Alicyn
Welcome to Alison's Wonderland. I'm your host, Alison Packard. Join us as we journey through the looking glass and down the rabbit hole into the wild and wonderful world of animation and video games. A do a girl a favor, and please subscribe to this podcast and go on iTunes and leave us a good review. If you like the show, please help spread the word it really helps us to get heard by more people. Thanks so much. David H Lawrence the seventh team has made a name for himself creating some incredible characters within the on camera and voice over world villainous characters like Eric Doyle in the live action series heroes. But did you also know that David is a gifted tech entrepreneur. He's also the creator of the rehearsal app, which is something that I use all the time for memorizing scripts and an inventive podcaster. And David and I go way back. So I am so excited to welcome to Alison's Wonderland today, David, nice to see you. See you in person since
Unknown Speaker
you know every time I go to Milton Metis. Yeah, because Emerson's like, alumni office or something is in that building. What
Alicyn
are you building used to be? That was the whole Emerson LA campus. So for those of you guys that don't know, I went to a school called Emerson College in Boston, but they have an LA program and I worked for the school for five years, which is when I knew David when we first met, I think, and they used to have their campus next to Milton, eds, dry cleaners in Burbank, but
Unknown Speaker
the best dry cleaners the best in the world. I know, it's like one of those titles that you don't like yearn for, but it's true. And what I remember is the phrase, the Emerson mafia.
Alicyn
Yes, yes. If you so yeah,
Unknown Speaker
I don't even know what year we met. It was it? I didn't move here till 2003.
Alicyn
Okay, so it was probably like 2005 or 2006.
Unknown Speaker
Was it masters network or clusters? Network? I
Alicyn
think Christine owner is the owner. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker
She was our power group leader.
Alicyn
That's right. Either a power group or something like that. Yeah. And you were big vo guy and we just hit it off.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah. And I don't know where you were in your journey when that happened. But man, every time I turn around, and I see what you're doing tears come to my they're coming to my eyes right now. Because when when I see people live action on camera, or I hear them in commercials or in you doing audiobooks, or doing any sort of voice work. I just feel like, Oh, that's so good. Somebody's got booked on something, and somebody's journey is moving forward, and somebody is succeeding. And I just get emotional about it. Because our business is so effed up when it comes to expectations. And you know, my buddy Michael Koster off his mantra is, you're not getting the job. You're not getting the job. You know, people look from the outside in and they see you booking what they consider to be left and right. Yeah. And I imagine that you may disagree with them in terms of the number the percentage, yeah, right. Oh, yeah. Because they don't see the stuff that's left on the floor. They don't see the nose. They don't see the Yeah, we went in another direction. She was great. But we went in another direction, right.
Alicyn
Oh, my God. Isn't that the truth? And you know, anytime I even book one job, I'm astonished that I got a job, you know, that we've been able to cobble together a career from what we've been able to work at. Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah, I mean, to think that there aren't challenges along the way, I went by myself balling a couple weeks ago, hearing about you know, someone whom I love, get a job that I really wanted so bad a project that I would have just loved to be a part of. And sadly, it was not for me, but like, you know, those one of those real Come to mama moments where you're like, can I handle this constant grind of not booking work? Well, so it's
Unknown Speaker
really interesting. You mentioned that because as we record this, I am about to launch my yearly launch of launching the launch for vo heroes, which is my training program. And in the last four or five years, I added a big component to it on mindset. Because to be rejected, is one thing to be rejected silently, is absolutely destructive to some people's psyche. Yeah. And to be rejected silently by design, knowing that they don't even have time to talk to the people, they are booking the casting offices, they would they can't call the 3994 other people that audition and say yeah, you know, you were great. I want you to keep trying, you know,
Alicyn
even number two through 10 Yeah, you know, for commercial, it's, you're booked off your audition. So what about unless you get an avail? You don't know.
