The Reality of the World of Voice Acting
Description
Kevin Coulter has been pursuing voice acting as a career for years, where they found both a sense of purpose and success. The story portrayed is grounded in the grittiness of self-starting, but thankfully has a happy ending. Or rather, a happy present and future.
Links to Kevin's Stuff:
Kevin's website: http://kevincoultervo.com/
Twitter:https://twitter.com/Coultergheist
Transcript
00:00:00.000Jordan Ugalde: Welcome to the Path of Passion Podcast, the podcast where we meet people who are passionate about their path in life. I am your host Jordan, and this is my gorgeous co host.
00:00:10.440
Tyler T Hamer: Hi I'm the gorgeous Tyler.
00:00:12.750
Jordan Ugalde: And today, we are interviewing Kevin. Now Kevin is a voice actor so he's going to show us all up on the mic and he has much better equipment than us.
00:00:25.020
Jordan Ugalde: He
00:00:25.500
Jordan Ugalde: probably sounds much more professional so let's just jump right into it. Kevin why, why did you start voice acting, what appealed to you about it?
00:00:36.870
Kevin Coulter: That's a great question um so I have been acting since high school. I took acting lessons in high school, as my like Fine Arts elective just kind of on a whim.
00:00:51.480
Kevin Coulter: And I like really enjoyed being on stage, I really enjoyed being able to like portray different characters but I hated memorizing lines, like, I would just like to second guess myself, like every rehearsal, I would like second death on my lines, I'd call for line all the time.
00:01:07.860
Kevin Coulter: To the point where my first like live performance, my director had me sit outside with one other person, and we were just drilling lines for like an hour and a half before the show started and nobody else had to do that.
00:01:23.910
Kevin Coulter: So I kind of followed a path of doing
00:01:29.550
Kevin Coulter: acting where I, I tried various different types of acting because none of them really felt like it. Like I enjoyed it, but it wasn't like the one I guess.
00:01:38.700
Kevin Coulter: So I tried obviously started with stage acting, I tried improv which I completely fell in love with and I tried film acting.
00:01:47.430
Kevin Coulter: But improv didn't really feel like something that I could make a career off of like you had to be like very lucky or in the right locations, or vice or things like that.
00:01:59.340
Kevin Coulter: And then one day in high school, I was like at my girlfriend's house at the time, and I was like singing along to a Tenacious D song.
00:02:10.380
Kevin Coulter: And it was one
00:02:11.920
Jordan Ugalde: Which one which one?
00:02:12.270
Kevin Coulter: It was uh, it was Tribute. And
00:02:16.140
Kevin Coulter: I was just like every part I was just like singing, along with the voices and my girlfriend's mom was like, wow you're really good at copying those voices have you ever considered voice acting and I was like that's real?
00:02:30.420
Kevin Coulter: I would play video games and watch cartoons all the time and I don't know why I didn't realize that there are people
00:02:35.130
Kevin Coulter: doing that.
00:02:39.540
Kevin Coulter: But anyway, like years later I finally like got a mic and gave it a try and it was great, not only because, like, I still had that like portraying characters and, like you, don't really have to memorize lines, because you can just have it in front of you.
00:02:54.600
Kevin Coulter: But it was also like.
00:02:57.300
Kevin Coulter: When you are on a stage or on film you're all, you're very limited to how you look physically like you can't be another person like you can put on makeup or you know, like change how you dress or whatever, but you can't like, I can't be a giant demon in real life.
00:03:14.790
Jordan Ugalde: You can try.
00:03:16.140
Tyler T Hamer: There's special effects
00:03:17.490
Tyler T Hamer: artists.
00:03:20.400
Kevin Coulter: So it's like it gives you the freedom to like explore a lot of new acting choices and explore a lot of like push yourself out of your comfort zone and stuff like that.
00:03:31.260
Kevin Coulter: Unfortunately, in my voice range isn't the demon voice range.
00:03:37.470
Kevin Coulter: But it was just really nice to to find that and I just completely fell in love.
00:03:42.270
Tyler T Hamer: So, like based off your voice range what's like the most unexpected role that you got because you know they don't have to see you?
00:03:50.700
Kevin Coulter: I.
00:03:53.100
Kevin Coulter: I don't know if I'd consider it unexpected but I recently did a...
00:04:00.210
Kevin Coulter: A friend of mine was running a D and D game, and he wanted me to be like the voice of the main villain who was actually this like.
00:04:08.790
Kevin Coulter: This guy who got like possessed and his like soul was taken over, and like he died and his soul was like lingering in in the area.
00:04:18.810
Kevin Coulter: And the the original version of him is like trying to get the the adventurers is to come to the castle to like purify it to get the evil presence out of it.
00:04:28.170
Kevin Coulter: But he's also this evil being so it was like having to switch between no I'm, I'm sane and I'm your friend and you have to save us to like I'm completely insane.
00:04:39.390
Kevin Coulter: Being able to do like that dichotomy was like super fun and I think it definitely caught people off guard.
00:04:45.090
Tyler T Hamer: That's amazing.
00:04:46.920
Jordan Ugalde: Have you ever seen.
00:04:49.410
Jordan Ugalde: David Hasselhoff playing Jekyll and Hyde.
00:04:52.710
Kevin Coulter: I haven't, that sonuds amazing.
00:04:56.160
Jordan Ugalde: There's this one
00:04:57.570
Jordan Ugalde: So we can pull up later, but there's this one video on YouTube where he basically has half of his face decorated as Hyde so he has.
00:05:06.600
Jordan Ugalde: Really long hair, grotesque makeup and then he looks standard handsome Hasselhoff on the other side and there's a light shift whenever he changes character, so he faces one way and he is he's so brave and courageous and then he's evil.
00:05:22.290
Jordan Ugalde: It's fun it's, I I love seeing the spectrum of what actors can create even in just technically the same role but split.
00:05:34.440
Kevin Coulter: Right absolutely.
00:05:36.090
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah and talking about these different roles, so I know there are some voice actors, I think Johnny Yong Bosch is one where I every time I hear his voice, I know it's him. So he he has a voice that's very recognizable that's generally sounds the same every time but
00:06:00.150
Jordan Ugalde: he's very emotionally expressive with his voice.
00:06:02.940
Jordan Ugalde: Right and then to contrast that there's someone like ProZD who does
00:06:08.910
Jordan Ugalde: wildly different voices.
00:06:11.220
Jordan Ugalde: He can sound like a
00:06:13.890
Jordan Ugalde: very masculine man and then also a much more higher pitch like chairem sempai.
00:06:19.770
Kevin Coulter: Yeah.
00:06:21.540
Jordan Ugalde: So.
00:06:23.490
Jordan Ugalde: What as a voice actor what's your take on the strengths of each of those and what kind of direction, do you try and delve into.
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Kevin Coulter: Um so something that I like to stress, and something that I've seen through various people in the industry is.
00:06:41.880
Kevin Coulter: The thing that's going ta,o you're going to be able to sell yourself with the most is your natural voice. Like of course it's it's good to be able to change up your voice and do like different characters.
00:06:51.930
Kevin Coulter: But ultimately your greatest asset is how you sound like naturally because it's what you have the most experience with. So people like Johnny Yong Bosch who, like every time you hear him you're like there he is, like I know who that is.
00:07:04.110
Kevin Coulter: Like they're focusing entirely on I am a good actor, which is like the most important part of the voice actor. It's the acting comes first, which.
00:07:13.530
Kevin Coulter: A lot of people who are first getting introduced to voiceover and trying to discover it themselves kind of fall in the trap of like.
00:07:20.580
Kevin Coulter: I do a lot of voices, so therefore I'll be a good voice actor when it's ultimately about how well you can portray those characters.
00:07:27.690
Kevin Coulter: Not like oh, I do a good Donald Duck impression, but it's like do you understand how Donald Duck is feeling in this circumstance? So what I'd like to focus on and what I encourage other people to focus on is making strong acting choices and not necessarily doing the goofy voice.
00:07:45.420
Tyler T Hamer: So just don't like if you're doing D and D, the demon isn't monotone the entire time.
00:07:49.380
Kevin Coulter: Exactly.
00:07:55.800
Jordan Ugalde: Okay cool and with that characterization, can you,
00:08:02.940
Jordan Ugalde: I know it's a lot to ask on the spot.
00:08:05.160
Kevin Coulter: Oh God.
00:08:08.670
Jordan Ugalde: Like with the, with the demon king, for example, if you remember anything about what that characterization was like um.
00:08:17.910
Jordan Ugalde: How, how do you approach getting into character.
00:08:23.670
Kevin Coulter: Yeah whoo um so there's a.
00:08:27.180
Kevin Coulter: There's a big, Uta Hagen is like a famous acting teacher from I don't know forever ago probably.
00:08:35.430
Kevin Coulter: And they had a worksheet or like a series of questions that you basically write like an essay on the character and like what their motivations are, what the situation they're in is like, what is their goal in this situation.
00:08:51.360
Kevin Coulter: Like who are they talking to like what's the point they're trying to get across and you're just like really break down.
00:08:59.340
Kevin Coulter: The scene, which, like even extends into commercial voiceover like if I'm doing some dumb, I shouldn't say dumb but if I'm doing some
00:09:08.490
Kevin Coulter: run of the mill like, "Come to Kohl's today and get 100% off everything you buy please come in."
00:09:18.990
Jordan Ugalde: 100% off that's pretty appealing.
00:09:22.590
Tyler T Hamer: I'd go to Kohl's right now.
00:09:23.400
Tyler T Hamer: Like I love this podcast I'll go right now to Kohl's.
00:09:27.510
Kevin Coulter: Even then I'm still like doing the worksheets like, who am I trying to sell this to, like who in my life, can I pull from to like encourage myself to get in the state of mind that I need to be or if it's like.
00:09:38.550
Kevin Coulter: If it's like an intimate like "By a Jetta today and you'll be really fast" like what, who needs to know this? Why am I telling someone about this, especially, in commercials,
00:09:52.590
Kevin Coulter: the trend has gone more towards conversational style voices, so they really want you to sound genuine and like you're talking to someone you know already so it's like you really have to put yourself in that mindset and like.
00:10:04.920
Kevin Coulter: Who am I talking to? Why am I telling them this? Why is it important? Like, what's my goal?
00:10:11.760
Jordan Ugalde: That that honestly reminds me a lot of my time in the software industry, where we we did like persona analysis, persona construction where we decide, like define what the person is like in very, very great detail.
00:10:28.410
Jordan Ugalde: Who we're trying to build our product for and
00:10:34.050
Jordan Ugalde: sometimes we did like very elaborate with their back stories and stuff.
00:10:39.090
Jordan Ugalde: Because the more clear we have of the character, the more clear, we can say this is how we want to write our narrative for them so yeah that makes sense for the voice, but at the same time having a.
00:10:55.020
Jordan Ugalde: With Tyler I don't normally say "have you bought a Jetta today?"
00:11:01.830
Tyler T Hamer: I was, I was gonna say like.
00:11:02.310
Tyler T Hamer: normal I'm trying to think of like in normal conversation oh OK, I can think of one where I was peddling you guys, you Jordan. I, when Lauren and I got the air fryer and I didn't shut up about it, I kept telling everyone to buy an air fryer.
00:11:16.920
Jordan Ugalde: Yes.
00:11:18.480
Jordan Ugalde: You should be an affiliate marketer for air fryers.
00:11:23.550
Tyler T Hamer: Yeah I think I have a Corsori?
00:11:25.530
Kevin Coulter: Have you heard of air fryers?
00:11:26.670
Kevin Coulter: Let me tell you.
00:11:30.000
Jordan Ugalde: So are there, like general tropey voices that you lean towards when going for the different roles, like for commercials is there, soft sensual...
00:11:47.250
Kevin Coulter: Um when you focus on commercial it tends to be like unless it calls for like a younger voice, or like an older voice which I'm not the best at.
00:11:56.970
Kevin Coulter: You tend to just be using your natural voice and you're adding like different characteristics to it, so instead of saying like there's a trope for a voice that I'd use for commercial work I'd say like.
00:12:06.870
Kevin Coulter: Is this supposed to be like conversational or intimate or like am I supposed to be energetic? Am I selling toys which, like one of my favorite directors described that is just yelling at kids which I love.
00:12:25.350
Tyler T Hamer: I'm picturing like doing like the like monster truck rally on Sunday like "BUY THIS TOY, BUY THIS TOY, BUY THIS TOY".
00:12:32.850
Jordan Ugalde: I'm just imagining,
00:12:33.510
Jordan Ugalde: you're going to a playground and yelling at the kids at the slide "BUY THIS TOY".
00:12:46.440
Jordan Ugalde: Oh man.
00:12:47.160
Tyler T Hamer: So take it away.
00:12:53.490
Jordan Ugalde: How do you find these kinds of roles?
00:12:58.170
Jordan Ugalde: Because honestly, it sounds like fun every once awhile to be able to yell at a kid so like, how do you.
00:13:04.980
Jordan Ugalde: How do you.
00:13:07.980
Tyler T Hamer: Like our podcast gets rated m for mature now.
00:13:12.840
Jordan Ugalde: So, whether it's commercial games like, how do you find these different roles?
00:13:19.410
Kevin Coulter: Depending on what you're looking for you're going to kind of go to different areas.
00:13:25.920
Kevin Coulter: Generally, starting out people tend to gravitate toward, gravitate towards a site called castingcall.club which is for the most part, a lot of like passion projects that are unpaid.
00:13:39.060
Kevin Coulter: Like a lot of visual novels or like short animations or things of that nature. They do post paid casting calls on there, but it's almost all like animation, video game on that site.
00:13:51.030
Kevin Coulter: As well as like audio dramas and podcasts I guess.
00:13:58.020
Kevin Coulter: There are also websites like voice123.com or voices.com, I mean like I have a whole list of stuff that I have to go through, but like I market myself on Twitter, I have a website, um there's cold calling or cold emailing like.
00:14:12.600
Jordan Ugalde: Well, while we have you there what is, what is your website and your Twitter.
00:14:18.240
Jordan Ugalde: Just so that everyone can know.
00:14:19.920
Kevin Coulter: My website is.
00:14:22.050
Kevin Coulter: KevinCoultervo.com and my Twitter is @Coultergheist for that spelled C O U L T E R G H E I S T.
00:14:32.430
Kevin Coulter: Like a play on words with poltergeist.
00:14:36.660
Jordan Ugalde: Okay now now with that repping out of the way so.
00:14:40.920
Jordan Ugalde: You market yourself on these different websites you market yourself on Twitter um how much of getting started was you actively cold, doing cold outreach to people versus like inbound what was that process like getting started.
00:14:57.030
Kevin Coulter: Starting, for me, I know, like every voice actor has like an entirely different story.
