GTT Partner: Tim Friedlander of SoundBox and NAVA

the whole thing was built around filling in a gap for talent that needed a space I was doing workout groups in my studio or actually in the 11th year of our workout Group which is insane the G Street workout group and it really started from people who were like hey I've been coming to your workout group for the last year I finally booked a job can I come record at your studio I know the place and I was like I don't see why not like how much would you charge I'm

like I don't know buy me like some lunch and we'll be fine and literally is how it started and so as people came in the studio was built around what people needed so somebody would come in and they were like hey can you do Source connect for I'm like I don't know what source connect is but let me get it somebody would come in and say hey do you have ISDN I'm like well I don't know what ISDN but let me get a week later I'd have ISDN and somebody come in and

say hey I need a 416 like okay well if I buy a 416 will you book the session here type thing if I have that you know you kind of build it and they will show up build it they will come but it was really built around the needs of the community are you saying there was no business plan or there was absolutely no business plan whatsoever no I I I don't do plans I don't do plans at all I hate plans no you're just filling hundreds of little micro needs and building a

business around it that all those little things yeah exactly George the tech hey everybody it's George the tech

back in our long and running series of trusted partner profile interviews and this is a person who will be no stranger to anybody who's already active and working in the voiceover field and if he is new to you oh you are in for a treat because this man has an incredible skill set of different areas he has become an expert in but he's also helped build an organization that is really going to change the lives of voice actors possibly even actors in general so without further Ado let's get into it

here today with Mr Tim Freelander how you doing Tim good good how you doing good to be here I'm great I'm great thanks for joining me we're both taking time out of a busy day so these are such awesome moments to sit down and talk in a way that we never get to and you and I always laugh at how we spend more time just chewing the fat talking out of La than we do in right yep yep and then we never see each other in La it takes forever to like you know or like if we

do it's like once a year in LA and then we never cross paths and then we see it it's because you host a big party you know for your birthday or something right it's so true I guess that's just

kind of the life of in Los Angeles and in the business because the things coming at you every day it's an onslaught of needs and wants and people demanding of your input and email and and on and on right it it's very difficult to really set aside time to just be and hang out with a friend right no it's it's but that's kind of the nature of La too and I guess it's also kind of the nature of why I came to LA in the first place which was specifically to work I came for the

opportunities and the work that was here and not to say that I'm trying to be antisocial but I think there's a lot of people who come to La specifically to focus on the craft and the things that they're doing and that kind of does tend to create a very isolated type of environment for a lot of people I think from the outside La is Santa Monica Beach it's Venice Beach it's Hollywood it's Disneyland It's a recreational place but the reality is the people that really do live here on the whole are

here to hustle they work very hard it's a very hard City to remain in having been now being here 21 years myself when did you land in Los Angeles I'm going 22 holy dude you're right there with me October of 2002 wow holy cow well you know we have a confined amount of time as always to talk today and that's the bummer but give me a little background

so what led you up to being in Los Angeles and what made you come here to pursue voiceover music and everything else that's a good question you know I came out of um I was a few years out of college and I was a musician and in the early 2000s if you wanted to be a musician you had to be in New York or La possibly Nashville or Austin Austin was kind of coming up at that time but I'm from Seattle so the straight shot down the coast to La was an obvious choice I

always say you know I've told the story multiple times but I literally have no plan I I my lease was up on a Sunday I threw my stuff into a U-Haul and drove to LA and ended up in LA on a Wednesday and I called my dad I was like hey I just got to La I like oh that's nice what are you doing I'm like you know I'm I'm going to I'm liveing I mean they knew I was going but it was like oh that's cool so how's it going I was like well I don't you know I don't know anybody I don't have a job I don't have

a house do you know anybody that I could call and crash on their couch for a while and I called up a couple of my dad you even less of a plan than I did I had no plan whatsoever my my dad was a Drama teacher so we had a bunch of students that would come up and down you know go to La for pilot season and stuff like that and so he had friends who were students who were down here I crashed in the accounts for two weeks and then I moved into the house that I'm living in