Unknown Speaker
And then that messes with your head too, because you've pinned or if you're on hold, or if you're on a veil, it's like unpin you know, it's like you want to go to coffee with a friend and go, Yeah, unpin for that downy commercial and just Go. Because what else do you have to talk about? And it's a learned process to just not talk about it. Don't say anything about it when somebody says, So what are you doing these days? You know, talk about your family, talk about, you know, how you feel about this season of Stranger Things to you know, talk about anything other than what you're up for. Yeah. You know, again, Michael's phrase, what are you up for? Avoid the fours, you know, so and it's hard, because what else do we have to hang on to? You know,
Alicyn
yeah, people don't understand the emotional toll that that can take, you know, especially because the industry has shifted so much. And I think there's so much more opportunity for more people to get involved in more projects, but we're not seeing the same type of career that people had in the 90s. And, you know, the Arts where there would be similar people working on multiple animated series. And, you know, we're not seeing that as much anymore. We're seeing differences. And that's a great opportunity, but it does shift your expectation of whose career you're modeling your own after.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, there's a lot more opportunity because of OTT because of the internet because of see, you know, sorry, what's OTT over the top boxes, like Netflix, I say, you know, Apple TV plus Amazon, I mean, the channels that we used to have, yeah. You know, when I was your age there, the channels that we had were network television Saturday morning. Yeah. For animation. Yeah, for for documentary narration, it was PBS, you know, or some days your show will be. But then then there was cable and cable. You know, HBO started off as nothing but movies, there wasn't any original programming. And then there was original programming, and then the sort of basic cable tear that came in with USA and TNT. And, you know, like, all of these layers started to grow. And then the Internet came in with more layers. So there's more opportunity. Yeah. But there's also less speed bumps between you and being in the industry because of the tools that are available for individuals to create their own content. Yes. So it's kind of like been this race between supply and demand. And then the really the ones that you want to brag about, you know, the Cartoon Network stuff, and the, you know, animation domination, and, you know, Adult Swim, and you know, those things also have a set of approachable kind of, there's a group of people that they look at, and many of them are celebrities, right? Yes, then that's what people rank against. It's like, oh, man, there's no work in this business. It's all celebrities. And what are they hiring her? Why are they hiring him? He sucks, you know, so it's all changed, but it's changed, I think for the better because the opportunities are greater. But now there's more people going after those opportunities.
Alicyn
Yeah. And with that comes a need for I think, diversification and you are a very diversified person. I mean, just even the juggle between your I am an
Unknown Speaker
old fat white guy. Anything but diversify. In terms of what I go after. Skills wise. Oh, I wanted to point out that I am not
Alicyn
for anyone. No, no. Yeah. I mean, you have a diverse skill set. So you do both voiceover and on camera, as well as created the rehearsal lab, you do tech stuff, podcast, and you have a newsletter, you have multiple income streams teaching vo heroes, do you see that as being a bigger part of artists these days, performers needing to be a bit more diversified?
Unknown Speaker
Well, you know, I, there's a couple ways to answer that question. I think that, you know, unless you are you have achieved, at least for the moment, a level of booking that doesn't require you to have other streams of income, then you're gonna have to figure out how to feed yourself at some point. Yeah. And I always had a survival job. Yeah, survival, thrival, whatever. You know, I've heard so many phrases, and I try to advise people to find those kinds of jobs as close to the industry as possible. You know, if you can work in a writers room, or if you can work, you know, in a casting office, or if you can work as an assistant for somebody just so that you're exposed to the industry on a regular basis, or something completely disconnected from the industry, so that you can live a life and create experiences for yourself that you can then use in your acting. Yeah, you know,
Alicyn
so I'm alive. What's my
Unknown Speaker