00:15:04.680
Kevin Coulter: But starting for me was.
00:15:08.070
Kevin Coulter: I needed to know that I could get myself to the point where I would feel confident lending my voice to certain roles, so it was just a lot of classes, I was just constantly taking classes and like practicing and like I didn't audition for anything at all.
00:15:25.710
Kevin Coulter: Like I'd see things that I could have auditioned for and I'd see the finished product and I'd be like I should have done that, like I'm better.
00:15:35.760
Kevin Coulter: And then, as it progressed forward I you know I went to castingcall.club and I auditioned for things there back in the day, there was.
00:15:44.700
Kevin Coulter: a bunch of older websites like voiceacting.club and.
00:15:49.350
Kevin Coulter: Oh man I don't remember the other one.
00:15:53.010
Kevin Coulter: But, just like smaller things I think I auditioned for stuff on newgrounds.com too like.
00:15:57.780
Jordan Ugalde: Oh wow.
00:16:00.060
Jordan Ugalde: Blast from the past right there yeah.
00:16:00.750
Tyler T Hamer: Flash animation.
00:16:02.160
Kevin Coulter: Yeah it was, I was very unfocused back then, and like eventually I like talk to more industry professionals I got more advice from people and really started like.
00:16:13.410
Kevin Coulter: Networking with more voiceovers not to like sell my voice to them, but to figure out their process was to get more skills under my belt and then I started being more focused about it and, like.
00:16:23.550
Kevin Coulter: there's a lot of like pay to play sites which you can sign up for them, but you can only be invited to audition.
00:16:31.770
Kevin Coulter: Unless you pay them and then you get like free
00:16:33.510
Kevin Coulter: auditions that you can do and then.
00:16:38.520
Kevin Coulter: Just buckling down getting a certain number of done per day and then like spending time marketing, spending time like being a real human on the Internet so people want to work with you.
00:16:52.980
Jordan Ugalde: So getting started with that of.
00:16:58.410
Jordan Ugalde: Learning, taking the time to learn effectively this public persona of
00:17:04.470
Jordan Ugalde: how to craft yourself.
00:17:08.100
Jordan Ugalde: What was that process like, like how long did that take you to shape the self that you want to present on the Internet?
00:17:16.530
Kevin Coulter: Oh, that was a miserable experience.
00:17:20.400
Kevin Coulter: I um.
00:17:22.770
Kevin Coulter: I, like I got a lot of books on like how to market yourself and like how to be an influencer or whatever like being an online person.
00:17:32.070
Kevin Coulter: And I was reading those and it was giving me like decide what your brand is and like stay true to your brand and like I don't know I just got I like kind of fell in this hole of like I created this idea of what my brand was going to be and it like didn't feel like me it felt like.
00:17:49.200
Kevin Coulter: I was an product and then I started to get like a little, like I spiraled a little bit from it was like I what am I doing? Like I don't seem believable like I'm not interacting with people.
00:17:59.970
Kevin Coulter: And I kind of like had to go through this weird journey of self discovery in the voiceover world where I have had to find a way to like blend my authentic self into my product so.
00:18:12.480
Kevin Coulter: I am a real person like you want to work with me because, like, I can engage with your fans on like a real human level or I can like be a real normal person that's what you
00:18:23.250
Kevin Coulter: want like you don't want to fake product to sell your fake product you want.
00:18:31.560
Tyler T Hamer: You don't want to sound like the chevy commercials where we randomly got people off the street like.
00:18:40.860
Kevin Coulter: Exactly.
00:18:41.400
Jordan Ugalde: It seems so
00:18:44.580
Jordan Ugalde: difficult to balance the presentation of a normal person versus just being your organic self and the thing is, I would say to some extent.
00:18:56.760
Jordan Ugalde: Any persona is just a sliver of your organic self.
00:19:01.440
Jordan Ugalde: But it can I definitely see where you're coming from that it can be hard to
00:19:10.140
Jordan Ugalde: find something that feels authentic both to you and to other people because
00:19:17.310
Jordan Ugalde: Some sometimes it, I have known people where they can put on a facade that other people believe in, but that they have no faith in themselves.
00:19:27.840
Jordan Ugalde: And there are occasional cracks that come through.
00:19:30.450
Jordan Ugalde: But to have some a coherent sense of self like I would imagine there's a lot of self self discovery.
00:19:37.800
Kevin Coulter: Absolutely I, the way that I started was like I'm just gonna be like unrelentlessly optimistic and I realized like how badly that can come off.
00:19:53.550
Kevin Coulter: Like there's nothing real about nothing ever goes wrong in my life.
00:19:56.970
Kevin Coulter: Everything is always perfect and I'm always happy and.
00:19:59.460
Kevin Coulter: Always uplifting.
00:20:01.050
Jordan Ugalde: Everything is awesome yeah.
00:20:02.130
Kevin Cutl: Yeah.
00:20:04.470
Tyler T Hamer: Yeah.
00:20:05.280
Tyler T Hamer: that's why they didn't make the song everything is terrible.
00:20:09.420
Jordan Ugalde: Some things are good, some things are bad.
00:20:13.170
Kevin Coulter: And then I think like I wasn't getting engaged with a lot and I, like it was putting a lot of pressure on myself to always be that happy.
00:20:22.590
Kevin Coulter: So instead of like like I am a generally happy and and generally optimistic person, so I thought it would come to me easily but it absolutely did not because it felt like I was forcing it instead of it coming from like a real place so nowadays like there's a lot like like shit posting mixed in with the brand.
00:20:44.010
Jordan Ugalde: I feel that's approachable, though.
00:20:45.510
Kevin Coulter: Yeah, exactly.
00:20:48.000
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah like.
00:20:50.310
Jordan Ugalde: they're very much is.
00:20:53.250
Jordan Ugalde: people want to see a real person, and I mean, I will say, sometimes watching Transformers where it's just mindless fun is a blast but I, I love seeing real characters and why I've loved doing this podcast is.
00:21:13.740
Jordan Ugalde: Usually within the second hour or or deep into it.
00:21:18.690
Jordan Ugalde: The initial guards have been let down, and we can hear like real very honest stories and it's so interesting to see what real people's stories are like because those real stories have a lot of meat to them they're very juicy and I love digging into those so on those lines.
00:21:38.370
Tyler T Hamer: This is our advertisement for steak.
00:21:42.450
Jordan Ugalde: So along those lines, you were taking classes earlier this, this podcast episode is sponsored by
00:21:48.420
Jordan Ugalde: No, not by Skill Share we don't have any sponsors yet.
00:21:50.550
Tyler T Hamer: MasterClass.
00:21:51.570
Jordan Ugalde: Yes.
00:21:54.240
Jordan Ugalde: No, but going back to what I was saying in terms of that self discovery like.
00:22:01.290
Jordan Ugalde: Can you go into some of the highs and lows of what the actual work for that was like? Because self discovery is a word we hear a lot and it's not always easy to understand, let alone do.
00:22:15.690
Kevin Coulter: Yeah actually the pandemic was a big self discovery thing for me.
00:22:23.550
Kevin Coulter: At the beginning of the pandemic or a little bit before the pandemic, I was actually finally made the decision to like leave my traditional career and go into voiceover full time.
00:22:37.770
Kevin Coulter: So there was a lot of like how am I going to make this work and how am I gonna.
00:22:42.210
Kevin Coulter: Stay motivated like what's the process and then also discovering like who I was when I didn't have something externally, to provide me motivation.
00:22:54.240
Kevin Coulter: which was definitely a riot.
00:22:59.520
Kevin Coulter: I definitely, it took a lot to like get myself out of.
00:23:06.600
Kevin Coulter: At the time I was in a lot of unhealthy situations, I was living with people that didn't quite respect me and I was kind of getting out of an unhealthy relationship so it was like.
00:23:20.460
Kevin Coulter: A lot of time to just like sit in my room by myself feeling bad and really discover like what were the core values that made me and how do I, how do I, like convey that, in a way that is not only compelling but engaging.
00:23:37.020
Kevin Coulter: And like I mentioned before the unending optimism was like I wasn't getting any engagement, nobody wants to interact with the person who, like the only thing they have to say is it's gonna be fine.
00:23:50.790
Kevin Coulter: But it's definitely, I mean with any, any social media, especially if you turn it into like your source of living.
00:23:59.520
Kevin Coulter: It's very invalidating when things don't like if you get really excited about something, and you don't get the numbers out of it that you're looking for you start to like question oh, am I doing this right or like.
00:24:10.020
Kevin Coulter: On the other hand, you'll post something like this is gonna be the worst thing I've ever done and it gets like the most engagement out of anything.
00:24:19.290
Jordan Ugalde: Yep.
00:24:22.290
Kevin Coulter: It's definitely it's
00:24:23.430
Kevin Coulter: definitely absolutely a roller coaster.
00:24:27.270
Kevin Coulter: Learning to like.
00:24:30.060
Kevin Coulter: make those bonds with people that are more than just oh, we have the same job like.
00:24:35.310
Kevin Coulter: Being able to rely on people that are in the same industry as you is like is like a huge thing for me. Actually recently made a few posts about like hey I just need people to hold me accountable that also do voiceover like let's bully each other, so we get our stuff done.
00:24:51.300
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah.
00:24:53.610
Tyler T Hamer: So I
00:24:55.380
Tyler T Hamer: I was gonna say like how big is like you're like your community or like the number of people that keep you accountable is it like there's like five of you is like the.
00:25:04.920
Tyler T Hamer: voice is there, like small groups within the voice acting community or is it like you know, like one big I guess like like reddit where everyone's on it like centralized or.
00:25:14.010
Jordan Ugalde: One big happy family.
00:25:18.000
Kevin Coulter: There is a Discord channel called voice acting club that has like.
00:25:28.260
Kevin Coulter: 10s of thousands of people on it and like they post like, I'm looking to hang out with people, I want to practice with people, they'll post like hey there's this casting call that I found.
00:25:39.840
Kevin Coulter: Here, if it's paid or unpaid, or like non voiceover stuff like there's things like that for friends, but like.
00:25:47.880
Kevin Coulter: Basically, every voiceover has their own or every voice actor has their own discord that varies in size that they like hang out with people.
00:25:56.340
Kevin Coulter: I have like besides my own personal support group, who I
00:26:00.390
Kevin Coulter: also helped me hold myself accountable, I have like a few people that I reach out to like individually that like will send me casting calls if they think that I'm a good fit or they'll update me on what they're working on for inspiration or ask me when I'm working on.
00:26:14.700
Kevin Coulter: So I don't know there's like maybe 10 or so people that I interact with regularly for voiceover specifically.
00:26:23.100
Kevin Coulter: That I try to stay like closer with but I'm also part of like larger communities.
00:26:28.920
Kevin Coulter: Which is like sometimes really stressful to keep up with just because there's so many people constantly talking.
00:26:35.460
Jordan Ugalde: 10,000 is a lot.
00:26:38.220
Tyler T Hamer: Like the voices in Twitch Plays Pokemon.
00:26:43.740
Jordan Ugalde: Oh man.
00:26:45.510
Jordan Ugalde: How did you find out about these communities when you were getting started?
00:26:50.310
Kevin Coulter: A lot of research.
00:26:53.430
Kevin Coulter: I'm, I
00:26:57.270
Kevin Coulter: getting started I I found a voiceover school near me that I just started going to and I met people through there who like told me about websites, but it was also like googling.
00:27:11.010
Kevin Coulter: Where can I go to find casting calls or how to do voiceover, shoot I, there's a great website by oh what's his name.
00:27:24.750
Kevin Coulter: Oh, I can't remember his name it's called I want to Dee Bradley Baker cool it's called Iwanttobeavoiceactor.com.
00:27:32.430
Kevin Coulter: And it's really a great starting place for.
00:27:37.890
Kevin Coulter: People who are looking to get into voiceover beginners or even like everyone and their path like it, it helps you it gives you tips for auditioning it teaches you how to find an agent it teaches you like ways to find.
00:27:53.310
Kevin Coulter: coaches, or like how to get started acting by yourself, if coaching isn't something that you have the budget for.
00:27:59.970
Kevin Coulter: What not to do what to do, how to make a demo, it has like everything on this website, but then I don't know if that existed when I started doing voiceover so I actually listened to, I don't want to shout out a different podcast on your.
00:28:13.500
Tyler T Hamer: No that's fine.
00:28:18.780
Kevin Coulter: Crispin Freeman who's like one of my favorite voice actors of all time does a great podcast called Voice Acting Mastery
00:28:27.060
Kevin Coulter: where he basically talks about what he's learned over his long career and he interviews industry professionals, or even some of his students to get like their story.
00:28:36.780
Kevin Coulter: So that was a great source for me and like weirdly got me through some dark times, just like strange from like a information podcast but it helped me stay focused and.
00:28:47.850
Tyler T Hamer: I feel like it's probably probably like a like a good North star right?
00:28:51.600
Tyler T Hamer: Where like you're down, but like you're like.
00:28:53.340
Tyler T Hamer: Okay, if even if I go about doing much this day if I'm listening to this it's like doing laundry like you like end up watching TV but you're like I made progress.
00:29:01.320
Kevin Coulter: Exactly.
00:29:08.010
Jordan Ugalde: By the way, Dee Bradley Baker, I had the wonderful privilege of seeing him live at video games live at comic con like
00:29:15.390
Jordan Ugalde: almost a decade ago.
00:29:16.500
Kevin Coulter: Oh that's amazing.
00:29:17.550
Jordan Ugalde: And there was, do you guys know Gears of War?
00:29:22.770
Tyler T Hamer: Yep, good game.
00:29:23.970
Jordan Ugalde: So he was the voice of the berserker.
00:29:27.480
Tyler T Hamer: Oh right.
00:29:29.280
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah that monster that's basically blind and just charges through stuff and they had someone just, they were streaming the footage of the first fight with that monster, while he was on stage with the mic doing the sounds for that monster live and
00:29:49.230
Jordan Ugalde: humans can make a lot of sounds with their mouth.
00:29:53.340
Jordan Ugalde: and orifices.
00:29:55.950
Kevin Coulter: I recently took a class from a, he's now a voice actor, but he used to be an ex metal singer.
00:30:04.170
Kevin Coulter: And he, like teaches you like the growling techniques from
00:30:07.800
Kevin Coulter: like death metal.
00:30:09.030
Kevin Coulter: to do creature sounds it was like one of the most fascinating classes I've ever taken.
00:30:14.790
Jordan Ugalde: Did he teach the pterodactyl screech.
00:30:19.680
Jordan Ugalde: There are some metal songs that have like this.
00:30:24.000
Tyler T Hamer: Now I'm beginning to wonder in like Jurassic Park, if, like they took the sounds from animals or they just got people like make all those sounds.
