I said, Tom, I want to book more work and I can't book it with this accent. And he said, well, you'll have to develop a Gen -Am character and you'll have to audition as that character and become that character when you act, when you audition. What we ended up going through a long process over a year deciding to do is taking words that are very
Paul (20:14.755)
you
Paul (20:21.493)
you
you
Troy Holden (20:36.564)
easy for us to go southern on like the word get, you know, everyone says get. Well, we don't, we say get, it has an I in it. So we identified about 30 words and the first steps were anytime I've got an audition, I would mark it. I would look for these words, you know, like million and fill and all that kind of stuff. So we would do that as a start. There you go. Mark your script. That's right. And, and that's what we were doing. And, and it helped.
Paul (20:37.423)
you
Paul (20:43.107)
Yeah. Great.
Paul (20:58.883)
Mark your script, dammit. Thank you, Uncle Roy. And thank you, Tom.
Troy Holden (21:05.164)
I booked, I started booking some other things in different areas. But again, I didn't feel a thousand percent authentic, but it still worked. It did help. But I had to make the decision and this was in talking to some other people. Just be you, quit worrying about it. I've even had casting directors say, I would rather hear you with your accent authentically than to hear you trying to do something else.
And I give Mary Lynn Wissner a ton of credit because she's helped me so much, not just through coaching, but she would, you know, if something came across her desk and she's like, it sounded, that was you, I knew it was you. I mean, she's helped me with a lot of things, pointed me in some great directions. And I think that was the other thing that went off. Once I had the confidence to just screw it.
Troy Holden (22:25.726)
and I can't remember what was talking about students leaving and whatever. She said, I choked up and cried. I knew you would have the job. And that's what you want is to touch people. It doesn't matter how you sound. And we hear that from day one. It ain't your voice. It's not your voice. So believe that it's the truth. Yeah.
Paul (22:41.667)
It's the reading the performance. Yeah. You know, I'm very close with Craig Williams, who is originally from Scotland. We all know, you know, dozens of people in this business with a native, we'll call it an accent if it's not general American, right? How do you make a decision on a given job, whether you're going to take a swing when it's not calling specifically for your, for a character or for an accent that is authentically you? How do you make that decision?
Troy Holden (22:53.868)
Mm -hmm.
Right.
Troy Holden (23:09.612)
It just becomes a take one, take two thing for me. So where I have really worked hard on this thing with Tom is my, I call my, my first name's Charles. So I call my GNN character, Charles. I normally will put my, myself as the first take, but if it's an online platform, we can put that little message in the front end, you know, Hey, this is Troy. I've got a Southern accent, but your first take, I'm going to try to, you know, GNN it down a little bit. And then the second one's all me.
They'll usually listen to both. And a lot of times I have booked the Southern one where they were asking for a gen -am. It happens because they'll hear more authenticity. And, you know, I think my strength too is in the storytelling side. So I always watch for that kind of stuff. If I can tell that story in my voice and not say too many words to Southern, I'm better off than using the other. But I'll send both and I'll occasionally, I've booked some insurance company things, you know, short.
30 second spots to where they picked the GM voice. So it happens.
Paul (24:13.827)
Gotcha. And I think oftentimes, and you know, you hear casting directors say this occasionally too, sometimes people don't know they need you until they hear you, right? They didn't know they were looking for you until they heard you. Right? That's, I do too.
Troy Holden (24:22.988)
Right. Right.
Right, right. I believe that. And I tell you, the one thing I get so tired of seeing is the reference to Sam Elliott because everybody wants to Sam Elliott, you know, we're list from here. Let's get a secure light. Well, that's not what they want. They just want you to relax, just slow down, you know, be that guy. And, you know, I can fall into myself and do that and do an okay job with that. And I'll book some of those, but my gosh, that reference.
Paul (24:56.259)
It's overplayed. I feel like Ryan Reynolds is the new Sam Elliott, right? I've seen a lot of Ryan Reynolds specs because he's got this like overflowing affability and you know, he's funny and he's God, he's handsome. He's got it all. I hate him. And he's young. So at least relatively compared to us, you mentioned you got in during the pandemic, right? How have things changed in the business in the four or five short years?
