Derek Chappell started his voicing career at a very young age as announcer at a FM radio station in Kansas City. Between jingles and station idents, Derek studied hard and got his law degree. Now he is a full time lawyer and a part time voice talent. His legal perspective is a bonus when it comes to writing his blog “The Voice of your Business”. Listen to this interview and pardon for the poor audio quality. It was a Skype liaison between Guayaquil, Ecuador and Ottawa, Kansas, USA.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Constantino: Interview with Derek Chappell, an all-American voice talent. Derek, where are you located in the United States?
Derek: Constantino, I am in Ottawa Kansas which is about forty minutes south of Kansas City. Beautiful blowing plains here in Kansas right at the heart of the midwest.
Constantino: Tell us about Derek Chapel as a voice actor, about your career in this business of voice-over acting.
Derek: Well I got my start behind a microphone about in ninth grade. We had a talent show and I didn’t have a talent. I couldn’t sing, I couldn’t dance, I didn’t play any instruments but I talked a lot and communicated quite well and I volunteered to be the MC and I fell in love being behind the microphone already at that point at about the ninth grade. Then I just continued as much I need to be behind the microphone because that’s what I wanted to do. At about age sixteen I was the public address announcer for summer baseball leagues. I went to college and studied broadcast communications. I worked at the local radio station and the campus radio station, did a lot of live things back then. I played for football and basketball games and when I graduated from college I landed a job at a rock station at Kansas City right up the road one of the FM rock stations, a classic rock format at that time was brand new. It was a lot of fun with that music it was brand new. Did that for about three or four years, my career took a turn. Some people say it was a lateral move. I went to law school, got my law degree. I have been practicing law and been doing voice-over part time for the past twenty years.
Constantino: At a certain point in your career you decided to write a blog: “The Voice of Your Business”. Why this title for the blog?
Derek: Well, I got into blogging about the time I attended a in Atlanta and I have been reading blogs before that from some of the guys that had started: Bob Sour, Dave [0:02:03], those guys. I thought it would be a fun way for me to share my experiences as I got back into the business more of a part time full time basis. Really originally I had no idea why I was writing the blog. With my blog The Voice of Your Business” I was just sharing some voice-over stuff that I thought I’d be interested in or maybe my family might want to read and understand a little more of what I was doing. I have enjoyed blogging ever since. I try to do blogging about three times a week Tuesday and Thursday and usually on the weekend, I review of the week’s best blog. But the title “The Voice of Your Business” really came from my marketing because I got this in 2008. I was doing some work for a couple of clients and thought about a great way to continue residual work for the same people which I thought would work to be sort of voice logo and kind of the their voice that people recognize with their business so the way I marketed to them whether it was on radio or TV spot or maybe their phone system, maybe something on the web for their business. If people continued to hear the same voice through all those mediums, they will be more familiar with that specific business. So I kind of just ducktail that to be the voice of your business so I’ve gone with that ever since.
Constantino: You’re using social media to market yourself and also to educate and entertain about the profession of voice-over acting. What are actually your results, your feedback here?
Derek: Well, I’ve had pretty good feedback mostly from other voice actors. I think it’s hard to blog and use social media to clients you don’t know yet or target them specifically so getting yourself out there I think for clients to see what you do. It’s very important and so I use my blog to educate other voice actors and educate others who may need voice talents as well. And I like to do it also for entertainment. I posted a thing yesterday on my blog a video of Joseph Riano’s studio. It was a phenomenal studio and I thought that a voice actor would love to see that. I know people from my family would like to see kind of behind the scene things like that. So I enjoy hosting very specific content for voice talent at the same time I found it broad enough and general enough to be entertaining for others who might stumble across my blog and look to that for entertainment as well. I use a number of social media platforms to share Facebook, Twitter, Linked-in, direct e-mail contacts. I figured the more you get yourself out there you never know who is going to see what you’re sharing and they need your services when they see it. So putting yourself out there as a professional in the business.
Constantino: Derek, who are the readers? Can you give a profile of the typical visitor to your pages begin with established voice talents.
