21: From side hustle to a new career

If you listen to audiobooks, you may have heard Mike Lenz on Audible. Mike is a voiceover actor who has narrated about 170 titles over the past 15 years.

When  Mike started doing voiceover in 2006, he was working as a pharmacist and running his own business. For some 10 years, he narrated books and voiced other projects on the side. Today, Mike is a full-time voiceover actor and works with corporate clients and major publishers, like Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster.

In this episode of Career Switch Podcast, Mike shares how he learned his craft, the mental challenges he had about making his career change, and the decade he remained, as he calls it, “persistently consistent” with his side hustle to make voiceover acting his new career after age 50.  


Find Mike Lenz at:

Website: https://mikelenzvoice.com

Podcast: https://mikelenzvopodcast.com

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/mikelenzvo

TikTok: www.tiktok.com/@mikelenzvoice

Instagram: www.instagram.com/mikelenzvoice

Voiceover course: https://vosuccess.com

Audiobook mentioned in episode:
Sell More with Science by David Hoffeld on Audible


More episodes for making a career change after age 50:
Ep 4: Aged out: Making a career switch at over 50
Ep 16: Starting a new career after 50
Ep 18: The pros and cons of being a full-time author
Ep 23: How being bilingual helps your new career
Ep 32: How to make a career change after 50
Ep 41: Pursuing your passion at any age

Music credit: TimMoor from Pixabay 

Podcast info:
What's your career switch? What do you think about this episode and the show? Tell us at careerswitchpod.com. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Transcript

Lixandra: Hi, everyone. I'm Lixandra Urresta, and this is Career Switch Podcast. This show is here to encourage you to take action with whatever career change you're considering or working on. Maybe you're trying to switch industries or professions or break out on your own and start a business. 

In some episodes, I talk to people who've made their own career switch, whether by choice or circumstance. They share the good, the bad, and the truth about their journey, including what worked for them and what didn't. In other episodes, I speak with experts who offer their best career advice on challenges that can come up during the process of making a career change. After all, it takes guts to switch things up, and it's not easy. However, it is possible. So I hope you hear something in this episode, an idea, a suggestion, a piece of advice that will spur you into action with your own career switch, whether it's taking that first bold step or trying something new. Welcome. I'm glad you're here. 

If you listen to audiobooks, you may have heard today's guest on Audible. Voiceover actor Mike Lenz has narrated around 170 titles over the past 15 years. When Mike started doing voiceover in 2006, he was actually working as a pharmacist and running his own pharmacy. For some 10 years, he narrated books and voiced other projects on the side. In 2018, he sold his business and went into voiceover full-time. Today, Mike works with corporate clients such as Microsoft and Coca-Cola, as well as major publishers like Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster. He also recently landed his first on-air TV commercial. In this episode, Mike shares how he learned his craft, the mental challenges he had about making his career switch, and the 10 years he remained, as he calls it, persistently consistent with his side hustle to make voiceover acting his new career. 

Hi, Mike. Thanks for joining us today. Let's dive in. What were you doing before your career switch and what led up to it?

Mike: I graduated from pharmacy college, so I ran a small independent pharmacy in our hometown and it was owned by my father previously. And the pharmacy has been there since 1872 when the building was built. We fortunately own the building and the pharmacy. And so I went into the family business. I enjoyed that. I enjoyed being a small business owner. I enjoyed being part of our downtown community, but I also had other things that I wanted to explore. So in addition to that, I also got involved in local politics ended up running for office and I served as both finance commissioner for a number of years and then mayor as well of our hometown. And then, um, at some point I lost a reelection bid and it was a really close race and everybody in my political party basically got thrown out of office. And it just was one of those moments in your life where you kind of had that pivot moment where I'm like, okay, I've kind of burned myself out of this political fire that I had inside my belly. I'd kind of had enough of it. My wife and I were having children, building our home. I was growing our business. And once I got out, I knew I didn't really want to get back in. So I had more free time on my hands to explore other things. And that's when I let my creative side kind of bubble to the surface and started exploring screenwriting. Had some amateur success doing some screenwriting and joined a local filmmakers group. And at one of the meetings, somebody was passing out these flyers for voiceover training and a light bulb went on. And I'm like, wait a minute. One of the things I really missed about being mayor was using my voice to communicate. I really enjoyed speaking to groups and speaking on television and radio. And I really liked using my voice to communicate. And so I thought, wait a minute, I could use my voice to communicate. I could get paid for it and I wouldn't have to run for office again. So I thought I'm going to try this out. And as soon as I took my first lesson. I was hooked. I knew I really wanted to be behind the microphone and try to make this a career. I wasn't sure how I was going to make that happen, but I knew I wanted to give it a try.

