Will AI Replace Voice Actors and Authors? | Aaron Ryan

PROFITABLE TALKS...

In this episode of The Profitable Creative, Christian Brim sits down with author and voice actor Aaron Ryan for a wide-ranging conversation about creativity, storytelling, voice acting, AI disruption, unions, intellectual property, and the mindset required to turn artistic passion into sustainable income.

Aaron shares how Lord of the Rings, childhood writing clubs, and a second-grade novella sparked his love of storytelling, eventually leading him into a career as both a published author and professional voice actor. The two also dive deep into the economics of creative work, including investments vs. expenses, audition discipline, the impact of AI on voice acting, and why creators shouldn’t feel guilty about making money from their art.

PROFITABLE TAKEAWAYS...

• Creativity is a long-game business 
•  Discipline matters more than inspiration 
•  Great storytelling creates lasting emotional connection 
•  There’s a difference between spending money and investing in growth 
•  AI is disrupting creative industries and increasing trust issues 
•  Creators shouldn’t feel guilty about making money from their work 
•  Persistence is often the difference between quitting and succeeding 
•  Self-employment means building your own dream 
•  Authenticity is becoming more valuable in a world flooded with AI 
•  Storytelling is ultimately about legacy 

Join our community of creative entrepreneurs and get a free copy of our No-BS Guide To Making Your Creative Business Actually Profitable delivered straight to your inbox. We’ll share smart, simple tips to help you keep more of what you earn—no boring accountant talk, we promise.  
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Transcript

Christian Brim (00:02.86)
Welcome to another edition of the profitable creative the only place on the interwebs where you will learn how to turn your passion into profit. am your host Christian Brim special shout out to our one listener in Athens, Georgia. If I'm not mistaken, that's home of the University of Georgia. I can't say go dogs, but thank you for listening. Joining me today, author Aaron Ryan, Aaron, welcome to the show.

Author Aaron Ryan (00:30.035)
Thanks for having me. It's good to be here. I appreciate it.

Christian Brim (00:32.746)
Yeah, I'm an OU alum and recently moving to the SEC. just, can't, I can't say go dogs. It's easier than hook of horns. I can tell you that. I, I, that just goes all over me. tell us about how you became an author.

Author Aaron Ryan (00:43.443)
You

Author Aaron Ryan (00:51.632)
Wow, so gosh, it's really funny because I think I have multiple origin stories as an author. So I'll try to like, explain to you. So the very first one I remember is I was a kid, I was in second grade. Mrs. Walker gave everyone an assignment to write a little novella. And I think I must have been in the thick of reading the novelization of E.T. by Alan Dean Foster. So committed blatant copyright ripoff and infringement by

Christian Brim (00:56.652)
Hmm, of course.

Author Aaron Ryan (01:21.564)
taking some of what he put and putting it in mine. Although my own spin and my exquisite stick figure drawings that I put in there, crudeness aplenty, that's the first thing I remember writing. But I remember being in a young author's club when I was 10. In fact, there's newspaper clippings my mom kept and showed me. And I look back at that and go, of course I'm an author now. I was in a young author's club. And then the third one would be reading The Lord of the Rings as a kid, just absolutely

not the Hobbit, not the Silmarillion, the Lord of the Rings blew my mind, just exposed me to the robustness of world building and character establishment and everything. So, kind of showed me what I could do, not that I have any Tolkien, but what I wanted to do as well. So, there you go.

Christian Brim (02:08.91)
My kids, two of them, had a middle school English teacher that that's what he taught from was Lord of the Rings. That was it. And it was all the grammar and vocabulary. That was how he taught English. I'm like, huh, that's interesting. Yeah. Yeah.

Author Aaron Ryan (02:10.608)
Thank

Author Aaron Ryan (02:27.602)
The language is.

Author Aaron Ryan (02:34.17)
Yeah, I would have loved to have been in that class.