now and I've been in the same house I moved into G Street K moved into gner Street on October 15th 2002 and I am still here that is wild that I'm learning about for the first time I have no idea that you've been in the same address from day one I think I'm on address number six yeah five or six it's part of the reason why I was able to build the studios the way that I did is because I was living literally living in my studio in rent controlled in Hollywood in a place that I had I been

tried to build the Studios from I want to build a studio commercial property rental not have worked but rent control you know and you know props to my my landlord you know it was his mom's house in the 80s it's a family property it's not a corporate landlord it's a duplex his son and his daughter-in-law live on one side I live on the other you know so it's a real family place and he's happy that I'm here to take care of the place and so you know it it's worked out

really well the reason why this place exists is because of you know the fact that we've had rent control in Hollywood and had a really great landlord who I've known him for 20 some years you know his family and that goes a long way in this

town when you started out was the goal from the get-go to have a studio in home or is it just you're a musician that's what you do first thing you do you always have a studio I mean you know I was recording I'm literally spent the last week pulling out like old dat tapes and cassettes from the 90s where I you know I mean the first solo album I did was on you know like a mixer that I had routed into my tape player so I could get Reverb and multi-tracking on a tape

player um so it was just direct to tape like direct a two track just direct a cassette yeah in in my bedroom and then I've always had you know some kind of home studio and some capacity so you know I moved down here with microphone and amps and guitars and and recording equipment and stuff like that but it was never an intention to open a studio it was more of an intention to provide a place I always just wanted a place to have like-minded people around and be a

creative atmosphere that's really what I wanted I wanted a place I couldn't find it or I didn't find it at least and so I kind of built it yeah you built what you needed yeah let's flash back one more time CU it's just fun what do what was your first multi track Recording Technology that you had that was your very own the very first thing I had I had a Sony Hi-Fi system like with the the tape deck and this five channel mixer stack the stack yeah little bit of like a small one like a little shelf

shelf one yep yeah and then I had a Tapco mixer it's a Tapco which I still have in the garage Tapco was pre Macky Tapco Tapco became Mackie and it was an old mixer with reav built into it so I could plug in multiple it was six channels I could plug in six microph phones and run that directly into this like bookshelf unit and so I could multitrack I could mic up my guitar I could sing on the vocals I could do all that at the same time you couldn't go back and track over it afterwards but I

could get I could set up multiple mics and get you know pretty decent sound of it I did one solo album in the 90s and I lost the tape I gave the tape I really wish I had it I gave it to a magazine to review it and they brought it back and they left it on my steps and under the door mat I remember seeing it I'd have no idea where that tape went I had physically lost had one copy of that one copy one copy of it so well that you never did that again oh no never done

that again so the only Master gold copy of the entire thing yeah I I have the review but I don't have the actual album did you ever dabble in real toore or did you kind of like go straight into digital after that no I was just post real toore you know we did like our first album we hired a studio when I was in Seattle in '94 I believe you recorded on real to real and then the master they gave us was bounced down to dat so I have the DAT Master but I don't have the

a real do you still have a machine to play back that D I bought actually you can see it right behind me right there is a d player I bought two of those in an auction they're only two tracks so I actually want to get an eight track D player so I can actually remix this album I did in the 90s oh do you have a so an ad I have an ad also yeah yeah it a out as well y I love that man and then

from there you uh transition to Daws I would imagine and yeah yeah early Protools I was nendo for a long time oh nendo the very first Studio I set up for somebody else commercially like a wasn't my own thing was built on nendo version one because he was a Windows guy I was on Windows I started I didn't know Mac so I went with the Sony VIO system went with nendo and this was back in you know 200,000 so like I can't afford to spend what $5,000 $7,000 $110,000 something so

you know everybody was just cracking and stuff like you know you were you had a friend who had a cracked version on something and cuz you did no idea what was to work so I went to that and then I was on Fruity Loops for like the first version of Fruity Loops my cousin still teaches kids how to use Fruity Loops in his media class in high school they love it yeah that's awesome and and then rewire when it was like a virtual patch Bay when you could do all that stuff and

then I ended up on digital performer for a long time I was on digital performer for years yeah okay before going to logic and then because of Joe ciano I'm actually on Protools because of joose Riano no kidding uh I learned Pro Tools because of that I was at Randy Thomas's event her her conference she did a couple years in a row and there the engineer didn't show up to to run Joe Si's class and I was like oh yeah sure I'm probably just somebody just showed me how to like show me how to set it up

