Voice Actor Remie Michelle Clarke: "AI STOLE My Voice!!!"

One of the scariest aspects of being a voice actor in modern times is AI, artificial intelligence, synthetic voice, and text to speech. Most of the discussion has been around the question of, “Well, what happens when AI steals our work?”

The scarier question to me is what happens when A.I. has your voice?

Joining us from Dublin today is the Irish voice actor and author Remie Michelle Clarke with her story of how she believes her voice was stolen directly by artificial intelligence and the difficulties she's had in pursuing the people that have taken her voice.

AI/TTS, the vo industry, tech/gear, businessPaul SchmidtMarch 2, 2023AI, TTS, Revoicer, NAVA Comments

WOW! Voices.com NEW Rate Guide vs. GVAA

Today, we’re going to go over Voices' new rate guide and compare it to the GVAA so that you’ll know exactly the differences between the 2 guides, where exactly Voices' rates are substandard and stick around because we’ll also show you where they’re actually above standard.

For years, the voice acting community has been begging Voices dot com to take solid steps to protect voice actors from unfair rates and practices on their site.

And I am happy to report that they seem to be taking some steps to do that.

First, Voices has revamped their rate guide for 2023.

business, professional development, ratesPaul SchmidtFebruary 16, 2023voices, Voices.com, GVAA, rates, bad rates Comment

Top 7 Beginner Voice Over Marketing MISTAKES to Avoid

How do I know if I'm making bad marketing mistakes that are turning clients off? What are the most common marketing mistakes in voiceover and how do I avoid them? What critical social media marketing mistakes am I making with my voiceover business?

Today we're talking about seven common marketing mistakes to avoid making in voiceover, why they are common and not so obvious, and why you want to avoid them.

Paul SchmidtFebruary 9, 2023 Comments

SHOCKING REAL CALL with an EXPLOITATIVE Voice Over Producer

What you are about to hear is an actual call about an exploitative practice that is too common in our business. It is a prime example of producers who purposefully seek out younger and less experienced talent and knowingly exploit them for the benefit of their own organizations.

To be clear, this is representative of a tiny-but-still-too-large fraction of producers in the business and this call centers on but one specific practice: the all-media buyout.

It is shocking in its brazen self-awareness.

7 Truths You MUST Know Before You Get Started in Voice Acting

Today's post is essentially a letter to my former self. It's all the stuff I wish I knew when I was starting out in voiceover and stuff that you should know, maybe even before you get into voiceover.

My goal and hope are that you can learn from some of the mistakes that I made and learn some of the lessons that I learned. As I've gotten older, I've learned that when you can learn from somebody with a little bit more experience than you, it can save you a lot of heartache and hurt. I'd like to think as a voice actor, I've done a better job of listening, but I still have made my own fair share of mistakes and learned lessons that I hope to pass on to you here.

So here are seven truths you need to know before you get into VO or at the very least, as you're getting into VO.

business, marketing, professional development, the vo industryPaul SchmidtJanuary 26, 2023getting started, voice actingComment

How To Drive AMAZING Voice Over Client Experiences

Here's a question: How do you drive an exceptional customer experience, one that generates loyalty among your customers and drives repeat and recurring business? It all starts with understanding customer needs.

And today, we're going to talk about understanding and identifying customer needs, using Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and just how that applies to the service business of Voice Over.

A Dialogue with Voice123: Can We CHANGE the P2Ps?

What if we could change how the P2Ps work? What if we could have a real dialog with the decision-makers, the policymakers, at the online casting sites? What if we could make actual recommendations directly to the people at the top of the pay-to-plays?

Now, it's one thing to have a monologue to someone in such a position as we did with David Ciccarelli of Voices in a couple of videos prior to this.

But it's another thing entirely to be able to ask questions from and make recommendations directly to the CEO of a major P2P platform.

Now, as it happens, one such opportunity is coming up.

the vo industryPaul SchmidtJanuary 12, 2023voice123, Voices.com, voices, p2ps Comments

Voice Over Conferences 2023 CALENDAR: VO Atlanta and more

So, I thought the first post of the New Year would be a great time to lay out the 2023 Voice Over Conference Calendar for you, not just the big ones like VO Atlanta, but some of the lesser known, more intimate, more boutique conferences like MAVO.

So, at this point in the first week of January, when we're filming this video, some of the conferences haven't announced dates or details yet, but we know generally, historically, when they fall.

So, I want to give you a brief overview of each and, you know, details and all that good stuff, organizers, and event people when I can, in case you've never heard of these conferences or you've never been to them.

conferences/conventions, professional development, the vo industryPaul SchmidtJanuary 5, 2023VO Atlanta, VOcation, One Voice, MAVO, SOVASComment

Voices.com Changes – For The Better or Worse?

In my last video called I Offended Voices.com. and Here's How, the founder and CEO, David Ciccarelli asked me to lay out my points as to why I asserted that Voices puts profit before talent.

Now I laid out five facts that detailed their history of disregard for transparency when it comes to fees, taking egregious cuts of the budgets and a few others.

The reaction was just nuts, Unprecedented. Here's just some of what you had to say…

rates, the vo industryPaul SchmidtDecember 22, 2022Voices.com Comment

I OFFENDED Voices.com. And Here’s WHY…

In my last video, My (No Gear) Christmas Wishlist for Voiceover, one of my wishes was this:

"I wish all of the pay-to-plays were ethical, but the chief offender here, of course, is Voices.com, but they're certainly not the only ones that put profit before talent and clients. These companies control a huge amount of work globally in the voiceover business, and it's a travesty to me that rather than seeing themselves as leaders and stewards of our industry, they couldn't give a reindeer turd about anything else other than putting profit ahead of people - clients and talent."