00:30:32.670
Jordan Ugalde: Well, have you have you guys heard of the movie The Wind Also rises? It's a Miyazaki movie an animated film where all of the sound effects are just human voices, so the so the plane is like *rubububub*.
00:30:52.740
Jordan Ugalde: And even, there's an earthquake.
00:30:54.510
Jordan Ugalde: And they made like *vrmm vrmm*.
00:30:58.890
Kevin Coulter: I need to watch this movie immediately that's.
00:31:00.660
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah there are better Miyazaki films, but just for that, that alone makes it worth at least seeing once it's fun it's a lot of fun.
00:31:11.970
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah.
00:31:13.440
Jordan Ugalde: So as an independent voice actor, what is your day to day life, I mean it's you're going to be very self directed, but how is that for you.
00:31:24.330
Kevin Coulter: Um I.
00:31:26.940
Kevin Coulter: I very recently made the discovery that whatever the opposite of a morning person I absolutely am.
00:31:34.620
Kevin Coulter: So before recently, I was like getting out of bed, and like forcing myself to do voiceover before I got like anything fun done, and then I found myself, just like sitting in my room doing nothing for hours because I couldn't get myself to do it um.
00:31:50.700
Kevin Coulter: But now I finally got to the point where I like, I wake up and I like get myself ready to start going and I like kind of exercise a bit, but for the, in terms of voiceover in general, specifically, it's I'll spend a few hours going through social medias, LinkedIn, all the websites.
00:32:10.170
Kevin Coulter: That I'm subscribed to, to find auditions that kind of call to me and then I'll just make like a big list of them.
00:32:17.580
Kevin Coulter: And then I turn on my recording software and walk into my booth and basically don't come out until I
00:32:23.370
Kevin Coulter: recorded all of them.
00:32:24.840
Kevin Coulter: And I do not like editing I'm not a big fan.
00:32:31.230
Kevin Coulter: So I definitely procrastinate before I start editing but.
00:32:35.280
Kevin Coulter: Usually someone yells at me like stop being a little bitch.
00:32:43.110
Kevin Coulter: In the next however many hours editing and then send those in and then closer to the end of the day, I like see like who haven't I emailed to reach out to in a while to see if they need more help or.
00:32:56.790
Kevin Coulter: Things like that and send in all the the auditions and thankfully, I have a like send this email in the morning, instead of at 10pm when I'm finished.
00:33:07.890
Jordan Ugalde: Oh man, oh there's definitely been times, where I I write the email as like 1am.
00:33:14.130
Jordan Ugalde: And it's like man I'm not gonna send this now because that presents the wrong face, you know.
00:33:21.840
Kevin Coulter: Exactly.
00:33:23.100
Jordan Ugalde: I am a hard worker, but I don't necessarily want to,
00:33:26.850
Jordan Ugalde: you gotta cultivate the persona a bit.
00:33:28.710
Kevin Coulter: Yeah yeah yeah.
00:33:30.750
Kevin Coulter: I'm doing all the work and it's all getting done on time, but I don't want you to think it's not, because it's 2am.
00:33:38.220
Tyler T Hamer: Yes, I've done the opposite I've like had my delays send the email at 4am so my Professor and advisor's like he must be working really late.
00:33:51.720
Kevin Coulter: Maybe I should take that strategy.
00:33:54.240
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah.
00:33:55.800
Jordan Ugalde: Oh, oh you're working that late into the night?
00:33:58.890
Tyler T Hamer: Take a break like.
00:34:01.560
Jordan Ugalde: Ok I'll pay you double.
00:34:06.090
Jordan Ugalde: So dedicated to the craft, working
00:34:08.610
Jordan Ugalde: 24/7
00:34:13.380
Tyler T Hamer: Damn
00:34:14.340
Tyler T Hamer: So I guess in that schedule like how many.
00:34:18.390
Tyler T Hamer: Do you say, you know you said you, you find, like a number of listings you go through the whole rigmarole.
00:34:22.860
Tyler T Hamer: And you do the recordings for them like, how many listings are you finding on average, is it like is it like when it rains it pours you get like 20 listings all of a suddenly that you're interested in, or is it like you find one here there, how was um.
00:34:37.050
Kevin Coulter: I think, depending on where you're looking you're going to get various degrees of success.
00:34:44.670
Kevin Coulter: If you're looking for unpaid things it's like always when it rains it pours.
00:34:50.580
Kevin Coulter: You need to make money so that's not really what you want the whole time.
00:34:54.390
Kevin Coulter: Um but I'm like one website like if I pick voices.com, for example, I'll get like at least five new ones, a day.
00:35:05.250
Kevin Coulter: That are like only the ones that are like 60% match or higher so like of course they're getting way more than that.
00:35:12.690
Kevin Coulter: On the website so sifting through like all the emails I've gotten since the last time I checked and there's
00:35:19.950
Kevin Coulter: a large number of things that you can do per day, I mean there's, there, I just read a tweet about someone who is like I decided last month to push my boundaries for voiceover and I did 70 auditions in two days and.
00:35:38.550
Tyler T Hamer: That's insane.
00:35:39.660
Kevin Coulter: Yeah there's also like a huge grind culture in in voiceover.
00:35:46.590
Kevin Coulter: Social media, I don't know if it extends to all voice actors, but, like all of them are like yeah I can barely speak and I have recordings six times today.
00:35:57.810
Kevin Coulter: I'm like hooked up to tubes in the hospital and I still sent out two auditions.
00:36:03.240
Tyler T Hamer: Oh no I'm literally darth vader.
00:36:06.300
Tyler T Hamer: So I might as well do his voice over.
00:36:08.400
Kevin Coulter: It concerns me a little bit when people are like yeah I got really sick, but that just means that I can play deeper like gravelly characters better, I'm like please take care of your voice.
00:36:16.800
Tyler T Hamer: But also like you can't get called back if you can only do it while sick.
00:36:22.470
Jordan Ugalde: I need to get sick again, I could do this voice only while sick.
00:36:25.470
Kevin Coulter: Spit on me.
00:36:28.860
Jordan Ugalde: Oh man.
00:36:30.180
Jordan Ugalde: This is just there.
00:36:31.770
Jordan Ugalde: In college, I was doing musical theatre and uh I had to do a very high tenor part like a very, very high notes and we have some parties.
00:36:45.240
Jordan Ugalde: The musical
00:36:46.440
Jordan Ugalde: theatre group had some parties, and so the night before one of our last shows that is actually the show that got recorded.
00:36:52.590
Kevin Coulter: and distributed
00:36:55.050
Jordan Ugalde: I lost my entire upper range.
00:37:00.540
Jordan Ugalde: And and the thing is, I had this big solo number, where I supposed to.
00:37:07.320
Jordan Ugalde: supposed to go all the way up there, and that did not exist.
00:37:11.760
Jordan Ugalde: What the fuck am I supposed to do I.
00:37:18.000
Jordan Ugalde: And in,
00:37:19.830
Jordan Ugalde: And the thing is he supposed to be like a very like not necessarily naive, but like more boyish character, but my voice is like.
00:37:28.380
Jordan Ugalde: Like down here.
00:37:29.130
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah and so yeah for that for that piece, I was don't like doing that elevator escalation up to the high note and I just dropped down to like little miss Woods comma L.
00:37:45.180
Kevin Coulter: Hit puberty halfway through the song yeah.
00:37:49.140
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah so I can't imagine actively
00:37:53.700
Jordan Ugalde: celebrating not.
00:37:56.220
Kevin Coulter: I don't know if it's necessarily celebrating but
00:37:58.020
Kevin Coulter: there's like I feel like sometimes there are is like a big culture around like, if you take a break you're failing.
00:38:08.280
Tyler T Hamer: That's MIT undergrad.
00:38:11.340
Tyler T Hamer: Like we we had just sweatshirts that said sleep is for the weak and then
00:38:14.910
Tyler T Hamer: you go to Grad school you're like no sleep is for the strong.
00:38:18.960
Kevin Coulter: Sleep is for the people that went to a different school.
00:38:24.660
Kevin Coulter: I'm catching up now.
00:38:28.830
Jordan Ugalde: I feel in any of the.
00:38:32.730
Jordan Ugalde: Because in startup culture as well, there's very much, if you aren't working 80 hours a week you're a failure and, like in all these different disciplines,
00:38:44.610
Jordan Ugalde: it's it's understandable. It's understandable that because it's so competitive and so hard to succeed, it makes sense that working so hard to, at the craft at your dream.
00:38:59.220
Jordan Ugalde: Is.
00:39:01.560
Jordan Ugalde: It is made such a priority as a goal, but I think there's
00:39:07.530
Jordan Ugalde: almost a perverseness in the level of celebration of this suffering itself rather than in working to hone your specific craft I agree 100%.
00:39:20.020
Kevin Coulter: I agree 100%
00:39:20.310
Tyler T Hamer: Yeah I think it also comes from the fact that, like when there's like, especially in like environments like startups where there's a lot of uncertainty.
00:39:28.110
Tyler T Hamer: You know the hours, like the masochism kind of becomes a proxy for like, like if you were if you knew you were doing stuff that was always going to yield value, you would you would feel good.
00:39:37.380
Tyler T Hamer: But since you're doing a lot of nebulous things they're like well I put it, I feel bad, so I must be doing it correct like.
00:39:44.880
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah yeah and, like, I would say honestly being a self employed voice actor, that is its own form of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship is so stressfully nebulous for you, you don't know if anything is working until you have a paycheck and even then how consistent is it?
00:40:07.710
Jordan Ugalde: Like how much money, are you actually regularly bringing in?
00:40:10.170
Jordan Ugalde: Am I? And, and also it doesn't help that the world moves so fast now, so
00:40:18.930
Jordan Ugalde: if you aren't always on top of your game,
00:40:23.730
Jordan Ugalde: it's not inevitable that you will fall behind but there's a higher likelihood.
00:40:32.010
Kevin Coulter: Yeah absolutely I, there's definitely a lot of like, you audition for like months at a time and nobody's biting and you're just like am I like bad at this craft now like what am I doing wrong and like it really does start to get to you.
00:40:49.080
Kevin Coulter: But then like after that month dry spell or however long you'll get like every single thing you audition for you're getting and you're like wait now hold on.
00:40:59.490
Kevin Coulter: I didn't do anything different, what happened?
00:41:04.200
Kevin Coulter: So it's like, I understand the thought process of like I don't know what's coming, so I have to constantly keep moving, but I'm also have the mindset of like if you aren't protecting your instrument, if you aren't protecting the thing that's making your money which is like your your voice.
00:41:25.350
Kevin Coulter: Because that's what you're performing with, or even like your your mental health your sanity, like you're not going to make as good acting choices if you're not like all there if you're if you're burnt out like that's going to come across in
00:41:36.750
Kevin Coulter: your performance.
00:41:38.520
Kevin Coulter: So it's, it's very hard to find a balance of like I need to keep going, because this is my livelihood and I need to take a break, to take care of myself, which is like.
00:41:48.990
Kevin Coulter: Every single voice actor will tell you this exact same struggle.
00:41:55.290
Tyler T Hamer: Man.
00:41:55.740
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah Tyler I'm sure you can relate to this given like where I didn't see you for weeks if not months when you when you were working on your thesis.
00:42:07.320
Tyler T Hamer: Yeah the last two months, it was, I mean Grad school is always a pain right, it was like 60 hours during normal at, normal time and thesis was bad thesis was like.
00:42:18.960
Tyler T Hamer: 70 hours, but those last two months, I guess, when you start working 14 hours a day times seven like yeah it just was I'm glad it's over.
00:42:30.510
Tyler T Hamer: Well, I mean it's it's, it was like the last final like push.
00:42:35.340
Kevin Coulter: I would not come out sane, that's wild.
00:42:38.790
Tyler T Hamer: I gained like.
00:42:40.530
Tyler T Hamer: 20 pounds, you know, and like so everyone's like oh yeah it's just pandemic and I was like no I was thesis like.
00:42:47.940
Kevin Coulter: I totally understand that.
00:42:51.000
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah yeah I, there are a lot of people I have known who in the path of pursuing,
00:43:01.050
Jordan Ugalde: not not even necessarily their passion, but something very important to them.
00:43:07.320
Jordan Ugalde: There's all, there can be, not always, but there can be a lot of sacrifice of the only way I can accomplish this goal is by stripping everything else out and making it happen and sometimes that like.
00:43:24.360
Jordan Ugalde: What I think is the kind of terrible thing about it is sometimes you can do all of that sacrifice and you don't get anything.
00:43:34.680
Tyler T Hamer: Yeah yeah.
00:43:37.770
Jordan Ugalde: Like one of my old bosses.
00:43:41.820
Jordan Ugalde: Her first startup, she and all of her co founders they got nothing.
00:43:51.420
Jordan Ugalde: Because venture money is, it's a hit or miss thing if you if you make it to the billionaire's club then venture money is great if you don't, you get nothing and so she got nothing from that and
00:44:05.790
Jordan Ugalde: she went straight from that into making another startup.
00:44:08.190
Jordan Ugalde: So you think she didn't learn, but the second one worked out, but in both in both cases.
00:44:15.030
Jordan Ugalde: It was just burning all the oil to try and make it so.
00:44:21.330
Jordan Ugalde: But at the same time that's, in the marathon that is life that's not really a way to live your entire life.
00:44:30.120
Kevin Coulter: The candle that burdens twice as the hot burns twice as fast something like that.
00:44:34.020
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah so how do you balance trying to make this lifestyle work for you, with trying to live.
00:44:45.870
Kevin Coulter: That's a great question.
00:44:48.360
Kevin Coulter: I actually have had struggles with mental health like literally as long as I can remember um so when it comes down to anything if I feel like it's.
00:45:01.110
Kevin Coulter: The way that I'm continuing is having a negative effect on my mental health, I really have to like take a step back, because I like fall into pits very easily.
00:45:12.930
Kevin Coulter: So the way that I've tried to balance it is, if I do feel like I'm burning out I can work on.
00:45:21.480
Kevin Coulter: Improving my skills in like a passive way, instead of like an active way where I can like listen to other voice actors talk, or like listen to performances, or like just read out loud to people, which is a great way to practice.
00:45:37.290
Kevin Coulter: It's the easiest and cheapest way to practice um and it's like I'm still feeling my passion, but I'm allowing myself and my body the time to rest. And like I mean, of course, building a good support network that like will point out hey I haven't seen you in two months, like everything good?
00:45:59.760
Kevin Coulter: But like just finding a routine that you hold yourself to is probably the best way, and when I say hold myself I don't mean like.