Troy Holden (25:00.108)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Troy Holden (25:07.308)
Yeah. Right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Son of a bitch. Yeah, that doesn't help either.
Troy Holden (25:20.364)
Mm -hmm.
Paul (25:25.891)
since COVID upended the world? Is it easier or is it harder to be a voice actor?
Troy Holden (25:30.764)
I think it's harder. I think between 2020 and 2022, there was a flood of people that wanted to work from home. And this became a go -to for a lot of people. And so what I think happened is, and this is just Troy's opinion, your pay to plays really got flooded because they kept running these $99 specials and whatever. And jobs that would typically get 40 auditions now get 100.
And yeah, maybe 60 of them suck, but if somebody good gets in the front 20, they're tired of listening to bad ones and they just cut it and move on. So a lot of times it's hard to be listened to. I think that part of the business changed a ton. I also think that the technology, it's really moved fast, even in the last five years. I know a lot of you guys that have been in it longer saw it.
go to home studios or people that were going to, you know, going in to record and then building a home studio and how easy it got and the gear. I think like every six months it just keeps lunging forward how much better it is. When I started, everybody said, whatever you do, do not use a USB mic. There's some right now that are pretty damn good. You know, they, and let's talk real quickly. I hate to pick on Jake. Jake used the, the, uh,
Paul (26:48.547)
They're getting good, yeah.
Troy Holden (26:55.718)
What is it the audio technica for two years on voices .com and made a boatload of money? You know and and that was a USB mic I sent him I gave him his first mic and interface last year and Actually talked him into buying a shotgun mic last week and he got it in but you know he was doing fine with that mic and a lot of people are and I think the technology thing is crazy, but
Paul (27:09.547)
Okay.
Troy Holden (27:21.398)
What affected me the most the first year on voices .com I booked more of my first year than I have since because it was less people on there. And I think now it's just flooded. It's just hard.
Paul (27:31.875)
Yeah, I think that's, I think it's true for the pay to plays. Uh, I think I feel like it's also true, uh, for what I want to ask you about now. And that is you mentioned that you've made a shift. I think we talked about this the other night in Atlanta, you've made a shift from the pay to plays to now getting your clients the way I've always done it, but through direct marketing, how did that evolve and how did you learn to do that?
Troy Holden (27:57.886)
Um, I learned because I had done it in previous businesses. And I think the thing that hit me one day was this is no different. Marketing is marketing, but I need to apply it to me. I became what I call a targeted market person. I don't need to market nationwide, although there are production houses in Oregon that probably have clients in the South.
But my thing was if I want to go after the automotive sector, if I want to go after commercial stuff or whatever, and especially e -learning, because if I work at Georgia Power Company, I want to hear a guy like me instructing. I don't want to hear a guy from Boston. I worked in the industry for 40 years and when they would take us in a room and somebody talked that way, we were like, no, we didn't want to hear it. We wanted a friend to talk to us, a colleague. So,
I started really marketing hard that way about a year and a half ago. And I watched my direct business go from like 25 % to almost 75 since then. And I was able to say, all right, I'm not, I'll drop this platform. I got rid of Upwork two years ago. I haven't done an Upwork job. My profile is still there and I'll occasionally get somebody hit me up, but I haven't done a valid job on there in two years. I did $30 ,000 on there my first year and a half.
That's, you know, but it was a lot of work and I don't want to go back. I got rid of upwork. Um, I dropped off temporarily off voice one, two, three, because I had too much struggle auditioning and keeping that percentage up and doing this and that, because with this accent, if it wasn't a specialized job, it didn't help me. For some reason, I see more of those jobs on voices .com. I book okay on there, but I don't feel the pressure to audition that I did on the other.
So instead of spending two to three hours a day on auditioning, I'm spending that researching companies, marketing, reaching out. I do as many cold calls as I do emails. And I'm looking for places in the South, the Southeast, Texas, Oklahoma. I even book oddly sometimes in Utah and Idaho. I don't know why. And I've even had a car.