Derek: The way I share my blog is a lot on Facebook, a lot of voice-over verbs that I’ve been involved in so I think the typical visitor to my blog is the voice talents themselves. There are some beginners. I tender a lot of my stuff to beginners. Really, I still consider myself as a beginner. I’m constantly being educated about the business as I continue to proceed so anything that I find whether it’s in social media tool that helps me or specific piece of equipment or piece of advice that I get, I’m more than willing to share that to anybody else so I like to put things on there for beginners and at the same time any established voice talent as well that may not see something that I see. I like to share that for anybody else to have. I’d say it’s more tailored towards people that are already in the business and the beginners as they come along I hope they can learn with me along the way.
Constantino: And what are the topics that are most interesting for that audience?
Derek: The biggest hits that I get are usually on the weekend when I do the review on the week’s blog posts. I plug in all of the voice-over blogs that I see and I read and I check those daily. It can be time consuming at times and I know other people like to read what other people posted as well but may not have the time. So as I read, and review something, if I feel it’s a top notch blog post for people who want to see that information maybe they didn’t have a chance during the week, I put a list over the weekend on the top voice-over blogs for the week for other people to use and review. I think that’s the biggest nitch that I have in my blog that people have seen but I try and share persona things as well about my voice over career and things that I find. And I also going to bring back a feature I did a year ago which is called match [0:06:34] which I put together three voice talents and randomly post their demos as well and I don’t tell you which demo goes with which person and I let you listen to them and see if you can match them up. That’s just kind of a friendly for me to share to most of my friends in this business and other friends as well. Like most voice-over talents, I have a lot of friends online, in social media and I got the thinking I’m friends with them, it’s great but have I ever really heard what they do? Would I know their demo if I heard it? I listen to other people’s demos and get some idea of what they’re doing. And I thought it was a fun way to share and get other people to read my blog and that was it.
Constantino: Oh that’s a brilliant idea. People usually of course listen to voice-over talents but they cannot a face on the voice they listen to. So that’s really clever and interesting and fun. One key topic that you have identified is regular invoicing problems, payment issues and clients ignoring the basic rules of compensation for a job. Voice talents face sometimes awkward situations with clients. What would be your advice to get over those problems?
Derek: Well I had a blog post about a week ago that was actually supplied to me by the great people at Edge Studio, New York. They supplied me with articles that I could post on my blog and one of those was a blog post about overcoming issues with invoicing clients. What I found so far for me was that communication from the start with your clients is the key. Be clear from the start about both of your expectations really. You get yourself into trouble with pick-ups and revisions and word counts and things like that. You might go ahead and talk to a client about a job and they say it’s one thing and all of the sudden you get into it and it’s something different. And nobody wants that. So I think you have to be consistent with each client. Your communication has to be extremely good from the start because you want to develop a relationship with that client so you want things to go great from the start. I think you should be flexible with your client when it comes to the invoicing and the expectations from the job but you have to be on the same page from the start. And one other thing too that some voice talents fall into this trap: they forget to send the invoice so I’ll send it tomorrow and so a week goes by or ten days go by and that’s how we get paid to send the invoice so it’s very important to set up your system so that invoice gets out as soon as possible after that job.
Constantino: Voice acting seems a very crowded market nowadays, probably with far too many suppliers. If you started, can you really make a living out of voice acting? Can you earn full income with voice-overs?
Derek: I think you can. Obviously there’s many people doing it but you have to be committed to it and I have been given great advice but some of my mentoring coaches here said when I got back into this about the way you don’t quit your day job until you’re making as much in voice-over as you are doing that day. I still crack this law full time I’m not going to quit that anytime soon but you can. Voice-over is a slow learning growing process as a talent. I think you’re not going to start your success overnight you’re not going to start making big money overnight. You got to pay the dues and take the time so the last thing you want to do while doing that is worrying how to make a living. So you can do it. There’s ways to do it. But you got to be really organized, you got to be focused. I think it can be done. I’d like to get there to be able to do that full time myself. That’s the goal.
Constantino: What do you think are the basics to start a promising VO business?