And the very next day, I got an email from David Ciccarelli. David, if you don't know, is the founder and CEO of Voices.com, and he was NOT happy…

My (No Gear) Voice Over Christmas Wish List

Christmas is right around the corner. And of course, this is the time of year when voice actors get the steamy undies for all kinds of gear. Mics, interfaces, preamps, amplifiers, headphones, you name it. We want all the gear.

But I think in this season of gratitude and giving, I want kind of a different kind of Christmas wish list this year for voice over.

Sure. I love great gear as much as the next voice actor, but what I want for voice over this year is not for me. It's for everybody. Everybody that calls themselves a voice actor.

So, Santa, if you're listening or watching, here's my list. I've checked it twice…

How To Survive Losing a Big Client: Voiceover Crisis Management

I was completely freaking out.

Seven months into my full-time voiceover career, I lost my biggest and best client, one of my gateway clients, one of the ones that helped me make the leap to full-time voiceover. I had lost a huge client and I had never seen it coming.

I was a single dad, a one-income house. I had risked everything for voiceover. Not only that, but I had fled a job that not only I hated, but I knew I would be fired from and could not go back to.

What in the hell was I going to do? Well, I'll tell you what I did, and I think it'll help you if the same situation or one similar ever happens to you.

This is your VO Crisis Management Plan.

business development, marketingPaul SchmidtDecember 1, 2022crisis management Comment

How Voice Over Saved My Mental Health

I was in a dark place.

I had been through a series of three jobs in three years. I had largely failed at all of them. I was a single dad. I was paying my bills, but just barely, living paycheck to paycheck. Near the end, I was working for people I didn't respect. I didn't enjoy the job.

I wasn't enjoying any success at the job, and I was pretty sure I was going to be fired within a year. I was approaching 50 and I was sick of at-work politics. Sick of working for other people. Sick at working at jobs I had absolutely no passion for. I was sick of all of it, but I had no real options, no hope.

Plan A was to go back and get another sh*tty job, and there really was no plan B.

Now, just to be clear, I was not suicidal. I was moderately depressed. I loved my son, but I hated my life. I dreaded going to work every day.

But there was one bright spot, and that was voiceover

mindset, personal developmentPaul SchmidtNovember 24, 2022mental health, depression, anxiety, 988 lifeline Comments

Get Started in Voiceover Work: Choosing Your 1st Coach

So you've decided you want to get into voice acting and you want to learn to do voiceovers and maybe even, who knows, become a professional voice actor one day. That's great.

And as the song says, yes, there are two paths you can go by first. Maybe you just want to make a few extra bucks and have some fun and make voice over a hobby.

Or you can jump on Fiverr or Upwork or any of the freelancer sites and find a ton of voiceover jobs to audition for. And that's great.

But if you think you might want to go pro one day or you don't even know, avoid the Fiverr route. Working on Fiverr and Upwork and the freelancer sites can eventually damage your professional career.

Now, if you want to get started on the journey to professional voice acting, it all starts with good coaching.

acting, professional development, the vo industryPaul SchmidtNovember 17, 2022coaching Comments

NEW Voices.com Affiliate Program – BRAZEN. RIDICULOUS. SHAMELESS.

The email goes like this:

We are excited to officially announce the Voices affiliate program and we are inviting you to become a part of it. You're already getting paid for doing what you love, so why not get paid twice as a Voices affiliate? Refer your network to Voices and receive a commission when they hire their first voice talent.

Learn more about the Voices affiliate program here and apply now to start earning.

Let's click that apply button and see what this is all about.

Using Online Casting Sites SMARTLY: 3 Scenarios

I am staunchly against relying on the voiceover casting sites as a long-term strategy for growing your business.

Note: I said relying on. If the lion's share of your business is coming from the online casting sites, then chances are you're not developing your own relationships and you're leaving your business and yourself vulnerable.

But I do believe that there are certain times and circumstances where you can use websites for voiceover or work strategically.

In this post, I'm going to lay out three scenarios of when and how to use the online casting sites and which ones in each case to your advantage using the voiceover audition sites.

Conference Sneak Peek: MAVO 2022 - Mid-Atlantic Voice Over

MAVO, The Mid-Atlantic Voice Over conference is coming up Friday, November 11th through Sunday, November 13th, at the Westin Dulles in the Washington, D.C. area. MAVO was my first conference, and it's very special to me. And so today we're going to do a little preview of MAVO 2022, the faces you can expect to see what you can expect to hear, why MAVO is different than certainly the 800-pound gorilla conferences in our business and what makes it special.

And to tell us about all that is the chief executive president, owner and executive producer of MAVO, Val Kelly.

conferences/conventions, professional development, the vo industryPaul SchmidtOctober 27, 2022MAVOComment

Absolutely CRUSH 2023: Your 3-Step Voice Over Business Plan

2023 is going to be your year

But only if you have a solid voice over business plan, including a solid voiceover marketing plan.

In this post, I'm going to give you the three most effective steps for building a rock solid 2023 action plan for your voice over business. And stick around because at the end, I'm going to reveal the real secret sauce for success in 2023 and beyond.

The old saying failing to plan is planning to fail is absolutely true. Here's exactly how to plan and rock. 2023.

Paul SchmidtOctober 20, 2022 Comment

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