but for me, I have this diversity by necessity. Everything that I have created has been created because I needed to fix something or I needed to do something rehearsal Pro was because I was at my agents office in Studio City at like three in the afternoon on a Monday. And he got a call looking for me to come in for an audition and the timing of it was such that they had to get me in at the end by the end of business that day. and this was at Paramount. And it was a four page script for the show community. Yeah. And it was it included a piano piece. Wow. But it was okay. It was just on Broadway. So it was like two chords, bom, bom, bom bom. That was it. Yeah. But the lines, right. So my process at the time was I would get my script from my agent and I would record in my studio, and I'd listen to it over and over and over and over again, which is exactly how rehearsal Pro works. I couldn't do that. I couldn't go home and do that. I had to go right to from Studio City to Hollywood. I had to go right to their studios, right. Yeah. So all the way down the one on one. I had recorded it in my agents parking lot with voice memo on my new iPhone. Oh, my gosh. So I was like having a one on one. And it's a soft button. It's not the physical button on the phone, right. So I'm looking at you know, I'm like driving in and out of traffic. And I'm looking for this. So I can repeat it over and over again, as I'm driving lunch. And I figured I'm thinking to myself, there has to be a way to do this. Because I've been hearing this phrase over and over and over again. There's an app for that. Yeah, maybe there's an app for this. I'm thinking to myself, while I'm trying to get prepped for this. I'm driving on to the lot at Paramount. My agent calls me he goes I'm so sorry. They wrote the part out. They just up in you know, and I'm like, that's fine. Because I wanted to get home. Yeah. And see if the iTunes app store. Yeah. A line learning app. And they did. And it's suck. It was awful. To get your script onto your iPhone, you had to open up a share on a Windows computer. You couldn't even use Mac. Oh, well, I'm like, Oh, come on. Yeah, really. So anyway, that's what started that whole thing. And I have another app called Audio cupcake, which is talks about that designed specifically to drag and drop your raw audio onto it and have it spit out your raw wav file and have it spit out an mp3 file that meets ACX is and audibles final audio book standards. Oh, wow. So 190 2k mono between 18 and 23 RMS and minus three dB normalization it spits out the uploadable ready to go. And then the only reason I needed that was because level later, which was another app that I was using all of a sudden wasn't working with Catalina the new Mac OS because it was 64 bit versus if I'm boring you at this point. Here's what I would do. I would go make some coffee, and come back and pick us up when she's talking about something more interesting. Okay. Anyway,
Alicyn
so design by necessity by
Unknown Speaker
necessity. Yeah, the VO heroes. I had people at the actors network. Wait, you know how to do demos do who did you? You did your demo? How did you do your demo? You know, and there are plenty of people who do wonderful demos in Los Angeles. Right? So it started with that. And then it was like,
Alicyn
we don't even need a demo producer in Los Angeles anymore. We have a home studio. Sure.
Unknown Speaker
Sure. So it just kind of it's all kind of presented itself in addition to you know, working on camera working on like in some very strange categories. But lovely. I mean, I feel like the only thing I would have done different in my life is move here faster.
Alicyn
Right? Because you've worked in radio for was it 30 years?
Unknown Speaker
38 years. Wow.
Alicyn
So
Unknown Speaker
it's it's old. Anyway, yeah. 38 years.
Alicyn
And what made you have that aha moment to move your whole life here.
Unknown Speaker
Radio was turning into an absolute cesspool. It was awful lot of people blame it on the Communications Act of 95, which allowed companies like Clear Channel and intercom and you know, now called I Heart Radio and radio.com are Odyssey you know, agglomerates to buy at one point 1200 stations and the best signals? Yeah, as well. Yeah. So I was working, I had a syndicated show and trying to get my show on stations that were owned by companies who had their own syndicated shows required a brave program director to say to the VP of programming, I'm taking David's show instead of the one that you want me to run. Yeah, it just was harder and harder and harder. And then XM and Sirius came along. And so my show was on that. But I saw the end coming and I saw the incoming because of podcasting. You know, we are living in a time. I don't know if you feel this way. But we have been through the rise, the joy, the complete delusion, and then the fall of CDs, like I talked to my daughters who are in their late 20s About compact discs and then like, what was that again? You know, and so we've seen technology come and go we've seen platforms and categories come and go, but we haven't seen do anything but remain is content creation. You know, what we do doesn't matter what the wire is all about. It doesn't matter how its distributed or received or played because getting scared or laughing or crying or being informed. It doesn't matter how that stuff gets to you. It matters how it's pretty used.
Alicyn
Yeah, and the demand has even grown so much. We're getting all emotional to get you a tissue. Yes, I completely can understand and relate to that. And when you talk about the rise and fall of CDs, I think we're seeing even over time more platforms rise and fall quicker. And the landscape is shifting at such an increasing rate. It's almost exponential where it's like, okay, now you have to learn now where we all need to edit our own content.