Derek: Find somebody that’ll help you from the start. There are so much to learn not only on the performance side but on the business side. So, if you find a great coach or a mentor first, who can help you, first of all to determine all the raw skills necessary to be successful. There are too many people these days, that, you know, voice over is growing greatly and so many people can you know, “I can talk into a microphone and make money doing that” but there is so much more to it than that. So, you got to get the experience behind the mic, you got to practice with your coach a lot before you buy any equipment, before you make a demo. It’s just not an overnight success business. So, I think the basics exactly is to find somebody to help you, get a lot of coaching first, learn about the business side and find somebody who is an audio engineer, a friend of yours or somebody in line who can help you learn the editing skills you’re going to need, if you don’t have those. Look for the people who are respected in the business and don’t find these demo producing companies that say, “Hey come to our weekend seminar and you’ll have a demo on your hand by Monday.” You can’t do that. If you’re serious you’ve got to have a plan you got to stick to it and finding somebody who can help you from the start is, I think, the key and that’s what has helped me a ton.
Constantino: Sooner or later you are going to have to sell your services probably on the internet, so, we wonder what is your opinion on pay to play sites? There are a few out there.
Derek: If you get on the forums and you see some of the groups, Voice Over groups, that I belong to. There’s opinions on that all over the board. Some say they’re a waste of time, some say that they’re just trimming out of talent, they’ve downloaded talent, or taken down the rates. I have not been in this long enough to really tell you those aspects. I can tell you what I think. They’re a good part of your overall marketing. I know that some of the jobs I’ve had had for the last year or two have been from my auditions on pay to play sites and some of those jobs I didn’t get but some of those people I auditioned for remembered me or saved me in their favorites perhaps and came back for me, so I have gained some work from the pay to play sites. I think that it can be an integral part of your overall marketing plan but very few people make a living just off pay to play sites and but it’s very different. I think it’s a very good tool to have.
Constantino: Talents would like to have a direct relationship with the clients without so-called middlemen but that’s really hard to get. You can have your website, be active on social media yet it’s unusual to have a direct contact with the voice seekers. Why is that Derek?
Derek: Well I think, first of all, there are so many voice talents out there for some people seeking voice talent, they don’t know where to start. A lot of them may search online and type a word voice-over and they’re going to get beta play sites that come up. But rarely, if you do that, they’re going to get these typic voice over websites, for individuals. Unless you’re really into the social media and search engine and things like that. So, I think that places like voices.com or voice123 people hear about that and they go there first. It’s that avenue that you could use then once you’ve established a relationship with somebody to then have that personal relationship with. But I think it’s difficult for some voice seekers who aren’t in the business all the time to know where to even look. But I think the key is, once you have them, like I said, some of the jobs that I’ve had aren’t from auditions I’ve won the first time, it’s from people coming back trying again or saying, “Hey I remember you from the last time you did great with this” So, it is difficult sometimes to find them individually. Although, I will say if 2 weeks ago I got a phone call totally out of the blue from a guy in Texas who found me online. Found my website listened to my demo. So it’s once in a while that’ll happen but it is rare.
Constantino: How would it be possible to leave those middlemen behind and then just get into business with real client with the real voice seeker?
Derek: If I had that answer, I would be a very rich man. Because I would share that to a lot of people who want to know. I think you got to market yourself. It’s up to you if you get yourself out there. That is one thing I’ve learned from a lot of people that I’ve talked to in the business, that I see online is through the exposure of social media over the last few years. There’s a many opportunities to get yourself out there. It’s one of those where you never know who is going to see what you’ve posted or word of mouth from somebody else or they see you on somebody else’s blog or website. You never know. And if you’re not out there, they’re not going to see you. So I think, one of the things you have to do is make sure you’re out there. And that’s why I’m trying to spread what I do across so many different mediums and social media because you never know who is going to be looking for you in a specific time. And then the key is once you have that relationship started with the client, you’ve got to do everything you can to keep it. Just like anything else, word of mouth is great, that’s a fantastic way to get new clients. That’s how I do in my law practice. About 75% of the clients I have are of word of mouth. From this client I took care of who has a friend who needs the same kind of help and they tell them about me. I think the same thing works in voice over. Let this client know what you do, they may know of somebody else that may be working. You just got to continue to foster those relationships once you got them started. But the hardest part is to get them started.
Constantino: Derek Chapel, an American voice talent, thank you very much for your comments, for your time and wish you much success in your career.
Derek: I thank you for the call and I look forward to what you guys are working and being a part of that as well and appreciate you taking the time to talk to me.
Laura Prada liked this on Facebook.