Christian Brim (02:38.336)
I mean, Tolkien seems to just stand in his own, you know, I too love those books. I also remember, you said world building. That's what I really liked. I played Dungeons and Dragons as a kid and the whole imagination of building just this whole world.

really intrigued me and of course Tolkien excuse me had a lot of influence on Dungeons and Dragons and yeah I don't I don't know that anybody's risen to his level yet in the modern age although I think the author's name is is Pierce Brown Red Rising series have you read that?

Author Aaron Ryan (03:14.599)
Mm.

Author Aaron Ryan (03:33.909)
I've heard of it, yeah I haven't read it, but it looks phenomenal. It looks phenomenal.

Christian Brim (03:37.838)
Well, I just I just my son said, Hey, you know, last year, he said, you need to read this. And I'm like, Yeah, okay. And as I started reading it, I went through all six books as fast as I get them from the library. And now I'm sitting here because the way it ended and I'm like, there's got to be another book. But that's the that's the power to me of world building and storytelling is like you just really can't get enough like I want more.

Author Aaron Ryan (03:58.129)
you

Author Aaron Ryan (04:06.542)
Yeah. Yeah.

Christian Brim (04:08.014)
I described it I actually got my wife who's not a sci-fi fan to to start reading it and I I described it to her as kind of like Game of Thrones in space like it's that's not a great analogy, but it's the best I can come up with But yeah, just powerful stuff powerful writing I mean like really great storytelling anyway character development

Author Aaron Ryan (04:26.011)
Hmm.

Author Aaron Ryan (04:31.319)
It sounds like it. Yeah, sounds like it.

Christian Brim (04:33.646)
Highly recommend. So what is the genre of your preference?

Author Aaron Ryan (04:39.057)
I'm a sci-fi writer at heart post apocalyptic and dystopian is kind of my wheelhouse But for those of you who are joining us visually, there's a there's a smattering Excuse me of all kinds of different genres behind me. There's nonfiction. There's kids books there's there's a Literary criticism historical fiction thrillers alien invasion blah blah blah, but I I would not have written the kids books Yeah, and these ones right here if I can point to them correctly

Christian Brim (04:41.496)
Okay.

Hmm.

Christian Brim (05:01.186)
And those are all books that you wrote? Those are all your, okay.

Author Aaron Ryan (05:07.857)
These are the kids books that I would not have written but for having a now 10 and six year old son. So I wrote one for the older of the two and then I still don't know why I even see this coming. I brought it home and showed it to him and Brennan's going, oh, it's wonderful. And then my six year old Asher goes, that's great daddy, where's mine? And I don't know why I didn't see that coming. So it evolved into a trilogy and this is the one for Asher, The Sword of Joy right here. But I really mostly, I feel,

Christian Brim (05:13.55)
Mmm.

Author Aaron Ryan (05:37.421)
not safest, but I feel most in my wheelhouse and most comfortable and in my element scribing any post-apocalyptic or dystopian fare.

Christian Brim (05:49.282)
Well, you that's interesting because one of I can remember I don't remember the author. I remember one author that I read when I was young that wasn't an adult writer was Ursula K. Le Guin. I don't remember specifically what book I books I read from her, but I remember there there there being very compelling. the one and maybe she wrote this series The Dark is Rising undersea over stone.

It's wild that I read these books when I was seven and they're still stuck with me at almost 56. Like I, they were just so compelling, right? I don't know. It's just, that's the power of a great story.

Author Aaron Ryan (06:28.474)
Thanks, Paul.

Author Aaron Ryan (06:34.702)
Yeah, Tolkien is a master at that and I would dare say Ted Decker, although I haven't read, not Ted Decker, Pierce, Brown or whatever it is with Red Rising. If you are left with this compulsion and this yearning for a new element or a new installment in the story, that's powerful writing because the thing for me as a writer is I love where fantasy blurs the line with reality. I have some of my favorite characters in the Dissonance Saga, their birthdays.

Christian Brim (06:49.656)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (06:58.926)
Hmm.

Author Aaron Ryan (07:03.565)
are on my real life Outlook calendar. Because they're alive, they're your creations and the story exists on, even though I'm not presently reading it, and you want them to call every now and then, you check in and see how they're doing and they're very real to you, is the narrative.