I think it was called Media city sound and I literally was like Googling how to create a track in Protools and I had never used Protools they were like oh yeah we we have our engineer here help up you and he he went in he he opened up Pro Tool St he's like cool have fun and I was like no like I don't where do I put this like where how do I save something and I was a able to create a single track and record and he was trying to do to picture so not only that

he's gave me a thumb drive and so I did a crash course in Protools and we pulled it off fire yep but then from that point on I was like you know what I need to know you know I need to know Pro Tools and I've been on Protools ever since so I go back and forth Protools and then logic if I'm doing music primarily youp stuff gotcha yeah I feel it saying more about Mac like I was on Windows until I moved to LA and i' built PCS and I was using Wave lab all this stuff and then so many

of my clients here on Mac you know and I was like I got to buy a Mac bought my first Mac Mini in like 2006 maybe and just spent a year or so kind of making the transition and really went all in you know and then after that it was just never looked back but yeah of course with Daws for me I'm like the I'm trying to fix you know all Swedish cars whatever it is I need how to fix Volos and you know oh I guess I'll pick some German cars too yeah exactly oh that one's from Japan okay I'll fix that so

it's like you know but I've also learned what I don't know and what my limits are you know so ex that's why I've got great people like yourself and that's

something I didn't mention you guys is that the reason Tim's here today for this interview is not only is he doing so many other great things we're going to get to but Tim is also a member of our Tech Team and is one of our Specialists who can navigate the Waters of Protools logic and the Apollo as well yeah yeah yeah so when did you get into the Apollo you that that's a good question I went from apog into like a Yamaha 6 channel interface no a baringer I think it was a baringer

it didn't sound very good and then I finally as we got into like having clients come into the studio it was just time to upgrade so I went to an a channel needed something that could handle drums primarily was which was the goal an Channel a channel apog interface no a channel Apollo gotcha and I've been on Apollo ever since and that was I mean 2016 or so it was really one of the first kind of like real pieces of gear that I got MH for the studio I've never looked back I mean it's been you know

it's such a ubiquitous sound that you can get and it works it's very versatile from music and voice over you know and and we've built all of our studios around the Apollo ecosystem so any of our Studios that we have we all have the same workflow we have the same capabilities so that you can go to different Studios and know that you can get the same sound and stuff like that so we'll step back one step again because this is you know the way our brains work right we're talking we

there's a Wei here it's not just about you right so that's soundbox GT not sure if your Studio's audio sounds competitive a sound check by George the tech removes all doubts and explains the next steps Audi books podcasts voiceovers for Content creators we do it all new customers get 20% off their first service with a coupon code on your screen George the tech yeah soundbox we have including your your space that we have which I know we haven't we would uh like to utilize more we are slowly

ramping up slowly ramping up we have seven facilities it's got five in LA and then we've got Boston and Nashville as well and the whole thing was built around filling in a gap for talent that needed a space I was doing workout groups in my studio we're actually in the 11th year of our workout Group which is insane the G Street workout group and it really started from people who were like hey I've been coming to your workout group for the last year I finally booked a job can I come record

at your studio I know the place and I was like I don't see why not like how much would you charge I'm like I don't know buy me like some lunch and we'll be fine and literally is how it started and so as people came in the studio was built around what people needed so somebody would come in they were like hey can you do Source connect for I'm like I don't know what source connect is but let me get it somebody would come in and say hey do you have ISDN I'm like