Lixandra: You started taking these voiceover lessons in 2006. What did you learn in the course?

Mike: A lot has changed since I started 15 years ago. Way back then, it was a training company. So you would go in and you would work with them for a number of sessions. I don't remember what it was, five or six sessions. And they'd go over different principles of voice acting and essentially teach you how to read copy, interpret copy, how to read words on a piece of paper and not sound like you're reading words on a piece of paper, how to act, how to emote, how to understand mic placement and where you should be in relation to the microphone. And it was really fundamental training for me. And at the end of that, those sessions, they created a demo for me. So that back in the day was a CD and it was kind of your calling card that you would send out to different producers and radio stations and say, Hey, look, I can do this. Here's my demo CD. And so that was fundamentally what I learned back then. Now things have changed dramatically where everything is online and you can take courses with individual coaches. There's amazing individual coaches and training companies that are out there. I do some coaching as well, and I have a course that I offer people that are aspiring voice actors. So coaching is really, really important. And I'm so thankful that I did that at the beginning of my career because it really created that foundation that allowed me to grow from there.

Lixandra: How did you transition into voiceover once you finished the course? Did you have to work on the side while you were still running your pharmacy?

Mike: I always say I did it in the margins for many years. So again, remember when I first got involved in voiceover, I was firmly entrenched in my brick and mortar business and running it. I had this idea that I might like to learn more about this industry, which is why I took the training, but I had to come up with a plan in terms of what I was going to do. It's hard when you're entrenched in doing something else in a particular career. to be able to even contemplate doing something else. We often tell ourselves, well, I can't do anything more than what I'm doing now, or I can't, I just can't do that. That's impossible. So I had to kind of force myself to work through the process. What I knew in the beginning was that I loved to do it. What I knew when I first started taking my coaching was that I wanted to do more of it. I felt alive. So I did it in the margins for about 10 years and I just slowly started getting my demo out there, auditioning, connecting, networking with other voiceover people and in the industry. And then I slowly developed a small client base. So it became a side hustle. And then eventually got to the point where I branched out, started doing some podcast producing because I created my own VO podcast to help people that were like me that started 10 years ago and didn't really know what to do. And it was really when I did my podcast, which started about seven years ago. As I started talking to other voice actors who were further along in their career than me, then I realized that it could be done at least as a legitimate part-time job and maybe as a full-time job. So I kind of reinvigorated my efforts to, to make this a reality. And that was about, like I said, seven years ago. And then about five years ago, I'd gotten to the point where I had grown the business as far as I could grow it. I was about 50 at the time and I said, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it now. And so I made the decision to sell the pharmacy, which we did about four years ago and went into VO full time. So it was a progression for me and every step of the way I had to weigh different things and make sure it was the right time and kind of know when the scale had tilted enough to make the jump.

Lixandra: How did you land your first client?

Mike: I got business cards printed up and I, I remember going to a fundraiser and it was obviously post my political career. Somebody walked up to me and said, Hey, you don't know me, but I know you. And I'm like, really, who are you? And he said, I'm the guy that handled all the media for your first mayoral campaign. Now we never met because your manager had talked to me. He gave me his business card and I gave him my card, which I had just created. And I'm like, well, guess what I'm doing? I'm doing voiceovers. And he is a producer, a media producer. He's like, well, let me keep it in mind. I'll give you a call if anything comes up. A few weeks later, I got a call at the pharmacy and he said, Hey, can you do a hard read? I'm like, yeah, sure. I can do a hard read. He was all right. I need you in the studio in a couple of weeks and, uh, I'll get the script to you and we'll book it in the studio. And I hung up the phone thinking I just got my first paid gig. And then the next thing out of my, in my mind was what's a hard read. I had no idea what a hard read was, but I just said, yeah, I can do it. So I had to look up what a hard read was.

