314 Brandi Benson author of The Enemy Inside Me – a young soldiers unexpected battle with cancer
That’s a great line that I stole from my mentor, Susan Berkley. She refers to people who keep dreaming, thinking, talking and hoping about getting into a VoiceOver career (but don’t really do much about it) as people who are “Getting Ready To Get Ready”.
Have you ever been that way about anything in your life?
I sure have… both in Voice-Over and also in playing the sax. There’s probably other stuff that I don’t want to remember for some obscure reason, but I figure two stories is about all I should subject you to…sooo, here we go!
The VoiceOver story for me is that I was in radio for over 20 years and for 15 of those years I did free lance voiceover work for the 8th largest automotive companies in America, Lithia Motors. I got out of radio in 2001 and moved from Chico, CA to Denver, CO. because I had been recruited by a dot.com company to move there and work for them. It was fun, but I also wanted to be sure I could keep my “freelance voiceover gig” so I called my friend Bob at Lithia and told him about my move and what I was thinking. He started laughing out loud at me and I said “what’s so damn funny?” He said “well when that dot.com thing doesn’t work out, we’ve been talking about opening up a branch office of our ad agency in Denver and you could be the guy.” I laughed along with him and said “thanks”! 3 months later, when the dot.com industry went south, as Bob had predicted, and my opportunity tanked right along with so many others, I was back on the phone with a slice of humble pie in hand… “Hey Bob…about that ad agency thing,” and again we both laughed. It took us 6 months to put it together but then I was blessed to open up their first ever outside ad agency office and I held that gig for 6 1/2 years. About 5 years in to it I thought “you know I could do this job for another few years and then retire and do my dream job of voiceover work full time.” So I went ahead and built a studio in my house and started studying with Susan Berkley at The Great Voice Company. Yep I was right in the middle of my own “getting ready to get ready.” A year later, when the auto industry hit the skids, my job was eliminated. My last day on the ‘job’ was April 30th, 2008. The very next day, on May 1st, I took a leap of faith and jumped in to doing voiceover work full time and here we are, almost 2 years later, and I’m still loving my “dream job” and paying the bills too!
From a corporate job to my dream job in one day. I wonder how much longer I would have been “getting ready to get ready” if my job hadn’t been eliminated.
My saxophone story: In High School and college I played the Baritone Sax and by all accounts I was pretty good; 1st chair in high school, 2nd chair all-state, and 2nd chair in college. I even won a music scholarship, but once I left college, to join the Navy and ride submarines, I never ever touched a musical instrument again. About 20 years ago I started thinking and dreaming and talking about “taking up the sax” again. Talk about “getting ready to get ready”! This fall my wife saw an article in the paper that said a local area swing band was looking for new musicians and they said “no experience necessary.” Immediately I thought “hey if they have no expectations then I have no excuse not to try out.” Over those 20 years the only instrument I wanted to play was the tenor sax. I had never played it before but I love the sound and knew that if I ever did “step up” that would be my instrument of choice. So I head to my first meeting to see if I will truly like this idea and to see if they will accept me. As I walk in, there is an elderly gentleman struggling to carry some things out of his car, so I offer to help. One of the cases is a tenor sax and I say “I’m looking at playing tenor sax with you guys but I haven’t touched an instrument of any kind in 43 years.” He stops, smiles, and says “yea…it was about that long for me too. Don’t worry, it’s like riding a bike, you’ll have a good time.” Immediately I thought well, that was a ‘God Thing’, so my confidence increased and I walked in “ready”. After having lessons with them, twice a week for a month, they invited me to join in and play with the intermediate band. What a blessing and I’m having the best time but I still often wonder… “Why did it take me 20 years of getting ready to get ready?”
High-lite of my musical experience came the night after my 2nd lesson. Two of my granddaughters (6 and 3) came over to the house and saw my sax. Audrey, the 6 year old, says “Poppa can you play twinkle twinkle?” I said “I sure can, do you want to sing it while I play?” She got all excited and said “yes!” Then Ayla, the 3 year old, says “Poppa can I play the guitar with you guys?” We said “sure”, so she goes to the toy room and grabs a beat up old guitar that we have. I played the sax, Audrey sang, and Ayla pretended to play the guitar. My 1st trio ever and one that I’ll never ever forget. The 3 of us had so much fun and in fact we still talk about.
Imagine if I was still “getting ready to get ready” to play the sax? Look at what I would have missed!
What are you still “getting ready to get ready” to do?
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With gratitude,
David Brower
Mission Statement : *To Build Lasting Mutually Beneficial Relationships By Delivering a Quality Audio Product With Exceptional Customer Service Locally, Nationally, Globally.
© 2015 David Brower –
www.DavidBrowerVO.com
Have a comment, suggestion, or an idea for a podcast, please email me:
David@DavidBrowerVO.com
With gratitude,
David Brower
Mission Statement: To Build Lasting Mutually Beneficial Relationships by Delivering a Quality Audio
Product with Exceptional Customer Service Locally, Nationally, Globally.
© 2018 David Brower – www.DavidBrowerVO.com
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