well I don't know what ISDN but let me get a week later I'd have ISDN and somebody and come in and say hey I need a 416 like okay well if I buy a 416 will you book the session here type thing if I have that you know you kind of build it and they will show up build it they will come but it was really built around the needs of the community are you saying there was no business plan there was absolutely no business plan whatsoever no I I I don't do plans I don't do plans at all I hate plans no

you're just filling hundreds of little micro needs and building a business around it that all those things yeah exactly and I think it worked really well because we weren't trying to go into be comp and I still don't go anywhere to try and be competition if there's like Nashville needed a space that was just vo specific same thing in Boston there's been some turnover with the studios in Boston and and some of the vo friendly spaces are no longer there so we want not stability just

closing doors and changing hands and yeah U but it was really we had we had a talent in here last week and I was walking him through the setup in the booth and the first thing he said was like ah yep you can tell this booth was built by a voiceover Talent it's got everything you would ever need in the booth from the talent side of things and so everything that I would want in the booth is there so I can go in and say great here is your you know you have a mixure you can separate your beeps you

can separate from the remote Talent from the director from the desk from yourself and you have full control over your own mix in the booth which as a talent I really want so rare to see that in a voiceover Booth right I mean you're lucky as a voiceover you have a headphone La n exct in most commercial Studios right yeah and and I wanted that for myself right I want to have that I want to be able to control the Beeps in a session I want to be able to turn the

director down on Zoom if they're coming in too loud I want to be able to turn the director up in the in the studio if they're too quiet and and all of those things are built around trying to be efficient and save time you know 10 minutes that you spend trying to get a mix in the booth for a talent so they can hear everything is you've now got 45 minutes left in an hourong session and those 10 minutes sometimes are the makeing break of what you had just exactly the right amount of time and

you're working with a union Talent you're going right up to the hour you don't have sometimes five or 10 minutes to waste trying to get a mix correct or do something like that so being aware of all of that from the production side from the talent side from from the producer side and engineer side really allows me to build a space that is hopefully friendly and usable for everybody efficient and efficiency is really a big part of the of the game these days you know no doubt absolutely

and I'm going to pull this thing out of my pocket and hold it up because I get yelled at for doing these shows and never promoting anything okay so this is my chance to talk about passport the exact concept of what you descri Ding and and everything being in one place for the voice actor to be able to control what they need to hear in their headphones that's the whole design philosophy around passport right there's these middle dials right here are all about what you hear actually everything

from here down is about what you hear as the actor not the top two are gain the rest is monitoring control right so this one is controlling record play back blend so when you want to edit and not hear yourself mouth breathing into the microphone while you're editing turn that to the right now you're only hearing record this knob over here is C so that's the return from the studio so that's their talk back you can turn that down everything's separated in one little tiny package and

the beauty of this is beyond the functionality the user usability there is no compromise in sound quality yeah we have really shot this thing out against some very high end preamps and gear in fact I just got a file today from Andrew Peters who's one of the four of us who helped design this and he has the gear he is a gear Head so he's got the knees and the ssls and the you know he's got it all and we're doing shootouts and this thing punches right up there with the top end stuff so just

go over to centr.com passport vo and there are still a handful left from the initial batch that we had produced so thanks for reminding me without meaning to this is why things like this get made because people like Tim and me are here to fill gaps for you guys as actors and talent and make you feel incredibly comfortable with what you're doing in your gear right isn't that what it's all about for actors I mean absolutely and that's what one of the biggest things I

think we've tried to do with all of our spaces and make a place that you feel comfortable being exposed and performing which you really are I mean you are

literally in a fishbowl under a microscope as a talent and that's an uncomfortable place to be if you're in I've been in plenty of places where the sound wasn't right or the space felt weird or it was too cold or it was too hot I mean all those little things may seem like yo I'll just power through it but those those things affect your performance and for people who are working all the time or people who are new and they go in and they're at first time with a client first time in a

session first time A lot of times people coming into my studio are the first time in in a studio that's outside of their own house so how can we make this

something that you feel comfortable in make it your own feel comfortable sit down do you want a stand do you want a chair do you want a tall chair do you want a short chair do you want the stand to be here feel free to move that around