Lixandra: So what was the job?

Mike: It was a local, um, car dealership. So it was kind of a high energy car commercial read. And that was my first gig, a paid gig as a voice actor. It was about seven months after I finished my training. Um, and it was because I met somebody at a cocktail party and I handed them my business card and we were off to the races.

Lixandra: Okay. So looking back, what are some ups and downs that you went through while making your career switch?

Mike: It's not a linear path. That's for sure. The voiceover industry is, is a networked industry, like a lot of industries. And it's about relationships. That takes time. And it can be very frustrating when you're not making the progress that you want to be making. Especially when you set a goal of something like changing your career, you know, and you're, there's a lot at stake. There's a lot that you're putting on the line and a lot that you're risking. So you don't want to make a mistake. And so you want to do it the right way. And that's hard because there isn't necessarily a right way in the voiceover industry.

Lixandra: How does it work, would you say?

Mike: Think of Silicon Valley or Boulder, Colorado, where there's these incubators, where people are grabbing coffee and talking to somebody and they're throwing around app ideas and some throwing spaghetti at the wall to see if it sticks. And then they say, Hey, let's partner on this and let's make this happen. And some of them work and some of them don't, but it's this constant interaction between colleagues. And that's what this industry is all about. It's about making progress. So in the beginning, it's hard because you want to make those connections with people that are successful in the industry. And it's hard to connect with them on social media and not be spamming. And it's hard to meet and convince them to give you advice. And it's hard to audition a hundred times before you book one gig. And most people, they focus so much on their tech and they want to go, I got the, I wouldn't got my microphone and I got my computer and I got my interface. So because it's tangible and they can see progress, but then what ends up happening is they get all the tech stuff and then they don't exactly know how to get a job. This positive excitement then becomes unfortunately more of a negative because they start feeling bad because they're not booking and, and then they sort of forget about it and then they stop.

Lixandra: So how did you handle having a side hustle while running the pharmacy and just not knowing if it was going to work out or not?

Mike: For me, there were always these ebbs and flows, especially when I was trying to run my, my, my full-time business and having to come home, have dinner with my family and then run downstairs and record an audio book or do crank out 10 or 15 auditions and then do the same thing, get up early in the morning and try to do auditions before I went to work. being at work and seeing auditions come in and know that I couldn't get to them until I got home at six o'clock. So frustrating. Watching other voice actors who it seemed like they were being, having more success than me. So frustrating. People say, well, how, how come you made it? How did, how were you able to do it? And I say, look, the only thing that I can distinguish between myself and other people is not that I'm necessarily more talented, but that I am persistently consistent. So I just kept doing it. Whatever came along that was, you know, take one step forward and then all of a sudden two steps back. I just got up in the morning and went back at it and went back at it, kept doing it until I started to get traction. It is a traction business. And if you're not willing to put the time in the grunt work to get yourself built up on social media, to make those connections, to do those auditions, to get the coaching, it's going to be really hard. Unfortunately for a lot of cases, people get discouraged and they stop. So I had a lot of those moments, but I'm like, I'm just going to keep doing it because I love it so much.

Lixandra: Now, when we first spoke, you said that it took you a while to call yourself a voiceover actor. What was that about?

Mike: Yeah, it was. I mean, I was in politics, so mayor and pharmacist, voice actor. They don't seem to, you know, they don't seem to fit together because, you know, you think of a pharmacist or a mayor as more buttoned down and a little more mature. You don't think of a creative soul, but I always had this creative part in me. I knew it from when I was, when I think back from when I was a young child, always had this creative piece of me that I kind of pushed down. We tend to think of ourselves in three ways. There's the person that we think we are, there's the person that other people think we are, and then there's the person that we think other people think we are. And unfortunately, a lot of people, myself included, spent a lot of time in that third category. We end up being the person that we think other people think we are. So I had, you know, really focused my efforts politically and I would have taken the political path as long as it continued to be open for me. It was closed for me and I'm very thankful that it did, but I don't think I would have stopped if I had lost the election. So my brain was really in that, you know, I'm going to take this as far as I can go mode. I'm the same with my business. People would come in and they're asking me questions as a pharmacist, you know, I had to know what I was talking about. There's that calm authority that you have that you, that you espouse to people and you start to, to play this part, you know, that people believe you to be. Even though in my mind, I was like, I'm not sure if I want to do this anymore, but I still had to go to work and I still had to serve that purpose to, to my customers.

