Dear Dan,
On impulse, I wanted to write a quick note and tell you how glad I am I went with Such A Voice. It feels so good to have pulled my dreams off the shelf after so long and take some action by going with your program. It’s been quite a ride so far, and only getting better.
It was only in January of last year that my coaching with Talia Gonzalez and demo production was wrapped up. Since then, I’ve acquired consistent and increasing work. In about fourteen months, I had paid off all my expenses, both the training and demo program as well as my home studio, which I’d put together shortly before signing up with you, all from voice work. Talia was a superb coach, caring, encouraging and candid with her feedback, but also quite skilled at pushing me out of my many comfort zones. Still working on some of that!
I’m averaging four, sometimes five voice jobs a week now. To date, I’ve completed over 50 explain er videos and have become the voice for several US and international companies via Internet advertising. I’ve done a couple explain er videos in British and Australian accents as well. I’m regularly doing Donato’s Pizza radio spots as well as minor league baseball during the season. I’m on numerous automated phone systems and video games, in trade shows in Russia and the Ukraine, and working with companies that do Russian to English and Spanish to English translation. I’m a regular with two companies that put together e Learning programs for English-as-a-second-language students, one based in California and the other in France.
I’m on Mexican radio selling insurance and I’m all over Turkish television doing Coke, Sprite and related sponsored-event promos, including the big annual Rock’Coke concert series. Well, I did that for last year’s, hoping I’ll do it again this year. I’m also the voice of instruction for a group of research doctors out of UC Berkeley who put together ongoing experiments and then training programs for the FBI, TSA, US Secret Service, various police departments and other government agencies for interrogation and lie detection.
American voice talent needs to market internationally, not just in smaller states! I get consistent work from production companies in Russia, Mumbai and another in Israel. I’m also doing jobs for an ad agency in Istanbul, Turkey. And by the way, all of these foreign companies are more generous than 90% of the US-based companies I’ve work with, which are getting bad on the low-balling. Really sad.
Oh, and I’m also currently working on my 10th audiobook and enjoying the monthly residuals from that. Honestly, I don’t deserve this much fun.
About seven months after getting my demo, I acquired a top San Francisco talent agency (Tonry Talent) and have gotten some great work through them. Because of this, I’ve gotten to know some of the folks at several big commercial studios in San Francisco as well as the surrounding east and south bay areas. I’m seeing more and more non-union nationally-syndicated gigs coming along through them, even from big companies. Seems to be a trend. In the following months, I acquired four more agencies, two with physical locations in the central and eastern time zones and three that are web-based. Maybe 10% of my work comes from agencies, but the pay is higher per gig. The rest my work has been from plain old pounding the virtual pavement marketing.
Anyway, sorry, this is no longer a quick note . . . I’ll end by telling you the two main reasons I went with SAV for my training and demo. The first was that you guys do everything out of the student’s home studio, which totally makes sense. That’s where the auditions and jobs are going to come from. Another company I was thinking of going with for my training wanted me to come to New York at least once. The second big reason was because of some video I saw of you where you were honest of the students who end up doing real, paid work. I don’t trust places that guarantee success or make false promises of how easy it’s going to be.
I tell everyone who asks about SAV. Everyone there is great. I’ve sent email questions to several other SAV coaches and they are all more than kind and helpful. I also tell others that while this is fun money for sure, it’s not all that easy. It’s work. It’s a solid business and marketing plan and the will do to a little something each day. I keep a big spreadsheet going of who my cold, warm and hot contacts are and market relentlessly with a simple letter and links to my demos and certain jobs. It was that first demo I got from SAV, which I still use that got my foot in all these doors.
I’m still keeping my day job for now, enjoying the freedom of consistent part-time, paying voice-work.
Take care,
Kelly Libatique
kelly.libatique@gmail.com