00:46:12.450
Kevin Coulter: You;e voice acting every day, I mean like these are the hours that I'm voice acting and if something is like really important than sure I can push it, but just stick to these hours because the more I, I push on those hours, the more it seeps and takes over my entire life.
00:46:28.950
Kevin Coulter: You have to treat it like a real job like it is my passion and it is like something I love and if I could spend all day, every day, doing it, I would, but then I would hate it, so I don't.
00:46:41.640
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah yeah um so you just a few minutes ago you mentioned burnout and when you notice you're burning out there are steps you can take but.
00:46:55.920
Jordan Ugalde: One thing that I've, I know for myself is that
00:46:59.880
Jordan Ugalde: it's a lot easier to realize oh shit I'm burned out rather than you know,
00:47:06.720
Jordan Ugalde: I think I'm I think I'm on track to burning out.
00:47:09.180
Kevin Coulter: Yeah.
00:47:11.430
Jordan Ugalde: So, given, given what I'm sure plenty of experiences burning out or like having that sensation.
00:47:20.580
Jordan Ugalde: Have you gotten any better at seeing it coming?
00:47:24.840
Kevin Coulter: Absolutely not.
00:47:26.280
Kevin Coulter: I'm like in the middle of a session and I'm like I just can't, I can't get this character done.
00:47:32.340
Kevin Coulter: Like I can't convey the emotion I'm looking for. Oh, I need to go to sleep.
00:47:41.580
Jordan Ugalde: Oh damn I was really hoping you'd have an answer for me because.
00:47:44.220
Kevin Coulter: I
00:47:45.690
Kevin Coulter: do have like, it's it's noticing patterns for me, my insomnia gets way worse when I'm burning out and I, like the the dark thoughts get worse when I'm burning out and like.
00:47:59.340
Kevin Coulter: All of the things that come with burnout like I just tried to be I don't know slightly more cognizant of like.
00:48:07.860
Kevin Coulter: Okay, I had this I felt bad this day and I had insomnia this day, I'm going to I'm going to track this keep it like in a mental note, or even a physical note, if I think it's that important.
00:48:17.400
Kevin Coulter: And if it becomes a pattern I'm probably burning out, but if it's just one night, then you know I had one bad night, and I can keep going.
00:48:26.460
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah.
00:48:27.330
Tyler T Hamer: Yeah that's been mostly my experience with like dealing with burnout was, because I was in Grad school it's like very easy to burn out.
00:48:33.870
Tyler T Hamer: Yeah and.
00:48:34.530
Tyler T Hamer: Like at the end of thesis because I had to do insane hours, I was definitely burning out, but like back in the beginning, where I was like trying to figure out a life balance, I think.
00:48:43.650
Tyler T Hamer: Like similar to what you were saying Kevin it's like I said, like these are going to be the hours, I try to go to campus and do work.
00:48:51.090
Tyler T Hamer: And the minute I started deviating from those hours and stuff, it started like I had to miss like dance class, I'm like well that's not sustainable and that kind of became like the sanity check. So like for at least for me with burn out I just it's somewhat like you, like with the pattern matching.
00:49:06.960
Kevin Coulter: I think it's a lot easier to
00:49:10.740
Kevin Coulter: set up a routine that helps you prevent it from ever happening than it is to notice, while it's happening.
00:49:17.940
Tyler T Hamer: Yeah I'd say so.
00:49:19.890
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah definitely, but I would say.
00:49:25.230
Jordan Ugalde: You can't even begin to prepare for it until you've experienced at least once.
00:49:30.720
Kevin Coulter: Yeah absolutely.
00:49:30.990
Tyler T Hamer: Absolutely, yes yeah.
00:49:32.940
Jordan Ugalde: And and honestly I think one of the big keys to doing anything this hard of trying to, this this psychological a demanding where you're not just following a pre-scripted path.
00:49:49.800
Jordan Ugalde: Is you have to get that experience of burnout and learn how to develop coping mechanisms to make it to the other side like.
00:50:03.960
Jordan Ugalde: If
00:50:05.550
Jordan Ugalde: to touch on startups a bit if I were to ever form a start up with a co-founder I would definitely make for certain they had burned out.
00:50:15.840
Jordan Ugalde: At least once in their lives.
00:50:18.810
Jordan Ugalde: And I remember talking to one person about that, that idea, that I think it's important for someone to have gone through that.
00:50:27.390
Jordan Ugalde: And he said yeah you know I burned out in my car the other day, so I.
00:50:38.100
Jordan Ugalde: And I was like Oh. No.
00:50:42.000
Jordan Ugalde: Completely wrong direction.
00:50:45.090
Kevin Coulter: Yeah I watched Initial D like I know what that is.
00:50:54.210
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah I had Deja Vu.
00:50:58.230
Jordan Ugalde: It's wild how
00:51:01.890
Jordan Ugalde: different the experiences can be from just the the traditional narrative like
00:51:07.950
Jordan Ugalde: for you, when you were when you were jumping from the standard job, like standard path to voice acting.
00:51:18.510
Jordan Ugalde: What was that, like, for you like, how did the people in your life respond, how did you handle it?
00:51:24.990
Kevin Coulter: Oh gosh um so I.
00:51:30.420
Kevin Coulter: A majority of my life I.
00:51:35.850
Kevin Coulter: Gosh how do I, how do I even start so okay.
00:51:39.060
Tyler T Hamer: Beginning.
00:51:40.200
Kevin Coulter: So I had a big struggle of.
00:51:43.500
Kevin Coulter: doing the, the battle between doing what I cared about and what like made me feel whole as a person versus what society or my family expecting of me.
00:51:56.370
Kevin Coulter: So I spent a lot of my life kind of like running away from voiceover.
00:52:01.440
Kevin Coulter: Like telling people like oh yeah I do voiceover but I wasn't actually like doing it, I would like, I had a mic and I would audition for things, occasionally, and I would take classes, occasionally, but I wasn't like,
00:52:11.490
Kevin Coulter: diving in, I was always like focused on whatever my traditional career was. I like contracted at Google for a while and I worked for a few like HR staffing companies and like very, very traditional career paths and I was like.
00:52:29.670
Kevin Coulter: While I was at Google, I was like coming home every day like completely drained like I was, I was great at my job, but I, it just killed my soul to be in the office and like stare at a computer screen for hours and.
00:52:45.600
Kevin Coulter: Like my whole team was great, like I loved everyone that I worked with, my boss was fantastic it was just like the work made me not want to do it.
00:52:55.230
Kevin Coulter: Ym and then, when I worked at the HR staffing company, it was like one of the worst experiences of my entire life I was like, it was a very small company, and it was.
00:53:08.730
Kevin Coulter: Like there was a like a lot of demands, because the work or the staff was so small that, like everybody had to wear a bunch of hats and like I wasn't
00:53:17.250
Kevin Coulter: told this coming in, like I don't even think I received a job description when I came in.
00:53:22.740
Kevin Coulter: And they
00:53:23.250
Kevin Coulter: switched up my roles on me constantly and I was like stressed out of my mind, I was working, I was working way more than I was told I would have to work, on top of having to commute like an hour and a half.
00:53:37.740
Tyler T Hamer: Oh that's brutal yeah.
00:53:39.510
Kevin Coulter: It was miserable I had, I was getting home cooking and then going to bed, so I could go back to work, and then I just kind of had the moment where I was like is this how I want the rest of my life to be like.
00:53:53.910
Tyler T Hamer: Yeah.
00:53:54.900
Kevin Coulter: Like do I want to keep doing these things that make me feel like I'm not human. Like at the HR staffing company, I was working with executive level people only and the people that we were placing their hiring bonus was bigger than my yearly salary.
00:54:08.760
Tyler T Hamer: That's bullshit.
00:54:10.170
Kevin Coulter: It was such an invalidating experience I was like is this what I want to do like I'm helping rich people get richer like.
00:54:16.590
Kevin Coulter: I'm not enriching myself I'm I don't know. So once my time at that company ended.
00:54:24.930
Kevin Coulter: I
00:54:26.760
Kevin Coulter: really had to like buckle down and like discover like do I want to continue pursuing the traditional career that I know I can succeed at, and I know will provide me like a
00:54:39.930
Kevin Coulter: future that isn't stressful, but I won't like be happy or do I do this thing that I know brings like my soul joy and, eventually, I was like, I'm not living unless I'm living, so I'm going to go do that, and then I had to convince, like all of my family that I wasn't insane.
00:55:01.260
Tyler T Hamer: Oh man.
00:55:03.390
Kevin Coulter: Which absolutely didn't come until I got paid for the first time.
00:55:08.790
Tyler T Hamer: Yeah.
00:55:10.020
Kevin Coulter: And even then it was like well you got one payment, but is it really, like can you do this sustainably and I had to like keep working at it.
00:55:20.880
Kevin Coulter: Just recently, I finished a role as like a voiceover director for an indie video game, and that was the point where I was like, I told my family and they're like oh so that is a job, like you can do that and make money.
00:55:35.490
Tyler T Hamer: Oh man.
00:55:39.210
Kevin Coulter: It's definitely like.
00:55:41.280
Kevin Coulter: A battle that you have to have with yourself and
00:55:44.370
Kevin Coulter: potentially everyone around you to like. No, this is what I, like it's not that I want to do this it's I need to do this, like I I'm not me unless I'm doing this, and I think like.
00:55:56.880
Kevin Coulter: If you have that approach to whatever you're passionate about like that will come out in whatever your product is, and I think people really resonate with that and they can like,
00:56:09.330
Kevin Coulter: feel that in the finished product, and I think that definitely helps with whatever path you choose to go down.
00:56:16.350
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah, but I would say, for that recognition to happen at the same time, you need to let that be seen like if you aren't if you're not marching
00:56:27.690
Jordan Ugalde: your personal brand.
00:56:30.210
Jordan Ugalde: Then even though you do have this passion, you have this fire it,
00:56:39.270
Jordan Ugalde: like, coming from an engineering background there's a very common mentality of if you just build it right, people will come people.
00:56:49.890
Jordan Ugalde: People like
00:56:50.520
Jordan Ugalde: good things so, I made a good thing,
00:56:53.010
Jordan Ugalde: people will use it. But the thing is, people like, you have to know your thing exists.
00:57:01.080
Jordan Ugalde: So you can have all the passion and love in the world, but if you don't.
00:57:07.560
Jordan Ugalde: Actively tell people it and
00:57:09.870
Jordan Ugalde: more than just tell people sell people because it
00:57:16.680
Jordan Ugalde: Tyler
00:57:17.790
Jordan Ugalde: your research was really interesting reading trying to read your thesis like,
00:57:25.260
Jordan Ugalde: I could.
00:57:26.490
Jordan Ugalde: I know it's not meant for the layman but like having that level of just
00:57:32.280
Jordan Ugalde: Harsh technicality.
00:57:35.040
Jordan Ugalde: You're not gonna sell anyone
00:57:36.930
Jordan Ugalde: on that.
00:57:37.380
Tyler T Hamer: Oh yeah.
00:57:38.250
Jordan Ugalde: But if you tweet at Elon Musk hey we can make your your satellites like a fraction of the cost cheaper then whoo whoom and then, especially if you put some memes in there, like really.
00:57:53.430
Tyler T Hamer: No, I mean that's fair.
00:57:54.660
Tyler T Hamer: I mean it's like yeah my thesis I wrote as not for sales, I wrote as a manual that's why it's so gritty and.
00:58:02.640
Tyler T Hamer: But, like you know you you're right about the whole selling yourself stuff because part of when I was selling it was going to conferences and writing journal articles and
00:58:11.790
Tyler T Hamer: conference papers in academia and that's I mean that's honestly, one of the reasons I went to like a government lab is like I like doing the work.
00:58:18.930
Tyler T Hamer: And I like selling the work in terms of like doing presentations like going in front of a government sponsor showing the, like showing off, that I like. I don't like being like here's this rat race of writing papers like I was like no not doing this.
00:58:34.650
Kevin Coulter: I think that's a, I think that's a really interesting point of like.
00:58:38.910
Kevin Coulter: It, finding your passion and like finding your way.
00:58:44.040
Kevin Coulter: To,
00:58:44.880
Kevin Coulter: to sell yourself you're like.
00:58:46.230
Kevin Coulter: You don't want to do the rat race, so you found the way that you make it work for you and I think for voiceover a lot of people have different ways of advertising themselves, like someone I follow does like daily posts on Instagram and then like a weekly
00:59:04.440
Kevin Coulter: like lesson and they like that's how they're marketing themselves, and then, on the other hand, I follow people who like they're huge and then they're selling point is I shit post like.
00:59:17.370
Kevin Coulter: So it's it's really like.
00:59:19.740
Kevin Coulter: If you have the passion to make it work, you are going to find out how to sell yourself, you are
00:59:25.650
Kevin Coulter: going to like
00:59:26.640
Kevin Coulter: want to explore the ways to make it matter, not only to you, but to show that it matters to someone else because it does matter.
00:59:35.520
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah I would say, I would say you're not necessarily going to, but you need to.
00:59:41.220
Kevin Coulter: Yes, yeah yes.
00:59:43.530
Tyler T Hamer: Yeah and I think part of kind of like knowing something you're passionate about is if if there is a way you can show it off that's like natural for you right? If
00:59:53.040
Tyler T Hamer: the traditional way doesn't work but there's like an alternative way to show off and you're still passionate about it, but if you really don't want anyone knowing you're doing this like it's not you know this isn't really a passion.
01:00:05.580
Kevin Coulter: I mean, maybe your passion is building legos that nobody gets to see and like
01:00:10.080
Kevin Coulter: that can be your passion that's,
01:00:11.670
Kevin Coulter: that's it that's fine, but if you want to make money building legos maybe take.
01:00:15.210
Tyler T Hamer: That's fair.
01:00:15.870
Kevin Coulter: pictures and posted on Instagram.
01:00:19.020
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah but some people have done stuff like that, like take pictures of miniatures and that are stylized and made a living.
01:00:26.640
Kevin Coulter: Absolutely absolutely oh.
01:00:28.470
Tyler T Hamer: Yeah people do with food, all the time, too.
01:00:31.350
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah and I.
01:00:33.330
Jordan Ugalde: I think, even though I have a lot of mixed feelings about social media, it has allowed a lot more people.
01:00:41.580
Jordan Ugalde: To effectively start their own businesses or start or find their own ways of making a living for themselves that really wasn't
01:00:51.840
Jordan Ugalde: possible without this global marketing platform that is social media and one thing I will say is, if you treat social media as a marketing platform, rather than an extension of your
01:01:06.390
Jordan Ugalde: personal persona it's a lot easier to not get destroyed.
01:01:11.850
Jordan Ugalde: When it isn't necessarily received the best or like one thing hits but the other thing doesn't because you
01:01:17.010
Kevin Coulter: Right.