Lixandra: How did you work through that mental challenge?

Mike: When I first started, I would tell people, I'm going to do this voice acting thing. And people, some people would laugh. Some people, you know, hit you on the shoulder like, okay, Mike, yeah, good luck with that. That was hard, you know, to get over because again, you're, you're stuck in that third description of yourself. And I had to move over into the first one, which is, who do you think you are? Who do you want to be? And as I slowly got myself to that point and started to do that on all of my social media, now flash forward 10 years, most people that know me, when you ask them who I am and what I do, they say, oh, Mike, he's an audio book narrator. He's a voice actor. When I tell people I was a pharmacist, usually they're surprised. They're like, whoa, you were a pharmacist? Oh, you were the mayor? So the worm has turned. It took a lot of time and a lot of effort, mental, physical, to change that. I didn't want to like scrub my past because I always talk about it. But what I promote on my social media sites is who I really truly feel that I am right now, which is that, an audiobook narrator, podcast producer, voice actor. But it took a while to overcome first the mental and then the actual physically creating your presence on social media that more reflected who I was and who I am.

Lixandra: What about the fact that you switched to a creative career? Your success and income will vary depending on the gigs that you get in voice acting. What part did that play with how you thought out your career switch?

Mike: Yeah, it's not a salaried position by any means. The advantage I think that I had was that I was already a small business owner. So I had really cut my teeth grown up really in the pharmacy business. So I watched my father run a small business. It was in my blood. And I think that really gave me an advantage because being a small business owner, remember I owned the pharmacy and it went through several manifestations in terms of what it was. It was a traditional pharmacy. Then it was a hybrid pharmacy where we did traditional and custom compounding. And then it became exclusively a compounding only pharmacy and they do nutritional counseling and sell nutritional supplements. So it went through manifestations and there was never any guarantee along that path because we all know the pharmacy industry has gone through so much evolution over the, over the decades. So being a small business owner in the pharmacy industry, you really had to be really good at what you did and be very cognizant of dollars and cents. That really honed my skills in the business area.

Lixandra: So just like there were ups and downs in running the pharmacy, you now have ups and downs with voiceover acting.

Mike: There have been so many ups and downs in my career that there have been times where I'm wringing my hands going, wow, did I make the right decision? And there are times when I'm too busy. I don't have enough time to do all the work that's on my plate. Fortunately, I was able to develop over the years, great relationships with producers, with audio book production companies and clients that I've been able to have a fairly good sense of what I'm going to make from week to week. And that continues to grow, but there is never a guarantee.

Lixandra: So for those times when you wonder if you made the right decision, what do you focus on?

Mike: It's focusing on what makes me truly come alive. What purpose am I serving on this planet? My faith is very important to me and I want to make sure that I'm using the gifts that I've been given to the utmost. And I, for whatever reason, have been given the gift of being able to have a voice that does have calm authority to it, that people do like to listen to. And I feel that I'm doing that every single day when I get in front of this microphone and record something for my clients. The other thing that's really fills me up is that our children, we have four children. And I always kind of felt when I was doing politics and doing the pharmacy that you just sort of have a sense that something's off. It's not exactly what you want to do. And I could kind of tell that my kids knew that I wasn't all in, you know, in those other careers. Whereas now when I talk to my children, several of them have said multiple times that they admire that I'm following a passion. I'm following a path that I love to do. And being a role model to my kids is probably the greatest gift that this career change has been for me.

Lixandra: All right. Thanks for sharing that with us, Mike. So what kind of voiceover projects do you work on? Where may we have heard you?

