Voice-Over Artist

He zig-zagged among many different jobs until volunteer work introduced him to a business network which opened career opportunities. 

FAMILY BACKGROUND 

NM is the older of two children. His father was a ‘Sea Bee’ (naval construction forces) who returned home after WW2 to work in production at a refinery where many of the extended family of both NM’s parents had been employed. His mother worked inside a laboratory in the same refinery.  When NM was 19, his father died of cancer, from toxic exposures which NM now realizes were related to his father’s refinery job. Neither parent attended college.

CHILDHOOD THOUGHTS OF AN ADULT CAREER

Looking back, NM recalls during his childhood, wanting to grow up and be a disc jockey, playing music and between songs, adding his comments for the huge, radio audience. (Editor’s note – This was before the invention and common use of personal phones which are easily transportable with self-created playlists of music, thus reducing reliance on fixed-position home and car radios playing music selected by disc jockeys.) An alternative, early career goal was to be a tv ‘anchor’ presenting the news every weekday night at 6 and 11 pm. That there were then and now only 4 such job openings in his tv viewing area, did not dissuade NM from his career goal – probably because he never thought about the unlikely odds of finding such a career opportunity. (Editor’s note – In contrast to the 4 tv anchors, there are significantly more job openings for most every other career, among carpenters, car salespersons, electricians, firefighters, NFL quarterbacks, plumbers, soldiers, teachers and even U.S. Senators!)

SCHOOL DAYS

NM was an above average student through high school. Upon graduation, he was still hopeful of eventually securing a job as a radio disc jockey. His father’s advice: “There’s no money in spinning records. You ought to look into computer stuff; it’s a coming thing, likely to take off.”

MANY ‘JOBS’ BEFORE A ‘CAREER’ – PART ONE

(Editor’s note – Within this collection of career stories, we distinguish ‘JOB’ (where the worker may or may not be interested in the daily tasks but needs to earn a paycheck) from ‘CAREER’ (a long-term occupation, hopefully interesting, with opportunities to continuously learn to improve performance and be promoted, all while being paid fairly and more depending on performance.)

Like many first-born children known to be more responsive to parental suggestions than middle or ‘caboose’ (last one born) children, NM accepted his father’s advice and upon high school graduation, enrolled in a summer course to learn about this emerging technology. However, computers then were big boxes, used primarily in offices, not yet designed for personal use at home. So, NM’s early computer education focused on use of keypunch cards and ‘Fortran’, a general-purpose programming language especially suited to numeric and scientific computations. NM quickly realized that he was uninterested in any computer related job or career. What to do? Why, of course, he would apply for work at the same refinery where both his parents had been employed. This started a string of jobs, while NM silently retained his dream of somehow getting involved in the general career field of broadcasting entertainment. But, before that dream could become reality, NM had to earn a living while balancing his jobs and family responsibilities. These concurrent financial and life-balance needs led NM along a zig-zagging jobs path:

• Refinery mailroom clerk 
• Refinery accounting department – involving accounts receivable and payable, billing, quality control, etc.
• Refinery production – coincidentally, doing essentially the same work which killed his father but fortunately, for a much shorter time, thus with less overall toxic exposure (and so far, no resulting disease symptoms)
• Part-time bar tending – once involving accompanying a mobster inspecting real estate to buy as a base for likely criminal operations (NM was only a brief, uninvolved observer)
• While working at the refinery, WM qualified for ‘tuition payment assistance’ which WM used to attend night and weekend classes at a local university, earning a Bachelor’s degree in business
• Selling welding equipment (despite having zero experience with the product, the main factors in NM being hired were his positive personality, willingness to learn the business, plus the coincidence that the employer interviewer had attended a college whose football team had once defeated the football team from NM’s college; of course, such a fact has no relevance to hiring decisions, but such random relationships sometimes are a factor in hiring decisions
• Real estate sales – like welding equipment sales, compensation for these sales jobs was based on ‘commissions,’ not on salary for working 8 hours a day, 5 days a week; in other words, commission work means payment only if and when something is sold – a risky business for someone without other income and just getting started in that business, without a steady stream of community contacts regularly hiring you to sell something