Unknown Speaker
And we need to adjust our aspect ratio to you know, used to be never ever shoot in Portrait mode. Oh, my God. Now always shoot landscape mode. And now it's like, never shoot landscape mode. If you want to be on the Insta, if you want to be on Tik Tok, if you want to be on Facebook stories, you know, and those words, by the way, if you're watching this in 2028, might be what Wait, what you might be saying Facebook, right, Facebook, someday, Google and Facebook will be the same kind of distant memories that America Online and MySpace and Friendster and orchid. And I mean, the litany of you know, the trash heap of technologies that we used to use. That used to be the shit is like, massive. Yeah. And we can't imagine a life as we record this without the things that are go to right now instant and but it's going to happen, and it's going to be replaced with something else.
Alicyn
I will never, never love another device as much as my very first Palm Pilot. Ever that you could like zapped someone your contact info like hey, oh, no. So did you beam it to me?
Unknown Speaker
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, I think the first thing I had was I had a palm pilot. I can't remember the second one that I had. But my mom still has a razor and she has like a phone, Motorola Razor. It's a flip phone. She she wanted to get a replacement for it. And she was really upset that they don't make them anymore. They make a new version. But she said I just want my old phone. I just want the Why don't want to send pictures. I didn't want to shoot like you know, video of my hamburger half eaten. That's not what I'm all about. I want to make a phone call. Can I make a phone call?
Alicyn
Anyway, that's great. Where did you grow up? By the way,
Unknown Speaker
Cleveland, Ohio. I grew up in Cleveland. I went to Ohio State for about a year and two months and then realized I was already doing what I wanted to do for live I went to school for broadcast communication, and Computer and Information Science. That's what technology stuff was called in seven days. And I got a job very quickly at the kind of just to be relatable The Kiss FM of Columbus, Ohio. And I worked my way up very quickly from overnights on Sunday night. Babysitting the religious tapes to an actual on air shift to overnights tonight to afternoon drive to morning drive. Wow. So in that year, I'm thinking to myself in a year wow. You like this? Right? You love this? Don't you? Do you want to keep going to psych 204 and get there by 1112? When class starts at 1115 and you just got off the air at 10 in the morning. So yeah, so anyway, so you
Alicyn
created your own path. Yeah. Hey guys, this is Alison Packard. Sorry to interrupt, but I just wanted to let you know that if you like the show, please please please remember to subscribe to this podcast. And leave us a review on iTunes. It really helps us to get heard by more people. Thanks so much. But then after all that time in radio What was that moment that made you realize I have other dreams and I need to get
Unknown Speaker
outside from radio being just crappy? Yeah, to work in. I had the temerity to think that this amazing face this gorgeous physique could do something until on camera, you know, maybe frat boy that never grew up crazy uncle you want to keep the kids away from you know, but what happened? You know, I've never been, as far as I know, I've never been afraid of risking even not calculated just like, really? You want to go work for America Online? What? You know, you're gonna do radio. I mean, I remember when I did move out here. They say that radio is a community of 99 jobs and 100 people to fill them. So somebody's always on the beach and my radio friends were hysterically laughing at my choice to come to LA and work on camera mostly because of the way I look. You know, you know they were like you're not good looking enough to be on television. I'm like, I know but I could be like the creepy guy the creepy friend Yeah, the crazy friend the nutty friend I was thinking about people like John Candy and people that aren't considered to be model looking.
Alicyn
There's Yeah, all right, Bill on TV and I went
Unknown Speaker
in fully wide eyed you know, for that didn't expect that what I would be booked on most was being a creepy evil villain. I did not expect that but I am so happy but to answer your call,
Alicyn
though, I would love to be a creepy evil villain.
Unknown Speaker
You can be. Yeah, I would be excellent at it because people would be like, Oh my God, she's gorgeous. What did she just do?