Christian Brim (07:06.99)
Mmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (07:22.636)
Yeah, I heard another author talk about like the their characters talking to them, like, you know, this just like this compulsion to get get it out because like they they're so real.

Author Aaron Ryan (07:35.214)
Right. This shirt says, being a writer is the best way I know how to get paid for being insane. That is, I can relate very much to that, that author that you're mentioning.

Christian Brim (07:40.589)
You

Christian Brim (07:47.092)
Yeah, okay, so you said you also do voiceover. How did you get into that?

Author Aaron Ryan (07:51.939)
Yep, accidentally. And I think that's one of the best ways to stumble into something is you just, you're left reeling and you go, wow, I kind of, really like this. But I was working as a telemarketer. I'm really glad this interview isn't going anywhere on the internet so anybody finds that out. just, shh. But I was, it was a cool job. I will say that I was calling people on behalf of local radio stations and I was selling PSAs.

Christian Brim (08:03.106)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (08:08.726)
Right. I too was a telemarketer. I may we can swap stories.

Author Aaron Ryan (08:21.825)
or CSA, some people call them. And so you would say, hey, it's Aaron Ryan on behalf of KPLZ. How you doing? And instantly they go, what I win. They think they won something. And we would sell them the PSAs, but you have to read them a sample of the PSA. For example, keeping kids away from drinking and driving or encouraging parents to use a kid code so their child doesn't get abducted. And then good sound advice brought to you is a courtesy by Bob's Plumbing.

Christian Brim (08:22.478)
Okay.

Christian Brim (08:32.632)
Right.

Author Aaron Ryan (08:51.214)
Well, I'm on the phone with Bob and Bob goes, yeah, that sounds great. We'll buy if you read. And I was, I'm the telemarketer. I'm going, hold please. And you know, I had to look around and can I read this? He wants me to read this. And so I got into the studio, I slapped the headphones on, read the script, heard it with the sound bed and went, I like this a lot. This is cool. So kind of stumbled into it.

Christian Brim (09:19.67)
So that's a different origin story than one of our guests, recent guest, Connor Quinn is an OG voice actor, but he actually started in acting as a child and then morphed into voice acting, which it's interesting you use the term voiceover versus voice acting. Would you make a distinction in that?

Author Aaron Ryan (09:47.958)
No, they're totally interchangeable. Voice actor, voiceover artist, voiceover, you hear it all the time and it just, it's completely interchangeable.

Christian Brim (09:58.412)
He told an interesting story. His coach, and I don't know how old Connor is, but he's at least as old as I am. His coach out in California was the guy that did the voiceover for Hanna-Babara for Yogi the Bear and some of those people. And he remembers distinctly him telling him like,

Specifically, Yogi the bear, like this character is real to him. He knows why he wears a tie, why he wears that hat, know, all of the background that goes into that character that you don't know, because it's never spoken about, right? But like, that's how he he's developed the character to do the voice. And and like, it's not about

Author Aaron Ryan (10:38.646)
Hmm psychology.

Author Aaron Ryan (10:45.516)
Right.

Christian Brim (10:55.842)
the your voice or the voice is about the character.

Author Aaron Ryan (10:59.691)
Right. Well, as a voice actor slash voiceover artist, if you please, I, my bread and butter predominantly comes from e-learning and from corporate. Like for example, I'm the voice of United healthcare right now. So all the commercials that you see radio, TV, web, with a smattering of some other voices that they've had, that's been me and it's been super lucrative. You talk about a profitable creative.

That's another one that I stumbled into and it's really provided a huge bounty of income, very lucrative, but for AI, the economy, low-balling clients, underbidding colleagues, eroding at that bottom line. But it's been super, super fun. Now that's not acting per se, I'm bringing a script to life, reading it normally, so it's a measure of acting, but then you switch to audio books or you switch to character and video games.

Christian Brim (11:50.924)
Hmm.

Author Aaron Ryan (11:53.267)
Much more acting is involved in that. But one of the best things I ever learned as a voice actor is what you have to sound absolutely natural. It sounds needs to sound very conversational. You can't sound you can't read and sound like you're reading is the issue there. And many people fail at that.