Mike: Primarily I do audio book narration, primarily nonfiction. If you have an Audible subscription, you can just type in Mike Lenz in the search bar and you'll see all my titles. I've done about 116, 170 titles to date. I love long form narration, and I love reading books where I learn all kinds of great stuff because they're typically business and self-help and Christian books. I do some smattering of fiction here and there, which is always fun as well. I also do a lot of e-learning, corporate video narration. I got my very first on-air television commercial voiceover gig this past year in 2021. It was for Dick's Sporting Goods. It was one word in the middle of this commercial, but I remember watching it on TV going, I did it. I could check that box off. I made it. I'm on a TV commercial.

Lixandra: Congrats. I actually learned about you when I saw your LinkedIn post that you were working on your first audio book narration title for Penguin Random House. That's big. The book is called Sell More with Science by David Hoffeld and it's out now, right?

Mike: Yeah, I just finished recording that a few weeks ago, which was a directed session, which was really fun. Penguin Random House, they're kind of the gold standard, if you will, in the, in the audio book industry because of the way that they record their audio books. They typically direct all of them. And what that means is usually when I get books, I'll get the book, the manuscript and the deadline, and then I record it on my own. In this case, I worked with a director via zoom for three days and he listened as I recorded and he would catch mistakes and he would also give me direction. He would say, okay, well that line, let's give it a little bit more emotion. Let's maybe with this line, I want you to inflect on that word. And it was my first experience doing a directed session, especially with long form. I do a lot of directed sessions for short, quick projects. It was a great experience and absolutely loved doing it.

Lixandra: You mentioned social media earlier. How does social media help you get jobs?

Mike: From all my social media profiles, LinkedIn is the one where I get most of my work from. Like people find me on LinkedIn and then reach out and want to hire me because I'm connecting with people that are, you know, instructional designers, chief learning officers, video producers. e-learning producers. So I'll do the search and I'll ask them to connect, say, Hey, we have some mutual connections and then say, Hey, this is what I do. Uh, if I can ever be of help, let me know, give them a link to my website and that's it. Like not spam me. Like we set up a call. I don't do that. It's the difference between selling to somebody and somebody wanting to buy from you. It's kind of the same transaction, but you want to make it so that people are interested in what it is that you offer them.

Lixandra: What about TikTok? I mean, that platform has just blown up.

Mike: There's so many audiobook narrators that are on TikTok now, and it's really a great platform for audiobook narrators because you can record yourself narrating. It's just a really cool platform for voice actors because it's really robust and very interactive, and the video creation tools that they have are really good. So as far from all the social media platforms, it's really video centric, and I like it so far.

Lixandra: What advice do you have for our listeners who are working on making their career switch?

Mike: Focus on what makes you come alive, especially in the world that we live in now, where there's just so much going on. Just try to find something that makes you come alive. Steve Jobs said, you know, you can't connect the dots going forward. You can only connect them going backwards. So just keep looking, keep looking. If you're not finding something that's really fulfilling you, then keep trying until you find it, because it will make all the difference in the world, because we really need more people that are truly alive.

Lixandra: And for anyone out there who's interested in voiceover acting, you also have a podcast where they can get lots of advice about the industry. Tell us about it.

Mike: It's the Mike Lenz VO Podcast. You can find it at MikeLenz, M-I-K-E-L-E-N-Z, VOPodcast.com. It's a wonderful podcast for anybody who's interested in getting involved in the VO industry or even people that already are over 125 guests. And everybody talks about their journey. We talk about some of the hurdles they've had to overcome. The last question is always, what's a single piece of advice you could give to an aspiring voice actor? So there's always kind of a golden nugget that you can take away. I learned so much every time I interview my guests. So even if you're in the industry, but you want to learn more about it, it always helps because as I mentioned, it's a networked industry to learn from our colleagues and learn from each other.

Lixandra: Thanks to Mike Lenz for being our guest today. You can find Mike at MikeLenzVoice.com on his social media and on his podcast, The Mike Lenz VO Podcast. You can find links to the resources mentioned in this episode and more helpful information in the show notes and on our website, careerswitchpod.com. 

So what's your career switch? Are you motivated to take action after listening to this episode? Tell us at careerswitchpod.com. We'd love to know, along with any feedback you have about the show. Let us know too, if you'd like to be a guest. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn at careerswitchpod. And please rate, review, and share with your friends and colleagues. It'll help get the show out there. Thanks for listening today. Till next time.