Troy Holden (30:16.966)
dealer out in California reach out and say, we, you know, we want a Southern voice because when it hits the air, people stop and listen because it's different. And that does make sense. So, yeah, and it's, and it's working. I work at it every day. I don't reach out as much as I should. I could do better. But I'm also trying to not.
Paul (30:27.427)
cuts through the clutter. Yep.
Troy Holden (30:40.71)
overload myself. I love free time. I got a farm I got to take care of. It's not huge, but I have 11 horses. And so there's a lot to do here a lot of grass to cut in the summer. So my goal is, like I said earlier, work less, make more, build these contacts and connections, their repeat customers. I have one guy like I said, I started earlier with him on a platform. I pulled him off. He had one little
five minute YouTube streaming outdoor thing he was doing. He now has five shows on streaming TV and I narrate all five. You can't beat that. You know, this is a guy that stuck with me and it's little things like that, you know, and I just try to hold on to it and grab it. It's a lot of non -glamorous work, but it's a living. It pays the bills and occasionally I get to do a Pfizer or Yellowwood or a Department of Education to Kentucky or, you know, whatever.
Paul (31:12.457)
Wow. No you cannot.
Troy Holden (31:33.644)
You land one here and there.
Paul (31:36.257)
What's your favorite kind of work?
Troy Holden (31:38.828)
Actually, I love video games. I love video game sessions, especially when they have stuff, you know, if they're dubbing it from another country and you know, you're in timelines and you got to get this in that timeline. And I don't know why I like that so much. Of course, as a kid, I was one of those had the big imagination. GI Joe and Big Jim were playing with each other and fighting and my matchbox cars all talked. And, you know, I was, I was a big imagination kid. I grew up on that.
I never, I have no acting background, no nothing, but I just have a knack for doing that. I mean, I just enjoy the heck out of it. And then behind that is going to come commercial and especially if it's a fun commercial. You know, I love anything that's got a little comedic touch to it or whatever. And a lot of people that know me or have met me, they're like, he's kind of quiet, he's kind of dry. I can't imagine he does that kind of stuff. But it all started, I had gotten some,
I forget what they call them, but some lead -ins for this Rise of Kingdoms game. And I was doing all these throwing these high -pitched voices and then I'd come back as the warrior, knowing they're talking to each other back and forth. And then I get to hear them edit it up and it's like three different people. You can't tell. And I love that stuff. And the last one I did a couple of weeks ago, I had seven different characters in one video game. So it was fun.
Paul (33:01.059)
Wow. Man, that's see to me, people that do character work. For example, fictional audiobook narrators. Like, you got to do a range of characters, you got to keep them not only separated, but consistent. And that's the tough part, right?
Troy Holden (33:18.732)
Paul, if I come to VO Atlanta next year and I told you I did an audio book, I would like you to get an oil soaked tuba for and hit me between the eyes. I will never do an audio book. I don't know how anyone can sit that long. And in all honesty, yesterday I booked an 11 ,000 word VSL that I'll have to record over the weekend. And I can get through one of those.
that, you know, because usually they're interesting or they're so far fetched or what it just depends. And I can get through those no problem. But if I had, I've never been a reader. And so that, you know, I could read a magazine article, I can read a short story kids book, but you hand me a novel that's a hundred thousand words. I'm not reading it. Where's the movie? I want to watch the movie. I'm not patient for that.
Paul (34:04.451)
Right. Yeah. I'm the same way. I think you got to have a passion for the art form, for the, for the, uh, fictional, uh, art form for reading for entertainment. Uh, I've just, I'm like you, I've never been one of those people, but I'll also say that, and I've said this before, fictional audiobook narrators to me are the hardest working people in all of show business. Right. I do too, but I.
Troy Holden (34:25.384)
Absolutely. Absolutely. I have a ton of respect for all those people. J. Rodney Turner is actually my neighbor, lives right up the street, you know, and I talk to him often about it. And I said, when I get back from VO Atlanta, I may want to ask you about, about audio books. Cause I feel like I've opened up a lot of time and I might could, and he's like, Oh, you don't really want to do that unless you have to. Well, I probably don't then. Yeah.