Christian Brim (11:55.81)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (12:13.39)
That just reminds me, I was rewatching the Seinfeld episode where they did the show Jerry, where they wrote the pilot to produce a movie, a show about, which is essentially the same show. And they were interviewing or casting characters. And Kramer comes in to interview for his own piece. And he

Author Aaron Ryan (12:27.53)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (12:42.39)
he reads the script completely unnatural for him. Like it was like he was trying to act and and the whole thing was so funny because the guy that actually took his spot was acting just like Kramer. But but when Kramer auditioned, he didn't act like Kramer. He started acting like somebody else. It was it was wild, but I don't know what that just triggered that story. Okay, so

The purpose of this show is to talk about how you make money doing that. what has what has that journey been like?

Author Aaron Ryan (13:21.389)
Well, for voiceovers, it's very much driven on a rise and fall on my own merits. mean, authoring is as well, but voiceovers, requires a constant dedication and discipline in auditioning. You can't reel in a job if you're not actually casting out your voice. So auditions, man, there was a time where I was doing roughly 50 auditions a day, or 40 to 50, so that's 200 to 250 auditions a week.

You don't get tired, you fire out a batch of them here, a batch of them there, there's eight hours in the day, you can easily get up to that number. But it does require discipline, and it's weeding out the ones that aren't paying fair market rates. They can go to Fiverr for stuff like that. This is part of the problem where you have a fair market rate of, $3,200 for a single national TV spot for a year. And then you got somebody on Fiverr going, I'll do it for $300.

Christian Brim (14:02.56)
Mm hmm.

Christian Brim (14:14.146)
Mm-hmm.

Author Aaron Ryan (14:19.496)
If it behooves us to tow the line for the market rate so that we're all eligible for that, you've got the guys that are undercutting that on Fiverr and other sites that just harms that bottom line. But you have to keep auditioning. You have to stick to the market rates and know what pays what and not sell out, as it were, not to be mean. Authoring's different. It's basically just writing stories. takes a lot longer to do.

I love the phrase out of In the Line of Fire with John Malkovich and my gosh, the 95.

Christian Brim (14:55.918)
Can you say that as John Malkovich would say it?

Author Aaron Ryan (15:00.172)
I can't do character. I don't do characters very well. I could do a few accents, but Gosh, I would love to speak like John Malkovich. It's so Stuttered and pronounced and it's he's got a beautiful speaking voice and Clint Eastwood, know, you just have to go like this and drop your eyebrows That's more John Hamm though But that that that phrase that he says when he is about ready to he's drawing ever near to the president he's gonna assassinate him

Christian Brim (15:03.668)
Okay, okay, never mind.

Christian Brim (15:19.054)
you

Author Aaron Ryan (15:30.244)
And he says to a group of businessmen around him that we look at the next quarter, fiscal quarter, the Japanese look at the next quarter century. So with authoring, that's the long game. You're playing the long game of establishing legacy and good books that will eventually just, you know, develop a title way of following. Go viral, as it were, and provide, you know, for your family in the long run. Those dividends aren't really paying right now.

Christian Brim (15:39.854)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (15:59.342)
you

Author Aaron Ryan (16:00.019)
Some of them are, but it takes a lot more effort to sustain it.

Christian Brim (16:05.646)
So I want to go back to the voice acting and you said, you know, keeping up the market rate. So let me ask a question. If I wanted to go get Matthew McConaughey to do my voiceover, I'm assuming he's going to get more than $3,200. Yeah.

Author Aaron Ryan (16:24.275)
Not necessarily. If it's paying a union rate, they're going to pay him the same as they would pay me, a union voice actor.

Christian Brim (16:30.03)
Okay, so it is a union structure, is that okay, so then usually then you're being hired by an agency.

Author Aaron Ryan (16:35.935)
Yeah.

Author Aaron Ryan (16:46.634)
Correct. And that's usually always the case. You do go through an agent for union rates. There are marketplaces aplenty online like Voices.com, Voice123, VO Planet, Bedalgo. These are sites that you can sign up by paying a yearly membership, get access to a horde of auditions. But the overwhelming majority of those don't pay fair market rates. It's good to pad the pockets. They're good for, you you can make a real decent income through them.