Alicyn
There's some dark. I have some darkness. Yeah. Oh, yeah, you
Unknown Speaker
have some darkness? Absolutely. I mean, when you think about, you know, the super villainous is yeah, they're all really hot. That is, they're all really like, there's a part like, you know, I can only imagine some of these fanboys and what they're really thinking about a lot of the people that they see in, you know, they're not paying much attention to the crimes that they commit. They're hoping to commit crimes on them. Right. But anyway, so to answer your question fully, I just decided I was going to research it and train properly, I use something called the Abraham Lincoln method. You know, Abraham Lincoln once said that if he had an hour to chop down a tree, he would take 45 minutes and sharpen his axe. And that would make very quick work. And basically that means do your research, get the right tools, get the right training, and I did that. I mean, I went to Howard fine for acting here, which is like world class. It's awesome. I got to know everything I possibly could about the business. I interned at Big casting agencies single, you know, solo agent, wow. You know, Talent Agent places, writing rooms, I wanted to know how the sausage was made. Yeah, I didn't even start auditioning. A lot of people really get anxious. Like, I want to, I want to start now. I didn't even start auditioning until I was here for like four years. Yeah, wow. And I was doing student films, and I was doing everything I could to kind of make my mistakes on a smaller stage. Yeah. And just get to know how it works. First, just understand the process. And there are lots and lots of people who begin a process and never quite get going because they need to sharpen their pencils. And then they need to line their pencils up on their desk, and then they need to straighten the papers. And they have to get ready to get begin to start to get underway. And they never quite get there because they're fearful of failure. And I don't, I want to fail. I want to make my mistakes as quickly as possible. So I know what doesn't work. So I know what I can make better. You know, that kind of thing. And it was just a methodical thing. And then heroes happened. Yeah. And that was my first job on television. Wow, ever. And it was supposed to be just one episode, but they rewrote the scripts that followed for the next three seasons, and was supposed to be just one one episode, the episode that I was in. I have Hayden Panettiere and her biological mom and her stepmom around a table playing Russian roulette because I can do that, right. And she gets shot, Aiden get shot and she's supposed to get up and grab the gun from the table and shoot me because I don't know she can heal herself. Instead, after the first morning's worth of shooting. They're like, Okay, let's do some changes here. And they came back to me later that day, and they said, We need to talk. This was my first day of shooting.
Alicyn
Did you think you were getting fired worse? Of course.
Unknown Speaker
And I'm like, okay, and we're shooting in this Knights of Columbus Hall in eastern in East LA. That was horrible. On purpose. I mean, it was it was awful. It was it was the set decorations were brilliant. It was my puppet theater. And so it was filled with I mean, they must have spent $50 million just on the inside. You know, it was crazy. Yeah. So they take me to this room off to the side that's got all of these old flats in it, you know, and it's dusty. And it's murky, and it's awful. And like, Okay, listen, we had to do some rewriting, because this just isn't working. And I mean, like, I'm just trying to hold it all together. And then like, here's your sides for Wednesday, Wednesday was the day that she was going to pick the gun up off the table and shoot me. So everything is exactly the same. I'm reading through it. And they're waiting the writers and Jeff Loeb, who I don't know if you know who Jeff Loeb is. He was the head of Marvel television for a long time. Before he retired. He was the executive producer of that episode. And he's the one that's enjoying this to the hill. Oh, this is their their pumpkin, you know? Yeah, totally. So I'm reading I'm reading it's exactly the same. Because I know this script. I mean, I spent two weeks I had time to like, and I get to the part where it gets shot, and instead she picks up a chair leg and whacks me over the head and then HRG horn rimmed glasses, her dad comes in and hauls me back off to prison, which I've never even heard of before in this whole thing. They wrote this whole backstory about how I was on level five. And for those of you that watch heroes, this is how this happened. And I'm like, this is I swear to God, I blurted this out I rehearsed my death scene all weekend. Are you kidding me? And so he said, Look, if you want to still die, we'll take that as a no, but we've got your written into the next eight episodes if that's okay, we've already talked to your agent, blah, blah, blah. And that extended on into season four and five and I remember going to Comic Con and Tim catching up with me, Tim crane, who's the creator and executive producer, I was walking back from Hall H to my hotel. Tim comes running after me because somebody in the audience had asked a question, how come the Puppet Master isn't on the panel? How come he's standing Over there on the side and people went nuts. I was just watching. Yeah, I was just happy to be in the room because you know, it was packed and Timson I had no idea that people loved you that much. That ended up getting me a web series during that break between season four and five. What happened to Eric Doyle during that period, and then the the whole the carnival year and I thank you. Thank you. I'd you know, so yeah, it's that it's one of those fairy tale stories where you go, I'm walking back to my hotel room with Tim Kring not to my hotel room, but to the hotel. Yeah. That's a different story. And he's talking to me about my character. He's got so many other things to do. He was working on touch he was working on, you know, other things, you know, man, wow. Yeah, it was great. So that early victory. Yeah, was really unexpected.