I think it's one of the things that digress slightly is Talent being aware that they can advocate for themselves in in a session and that they should advocate for themselves because it gives you the best chance to be the best performance you can and in the end you're going to give the producer the client the best thing they can get you're going get that job again and don't be afraid to say I'm sorry can you turn that up a little bit you can turn that down my microphone is too loud my

microphone is too quiet can I take off one side of my headphones can I have a chair to sit down in hey do you mind if I get a cup of hot tea in here cuz I know this is going to be a long session can you turn the air conditioning off can you turn the AC on all of those things every single thing I have in here is like do you want the AC on do you want a chair would you like water do you want tea halfway through the session is that microphone okay where it is or

would you prefer to have it off to the side yeah you know is the script okay would you like the script to be taller or lower and every single time I guarantee you almost every single I would I would say I start keeping track of this but every time somebody says oh it's fine and I adjust the stand they always say oh great that's much better thank you they are trained to not speak up for themselves they're trained that they're trained well first what's the first thing they always told they're

always told not to don't mic don't touch the micrphone which is valid that's that still it's still valid but unfortunately what happens is that the whole mindset of don't touch the microphone then sort of translates into don't speak up don't complain you're paid very well to be here you know you're part of a machine you're just a cogn a machine just do your job don't be annoying and that ends up being like so anti- talent and it's just not cool it's antihuman you know

it's like these are humans doing very very human things yeah and you're not going to get the best performance the best performances are from people who are relaxed and focused and able to concentrate on what they're there to do which is to be the actor in that space

and which is again to slightly digress one of the the things that's been so difficult about the last four or five years with Co is that you have a lot of people who don't have the experience that many of us have to be engineers and talent and are having to try and navigate that it's frustrating it's confusing it is hard it is difficult if you're in the middle of a session and you're like I I need to adjust the volume and you have to figure out how to go out to your booth and adjust the

volume and go back in and test it all those little things that many people have had to learn over the last five years have affected performances and and affected mindsets and how people react when they get into a every single time

for the last four years unless I absolutely have to I won't do a session at home I will always go to somebody else's Studio every single time your guys minds are probably blown right now right this man has built himself a beautiful Studio comfortable has everything a voice act can need but that is what he's chosen to do yeah I don't want to deal with gain I don't want to deal with a micro a cable crackling I don't want to deal with something happening I want to be there to do my

job so I can do the best job I can as the voice actor and then then you come into my studio and I will do the best job as an engineer to make sure every single thing is accounted for and prepared and you have the best experience you can as a talent every single time I book with an agent I say can I go into the studio and I go into the studio and I don't care if it's an hour drive it's a two-hour drive I will drive where I need to be to be in that space with all the people doing their

jobs the best that they can man that is huge I mean that just says a lot I totally can feel you like I can only imagine well I don't have to imagine doing these interview I told you before we hit record how frustrating the technology is and how distracting it is when it doesn't work as an actor being paid to create a character out of whole cloth or just do this role and if you're recording yourself and I I can tell you right now my own personality is if there

was some tech issue that was mid session while I'm in the thing I would get angry yeah I I would be like God that becomes your focus would toally ADHD brain man that would me off on aent now i' be out looking to see what's going on then I would realize that oh it's not the cable it's the connector or the adapter that's on this thing then I'd be on Amazon going to aboard one of those anyway right right it's like nightmare right so that's such a brilliant social engineering kind of a

thing that you figured this out I don't

engineer myself I act I produce and I advocate which will get but these are you compartmentalize these things I I compart that's kind of allowed me to do the things that I do I know if I'm in engineer mode this is my area of expertise for engineer I need to do this and you entertain I forgot to ENT per perform geez I forgot you know but yeah one other things I think you touch real briefly on is you know the speed at which voiceover works you don't always have the opportunity to burn a