01:01:17.460
Jordan Ugalde: can have this detached approach of I'm trying to market my brand rather than this is me and I'm getting rejected by people.
01:01:29.490
Tyler T Hamer: Yeah.
01:01:30.510
Tyler T Hamer: I think it's a lot easier to get along those lines view it as like oh I'm like Spielberg, and this is someone reviewing my movie versus like oh I liked this girl and went out to ask them out and got shit on right.
01:01:43.530
Tyler T Hamer: Those are two very different things.
01:01:45.690
Kevin Coulter: I definitely I, I think there's absolutely a ton of voice actors that are like I am marketing my product and my product is my voice.
01:01:54.510
Kevin Coulter: But when I was doing that I, maybe I was just doing it wrong, like that's absolutely a possibility, it was just like a really invalidating experience for me like just boiling myself down into like.
01:02:05.610
Kevin Coulter: A product made me feel like I wasn't a human anymore, and so I don't know, for me as as as shitty as it feels to not get engagement when I like it like I still need that human element in whatever I'm selling.
01:02:20.610
Kevin Coulter: Especially because, like ultimately the product is me.
01:02:23.550
Kevin Coulter: Which is, voiceover, voice actors and I guess actors in general have to get very used to rejection.
01:02:31.200
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah.
01:02:33.210
Jordan Ugalde: That's fair.
01:02:35.250
Jordan Ugalde: Um.
01:02:37.050
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah my experience I briefly delved into the world of TikTok.
01:02:43.620
Jordan Ugalde: And I I was trying to make, so I was learning, I've been, I spent this past year, trying to get business like two businesses off the ground, so I was trying to learn a lot about that space and.
01:02:58.170
Jordan Ugalde: I wanted to create videos that were fun entertaining ways of like, sharing the lessons I learned, but because it's only like.
01:03:07.950
Jordan Ugalde: 30 seconds to a minute long, you have to really, that, it's really an art of simplifying into just the most basic idea that is going to get the details wrong.
01:03:20.820
Jordan Ugalde: But ideally is entertaining enough to like get some nuggets of truth and get people to look further and I had one video that actually got like a million views, and that was
01:03:30.870
Jordan Ugalde: really cool except a lot of people were.
01:03:37.920
Jordan Ugalde: A lot of people who had more business experience were like this is wildly misrepresenting the case and I was getting a lot of flak and I felt like shit.
01:03:47.160
Jordan Ugalde: I felt awful awful because, like, even though I was going into it like I knew I was
01:03:56.340
Jordan Ugalde: telling not a full picture, because I was, I was trying to do this juggling act, and I might have dropped a few balls in it, I still
01:04:06.300
Jordan Ugalde: for me, I still was putting a lot of my, even though is affecting different characters I actually would, was wearing different costumes and stuff.
01:04:13.920
Jordan Ugalde: Doing different voices.
01:04:15.600
Jordan Ugalde: I had like a.
01:04:16.530
Jordan Ugalde: nerdy, nerdy accountant voice like this
01:04:23.220
Jordan Ugalde: or a bro tank and like affected my So Cal vibes bro.
01:04:30.480
Jordan Ugalde: Um.
01:04:31.620
Jordan Ugalde: But they're still even with those characters, there was still a lot of a lot of myself in there.
01:04:38.340
Jordan Ugalde: and so.
01:04:40.950
Jordan Ugalde: I wouldn't necessarily say.
01:04:43.920
Jordan Ugalde: I would say I'm very much a hypocrite in saying the idea of separating oneself from the persona but that at least feels like a, in some ways a safer way to go, but also not, as you were mentioning not necessarily authentic.
01:04:59.430
Jordan Ugalde: or even.
01:05:01.440
Kevin Coulter: Well.
01:05:01.770
Jordan Ugalde: Sustainable.
01:05:04.140
Tyler T Hamer: So maybe it's it's kind of like right, you have the two extremes you just have to be like some healthy mix in the middle right it's like.
01:05:10.710
Tyler T Hamer: it's like when you first start dating where you're like you want to be out there and you're really vulnerable and then you get hurt really bad and you're like okay, I still want to be vulnerable I just can't be like you know, like first person that says hi to me I'm in love with them right.
01:05:25.260
Tyler T Hamer: You.
01:05:25.710
Jordan Ugalde: You can. You can.
01:05:27.720
Tyler T Hamer: But it's right, you want to you're putting yourself out there, but you just have to have some defense mechanism, because it is going to be harsh.
01:05:36.810
Kevin Coulter: Finding finding the right balance of this is the real me, but like I'm still selling you a product and I'm not gonna let it, it's not a reflection on me if you don't buy my product it's it's I didn't sell it the right way or you're not the right audience or.
01:05:53.790
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah oh man. Finding that balance is rough, especially when you're starting out trying to find your audience, like, because there's the difference between okay you're not my audience versus who the hell is my audience.
01:06:11.520
Kevin Coulter: I'm gonna market at everyone and see who's interested.
01:06:14.400
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah so like for you how did you niche down how did you find your unique brand, your unique niche, your customer base.
01:06:24.480
Kevin Coulter: For voiceover in general um I actually had a wonderful private coach who like went through all of the styles of commercial voiceover.
01:06:36.990
Kevin Coulter: To find out what my like, money voice was, um which ended up being the like, it's called retail voiceover and it's the like "50% off" like way too excited and happy.
01:06:50.970
Kevin Coulter: It's so having that direction, having someone else who's been doing it for years, be like hey this is gonna make you money like you're good at all of these other things, but this is the thing that's,
01:07:01.650
Kevin Coulter: gonna make you money.
01:07:05.010
Kevin Coulter: Was like a great resource for me, but then like finding the authentic me on
01:07:11.820
Kevin Coulter: like social media or whatever was actually like a whole conversation, like many sessions, with my therapist.
01:07:23.670
Jordan Ugalde: Oh man.
01:07:24.000
Kevin Coulter: I'm feeling really invalidated I feel like people aren't engaging with me and I'm not my authentic self and they were like what if you just were
01:07:30.870
Kevin Coulter: your authentic self, and I was like is that allowed?
01:07:36.870
Kevin Coulter: So they tried to walk me through that process, and they have no idea how to be a voiceover.
01:07:40.740
Kevin Coulter: Yeah I you know I I tried to being my authentic self and like posting shit posts or like just things that I think, or like ideas that I have and being like true to me, but still like focusing on the fact that I'm a voiceover, voiceover actor.
01:07:59.880
Kevin Coulter: Was I don't know I just it just fell into place, I guess, I lucked out.
01:08:05.700
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah.
01:08:07.560
Jordan Ugalde: Um something that I am curious about given what you just said is.
01:08:14.220
Jordan Ugalde: And something, so something that's been a challenge for me.
01:08:18.240
Jordan Ugalde: I have recently found a therapist that is very
01:08:22.470
Jordan Ugalde: good at working with me in my specific niche of I'm trying to start my own businesses. So for you like you were mentioning how your therapist doesn't really, your therapist is not a voice actor and if they are, how do they have time to be a therapist.
01:08:46.290
Jordan Ugalde: So.
01:08:47.130
Jordan Ugalde: how do you
01:08:51.690
Jordan Ugalde: actually make sure you're getting the advice that you think is valuable for you?
01:09:01.500
Kevin Coulter: Oh God.
01:09:04.680
Kevin Coulter: I mean.
01:09:07.320
Kevin Coulter: As I mentioned earlier, like focusing more on my mental health is going to allow me to focus on producing the best product so working with my therapist was more how do I make this sustainable for me and less like how do I market myself.
01:09:26.100
Kevin Coulter: Because, if I can keep myself sustainable I can eventually find the thing that works and I'm going to find that by talking to people in the industry.
01:09:36.300
Kevin Coulter: Getting advice from them, taking classes, or even just making connections and things like that, but I think finding that like authentic version of me that I can portray on the Internet was like
01:09:50.580
Kevin Coulter: very much
01:09:52.650
Kevin Coulter: a process with my therapist of like here's the advice I've been given, here's what I've read, but I can't consolidate that with who I am and them, just like listening to my ideas and
01:10:08.280
Kevin Coulter: not necessarily giving me advice, but like encouraging me to go in the directions that I was already like pushing myself in but just needed that a little bit of encouragement to get there.
01:10:20.550
Kevin Coulter: So it wasn't so much them being like oh no, you need to do this, this, and this, it was like yeah I've been doing this and it's not working, and I feel like shit and they were like well what other ideas do you have, and I was like oh, I can do this and they're like why don't you do that.
01:10:40.560
Kevin Coulter: Sorry go ahead.
01:10:42.060
Tyler T Hamer: Oh, I should say it's just that little push you need right it's like.
01:10:44.490
Kevin Coulter: Exactly, exactly so like working in therapy for me wasn't like it wasn't like a master class in marketing it was like
01:10:51.960
Kevin Coulter: Stop being a baby and do the thing you say you're gonna do.
01:10:55.170
Tyler T Hamer: So your,
01:10:56.940
Tyler T Hamer: so your therapist isn't Gordon Ramsay then?
01:11:02.970
Jordan Ugalde: I'm not sure if that would be a good experience.
01:11:06.780
Jordan Ugalde: I wouldn't feel safe.
01:11:09.630
Tyler T Hamer: You'd probably called an idiot sandwich a lot so.
01:11:13.890
Kevin Coulter: I am, I am full of carbs.
01:11:18.300
Kevin Coulter: I think Steve Blum actually has a master class on voiceover so maybe.
01:11:24.780
Tyler T Hamer: I've never used MasteCclass so I just, I think, I've just, like that's why I keep making fun of it.
01:11:29.730
Kevin Coulter: Last Christmas my brother got me a year subscription and I haven't even activated it.
01:11:40.650
Tyler T Hamer: They're never going to be a sponsor.
01:11:44.970
Kevin Coulter: I watched every single class on there and they're amazing.
01:11:49.380
Jordan Ugalde: Every single product and service that exists today is amazing and worthy of being marketed, especially if you pay us money.
01:11:59.970
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah.
01:12:01.800
Jordan Ugalde: there.
01:12:03.810
Jordan Ugalde: There is almost a level of
01:12:08.880
Jordan Ugalde: I'm gonna say self prostitution, that you have to do if you are going to make
01:12:16.140
Jordan Ugalde: yourself, like if you're done carve your own way there's a level of and I don't mean that derogatory I mean, like you are,
01:12:27.960
Jordan Ugalde: you're I mean it's you're making a business of yourself and
01:12:37.050
Jordan Ugalde: that shit's scary.
01:12:40.830
Jordan Ugalde: Like.
01:12:42.750
Jordan Ugalde: One thing that I would say, I did not have a full appreciation of going into this is just how nebulous it can be.
01:12:54.060
Jordan Ugalde: How have you dealt with the all the uncertainty that comes with this path?
01:13:02.160
Kevin Coulter: There's a a quote that shows up in like the whole voiceover social media, like every coach is going to give it to you, but like, speaking of auditions specifically it's send and forget.
01:13:16.710
Kevin Coulter: Because if you're really excited about something, and you send them the audition and you're like sitting at your computer waiting to hear from them like.
01:13:24.960
Kevin Coulter: You might never hear from them, they might like you might not get the role and a lot of times, if you don't get the role you don't even get an email. Like you need to, you need to send it and then it needs to immediately leave your mind as hard as that is.
01:13:39.450
Kevin Coulter: You, you send in the audition and then you move on to the next step, and if you focus on, hopefully if you focus on constantly taking the next step, assuming you're going in the right direction you're going to make it somewhere.
01:13:54.450
Kevin Coulter: and
01:13:56.430
Kevin Coulter: that might not be what your goal was when you set off on the journey but you, if you keep taking the next step you're going to find yourself in some place that hopefully you're happy with.
01:14:08.070
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah.
01:14:08.970
Kevin Coulter: It's a lot of like,
01:14:12.210
Kevin Coulter: reminding yourself that you are taking the right steps and finding ways to keep yourself motivated, keep yourself like focused, constantly be learning constantly be absorbing new information.
01:14:29.070
Kevin Coulter: But just forgetting about it, if it's not working out which is so hard to do and it's like there's not really a way to do that.
01:14:37.980
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah.
01:14:39.480
Kevin Coulter: Like give advice on how to not be stressed.
01:14:42.840
Jordan Ugalde: You just turn it off, like a light switch.
01:14:44.760
Kevin Coulter: You know it's like a light switch.
01:14:48.240
Jordan Ugalde: Put it in a box and just like.
01:14:50.130
Jordan Ugalde: Forget about over there.
01:14:51.210
Kevin Coulter: I'll deal with this later.
01:14:53.850
Kevin Coulter: But yeah it's it's.
01:14:57.090
Kevin Coulter: Especially with voiceover you're going to get hundreds of more rejections than you'll ever get roles and if you start basing your success on,
01:15:08.730
Kevin Coulter: your percentage of landing you're not going to ever feel good about yourself, and you, you need to find like.
01:15:17.460
Kevin Coulter: Either you have to convince yourself that each audition is a new experience that you're gaining something from or you have to get like know that the right role is coming, and I think something that I learned from.
01:15:29.400
Kevin Coulter: Crispin Freeman's class was.
01:15:32.940
Kevin Coulter: He was interviewing some voice actor who kind of broke it down into like when you are being rejected, it is not
01:15:42.450
Kevin Coulter: anything about you as a person it's not an evaluation of your character you just weren't the right fit for this role, like you weren't, you're not a bad actor you just weren't the right actor for this.
01:15:54.180
Kevin Coulter: And that's it doesn't say anything about you, you just have to go and find the thing that you fit and I think he said, like every no gets you one step closer to the yes.
01:16:04.950
Tyler T Hamer: Yeah I mean it's it's one of the things in research that people under appreciate is like when you prove a result false, it then sends you in the direction, the new direction that your like dissertation can be about or like.
01:16:19.320
Tyler T Hamer: Finding the actual solution it's it's more like practice you're moving the right direction, because the process of elimination.
01:16:25.500
Kevin Coulter: Yeah.
01:16:27.480
Tyler T Hamer: It's
01:16:27.900
Tyler T Hamer: tedious but.
01:16:29.370
Jordan Ugalde: I think it's important to have that mindset, but it can also be
01:16:35.040
Jordan Ugalde: hard to maintain.
01:16:36.780
Kevin Coulter: Absolutely, I mean.
01:16:38.250
Kevin Coulter: That where doubt comes in.
01:16:39.150
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah because eventually, okay yeah all these nos, are helping guide me to a yes. Is that within the next year? The next 10 years?
01:16:50.790
Kevin Coulter: Am I going to be able to afford rent in time?
01:16:52.200
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah.