Paul (34:51.277)
Got it. Yeah, we're good. Jay Rodney, man, I'm telling you, they don't make them any better than that. They do not at all. Dude, it's been an absolute pleasure to sit with you once again. I feel like we spent more time together in the last week than we did in the whole other 50x years of our lives. So I just I enjoy your company. You're one of the good guys in this business. You are the embodiment of.
Troy Holden (34:56.428)
They do not.
Troy Holden (35:08.492)
Right.
Paul (35:17.155)
I think the journey that a lot of voice actors go through and that is discovering who they are and leaning into it and standing up for it. And dude, it's been so fun to watch you grow even over the last year since I've known you. And I'm looking for great things from Troy Holden, man. Thanks for spending time with me today.
Troy Holden (35:33.452)
Well, Paul, and let me thank you for all you do. One of the things that you said early on when we spoke on one of your consultation calls, you said too many VOs are leaving because they don't understand the business side and they're very good at what they do. And that hit me hard because I knew I had a business background, but I knew this was going to be different and hard. And, but that really helped me focus and stay in there with it. And thanks for all you do in the industry. I mean, just watching some of you guys.
you know, stand up for the industry. I'm very, very proud of that. And, and some days I think, well, I've only been in it, you know, four years, three and a half, four years. I don't have the rights to say what I need to say. I, you know, I'm trying to at a different level and especially in my Facebook group, I have a lot of new people in there and I'm telling them don't fall into this trap. You know, go back and listen to all my old VO life podcasts where I was stupid and then listen to me change.
somewhere around episode 40, and then listen to another change at episode 75. And then when it gets all the way up to 140 or 130 or whatever it is, you'll know what I've been through and whatever. And I really encourage those people to listen to that stuff because I got sucked into the fruit punch and then I was drunk on the wine. And then all of a sudden I said, oh, here's the bourbon. And here we are. So don't do the wrong thing and believe in yourself. It'll work.
Paul (36:56.355)
Well, and I think that's huge for everybody because especially in today's world, Troy, everybody is putting out such a curated, vetted, sort of airbrushed look at their lives and their careers. And you've got the courage to say, hey, I've evolved over the years and I'm not afraid to show that journey. And I think that's huge, man.
Troy Holden (37:18.22)
Yep, and still got a ways to go, but we'll get there. We'll get there.
Paul (37:21.891)
The podcast that you're doing with our other buddies Charles and Alden and Jake is called another VO podcast. Are you still doing a VO life?
Troy Holden (37:28.268)
Yep. I am, I'm doing a couple of months because I had people say, please don't stop. You know, they enjoy hearing all four of us and we're having to learn not to talk on top of each other. I have to crack a whip on those guys sometime. It's hard with four of us. We all have something to say when the subject comes up, but we're getting better at it. We're only about 40 episodes in and it's fun. We're an accountability group as well. So we talk to each other constantly. So.
That's where it evolved and they wanted to be a part of a podcast and I kept hoping I could hand it off to them and go back to what I was doing, but I can't. It seems like, you know, I offered a few weeks ago and they're like, no, don't do that. So I'm going to hang around and do both, but VO life is still there. It's a lot shorter. It's more of, you know, keep following that journey. I try to make it more pointed to activities that are going on in the industry. And I will probably evolve it into being more of a.
you know, a guy that's trying to stand up for the business now, you know, not just, I'm done teaching, listen to the old stuff. If you want to learn, go through what I went through, but now it's more like don't do this, don't do that, listen, you know, follow and, you know.
Paul (38:37.763)
Well, and that's what hundreds that came before us did for us. And that's what we're doing for people that are coming behind us. And we all help each other. So dude, I'm so grateful and proud to know you. I'm glad we got to spend some time together today. Troy Holden, everybody.
Troy Holden (38:41.356)
Right. Right. Absolutely. Great community.
Troy Holden (38:53.036)
Thanks, Paul.