Alicyn
So how did that play into the rest of your career? That I mean, was it was it great to have an early victory like that? Or was it three expect every job from then on out to be like, Oh, no, no, I
Unknown Speaker
never expect me like I got disabused of that notion in radio. You know, I worked at a radio station in New York City in the 80s. And I thought, This is gonna be great. I can get a job anywhere I want. It's gonna be awesome. No, you're only as good as your last, you know, demo tape or I mean, people. I'm not sure that people quite understand how capricious our business is, you know, we're here
Alicyn
to tell them.
Unknown Speaker
And I think also that the rule is disproven by people who are booked all the time. My friend, Jimmy Smits, like my mom wouldn't know his name, but she knows his face. Uh huh. You know, and he's, he's doing another series this fall East Los Angeles on CBS. I just started seeing the promos for it. And I'm always so happy for him because he keeps proving over and over and over again, that he can put butts in the seats and and then you have people who have a great career, and then they become the subject of a question on Quora, you know, what did Jennifer Lawrence do to ruin her Hollywood career? She hasn't done anything to ruin her Hollywood career. She's taking some time off. What did Cameron Diaz do? Why did she decide to stop? You know, or why did people stop hiring her? They didn't stop hiring her. She made an overt decision to stop making movies and she's coming back, right? She took a break. Other people, their breaks are chosen for them by the casting and production community, there is no way to predict. It's like the stock market. Yeah, whatever you've had in the past, and I'm sorry, I feel like I'm just rambling. On and on and on. But I think that people don't realize how out of our control Yeah, the choices like my mom is like, don't you want to be on? Like, why don't you tell them you want to be on? You know, and it's like, you know, heroes was a pretty big thing. Yeah, I've been on last. I've been How I Met Your Mother. I've been on a lot of really big shows. Yes, those are big. My mom had no idea couldn't have cared less until I got a very small one scene roll on the Bold and the Beautiful. Oh, that with Denise Richards here we go. Whoa, now you're my mom gathered her posse and their walkers and their wheelchairs, you know, down in Florida to gather around her still CRT based television to watch me on the show. She was so proud of me. I can't tell you and she has no idea what the what the hierarchy of our business is like, not that bold, and the beautiful isn't brilliant and lovely. And a heritage show that I loved being on? Yeah, yeah. But she wouldn't know the difference between that and a primetime television show with a $10 million per episode budget and ratings in the teens. When ratings in the teens were not possible. You know, like she had no idea she had no idea. Most people don't. And you know what, I like it that way. Because you're not pulling back the kimono and giving everybody the inside secrets, you're actually giving them the ability to enjoy the story. You know, one of the things that's happened about the development of the internet over the years is that fans have become very entitled, you know, I remember it was it was happening when heroes was ending. People were asking me, How come they're canceling euros. It's like, you know, you guys did a lot of illegal downloading. And advertisers are like, Why am I buying Why am I buying time on the show, and they didn't want to hear that fans didn't want to go fans didn't want to hear that. They still don't want to hear that. And now the industry has adjusted you know, they're kind of hard to, you know, illegally download something when you can download something right with their permission, you know? Wow. Yeah, I'm not sure I answered your question.
Alicyn
Well, we did a little bit we were just talking about you know, having a big hit early on and how that then so how do you find that you keep yourself sane amidst all the challenges
Unknown Speaker
I don't look at them as challenges. I looked at them as sort of realities and and that are changing you know, as You move forward on your journey, the rules by which you determine success and failure are going to change. Yeah. When you look back on your training days, when you were first learning, you were hoping that you could get this down. You were hoping you could like make this happen. You could do well, and then you were hoping for like, just one audition. Can I get just one? Can I just get one audition that isn't like a fake audition that isn't like, you know, my friend said Here, read this page, you know. And then it was like, if I could just get a callback, you get a callback. Or if I could just get one booking. I don't care. I just want one credit. I want one IMDb credit I want one can I guess get one and then you move into other areas of work and also how you're perceived as an artist changes by the casting community by the production community
Alicyn
anyway, and the needs from your life change. There will be times where you have more to give and other times you want to balance with the family or
Unknown Speaker
Yep, well, I built my businesses specifically around being able to pull the ripcord at a moment's notice. It does talk about that. What do you mean, exactly? So if you're in this business, you have to be able to respond to an audition. They need it by five o'clock. Yes, you have to be able to say, of course, I can be there tomorrow morning at 630. On set, you have to be able to say of course I can, you know, memorize 11 lines or 11 pages, you know, and so the business is built around what other people might determine to be emergency.