Christian Brim (17:11.468)
Hmm.

Author Aaron Ryan (17:16.84)
But the overwhelming majority of them do not pay fair market rates. It's more of a one-off, non-union usage.

Christian Brim (17:24.288)
Interesting, I guess I didn't know there was a union there in the voice actor space But that that actually makes sense since you know everybody else in the creative space from writers to actors You know, they all have unions. I am curious. This is More a perspective from your standpoint. Do you see the influence of unions in the creative space? Waxing waning

What do you see?

Author Aaron Ryan (17:56.65)
No, I actually see it rising and the reason for that is primarily AI. and infringement issues are abounding. So AI, when it kind of burst onto the scene in whole in 2023, the spring of 2023, that's when I was making an exodus from a very toxic online voiceover community and saw me returning to other creative pursuits like music, like authoring. I'm still very involved in voiceovers and it still pays our bottom line.

But I just went to Fan Expo in Portland in February, met the Hobbits, all four of the Hobbit actors were there. Sean Astin is the president of the SAG-AFTRA union. And so I watch his videos, he's very active in promoting legislation and trying to keep those fair market rates solid and encouraging people to toe the line.

Christian Brim (18:37.204)
Okay.

Author Aaron Ryan (18:50.929)
It's not always going to be the case because the non-union side eats away at the union side and it's way easier to get into the non-union side than the union side. You have to pay to be in the union. have to get an agent in order to get those union jobs usually. So it's a competition between everybody. I think that it is eroding that

Christian Brim (18:56.087)
Right.

Christian Brim (19:09.314)
Mm-hmm.

Author Aaron Ryan (19:20.115)
confidence in the SAG after a union, but the fact that you have AI really harming rates, really seeing a lot of infringement and deep fakes and all that stuff, that's just making the union rise up and say, we've got to tow the line and help everybody here.

Christian Brim (19:36.578)
So it is the Screen Actors Guild, the union you belong to?

Author Aaron Ryan (19:41.735)
Yeah, sag after they're merged.

Christian Brim (19:43.712)
Okay. Okay. Well, you know, that kind of prompts a thought. and you're going to say where the hell did this come from? I, I honestly think we should bring back guilt, as, as a manner of education, and, qualification in, in, the sense that, there's a dearth of authenticity.

in the marketplace across all different segments. But like I take my industry accounting and I see some people out there that are promoting tax advice on TikTok or LinkedIn or whatever. And some of them are making good money, you know, selling webinars and programs about like how to pay no tax and this kind of thing.

And we've snuck into a couple of the webinars to kind of like hear what they're saying, because we're just curious. And we left with like, these people are going to end up indicted. it's flat out fraud, right? But there's nothing to keep people from buying or following their advice. you know, obviously we have a rigorous

Author Aaron Ryan (20:55.592)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (21:09.976)
Profession with the a ICPA, you know state licensing all of those things but for most most of what we do except in a Very few states like California is one of them There's no regulation either at the federal or state level And so like there's nothing to keep somebody from it's truly, you know buyer beware like

Author Aaron Ryan (21:37.938)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (21:38.702)
You have to have a license in in Oklahoma where I live to cut hair or do nails You do not have to have a license to prepare someone else's taxes for money and there's no federal requirement, right? And so, you know free market. sure fine, but you know there there's there's I Don't know. I think going back to a guild structure where like if you know, you have to earn your way into the guild

Author Aaron Ryan (21:50.011)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (22:07.296)
You have to be selected. yeah, vetted. And it's also the way the knowledge is passed down. I think about somewhere along the line in the last 50, 60 years, education became a profession, as opposed to the people that knew the subjects were the ones that taught. I remember my math teacher was this

Author Aaron Ryan (22:10.821)
Yeah, vetted.