UNPAID, VOLUNTEER WORK SOMETIMES LEADS TO PAID EMPLOYMENT

While NM and his wife were working in different jobs to earn enough to pay their household / family expenses, NM’s wife suggested that they should each consider “giving back” by volunteering for jobs to serve and benefit folks who could use free assistance. She would volunteer at the local Ronald McDonald House (where out-of-town families stay while their children are being treated for cancer at local hospitals). WM would volunteer to read (newspapers) on radio to blind people. WM loved the idea: he would be bringing newspaper contents – ranging from news to editorials, to cartoons – to blind people while at the same time, using his voice to be on the radio! 

After 5 years of once weekly radio readings, one day the manager of the volunteer radio program was approached by a businessman looking to hire ‘voice talent’ to read education materials which that company would incorporate into videotapes to be sold to schools, parents, and businesses. When NM asked about the financial arrangement, the businessman responded: “This job would pay ‘only’ $75. per hour, let me know if you are interested.” Compared to NM’s many days of zero earnings when he was unable to complete sales of real estate or welding equipment, $75. hourly seemed like winning a lottery but NM was wise enough to mask his enthusiasm, responding calmly, “I guess that would be ok. How soon do you need me?” (hoping immediately…..)

MANY JOBS BEFORE A CAREER – PART TWO

• Reading education materials was enjoyable and well paid but it was only part-time and thus insufficient to provide WM’s level of required income
• Real estate sales were decreased drastically due to national economic conditions (Editor’s note – career challenges caused by economic conditions beyond the worker’s control are common to almost all jobs)
• Through a newspaper ad, WM found a job selling aerial photography to real estate developers and wealthy homeowners who wanted overhead pictures of their estates
• Another newspaper ad led NM to a job testing airplane evacuation equipment: during his 8-hour shift, WM would continuously slide down ramps from airplanes parked on a runway, while being observed by the manufacturer of the evacuation equipment
• After NM’s heart by-pass surgery, NM’s wife suggested that he look for essentially full-time work in the ‘voice-over’ business. When full-time work was unavailable, the option was to create a home studio, involving sound-proofing a room (or closet) and installing the necessary technology equipment to produce the voice overs. However, such start-up expenses too costly for NM and his wife, so he continued his zig zagging jobs strategy 
• WM became a ‘product tester’ – eating varieties of meats and cheeses
• WM participated – for payment – in ‘clinical trials ‘ requiring him to swallow pills and/or be injected with various substances; the clinical trial administrator disclosed all known effects of the pills and injections on human health but of course the reason for clinical trials is to test the substances on humans since the actual effects are truly unknown; the lack of scientific certainty regarding health hazards to NM was demonstrated by the clinical trials leader sending a car to pick up NM each morning following one of the trials, since they didn’t know how sick he might be and whether he could drive himself back to the testing site.  

COMBINING INTERESTING WORK EXPERIENCES WITH A DREAM JOB MIGHT PRODUCE A PATH TOWARD CAREER SATISFACTION

Eventually, NM was able to combine several factors to create an enjoyable, sufficiently compensated career:

• Fun experiences performing with his voice in commercials, infomercials and audio books plus several acting roles in plays and movies, one of which cast NM as the lead, with the movie poster featuring his face
• Increasing opportunities within the field of voice-over productions
• Advances in technology now permit voice-overs to be produced almost anywhere, including home studios where the sound can be as good as any formal studio production 
• Saving enough money to finance a home studio with sound-proofing and basic technology
• Hiring an experienced agent for career guidance
• NM now has enough ‘free-lance’ (self-employment), voice-over business, with flexible hours and locations, to avoid having to seek employment requiring use of his voice all day, 5 days a week