take yeah right and so you're engineering your own session as Miles Davis said in his 50s what mean you didn't record that too yeah you HSE every time you pay on the instrument Y and and and I try and make sure you know I pride myself in the fact that I don't think I've ever lost a take from somebody you know we've been able to salvage it if there's a gain issue we redo it you can fix it but you know it's nothing like doing a great performance and the take is not usable because

sometimes you know it actors are great at recreating but every once in a while you get that lightning in a bottle moment that is just the most perfect you encapsulated that performance and I I'll I'll tell you a story actually was at was actually at another Studio M mind blowing in it was a large facility but booths weren't soundproof and I was in the middle of doing a scene I was literally I was doing a dubbing scene and I was playing the father on his deathbed and I was

literally in tears and you could hear the dog barking in the hallway we lost the take just like I'm like so from that side I'm like was this like a commercial recording facility or like part of a television or it was a large recording facil got got but that just goes you know like that I have very specific you know like ideas about what my booth should sound like I don't want to hear people I shouldn't be able to hear a dog barking in the hallway I shouldn't be

able to hear something coming through the walls and now we're talking quality over quantity so they have a lot of spaces but not very high quality spaces and all of our studios are one booth facilities and they are not as perfectly tuned as we could get but that one space is optimized for ex exactly what we need to never lose a take to not hear outside noise to not hear somebody you know down below or above or whatever it is it's category bending because I know in home

in studios right there's either commercial Studios yeah home Studios yeah now there's sort of a project Studio middle ground but I wouldn't even call what you're describing a project Studio no it's still a commercial Studio but a personalized commercial it's like it's a commercial Studio of quality and experience on an ex personal one-onone level where that's a really cool unique thing about soundbox I didn't really think of it that way you guys it's one booth one facility one booth one

facility and when you're on the grounds you are the only talent in the entire space so during Co we were the first Studio to get approval from the state the city and the county and sagaa to open before every other studio in California partially because of the isolation that we had in the facility we were a single Booth so you know that no janitor no nope you're not going to pass another talent in the hallway you're not going to run into somebody in the bathroom you know so we work a lot with

high-profile clients who they will come in and they'll take the entire day they'll crash out on the couch they'll order lunch they'll do a photo shoot outside they'll maybe use the house to do makeup in front before they go to a red carpet event type thing that we give that entire space for somebody to use and it becomes a very Boutique you know safe space for people to be in and I think really you know safe comfortable Space is really kind of what I I really

is what all our goal is you know so oh I love that well out of Co from Co then we start dealing with a new covid called AI yeah yes in the time we have left yeah which is nowhere near enough you started

Nava yeah give us a little what was the initial trigger point because it wasn't AI no it wasn't initial trigger to point to start now it tell us about it it was a combination of kind of funds during we had been doing fundraising myself and Karen gilfrey who's our vice president she had a group in New York called voice actors to NYC I had a group in in La here which was the voice over Collective which became the gardener Collective when Jay Preston stepped aside and I

took over and we had spent a lot of time during Co taking donations and giving out financial aid to people and all of that had been going through both of our personal accounts so we were you know we were taking in and giving out 3040 $50,000 a year and we were like you know we're already doing this maybe it would make sense to try and put this into a nonprofit so that we could get it off of our books because you know I'm paying taxes on the money coming in I'm paying

money on on all that going out we were dealing with the financial GI tax mess huge tax M oh my God you know it was just but it had to be done right I mean it was something that needed to be done we were the people to facilitate that instead of going you know we're not going to do this is a tax headache moving on you're like no this has to be done we're going to do it we did it and then we dealt with the issues the ramifications of it later and it wasn't it wasn't terrible but we're like you

know if we're going to do this and if we want to grow this then we should probably put this into a nonprofit and if we're going to put it into a nonprofit what do we offer for a nonprofit and then I said wow you know and I had nothing to follow it up with

but during covid Sega after's healthc care plans changed and they got rid of the eligibility requirements chain first they had two levels of Healthcare in the first tier the lowest tier if you earned 17 $17,000 a year you'd qualify for one level of healthcare if you earned about 24,000 You' you'd qualify for the higher tier they eliminated the lower tier and made the level of requirement much higher 26,000 to $27,000 now sounds like it pulled the ladder so it it was very