Christian Brim (22:35.918)
crazy Persian woman that she was brilliant at math and I could sometimes understand her, sometimes I couldn't, but she was passionate about it and I loved math because she taught it and she knew it and she could teach it in a way that I could understand it as opposed to somebody that is a quote professional educator. And so like I know how to educate, but I don't necessarily deeply resonate and deeply understand the subject that I'm teaching.

Yeah. And and so going back to a guild structure where, know, maybe we go through education through eighth grade like they used to. And then after that, you kind of pick your own path. And if you want to go into a vocation, or some profession, then you you go to somebody that knows it and they teach it. I don't know, I'm just kind of ranting.

Author Aaron Ryan (23:06.491)
Right, yeah.

Author Aaron Ryan (23:27.825)
No, I think it's a great thought. I'm a very active member of the authors guild. I value it. I value the membership and the collective. It's certainly not a herd mentality. It's a lot of people who are doing what I'm doing and I'm doing what they're doing. And we're finding new ways to perfect our craft and to learn the best ways to do it. So yeah, there's influencers out there, which is a wild west of unregulated community of people just saying this and.

Because you like them, you like the way they look, the way they sound, what they're saying. It's kind of like there's a scripture in First Timothy, I believe, it says, in the later days, people will gather around them, people who say what their itching ears want to hear. That's what TikTok is. And we just, you know, we like them. So we'll listen to them over the viable vetted advice over here. You pair that with AI, and you've also got a wild west of unregulated.

Christian Brim (24:08.438)
Mm-hmm. Mm.

Author Aaron Ryan (24:22.854)
Usage over here. So you've got influencers like people with C dance creating AI Versions of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt up on a rooftop having a fight that neither one of them consented to neither one of them are in and looks 100 % believable and you've got you've got the dumbing down of society happening right there and you've got intellectual property being violated copyright being violated no consent and

Christian Brim (24:28.188)
Mm-hmm.

Author Aaron Ryan (24:51.846)
There's so much wrong with the online dissemination of information and entertainment right now.

Christian Brim (24:52.109)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (24:59.896)
Do you see some backlash to that? mean, because, because what I see is this nascent movement to go offline, like to be more in person and really the whole, said you'd gone to a convention. maybe that ties into that. Like I, I just see people like opting out of, of the algorithm just for a term to use.

What do you see?

Author Aaron Ryan (25:30.501)
I do see backlash, I think that legislation just takes way too long to catch up to the detrimental effect of unregulated technology or unregulated people. And the backlash that I'm seeing is just is more reactive than anything. It's lawsuits from the original rights holders against C-dance. There's another case. forget what it was. was Scarlett Johansson was in a movie called Her.

Christian Brim (25:48.951)
Right.

Author Aaron Ryan (25:58.778)
and she's an AI voice and they then the producers or somebody took her voice and made an AI like trained it, you know, with an LLM model, whatever, and made an AI persona that she objected to initially. They did it anyway. And so she said, and I believe that's been settled or taken care of as a voice actor. One of the very first things that we ever saw on this plane was a colleague named Bev had done work for the Chinese Institute of Acoustics.

I think she had a contract in place, but what the Chinese Institute of Acoustics did was then sell those recordings to TikTok. So unbeknownst to and without her consent. So colleagues who are on TikTok are watching these reels and going, hey Bev, just heard this, here's this link, is this you? This sounds so much like you, it's uncanny. And she's going, my gosh, that is me. And so she sued TikTok and they settled out of court.

Christian Brim (26:36.846)
Mm.

Christian Brim (26:49.011)
Mm-hmm.

Author Aaron Ryan (26:57.623)
I think that's the only backlash that you're gonna see is in the courts right now. But I think that you just have, as an author, it hurts to see authors pitted against authors saying, you wrote this with AI. No, I didn't. Yes, I did. Yes, you did. And I didn't write it with AI. They didn't write it with AI. But everybody is suspect right now, because no one knows what to believe.

Christian Brim (27:25.748)
Yes, there is a trust deficit. And I think what you're saying is that there's a large swath of the population that doesn't care. Like, I don't care that it's not the original. I find this entertaining or useful. How do you as an author and an actor protect your IP? How do you do that?