01:16:56.250
Jordan Ugalde: Because there
01:16:59.700
Jordan Ugalde: I think the devil in the details of this is that
01:17:05.190
Jordan Ugalde: there are some times, where you need to work on yourself in order to show, and the role but and but at the same time, there are other times, where you aren't the right fit and, in general, you might not be the right fit either because of your experience or just your fit for the role.
01:17:21.210
Jordan Ugalde: And so it's,
01:17:25.710
Jordan Ugalde: it's hard, I have found it difficult to consistently maintain the right mindset, even if you know necessarily the right tool, or you know some tools to think about it in a framework that works for you.
01:17:38.280
Jordan Ugalde: Maintaining that can be a challenge, sometimes.
01:17:42.510
Kevin Coulter: I.
01:17:44.460
Kevin Coulter: Just thinking about that now actually I, when I do find myself this actually happened to me incredibly recently when I do find myself in those like ruts where I'm like I'm not getting any
01:17:58.110
Kevin Coulter: hooks I'm like not getting any audition or I'm not getting any roles that I auditioned for like, I feel like I'm maybe I'm just not the actor that I thought I was.
01:18:08.280
Kevin Coulter: What I actually ended up doing was, so I was focusing like really heavily on character voiceover and I just wasn't getting anything.
01:18:18.510
Kevin Coulter: and
01:18:20.580
Kevin Coulter: I like took a step back, I signed up for some classes, I was like are my skills not there, like what's the issue and then like I was getting good feedback from coaches and like hearing good things, and I was like I don't know what's happening, and I still feel like shit.
01:18:34.800
Kevin Coulter: So I just like completely pivoted to something that I know I can do, and that I know will work, so I went back to like my moneymaker voice, and I was auditioning for those retail roles where like.
01:18:47.580
Kevin Coulter: Just be cheery and happy and like I was like immediately landing things so like finding ways to.
01:18:55.050
Kevin Coulter: Re-validate yourself, when you get in that that mindset like things nice work either like doing more research getting like,
01:19:03.240
Kevin Coulter: talking to someone you know you can trust, even if they're not in the same industry like, hey I'm feeling like shit and I need like encouragement to keep going, or like taking classes, or just taking a step back to like.
01:19:17.520
Kevin Coulter: Reevaluate because when you're when you're in the grind it's hard to notice like what you might be doing wrong.
01:19:23.970
Kevin Coulter: Or it might be hard to notice what you might like be hyper focusing on or like whatever is causing your your mental duress and when you when you give yourself that time to take a step back, which I absolutely had to do.
01:19:36.210
Kevin Coulter: I was able to be like, oh no I'm feeling like shit because I don't have a ton of experience with this and, like while I can do it like I can't do it as well as these other people, so I need to like practice that so I can do it, but also work on the things that I know I can do.
01:19:53.730
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah.
01:19:54.510
Kevin Coulter: And that was a, that like completely revitalized me.
01:19:58.470
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah like having not necessarily the easy wins, but just having wins.
01:20:04.380
Kevin Coulter: Exactly exactly.
01:20:07.020
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah.
01:20:08.640
Jordan Ugalde: It can very much it's, especially when you're trying to do something that you aren't already identified as a master of, if you're trying to break into something, it can be overwhelming to just.
01:20:25.350
Jordan Ugalde: it's like you're either in or you're out.
01:20:29.400
Jordan Ugalde: And it's, it's so important to stress the wins and get the wins when you can get them.
01:20:36.840
Kevin Coulter: Yeah and finding ways to like remind you how to get those wins.
01:20:43.230
Jordan Ugalde: Yes, yeah yeah.
01:20:45.930
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah it's,
01:20:48.120
Jordan Ugalde: I think it can be easy to be single minded towards a goal to your own detriment.
01:20:58.110
Jordan Ugalde: And I think part of pursuing these lives of passion is being able to recognize that and have people to lean on to give you a different perspective.
01:21:09.690
Jordan Ugalde: Like our mutual friend Ryan.
01:21:14.550
Jordan Ugalde: We have been like co working every day for a while and.
01:21:18.960
Jordan Ugalde: that's been.
01:21:20.130
Jordan Ugalde: very helpful, there have been times, where he's been able to provide feedback for me, I can provide feedback for him.
01:21:25.830
Jordan Ugalde: And even though we are working on in different spaces not just not just physically but, but overall.
01:21:33.150
Jordan Ugalde: There still is the ability to provide that different perspective and sometimes you need to get out of your own head. It's hard to get out of your own head when you have your own head.
01:21:46.650
Jordan Ugalde: You need another head.
01:21:49.530
Kevin Coulter: They do say two heads are better than one.
01:21:53.100
Kevin Coulter: I actually on in a very similar way, I have a bunch of friends who are animators and artists.
01:22:02.910
Kevin Coulter: and
01:22:04.740
Kevin Coulter: very similar like you're either in or you're out type of situation, they kind of get in their head where like my my art isn't good and then I'm.
01:22:15.450
Kevin Coulter: I might be in the same place, like my voiceover isn't good, so I have those people to like where we can come back to each other and be like hey I recorded this or I drew this can you tell me like genuinely.
01:22:26.640
Kevin Coulter: how you feel about it, or like how does it compare to whoever I'm trying to compare with or like even even a Ryan, the same person like I think every Friday at like two he's like you need to tell me what you've been working on, and I have to tell you what I've been working on, so we can.
01:22:43.350
Kevin Coulter: help each other stay focused.
01:22:46.800
Kevin Coulter: So yeah definitely finding those ways to keep yourself focused and to keep yourself like encourage building those support groups in your life.
01:22:56.250
Kevin Coulter: finding ways to keep yourself inspired which is like the hardest thing about pursuing a passion and turning your passion into your career is.
01:23:06.840
Kevin Coulter: The passion might not be as strong as you are hoping, or it might burn out and finding ways to relight those fires if it really is that important to you like, reminding yourself why you've gone down this road, which, like I constantly have to do.
01:23:23.610
Jordan Ugalde: Right.
01:23:25.080
Jordan Ugalde: What what exercises, do you have for doing that? Like, how do you go about reigniting your own fire?
01:23:30.660
Kevin Coulter: Something that works for me is like going back to the basics doing like basic acting lessons or just like hopping in like a scene with voiceover friends or even my stage acting friends just.
01:23:44.010
Kevin Coulter: doing something fun where it like there's not pressure and like reminding myself like oh, I do love just portraying characters and things like that, but.
01:23:55.890
Kevin Coulter: Ultimately, like one of the main reasons that I got into voiceover was growing up and having all of those video games and cartoons and stuff like there are a lot of those have like impactful messages that like they try to pass on.
01:24:12.630
Tyler T Hamer: And like GI Joe.
01:24:17.100
Kevin Coulter: When there's smoke.
01:24:20.100
Kevin Coulter: I, like growing up, I was not in the healthiest home and probably did put a little bit too much of my mental health on those video games and like.
01:24:32.130
Kevin Coulter: animations or whatever, and like they'd got me through some hard times and like reminding myself that I might hopefully one day be able to make that impact on someone to get them through their hard times the same way that people helped me through my hard times is like.
01:24:50.130
Kevin Coulter: I lose sight of that when I'm like in the day to day grind like.
01:24:54.390
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah.
01:24:54.840
Kevin Coulter: I'm just I'm just selling things at Kohl's or whatever I'm selling selling sweatshirts like who am I helping and it's like no I am on the path to find the person who I'm going to help or like maybe someone really needed sweatshirts and they didn't know that they were half off.
01:25:11.790
Kevin Coulter: I'm the person that tells them that.
01:25:16.140
Jordan Ugalde: Well, I mean earlier, you told us about hundred.
01:25:18.060
Jordan Ugalde: percent off.
01:25:19.380
Tyler T Hamer: I thought, that would've got me in there.
01:25:22.920
Jordan Ugalde: I definitely need that.
01:25:26.700
Kevin Coulter: I'll let you know, the next time I do one of those.
01:25:31.260
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah so for you there in some ways voice acting is.
01:25:38.790
Jordan Ugalde: Providing for your younger self. Yeah, I can I can.
01:25:48.210
Jordan Ugalde: Imagine that.
01:25:51.000
Jordan Ugalde: Being very meaty in in terms of being motivating but also.
01:25:58.590
Tyler T Hamer: it's high stakes.
01:25:59.730
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah.
01:26:01.020
Kevin Coulter: Yeah because you don't want to let past you down.
01:26:03.450
Jordan Ugalde: You don't want let yourself down and.
01:26:06.720
Jordan Ugalde: Nah that sounds hard,
01:26:10.950
Jordan Ugalde: that sounds really hard.
01:26:11.610
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah I'd imagine you've talked with your therapist.
01:26:14.580
Kevin Coulter: Yeah.
01:26:16.800
Kevin Coulter: Definitely some sleepless nights of like if I don't do this like what do I have and.
01:26:23.310
Kevin Coulter: like reconciling that and like.
01:26:29.040
Kevin Coulter: finding a way to not put too much pressure on yourself like finding.
01:26:33.900
Kevin Coulter: The beauty in other things and allowing yourself to.
01:26:36.480
Kevin Coulter: explore those other things like I'm a very artistic person and like without art I don't really have, like I don't think life is worth living without art in some way.
01:26:48.120
Kevin Coulter: And I've noticed if I focus like entirely on voiceover and it's it's not succeeding I'm like I don't have anything, and then I have to remind myself like no I love making music I love like, even though I can't draw, I love drawing
01:27:01.980
Kevin Coulter: Like doing any type of art like even just like reading stupid stories with friends is still like art to me and like watching the sunset is still art to me, so I like I go to karaoke all the time I.
01:27:14.190
Kevin Coulter: Do stuff like that.
01:27:16.200
Kevin Coulter: To like.
01:27:17.970
Kevin Coulter: pull myself out of the like trap of.
01:27:23.400
Kevin Coulter: I need this to work to give myself meaning or it's like no there's I still have meaning if this doesn't work and if it doesn't work, I will be able to find a way around that like I can always have this as part of my life.
01:27:37.200
Kevin Coulter: But it doesn't, I don't need it to succeed for me to succeed.
01:27:42.960
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah that that's honestly, something that I'm working on right now.
01:27:51.150
Jordan Ugalde: To be completely transparent.
01:27:52.650
Jordan Ugalde: Because I've been so fixated on this ideal of startup founder successful startup founder.
01:27:59.730
Jordan Ugalde: Right, whereas.
01:28:03.810
Jordan Ugalde: Well, most companies don't succeed.
01:28:06.660
Jordan Ugalde: there's a lot of failure and.
01:28:09.360
Jordan Ugalde: I think one very important lesson that I've been working on internalizing is.
01:28:16.770
Jordan Ugalde: You don't necessarily have to let go of that ambition but make sure you're defined by more than just that, because if you just have this one dimension, then buddy you better be perfect at that dimension.
01:28:30.690
Jordan Ugalde: You better be like.
01:28:31.890
Jordan Ugalde: The most maximal in that dimension, because if you falter at all, you are, you are, you only have one dimension, so if you turn 90 degrees there's no other dimension for you.
01:28:44.310
Jordan Ugalde: it's.
01:28:46.530
Jordan Ugalde: And the thing is, if if I am honest with myself there is so much more to my life that just my ambitions, there are plenty of other things that've been in it, but it's.
01:28:59.550
Jordan Ugalde: When you're pursuing a dream it's so easy to get single minded and forget about all that and I know for some people like there have been some people I know.
01:29:08.670
Jordan Ugalde: Who, not just are in that mindset, but also sacrifice a lot to the point that they lose both themselves and their their support structures.
01:29:21.900
Jordan Ugalde: So.
01:29:23.730
Jordan Ugalde: in regards to.
01:29:27.000
Jordan Ugalde: Your experiences, how do you.
01:29:32.100
Jordan Ugalde: How do you make sure.
01:29:34.440
Jordan Ugalde: How do you balance, a lot of adult life is balance, how do you balance sacrifice.
01:29:41.220
Kevin Coulter: Um.
01:29:44.580
Kevin Coulter: I think it's important, I'm like a very detail oriented person and I like making lists and I like making spreadsheets I'm actually working on a voiceover spreadsheet like right now.
01:29:56.850
Tyler T Hamer: Oh that's cool.
01:29:59.640
Kevin Coulter: And I made a list basically of the values that were important to me, the things that I like absolutely could never budge on.
01:30:12.150
Kevin Coulter: And what things weren't necessarily the most important that I could sacrifice a bit or things that I was like yeah I don't need this at all like I don't need to I don't need to live in a mansion like that's a little kid me is gonna be disappointed, but like fuck little kid me.
01:30:31.620
Kevin Coulter: But um.
01:30:33.540
Kevin Coulter: Going back to that and, like reminding myself like.
01:30:37.650
Kevin Coulter: What ultimately is important, what I need to have to retain myself and like relooking at that list and seeing like what matters to me like the people that I have in my life or the the other things that I do besides voiceover.
01:30:54.180
Kevin Coulter: And like.
01:30:56.160
Kevin Coulter: As dumb as it is like scheduling time for those things as well is is what you need to do.
01:31:03.780
Jordan Ugalde: I I very much agree.
01:31:06.150
Kevin Coulter: Scheduling like I'm gonna hang out with friends for two hours today or like an hour today and, like actually putting it on your calendar, because you won't do it if you don't you.
01:31:16.920
Jordan Ugalde: No no, I've been I've become religiously devoted to my calendar and making sure I, like any fun goes in my calendar.
01:31:27.270
Jordan Ugalde: I explicitly book time to for my relationships for like I.
01:31:35.340
Jordan Ugalde: I even have.
01:31:37.740
Jordan Ugalde: Me and a friend, are working on, we both want to compete with each other.
01:31:45.180
Jordan Ugalde: in regards to fitness we want to, we want to out fitness each other.
01:31:49.020
Jordan Ugalde: and and it's pretty nebulous we we but we send each other pictures every two weeks, and like send a current weigh in and my my wife says it's a bit like a it's a bit like not the most.
01:32:10.170
Jordan Ugalde: She she questions if if I am if I'm loyal to her or.
01:32:16.800
Jordan Ugalde: she's like you know you're getting a lot of these shirtless pics from this other guy.
01:32:22.980
Kevin Coulter: Are you sending nudes to someone else.
01:32:25.170
Kevin Coulter: These aren't nudes, they're progress pics.
01:32:28.350
Jordan Ugalde: Progress pics yeah.
01:32:31.560
Jordan Ugalde: But.
01:32:32.220
Jordan Ugalde: Like I have that in my calendar and I have daily daily reminders that I am in this competition to help keep me motivated and just keeping.