tough it was you know it was the reality of unfortunately economics of the situation you know the health plans are based on people working and if people nobody's working money's not going in and how do you maintain the ability to provide healthare for those who qualified so you know that you can have your opinion about whether it was right or wrong or could have been avoided or not avoided the reality is that it happened it wasn't a decision that I don't think was made lightly it was a

decision many people don't agree with and were definitely hurt by so then we were like huh I wonder if there's a way to offer healthc care to an association and surprisingly one of the things that came out of the administration that was in office from 2016 to to 20 2021 was that they ease the requirements for associations to offer Healthcare to their members and so we spent about 2 years working on trying to find an option that would allow us to provide Health Care to our members we

had 87 or 88 rejections and we had one yes and once we got that yes we decided that we had what we needed to offer something that would again not be competition but fill in a need and a void that existed in the industry Y which is where we tried to fit ourselves in and so you know we're actually coming up on our third year anniversary of our announcement we announced at vo Atlanta in 2022 we announced the morning that we got our LLC papers approved and so we

were like okay we got approved let's say we're going to do this thing we didn't have Healthcare we said we were going to do health care but we also said we're going to make our best effort and if we fail at least we will have failed trying to make this happen if we succeed it's going to be amazing and so so you know we did succeed and we got Healthcare we launched in November of 2022 with access to National healthc care plan for all of our members and anybody who joined after 30 days like

with a business after 30 days you can then just sign up for the healthcare plan there's no earning requirements there's nothing else needed and so we launched right away I'm personally on the healthcare I'm on the plan myself so is Matthew who's our director of operations we've got 150 members or so on the plan and we offer there's eight different levels of health care that you can get through us including vision and dental and pet and life insurance and auto insurance all those things you can

get through Nava now we've expanded our offerings as we've gone through the last few years but as soon as we launch in

November of 2022 Apple audiobooks announced their AI Audi books and we all of a sudden were like wait what is this thing I think this is going to be a problem for voice actors kind of sat on it for a few months and then in Fe February of 2023 coming back from vocation there was a weekend where 13 or 14,000 audio files from voice actors showed up on a website called fake you and another website called Uber duck and we were like okay this is a huge problem now this is something

that is not just a theoretical but is something this is a form of identity theft yeah so identity theft IP theft copyright theft biometric dat yeah and we jumped directly into that conversation and I'm actually doing a panel at One Voice UK called from the garage to the UN how Nava became a player on the global stage around a I think is what we're calling it so in and it was pretty much like a one-year span of

time by February of 2023 and by November of 2024 we'd had 35 meetings on Capitol Hill with lawmakers on that we jumped right in we got airm to help help us get access we got a lobbying firm we got lawyers we put ourselves directly into that conversation wow because you had you know chat GPT you had 11 Labs you have murf doai you have a lot of companies showing up that are using voice actors voices to create their platforms some ethically some not ethically some

licensed some not licensed and so you know we wanted to look at this not from an AI regulation standpoint but from an American rights standpoint and a human rights standpoint which is that we should have the right to own the protections of our voice image name and likeness and that's been our Pursuit for the last you know going on two years now we've now had over 80 meetings with senators and Congress people and politicians on a federal level we helped write the voice Amendment for the EU AI

act in 2022 with another group we started in my spare time called United voice artists which is a global Coalition of voice acting associations I presented to the UN twice now on these concerns you know we are now helping set Global AI policy for voice associations wow it's just you know it's nuts and we're going shortly after this interview is recorded we're actually going to Sacramento we're sponsoring co-sponsoring our first bill and we're going to speak at a press conference in

