Terry Daniel: "That Shit Sticks With You For Life"

Well, after much ado and much delay, I finally get to say, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Terry Daniel to the VO Pro Podcast. My God, how long have we been trying to get this together? Oh, I don't know. Well, you know, I held out for a bigger rate. You know, I was really worth it. So I can't thank you enough for agreeing to my terms, Paul. You and I have a unique relationship in this business because, you know, I'm pretty...

I think well documented the first time I tried to get into voiceover was 25 years ago and I hit the brick wall and slid down like a load of spaghetti. Uh, and then several years ago, I came to you first. I had heard you on Jamie Muffet's VO school podcast along with J. Michael Collins. Yeah. And I reached out to you and I said, Terry, I want to get back in the business. I don't know what I don't know. Help. And you did.

Yeah, which is really kind of a shame. I mean, you could take our conversation out of the Facebook Messenger thread and you could probably we'd have like 10 voiceover books. You know, if you transcribed all of our audio clips back and forth, 10 bestsellers right there. I think you could get 10 voiceover books. You could get probably three or four episodes of Sports Center.

I know that you've been doing this for a long time. I know that you've been coaching for a long time. I've trained with you and your staff. How and when did that start for you? You know, it's not something I really even was interested in doing. And then, you know, as I started to get more, you know, friendly online with other people that were in the voice over business and the community started to grow a little bit, I would occasionally.

get like an email from somebody, hey, do you do any training or coaching? And I'm like, well, not really. And then that just started to really pick up in like 2008, you know, somewhere around there, I was just getting more inquiries. I wasn't really advertising myself as a coach or, or doing anything like that. And, and then I started getting a lot of messages from people that were just kind of kind of getting scammed a little bit. And, you know, they were getting taught by people who probably had no business teaching. I mean, you know, I got tired of hearing that story over and over again.

I'm like, you know, I've done pretty well. I want to get a group of other coaches that are also full -time voice actors. I wasn't going to do it with a staff of teachers who weren't still booking because I wanted to build. I mean, I was coaching on my own for a while, but then, you know, I always had this kind of dream about putting a coaching staff together, AKUVT.

But it was really important to me and still is that all the coaches are still booking voiceovers, you know, on a regular basis because it's such a massive benefit to train with people who are still booking in this era of voice acting. And while there's a lot of great teachers out there, they're not all necessarily voice actors. I'm not suggesting that you have to be a voice actor to be a really good coach. Nancy Wolfson, I don't think, has booked a voiceover in her life and she's a tremendous coach.

Um, she's a casting agent, but, um, there's, uh, you know, you know how it is, Paul, there's kind of, there's demo mills out there where they just kind of teach. And half of the time the instructors don't really have a lot of experience. And I certainly wouldn't want to throw my money at those people. And that's where I feel like, uh, and this, I got to see firsthand when I, when I coach with you and your staff, the thing that I enjoyed was, uh,

You get not just one person's ears on your work. You get a spectrum, right? Rob Marley may hear something different than the way you hear it. And you get the benefit of almost coaching by committee. Yeah. And everybody kind of brings something fresh to the table. Everybody has a different niche really where Trish just does all our marketing sessions really. That's what she does with us. And we have Amy Breedlove now who's a great script performance coach.

Jan Anderson is a good tech coach, really good, you know, audio engineering mind. And Rob and I do a lot of the demos and script coaching and Garnett Williams is a terrific script performance coach and really good with character work, which is something I'm not super strong at. So there's just, there's, you know, everybody's brings a certain strength to the team. And I think it works and everybody's booking, of course, which is really important to have a staff like that.

And I think it takes probably a lot of the, you know, because I'm a one man band here, right? On the business coaching side. And I think it probably takes a lot of the heat off of, you know, one person having to do everything. Now you can sort of share the load as a team. Correct. Cause I, my, my goal was to really focus on demo production. I still enjoy doing a lot of the group classes and I still do some one -on -one coaching, but really.

The rest of the coaching staff, they really, they take the bulk of the one -on -one appointments because it's just, it's getting harder and harder for me to, to have my calendar fill up like that. I still enjoy it, but you know, I like it when the rest of the staff does the coaching so I can focus on the demos. You work with, uh, largely newer talent or people getting it, for example, in my case, back into the industry.

What do you think is the biggest obstacle to most people when they get into voiceover? I think fear and being really impatient, you know, feeling that need to just make all kinds of money within a two -week period. There's a lot of people that, you know, lose their job. And we've all been there. We've all gotten fired or we've all gotten laid off. But the voiceover business, as you know, Paul, this is not a quick fix if you're unemployed.

It's not something where, and it's too bad because there's a lot of these, you know, kind of a snake oil salesman out there making outlandish income guarantees and, oh, you can make this in two weeks. No, you can't. And sometimes it takes two years and you just have to, you have to really work your ass off and be really patient. This is not, absolutely not a business that's going to be, you know, a quick resolution for, for being unemployed or a financial issue. That's for sure.