Alicyn
Oh, you think you're taking a vacation? Yeah, you know,
Unknown Speaker
the joke, obviously, is just you want to get booked on something Book a vacation, they'll call you the day before you're ready to leave and say, Oh, you booked it. So but I built my businesses around that, you know, I tell my clients, my voiceover clients, yes, we will schedule your workout, we will schedule your private coaching whatever it is that you want to do course, you know, class work with me. But if either one of us get work, there's no default, our cancellation Oh, there's nothing that no cancellation fees, no cancellation time. I don't care if it's one minute before we start or during the session. Yeah, if you notice on your phone, for some reason, you just got an audition, you go do that. Right. That's our business. And so building all of my businesses around that basis, you know, once you get work that sacrosanct, but all the other time, it's like that comes first. And so, you know, that rule took a while to you know, sort of get in place. But so the rules are going to change. And I just look at it as the reality of our business. And I hate it when actors are frustrated by that. Because it's like, look, this is what you signed up for. You can't you know,
Alicyn
you can't control the business only how you react to it. Exactly.
Unknown Speaker
You should you should repeat that over and over again. For people when they get all uppity about this.
Alicyn
That's your advice, guys. You can't control the business. Just how you react to it. Yeah, yes. Well, it's been so amazing chatting with you today. David, before we end, I just wanted to say to you, other than that advice, is there anything else that you would mention to somebody that was looking to move to Los Angeles to break into on camera acting and voice acting?
Unknown Speaker
Oh, my gosh, I've got tons of advice. Some of which might be useful, some of which wouldn't, but I would be in it for the long haul. Yeah, for sure. And I would also try to have a war chest. What do you mean by that? Some resources, some money. You know, try to not show up with you know, looking forward to the day when you go on the Late Show. And you go Yeah, I arrived in Los Angeles on a Greyhound bus and I had 20 bucks in my pocket, you know, try to be a little bit more prepared than that. Try to be a little bit. You know, I had a radio show that I was doing at night. Uh huh. So I was able to keep that war chest filled for a few years, but some people come in, they're like, Well, you know, I'm a poor artist. I can eat my ramen, and it'll help me be a better artist. You know?
Alicyn
You can do that when you're young. You know you it's not that bad. I remember moving here and graduating from college and like, we just didn't have any furniture. Just cardboard boxes. Were like, we love this. But I couldn't do that now. No, it's this life is my needs are
Unknown Speaker
very different, like very different than you had when I first met you. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm so happy for you. I'm so proud of you. I am such a fan.
Alicyn
Oh, yeah. Crazy. David. We've been friends for a while. So anybody that is interested in working with you either one on one coaching or through vo heroes, what is the best way for them to get in touch with
Unknown Speaker
your heroes.com Convio heroes with an E H ER o es.com.
Alicyn
And you have your thriving newsletter too. I do a podcast. Yeah. So the newsletter but you also promote other things in your newsletter too, right?
Unknown Speaker
Oh, there will be times when I will send you emails that ask you to enjoy this free training. Yeah. Or you know, I have a friend who's doing something that's associated with our business that you might benefit from but like you I do, I don't know if yours is weekly or if it's when you decide you're doing it
Alicyn
or newsletter from my pocket. I just thought Yeah, you know, I haven't I need to start implementing that because I haven't been doing that. But
Unknown Speaker
yeah, no, I do a weekly, very short eight minutes, you know, video and audio podcast, and that's available on vo heroes.com as well.
Alicyn
Awesome. Well, thanks for coming down today. Pleasure. And guys, if you're not already subscribed make sure to click Subscribe so you can stay tuned because we have some amazing guests coming up. I'm not sure who yet to be honest, but we have some big changes and excited to see you next week. Bye. Thanks for tuning in to Alison's Wonderland, where we explore the wild and wonderful world of animation and video games. Please remember to subscribe and leave us a review. For more episodes of Alison's Wonderland. Please visit us at www dot Alison packard.com. See you next week.