Sacramento at the introduction of this bill alongside sag aftera and the concept art Association so it's sponsored by seaa National Association of voice actors and concept art Association we're the three sponsors of the bill and that's what we've done in 2 and a half years to that point it's fantastic I mean it really is amazing and it's because of the dues right is that how you're able to make this happen the the membership dues and donations yeah membership dues pay for that Nava

is a 501c3 and a 501 C6 nonprofits can't do lobbying unless they're a 501 C6 so we have a lobbying arm which is the 501 C6 and that's what travels and goes and works and these things then we have the 501c3 which handles the donations the Brad Venable scholarship the scholarships we're doing to VI Atlanta financial aid legal a we don't even have close to the amount of time to really get in I mean we could talk for a half hour about Brad Venable we could talk for a half hour about like all these

different initiatives and everything and and we wouldn't even we we still wouldn't get through it all and that's the shame of the format of this little interview you know but that maybe that gives us more opportunities for you and I to talk but it is fantastic fantastic and just I'm really Blown Away with what you've accomplished it's so amazing it is no small feat to last 20 plus years in Los Angeles I'm telling you from my own personal experience and that not not

that you've only just survived but now with all these new things it's clearly you're thriving too and that is just freaking awesome I'm just Blown Away really it's it's not an easy town to do either of those things in no you know but but we're here and doing it so where

do we direct people that want to know more about Nava and maybe possibly themselves yeah navavoor and then soundbox is soundbox Dola so you can find those two nav

voices. org has all the information on the front page all the membership stuff is there Healthcare info is there so you can take a look at the healthcare prior to that but you know all of those things are just a you know little small components of the totality of what Nava is so you know there's free classes every month there's legal aid resources Rob sigin Paglia we'll do contract reviews for people we have financial aid if you need it we have a Cal Fire fund

which you've been helped you help and you got involved with the VA for La got involved with that and yep we've been providing equipment and gear for talent who lost it in the fire and this is still open so if you're listening to this and you still have needs reach out to go to navavoor and find the information there as long as this video is out likely people are still going to have needs yeah we've given out about $20,000 in just direct financial aid to voice actors and a large amount of gear

has gone out the community stepped up and donated a bunch of equipment so we've been handling that and uh I got to do that it was so cool I got to literally hand to an actor yeah you know acoustical panels and yeah a mic and just send her off on her way yeah and you know no obligation people have donated it and you know it's not we're not loaning somebody a microphone for 6 months and asking for it back you know we give them the equipment they get to keep it and hopefully use it to rebuild

their Studio their life I mean you way to resume earning which is so yeah exactly y gosh man well I can't imagine I I can't imagine but I'm Blown Away with what you're able to accomplish it it really is amazing that you're able to manage it all and keep doing what you're doing I will always be a fan of you Tim

and thank you for also providing tech support from time to time for our people which you know is so valuable because I can't be an expert in everything and I'm not so yeah well and you know neither are we and that's why we have a great team you know to shout out to the Nava team and to the soundbox crew that I can go out of town I can go to DC for a week still know that the team here in La is going to keep running the studios and that we have a great team of people you

know Michelle Haynes and Carson Beck and paiso and Paul Merc and you've been helping facilitate some of that as well and we've got Christy Bowen in Nashville and Chris schula in Boston that these people have been the right people have stepped up and provided the space and same thing with Nava you know myself Karen gilfrey and Matthew parm who's our director of operations and our entire board yeah you know but between all of us if I can't do it somebody else steps

up and does it and when somebody else can't do it I step in and do it we're here because we always say yes that was like it's the biggest joke with with Nava is that like if anybody at the beginning if K or myself or somebody else had just said you know what no I don't think that's a good idea you shouldn't do it we all would have been all right cool no big deal I'll go about doing what I do but nobody said no so we all just kept saying yes and here we are

so oh thank you Tim yeah thanks always a pleasure man I guess I'll see you in Atlanta then yeah yeah exactly see you there somewhere else other than Los some in Los Angeles yeah exactly thanks buddy take care all right cool man thanks see it GT not sure if your Studio's audio sounds competitive a sound check by George the tech removes all doubts and explains the next steps audiobooks podcasts voiceovers for Content creators we do it all new customers get 20% off

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