You mentioned fear, fear what? Just fear of failure. There's a lot of people that don't think they're good enough and there's a lot of people that think they're great and they're not very good. So it kind of goes both ways, but you know, it is amazing how creative individuals, whether, let's say if they're, whether they're a good photographer, a voice actor, musician, it's unbelievable. The insecurity level amongst all of us, I still can't stomach my own voice. I hear it on a video, I hear it on a commercial, and I just, you know, I just want to vomit everywhere. I just, I'm not really a fan of, of hearing it.

I'm glad agents and clients like it, but that's, you know, that's been my own insecurity my whole life of being told when I was a child that I wasn't good enough to do anything that I wanted to do. So that's been a major hurdle jumping over that and, you know, hearing those, uh,

hearing that little snake in the garden of Eden whisper in my ear as a child, you know, that I was a fool for wanting to go into theater or radio or voice acting. You know, I won't go into too much more detail, but my mom was really, she went to her grave really disappointed that I never became a minister. That shit sticks with you for the rest of your life when that's all you heard is, you know, those kind of, you know, I didn't have the type of parents that supported me when I was, you know, you hear all these stories like, oh, my parents, you know, I've got people that, you know, parents have come to me, my son wants to do voiceover, my daughter wants to do voiceover, they're like 10 or 11 years old, right?

It's like, you know, wow, I mean, that I don't even know what that feels like, you know, it's, uh, and that's why, that's why I'm such a big believer in mindset, right? Because owning a business, starting a business for me,

I always say it's one of the most difficult things you will ever do in your life. And to that end, it will stretch you and push you and grow you in ways that are monumentally uncomfortable. And what that means is it forces you to confront your own shit, right? The voices in your head, the imposter syndrome, all that stuff, perfectionism, you name it, it all comes bubbling to the surface under the force of that pressure. Right. And it's in...

If you're getting into voiceover in this new era of voiceover where there's, you know, there's almost so much help, you know, there's like 500 voiceover groups on Facebook alone, right? So you're getting really good information mixed in with information that's not very good at all. Or you have moderators of some of these groups that just started doing voiceovers 10 minutes ago, you know, and, oh, I'm going to open up a voiceover group and we'll do some Q and A. And it's just like, you know, Dude, you just started like 10 minutes ago. I'm not sure you should be running, you know, being an expert in a voiceover group.

So it can be, you know, and then we have Reddit right now and then all these platforms where you can get advice about voice. And congratulations with your new stardom on Reddit, Paul. Yeah, I got roasted and pretty much thrown off of Reddit.

Oh yeah, that was, uh, you know, God forbid that you offer up some good advice, right? On a, on a platform there, but, uh, yeah, they're not quite as nasty on, on YouTube and, and, and Facebook, thank God. But if I was just starting today, you know, it would be really helpful to see that all this information out there, but man, there, there is a mixed bag of, of really good information and really misleading information. So, you know, you just got to take everything with a grain of salt. I always tell people, I always tell my students.

Whenever you read something, let's say you're in like 10 voiceover groups, which that's too many anyway, but then you see something that's kind of like, will make you raise an eyebrow. Well, click on the person who said it and do some research on that person. Google them and look them up on social media, find out if they're booking, you know, who, uh, what agency represents them. I mean, are they qualified to be giving any advice at all? And usually when you see something really stupid like that in a Facebook thread,

Usually this person isn't even in the business. And a perfect example of that is these AI fear -mongering trolls out there that just, you know, the doomsday AI trolls, and they're not even in our business. In the grand scheme, that is not unique to voiceover. This is the era in which we live, the era of so much information, there is misinformation and disinformation. And while I get that,

You know, it's confusing for people. It's not unique to voiceover. And, you know, people say, well, there's so much contradictory information out there. And I will say that's true. And I will further say it's true even among the good information, because my opinion on the business is going to be different from Terry Daniels, which is going to be different from Mark writers, which is going to be different from Trish Bessonis, which is going to be different from everybody else. Right. So, uh,

You've got to take some responsibility and go, yeah, this is a lot of stuff to sort through, but I've got to sort through it. Absolutely. And it's interesting too, because if you look at other industries too, like photography, on -camera acting, music, they all have groups on Facebook too. And it's the same thing in every business.

You're going to get great information. You're going to have the snake oil salespeople that are going to try to make shit up just to get a couple of bucks from you and... This fascinates me about you because it's a subgenre, almost of a subgenre, that I've never really heard of and it's been quite lucrative for you. Tell me about amusement park work. You know, this one feels like a fluke. Again, this isn't something that I was pursuing. Like, oh, I gotta put a theme park promo demo together and I'm gonna market it. I'm gonna focus on that this summer and see what I can get.

There was a little bit of luck involved. I have to be honest about that where usually all this is. Yeah. There's a couple of clients that found me online. Uh, one was, I had to audition for, but these particular clients also run a variety of different parks, you know, so that's kind of how I got into it. And one particular client that I do a lot of stuff for stone mountain park and, uh, a few of the others that he runs, he's been very, very loyal.