01:32:44.310
Jordan Ugalde: Honestly, the more, what I found and tell me if it's similar for you, but I found is that the more you impose external structure to make it easier to commit to the version of yourself, you want to be, the easier it is to follow that.
01:33:02.280
Kevin Coulter: Absolutely, I think.
01:33:04.110
Kevin Coulter: Building the habit like when you can't rely on motivation, you can rely on the habit it's like it's you're just doing it.
01:33:16.080
Kevin Coulter: Just your day to day like it's in your schedule so you're going to do it instead of like, I'm I'm gonna wake up and convince myself to do it every day, it's like it's so much harder to keep that sustainable than it is to just follow a thing that you wrote a week go.
01:33:31.740
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah.
01:33:32.490
Kevin Coulter: But yeah absolutely like I actually.
01:33:37.920
Kevin Coulter: deleted all of my social media, other than my voice over Twitter somewhat recently.
01:33:46.020
Kevin Coulter: Because I like wasn't really finding that I was using it like I didn't know.
01:33:50.670
Kevin Coulter: What to post or like who to contact and I was like the reason I hadn't deleted it, as, is because I was like this is how I stay in contact with friends and then, once I deleted it and, like had to force myself to stay in contact with friends it made me.
01:34:03.930
Kevin Coulter: Be way better at staying in contact with them and I got to know them on like an even deeper level so like.
01:34:09.510
Kevin Coulter: Putting those things on your schedule like putting like this is when I'm exercising this is.
01:34:14.130
Kevin Coulter: This is what I'm doing karaoke like these are my one hour of studying this is my however long of doing voiceover like it's you, you have that constant external reminder that gets you to do it and, like there are absolutely times that I ignore them but.
01:34:34.590
Kevin Coulter: Definitely, it helps you I mean again building that routine and building the like.
01:34:40.050
Kevin Coulter: If you can't rely on the internal motivation, you have the external and then it helps you stay centered.
01:34:46.470
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah yeah like.
01:34:51.570
Jordan Ugalde: I, for me, I have even had other people set reminders for or like relied on other people to help give me structure, and you have to
01:35:03.570
Jordan Ugalde: there's some level of balance for that, because if you lean on other people too much, then they fall over because, they tend to only, like people can hold their own body weight and a bit like some other weight, but not indefinite amounts of weight.
01:35:17.760
Kevin Coulter: Yep.
01:35:18.330
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah so there's definitely a lot of.
01:35:22.050
Jordan Ugalde: I think, really, in order to succeed, you have to lean on people some extent.
01:35:27.360
Jordan Ugalde: But.
01:35:30.060
Jordan Ugalde: This fucking balancing act of life, you have to.
01:35:32.550
Jordan Ugalde: lean on some people a bit, but not too much, but also like work and cultivating this real these relationships, but it needs to be at fully like mutual it's life is challenging.
01:35:44.730
Jordan Ugalde: and pursuing your passion is even more challenging.
01:35:50.400
Kevin Coulter: For your next episode you interview a trapeze artists to figure out.
01:35:54.750
Kevin Coulter: how to balance correctly.
01:35:58.710
Jordan Ugalde: If you know any trapeze artists, we'd love to, that'd be fun.
01:36:04.350
Kevin Coulter: Yeah.
01:36:05.880
Kevin Coulter: yeah it's.
01:36:06.570
Kevin Coulter: it's all like I mean it's all weird platitudes of like find that balance and never give up but it's like learning how to truly live that and finding that for yourself is absolutely the hardest part.
01:36:17.580
Kevin Coulter: Because like I know people that I've worked with are like way more organized than me and, like everything is written somewhere and then other people they like thrive in the chaos and if you give them a schedule at all their life falls apart.
01:36:31.260
Kevin Coulter: So it's like, like really finding like taking the time to explore yourself and like.
01:36:37.980
Kevin Coulter: understand who you are to find that balance for yourself because, like as much as we can talk about it here, we can't tell you how to live, like I could never give you advice that'll work 100% for you and.
01:36:49.770
Kevin Coulter: You can, I mean like you can suggest things but ultimately there's going to be differences.
01:36:55.770
Jordan Ugalde: Honestly actually along the lines of honestly I think what it really boils down to is really being honest with yourself and like.
01:37:07.380
Jordan Ugalde: All these phrases of like be be honest with yourself, you need balance all it the actual the reason that they are usually said at this high level platitude level is because you can't fucking give a general answer to this question like.
01:37:23.010
Jordan Ugalde: the the ultimate thing you need to do is be balanced, but everyone has a different distribution of weight and balances differently.
01:37:31.140
Jordan Ugalde: So.
01:37:33.090
Jordan Ugalde: I think.
01:37:35.070
Jordan Ugalde: Regardless of whether you're whether you're pursuing a path of passion or not, you need to, if you want to be.
01:37:44.160
Jordan Ugalde: satisfied with your life, you need to be honest with yourself and that that can be scary as shit.
01:37:52.500
Tyler T Hamer: Terrifiying yeah.
01:37:54.780
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah.
01:37:57.420
Jordan Ugalde: Like I'm sure you were honest with yourself your entire life from from being born, all the way till now.
01:38:07.770
Kevin Coulter: Absolutely, hat's why I got a degree in computer science and completed.
01:38:15.000
Jordan Ugalde: You like, you liked video games.
01:38:19.020
Jordan Ugalde: You were being honest you like video games.
01:38:21.480
Jordan Ugalde: Programming.
01:38:22.080
Jordan Ugalde: That's video games so.
01:38:23.250
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah yeah.
01:38:26.160
Kevin Coulter: It definitely it's definitely a battle and it's like.
01:38:31.230
Kevin Coulter: Self discovery never stops.
01:38:33.300
Tyler T Hamer: Yeah yeah.
01:38:35.280
Kevin Coulter: The one of the rules, I like to live my life by is.
01:38:39.540
Kevin Coulter: If you're the smartest person in the room you're in the wrong room and I think that, like.
01:38:43.260
Kevin Coulter: I think that applies to everything like.
01:38:44.730
Kevin Coulter: Even even with yourself if you if you think that you have nothing else to learn about yourself you're you're in the wrong room.
01:38:54.360
Jordan Ugalde: Oh shit one sec.
01:38:56.100
Tyler T Hamer: No I mean that's fair well.
01:39:00.090
Tyler T Hamer: Are you the only one in that room.
01:39:01.800
Jordan Ugalde: No, no.
01:39:04.110
Jordan Ugalde: I was pretending to move to a different room but.
01:39:07.260
Jordan Ugalde: I thought it.
01:39:09.840
Tyler T Hamer: Lauren's in this room so I'm clearly not the smartest person.
01:39:13.770
Jordan Ugalde: I cannot really move everything right here.
01:39:17.460
Jordan Ugalde: This light is not really movable.
01:39:25.920
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah um.
01:39:30.210
Jordan Ugalde: It can be very but even with because I agree.
01:39:34.800
Jordan Ugalde: Like not being the smartest person in the room but honestly, if you are the smartest person in the room, I don't know if it's this for other people, but I feel.
01:39:45.570
Jordan Ugalde: Almost a sense of dread because it feels like I have hit a wall if there if I feel like there's nothing for me to learn from the people around me and for me that there is nothing more.
01:40:01.530
Jordan Ugalde: despair inspiring than that, like, I honestly, one of the things I loved about this podcast is just hearing such diversely radically different stories from the past I've gone down and like.
01:40:18.720
Jordan Ugalde: I think I might be a slightly better programmer than you're and you're probably slightly better voice actor than they just slightly.
01:40:26.490
Kevin Coulter: Maybe just guessing.
01:40:30.210
Jordan Ugalde: But like so being able to hear your insights into that way of life is awesome.
01:40:37.290
Kevin Coulter: Absolutely yeah.
01:40:39.990
Jordan Ugalde: And I find this not just invigorating on a personal level of growth, but just on.
01:40:48.930
Jordan Ugalde: I'm not spiritual but on a spiritual level.
01:40:51.660
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah like it's just it's a level of fulfillment that it's just outside of the professional space.
01:41:00.330
Kevin Coulter: Absolutely and surround yourself with people that inspire you that's like.
01:41:04.680
Kevin Coulter: Yeah the biggest, the biggest thing that you can do to help yourself and it doesn't necessarily need to be I mean, as you were just discussing the same exact path.
01:41:13.320
Kevin Coulter: That you're going on, like,
01:41:14.910
Kevin Coulter: My whole support group, like I'm the only voice actor and all of them are amazing in everything they do, and just watching them succeed and thrive and whatever they're working on inspires me to want to do the same.
01:41:27.240
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah yeah.
01:41:29.370
Jordan Ugalde: On the flip side of this, there are some times, where you have to exorcise the relationships that are causing you damage outside of your life because.
01:41:46.590
Jordan Ugalde: it's, if you are surrounded, if you're the smartest person in the room, if you are surrounded by people who are like crabs in a bucketing you and, just like.
01:41:57.210
Jordan Ugalde: there's it's there's a point where you have to get out and define who you are outside of that space so.
01:42:06.330
Jordan Ugalde: I, that is by no means easy. Have you experienced that what does that been like for you?
01:42:12.630
Kevin Coulter: Oh boy.
01:42:19.920
Kevin Coulter: I had a group of friends who.
01:42:24.150
Kevin Coulter: They were like big party friends where like every time I hung out with them, we had a great time but they didn't like.
01:42:31.950
Kevin Coulter: This feels so mean but they didn't really want to accomplish much with their life like they were just there to party and like.
01:42:37.950
Kevin Coulter: They wanted you to just be there to party and like constant, like they didn't want you to focus on work they they wanted everyone in the group to just always be party mode.
01:42:50.160
Kevin Coulter: and
01:42:53.460
Kevin Coulter: That, for a long time was a group that was absolutely holding me back because I was just kind of stuck in that mindset with them.
01:43:04.800
Kevin Coulter: And I felt like if I didn't make the time for them that they were expecting that I was failing as a friend.
01:43:13.290
Kevin Coulter: And I didn't really like realize any of this was happening until I, I ended up dating someone who another member of the group had a crush on.
01:43:22.950
Kevin Coulter: And then he.
01:43:23.460
Kevin Coulter: started spreading like incredibly malicious rumors about me.
01:43:28.020
Tyler T Hamer: Oh man.
01:43:30.750
Kevin Coulter: And like we kind of stopped being friends after that point.
01:43:35.880
Kevin Coulter: And a lot of people were like taking his side because, generally, the first person you hear on a story that has two sides of the person that you believe.
01:43:46.920
Kevin Coulter: So people were like coming to me and being like, why are you mad at him and I like explain my side of the story, and I like I had like screenshots of him admitting to doing
01:43:57.480
Kevin Coulter: things and like people weren't believing my screenshots and like it was just like it was a horrible horrible time where I like lost 90% of my friend group and I.
01:44:07.920
Tyler T Hamer: That's really rough oh.
01:44:09.570
Kevin Coulter: Like that was like right after I left the.
01:44:14.250
Kevin Coulter: The HR staffing company, so it was like I had lost just so much in my life.
01:44:19.500
Kevin Coulter: So I had to very, very rapidly like get better at like holding people accountable knowing what like true friendship feels like and like reevaluating all of my friends at the time to like are you good, are you a good influence on me, or do you just want me to be the same forever.
01:44:35.340
Kevin Coulter: And like really taking that time to figure out, who I was and figure out like if the people I was surrounding myself wanted me to be that person or if they wanted me to be someone else and it like it is such a hard journey to take, and I.
01:44:49.950
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah like.
01:44:52.500
Kevin Coulter: The most self discovery I've done and, also like the shortest period of time and also like one of the darkest places my life has ever gone to um.
01:45:03.360
Kevin Coulter: I don't know if.
01:45:05.190
Kevin Coulter: it's a riot it was a fun time.
01:45:09.330
Jordan Ugalde: I would imagine it was pretty quick and painless like.
01:45:11.580
Kevin Coulter: Yeah.
01:45:12.840
Kevin Coulter: I woke up and everything was chill.
01:45:17.220
Jordan Ugalde: Just leaving your past job losing 90% of your friend right that's like a typical Friday, so I.
01:45:23.550
Tyler T Hamer: Think it's a Tuesday.
01:45:26.910
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah.
01:45:27.990
Kevin Coulter: yeah and I had to like.
01:45:31.980
Kevin Coulter: I was in an abusive relationship once upon a time, and like she was also heavily involved with everything, so it was like really, really invalidating tab everyone like choose the side of my abuser and.
01:45:43.830
Tyler T Hamer: That's terrible.
01:45:46.410
Kevin Coulter: It made me feel like less than human and I had to like remind myself why I was human and like now, I have this wonderful like perfect support group that like.
01:45:56.340
Kevin Coulter: inspires me and I inspire them and we all support each other and like I'm not saying that everybody should go through hell to find their place.
01:46:06.480
Kevin Coulter: It sure fucking worked for me.
01:46:10.740
Jordan Ugalde: I would say like for me as well that a lot of my biggest growth moments were the worst moments of my life but.
01:46:20.100
Jordan Ugalde: Well, what were you about to say?
01:46:22.650
Tyler T Hamer: Well I'll just say growth is uncomfortable right like if it was comfortable if, like the reason why you're growing right.
01:46:30.510
Tyler T Hamer: it's doing the same thing over and over again, is comfortable and like right, because otherwise it lets you just stay what you're doing and.
01:46:37.410
Tyler T Hamer: grow, otherwise everyone should be growing all the time right so idea that growth is comfortable and takes you somewhere new.
01:46:43.020
Tyler T Hamer: And kind of I think one of the reasons why you know a lot of people, including myself, you guys like experience a lot of growth when things get really dark is.
01:46:52.260
Tyler T Hamer: You don't want all of us at the place that's normally comfortable is not and so they're only there is only option is growth to get out of there and it kind of.
01:47:03.720
Jordan Ugalde: I grow growth is the only way to get out but not everyone makes it out.
01:47:10.080
Tyler T Hamer: No it's true it's just because it's it's also.
01:47:13.710
Tyler T Hamer: Because what direction are you going to grow right it's it's kind of it's kind of like we were saying earlier, just like be happy flip a switch like we're just now nebulously saying you're in a bad place just grow out of it.
01:47:24.900
Tyler T Hamer: that's not, right it's we're not giving any actionable items are just saying this is what you need to do not how to do it.
01:47:33.420
Kevin Coulter: Therapy.
01:47:36.090
Jordan Ugalde: I have.
01:47:36.960
Jordan Ugalde: Like honestly, BetterHelp BetterHelp has been great for me and in that if you can't find a therapist that matches you, the first time, you can easily find a new one.
01:47:45.270
Jordan Ugalde: In like 24 hours, and I have gone through 12, 12 therapists.