And what the one thing I love about theme park, I usually I have for most of them, I have retainers. So, you know, it's a monthly payment and you get paid even it's like radio imaging. If there's a month where there's nothing, you still get paid for it. Nice. You know, we can you kind of make up for it a little bit. It's kind of like if you have a snow removal company, you know, and it doesn't snow for a month.

Well. you know, then the next month they're going to be out like every other day because it's going to be blizzards and blizzards and all kind of evens out. So it's money worth paying. I don't know if that was a good comparison or not, but it always kind of evens out, you know, and they're fun. And with my ADD issue, which is severe, as you know, I love it because they're all really short announcements. You and I both come from broadcast. Anything over 60 seconds may as well be an eternity, right?

And that's all you think. I mean, this isn't the case with bless all the audio book narrators, the Johnny Hellers of the world, who just kind of go from one audio book to the next. And they're just, they've got that mindset and they're patient and they just, you know, they're just, they've got it, you know, for me, even when I'm reading the audio book, the only thing I'm thinking of is how many pages are left. And it's a huge distraction.

And my brain, I just realized after doing a few of them that were just, it was just, oh, it was, it was the equivalent of doing road construction in a blizzard in Minnesota when the temperature's 50 below. That's what it felt like every audio. And I'm like, why am I doing this? I don't enjoy this. You know, work to your strengths. And that really has become, you know, commercials and things. I still do like e -learning because that's broken up, you know, in the modules.

I will say that with a caveat. If somebody hired me to be a character in an audiobook where I'm working with 10, 15 other actors, where I don't have to do everything, that would be ideal. And that's what I really loved about theater, because I was more of like a supporting actor type. But I would go out for roles where I knew that they were going to remember me and boo me at the end because I was the bad guy. There you go. You know, I'm the one they're going to think about when they're trying to sleep at night.

So you've been doing this for a hot minute now, 25 years or so. Yep. You're a coach, you're a working voice actor. How do you decide, okay, how do I keep this interesting? How, you know, where do I grow in the following six months, a year, five years? How do you sort of come to those decisions? How do you evaluate where your career is going, where you want it to grow and where the growth areas are?

Well, that's a great question because it's harder to get burned out if you're doing a variety of different projects in VO to begin with. And it's really hard to burn out if you're mixing that in with teaching and demo production and coaching. I'm doing a little bit of music production now, which is really quite entertaining and really fun.

And that's, I...you know, it's burnout free. I mean, if it like, if I was, if I was a guy with ADD who was just doing audio books, you know, I would probably be doing something else for a living right now because I'd have a nervous breakdown. As far as goals, I think that's an interesting question because the industry is always evolving, as you know, and the goals change with the industry evolving. And I really, really,

I'll tell you what I miss. I missed the production part of doing commercials. And when I first got started, it felt like I was doing more of commercial production, where a client would hire me not only to do the voice, but hey, can you produce the entire commercial? We just don't really see a lot of that anymore. At least I don't. I get that thrill out of demo production, and I really, really enjoy that. But where I would like to be in five years, and this is happening a little bit more and more, I've been hired to actually direct, commercial sessions at studios where I'm not even the voice actor.

They want me to come in with the ad agency and direct the talent. I've read every kind of script there is, so I know how they're supposed to be performed. And I, you know, I usually meet with the ad agency a couple of days before, but who knew that that would be a thing really? I mean, I know they have directors, you know, usually creative director or two from the ad agency will show up and direct the session, but every now and then,

I get that call so I wouldn't mind doing a little bit more of that in the coming years because I really enjoy it. Dude, it's been fun catching up. I'm glad you got to do this. I know, this is fun. I hope I wasn't rambling too much where you have a bunch of editing to do. There is nobody that outrambles me. So you were fine. You were great. I really enjoyed talking to you. And most of all, I'm thankful for everything you've done for me over the years. You've been a soundboard, you've been a coach, you've been a friend.

And it's been a really great addition to my life to get to know you a little bit. So I appreciate that. Back at you, man. It's kind of sad that we still haven't met in person, but I know that that day will come. It probably won't be at one of those big, massive... Conferences? ...comicon, voiceover conferences that you love. But it might be a smaller gathering, I think. And it won't be in Minnesota in January, I can guarantee you that. will never be Minnesota in January.

Paul, you're a wonderful talent, a good friend, and I appreciate you bringing me in because this was a lot of fun and let's do it again. Like always, buddy, it's Terry Daniel with Universal Voice Talent. And I'll put the link to the website in the description and the show notes that people want to get in touch with you there. They can do that. Terry, always a pleasure, man. Thanks for coming on. We're calling it UVT coaching now because it just sounds cooler.

Sounds like sunscreen to me. I don't know why. Well, now I'm going to have that in my head for the rest of it. Now we're going to change our world. Oh, I'm wearing 50. Thank you, sir. This was a lot of fun. Thank you, buddy. Great seeing you. Take care, man.