01:47:50.550
Kevin Coulter: That's incredible.
01:47:51.600
Jordan Ugalde: That sucks.
01:47:54.000
Jordan Ugalde: I like my current one.
01:47:55.140
Jordan Ugalde: But yeah no like.
01:47:58.860
Jordan Ugalde: Getting the support you need to be honest with yourself and work towards who you want to be.
01:48:06.180
Jordan Ugalde: is crucial and my motto is use every weapon at your disposal to get where you want to go because life is really hard, life is really hard.
01:48:20.610
Kevin Coulter: And it doesn't pull any punches.
01:48:22.560
Jordan Ugalde: Life doesn't pull any punches and.
01:48:25.890
Jordan Ugalde: At least, be aware of every weapon that exists, even if there's some tools that you don't want to use just so you can give yourself the best fighting chance at finding your own happiness because god that shit is hard.
01:48:40.500
Tyler T Hamer: Yes.
01:48:42.570
Kevin Coulter: Yeah and I think there's a lot of like.
01:48:45.510
Kevin Coulter: A lot of the things that you might recommend to someone like therapy for an example is like I feel like there is still somewhat of a stigma around things like that or even like I for full honesty, I do have to take antidepressants and I feel like there's a stigma around that.
01:49:03.810
Jordan Ugalde: SSRIs? Fluoxetine?
01:49:06.510
Kevin Coulter: It's lexapro.
01:49:07.680
Jordan Ugalde: Okay yeah yeah.
01:49:10.800
Kevin Coulter: And it's.
01:49:13.290
Kevin Coulter: I mean, as you were saying like.
01:49:14.910
Kevin Coulter: Knowing all of the options, you have get like outfitting yourself with as many weapons as you can find and even if, even if it doesn't feel like the right one for you like, I had to go through a ton of therapists as well, through my life to like.
01:49:26.730
Kevin Coulter: The point that I was like therapy doesn't work for me and I just like stopped going to it, and then I my current.
01:49:33.240
Kevin Coulter: My two most recent therapists who I had to be switched off because one went on to a medical leave were like literal perfect therapists for me in my life, like in the span of a year like got so much better.
01:49:50.100
Kevin Coulter: And it's um something that I think a lot of people.
01:49:56.070
Kevin Coulter: need to focus on is like knowing how to set and keep boundaries, not only for themselves, but the people in their lives.
01:50:07.770
Jordan Ugalde: We don't teach that.
01:50:09.330
Tyler T Hamer: No.
01:50:09.750
Kevin Coulter: Not at all.
01:50:11.970
Jordan Ugalde: Like In fact I would say, if anything, we're often taught the opposite like growing up.
01:50:20.250
Jordan Ugalde: It was very common like if, if older relatives want to hug you or just show you affection, you have to put up with it.
01:50:27.090
Kevin Coulter: Like you have to put up with it.
01:50:28.050
Jordan Ugalde: You can't you're not allowed to say no, you know I don't want that, and.
01:50:36.390
Jordan Ugalde: it's.
01:50:38.190
Jordan Ugalde: It it can be so unintuitive to learn boundaries, if all of your lessons and socialization have been boundaries don't exist.
01:50:49.500
Kevin Coulter: Yeah yeah yeah yeah I definitely was raised with that mindset it's something that I talked about a lot with with my therapist.
01:50:59.460
Kevin Coulter: was like people who are used to.
01:51:03.180
Kevin Coulter: You not having boundaries, if you start setting boundaries it's gonna feel like the end of the world to them.
01:51:09.570
Kevin Coulter: And I think through that regardless, is something that you have to figure out and it's like they don't teach you don't learn this it's it's something that you have to do through trial and error and it's not fun.
01:51:21.780
Tyler T Hamer: Well, I think, also along the lines of like you know we having the growth, when you have the most growth when like things are darkest you also tend to set boundaries when they need to be set, you don't like.
01:51:32.640
Tyler T Hamer: Go and preemptively set a boundary and so it's always like that's another reason why it's really painful you're like this line has been crossed, and so now I know it's that's the line.
01:51:41.670
Jordan Ugalde: Oh God yeah it's like one of the hard things about boundaries is you don't always know that they exist until you.
01:51:49.740
Kevin Coulter: realize.
01:51:50.460
Kevin Coulter: Until they crossed it.
01:51:51.660
Tyler T Hamer: yeah.
01:51:51.990
Jordan Ugalde: yeah, this is not okay.
01:51:54.840
Kevin Coulter: I know I tend to like overcorrect when I realized that one of my boundries like,
01:52:00.000
Kevin Coulter: exist and I'm like if anything remotely reminds me about like you fucking piece of shit.
01:52:06.870
Kevin Coulter: And then, like.
01:52:07.650
Kevin Coulter: A day later I'm like wow I'm unreasonable.
01:52:14.100
Kevin Coulter: Even for me like I'm preaching about it and it's still, it's still a learning, learning lesson and things I need to work on, and I mean if I think at any point that I have no point left to grow, then I'm in the wrong room.
01:52:27.570
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah and, and all this to say to our listeners, we can say whatever we want, but you need to actually do it just.
01:52:37.500
Jordan Ugalde: Do it.
01:52:37.980
Tyler T Hamer: Hashtag Shia LaBeouf.
01:52:41.190
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah we, I think our last episode, had a "do it" in it.
01:52:47.370
Tyler T Hamer: That was with Jake right?
01:52:49.080
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah he also had a "just do it".
01:52:51.480
Jordan Ugalde: mindset. I kind of want to like include that in every one of these episodes like at least like.
01:52:55.560
Tyler T Hamer: A hidden just do it.
01:52:57.060
Kevin Coulter: Just do it.
01:52:58.350
Jordan Ugalde: We need to have like a Shia LaBeouf just creep into the frame.
01:53:06.270
Jordan Ugalde: I am slowly in the process of making these podcast episodes, learning video editing and so, if I can make Shia LaBeouf magically appear behind us and just scream just do it, I would I would be so proud of myself, that is a growth moment that is a growth moment right there.
01:53:23.520
Kevin Coulter: You have something to focus on to give you.
01:53:25.620
Jordan Ugalde: Yes.
01:53:26.250
Tyler T Hamer: Well, Jordan, what you have to do is since we're like all separate you just have to replace one of us to Shia LaBeouf some point, like don't tell.
01:53:32.160
Tyler T Hamer: don't tell the audience.
01:53:38.670
Jordan Ugalde: Oh man yeah like get a deep fake of Shia LaBeouf .
01:53:42.300
Tyler T Hamer: Yes.
01:53:45.270
Tyler T Hamer: We get Shia LaBeouf on the podcast.
01:53:48.990
Jordan Ugalde: We are all Shia LaBeouf deep inside.
01:53:50.400
Jordan Ugalde: that is the lesson.
01:53:57.030
Jordan Ugalde: Okay, well, so one last question to wrap things up.
01:54:03.330
Jordan Ugalde: You've talked you talked a bit about your own experience, getting into voice acting but for someone.
01:54:11.850
Jordan Ugalde: Who has like no experience but has seen like voice acting people on YouTube has realized that in these video games that they play that there are voice actors, there are actual people what would you say to someone who has no idea how to get started, but is interested?
01:54:34.050
Kevin Coulter: I actually do this, a lot.
01:54:38.280
Kevin Coulter: I'm I'm.
01:54:42.660
Kevin Coulter: I think that classes are the most important resource for any level of voice actor.
01:54:53.010
Kevin Coulter: Which is like such a shitty thing to say, because classes cost money and like not everybody has a budget for that and, like.
01:55:01.620
Kevin Coulter: For me to go like before you get into voiceover take classes is like.
01:55:05.910
Kevin Coulter: A little bit of gate keeping and I don't want to do that, but like there's absolutely resources that you can find online like IWantToBeAVoiceActor.com that like teach you how to get started and.
01:55:15.960
Kevin Coulter: Like I'm certain there, I mean like Crispin Freeman's voice I've seen Crispin Freeman's voice acting mastery or like you can absorb that sort of information that you would get from a class but it's free.
01:55:28.740
Kevin Coulter: But if you end up if you do end up taking that free route, or even if you're not something that's super helps is.
01:55:36.210
Kevin Coulter: Finding performances that resonate with you and then recording the same thing and seeing how they're.
01:55:44.160
Kevin Coulter: Similar or seeing how they're different, like actually listen to yourself record yourself acting and listen to it and see what you can do better and see like.
01:55:53.310
Kevin Coulter: How does it make you feel like how does it compare to the people that you look up to like there's a reason that they're getting cast for these roles and finding that reason and putting it into your own delivery, which ultimately is just learning how to act better, which is classes, but.
01:56:10.980
Kevin Coulter: It's all just finding little excuses to practice and then, once you feel like you have a better understanding of your voice, either through classes or self practice get.
01:56:21.420
Kevin Coulter: get a cheap microphone of like stay in your budget there's like this huge culture in the voiceover world where like if you're on a blue yeti you aren't a real voice actor, which is not true if you call yourself a voice actor and you're acting with your voice you're a real voice actor um.
01:56:40.590
Kevin Coulter: So, like get get something and then just start auditioning for like you're gonna start with unpaid stuff like you're you're.
01:56:46.890
Kevin Coulter: it's very unlikely that your first gig is going to be one that's going to pay you a lot of money so like find those passion projects that matter for you and and lend your voice to them and keep honing your craft keep studying and keep learning and it's such a long process and network.
01:57:05.880
Kevin Coulter: And, just like I mean, like any house starts with one brick so like start with the learning how to act and then, as you get those foundations keep building and building on it and picking up more and more skills and like.
01:57:18.600
Kevin Coulter: I mean I don't know that's that's kind of the path to start in any passion or any any career is you start with the lowest amount of knowledge that you can absorb and you keep adding to it.
01:57:31.470
Tyler T Hamer: That's, I mean that's fair, that's kind of a just kind of reminder of like everyone who did something they're passionate about started off in the same place, it was not having a ton of knowledge.
01:57:42.660
Tyler T Hamer: Finding out, getting exposed to that passion, you know, seeing if they even want to learn that knowledge and then trying to acquire it and it's kind of.
01:57:52.140
Tyler T Hamer: You know it's it's kind of humbling to remember like we all kind of came from the same an original origin in terms of like what we care about.
01:58:00.000
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah I would say there is very much a myth of Mozart in our society where Mozart, he was a prodigy in his early, early childhood making music, and that is not 99% of people's experience there are most successful people have started at the ground level.
01:58:21.540
Jordan Ugalde: And how to gruelingly work themselves up, so I think it's important to acknowledge. Say this is like and also so that when you're getting into it, you realize okay this extremely shitty situation I'm feeling, this is unfortunately normal.
01:58:40.950
Jordan Ugalde: And I will push through it to to get to the path that I want to make.
01:58:45.480
Jordan Ugalde: So yeah that is good to know and also there is you mentioned a voice actor club discord.
01:58:54.540
Kevin Coulter: Yes, Voice Acting Club.
01:58:55.890
Kevin Coulter: I don't remember how I found it but I'm sure if you just Google voice acting club discord you can find it.
01:59:02.160
Kevin Coulter: it's also a website and the the discord channel's probably on the website, but there's like looking for local any type of acting class or, like any type of acting.
01:59:16.020
Kevin Coulter: If you have like a local community theater, just audition for things for that and you'll get direction like you'll get.
01:59:21.480
Kevin Coulter: New things and you'll get experience and.
01:59:26.550
Kevin Coulter: I think, for me, the most important thing that I feel like maybe a lot of people overlook is find improv somewhere.
01:59:34.620
Kevin Coulter: Improv is so important because it teaches you how to like go with the flow and make strong choices and like.
01:59:41.790
Kevin Coulter: Roll with the punches and I feel like you gain a lot of skills from improv that help in your life overall like I got better at public speaking from taking improv improv classes like.
01:59:54.210
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah.
01:59:56.490
Kevin Coulter: I got better at like so many like interviews for not even voiceover like.
02:00:01.920
Kevin Coulter: It helps so much just take improv classes everyone.
02:00:06.870
Jordan Ugalde: Final message for the day.
02:00:08.160
Jordan Ugalde: Everyone take improv.
02:00:10.170
Jordan Ugalde: This episode, sponsored by improv.
02:00:15.900
Kevin Coulter: And I think like a lot of improv is, I don't know if you have to.
02:00:18.180
Tyler T Hamer: I think depends, where you are like yeah yeah yeah.
02:00:20.640
Kevin Coulter: I know if you're like in a college there's gonna be improv like clubs that you can do for free and.
02:00:26.550
Jordan Ugalde: Sometimes high school, yeah if you can, if you can find a local class that's free great if you have to pay well the gates being kept so sorry about that.
02:00:40.560
Kevin Coulter: Unfortunately voiceover you are going to have to pay money eventually.
02:00:45.120
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah at the very least to buy at least a shitty mic.
02:00:50.400
Tyler T Hamer: That's a business expense and it's.
02:00:52.800
Jordan Ugalde: Write off all of it, you're tax deductible yeah.
02:00:56.880
Jordan Ugalde: Future episode on on business deductions and taxes.
02:01:01.260
Jordan Ugalde: We need to, we need to bring on like a tax expert.
02:01:05.550
Tyler T Hamer: Oh so passionate about taxes.
02:01:07.560
Tyler T Hamer: Someone passionate about taxes.
02:01:09.720
Tyler T Hamer: That'll be like the guy from like parks and rec right it's like I think Barry is his name or whatever.
02:01:16.830
Jordan Ugalde: There has to be someone passionate about taxes, there are there's millions of people in America at least one of them is passionate about their taxes I hope.
02:01:25.950
Tyler T Hamer: I hope so.
02:01:27.780
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah.
02:01:29.010
Jordan Ugalde: All right now.
02:01:30.180
Jordan Ugalde: Last very last thing, even though I did bring up before before we say goodbye to you, your website is KevinCoulterVO.com and your Twitter handle is.
02:01:42.390
Kevin Coulter: @CoulterGheist C O U L T E R G H E I S T.
02:01:47.880
Jordan Ugalde: Wonderful wonderful and kevin's voice is amazing as you've heard.
02:01:53.130
Tyler T Hamer: He will sell you things at Kohl's or give it to you for free yeah.
02:02:05.730
Jordan Ugalde: Well, it was a pleasure talking to you.
02:02:07.560
Kevin Coulter: Thanks so much.
02:02:12.000
Jordan Ugalde: If you're ever on the east coast let's meet up and grab a drink sometime.
02:02:15.270
Kevin Coulter: Sounds great.
02:02:16.740
Jordan Ugalde: Okay, see you later man.
02:02:18.780
Tyler T Hamer: See you.
02:02:19.230
Kevin Coulter: Bye.