Author Aaron Ryan (27:35.235)
Yeah.

Author Aaron Ryan (27:52.377)
Well, there's not much that you can do. Boy, that's a really good question because on a frightening level, I've done so much voiceover work, particularly of a non-union nature. So it's out there, wherever it is out there. And it could easily be harvested and fed into an LLM model by scammers who will then call my elderly parents and say, hey, it's Aaron. I'm in Bangladesh. I've been stranded here. I didn't want to tell you, but I had to take a trip and I need money.

And they're going to send me money. And that just frightens me to my core. As an author, all we can do is literally register our works with the Library of Congress and get a copyright number on it. Poor man's copyright doesn't do anything. You need a leg to stand on in court and actually gain any punitive damages with a copyright number. So every one of my works is registered copyright. That's how I do that. But for voiceovers, the only real protections that you have, it's largely a trust system.

And if you have the umbrella covering of my agent and the SAG-AFT reunion, then they would go after them if something like this happened. it's just so, they've all been really kind of done on trust where you have them sign a contract. I do have every one of my clients sign a contract that enforces usage compliance. And if I find that they have violated that contract, then I've got legal grounds to.

take them to court but it's just when you're dealing with intangible digital assets like this it's so easy for violation to occur.

Christian Brim (29:31.362)
Yeah. And then when you start dealing with multinational actors, act, you know, that are not actors as in professional actors, but like bad actors, it's, it's, it's real hard to enforce, right? Like if you, you know, how do you, all you can do is like, get it off the platform of YouTube or Tik Tok or whatever, but like that doesn't keep the content from right. But yeah.

Author Aaron Ryan (29:55.588)
cease and desist.

Christian Brim (29:59.694)
Okay, I'm going to pivot. back to your journey as an author and a voiceover actor, what were some of the money challenges that you had?

Author Aaron Ryan (30:13.826)
Well, I mean, let's go back to the very beginning though, actually, because I started in 2007 entering self-employment and that required not a considerable amount of startup. needed a good computer, right? And I was plagued from the get-go as I was with my recent PC I was mentioning to you with just a headache of a babble of problems with memory and the CPU and the drives, whatever. So I kept swapping things out.

Christian Brim (30:25.43)
Right.

Author Aaron Ryan (30:42.571)
and I was ready to just give up. I remember sitting on the toilet, that sounds wrong, I was clothed, but I was sitting on the toilet, and my face, two o'clock in the morning, face buried into a pillow and I was bawling. I could feel self-employment in my teeth. It was right there, I wanted it so bad, but this darn computer kept holding things up and causing problems. I really needed to invest into something.

Christian Brim (30:57.088)
Mm-hmm.

Author Aaron Ryan (31:09.119)
Again, more memory. More memory? I just bought memory. Okay, more memory. And what that did though early on is it taught me a great lesson that there's a huge difference between expense and investment. There's a huge difference. And I've preached that as a voiceover business coach and I preach that to fellow authors. I have spent a fortune on advertising and promotion of books.

Christian Brim (31:21.622)
Mmm.

Author Aaron Ryan (31:35.393)
because there's 7,500 books published every single day on Kindle Direct, Amazon, 7,500. To stand out in the crowd, you have to promote, you have to drive traffic to your books, you have to pay for ads and try this. And expense would be, all right, if I have to. And investment though is like, no, this is so worth it, I want to drive traffic to my books.

Christian Brim (31:41.622)
Mm-hmm

Author Aaron Ryan (32:01.258)
All it takes is one influencer to find that book and go, I love this, everyone needs to this. But those hangups can slow you down and can trip you up if you're looking at them only as an expense.

Christian Brim (32:12.942)
I love that distinction. I think about like Red Rising that we talked about when I went back and looked I think he wrote that original book in 2015 2017 and I'm just now discovering it in 2025 You know that that that shows that there is a cumulative long game effect to a lot of this stuff And it's something that I I talk about

Author Aaron Ryan (32:31.244)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (32:42.92)
In my book, Prophet First for Creatives, you know, creator has a tendency, maybe not all of them, maybe not you, but there's oftentimes a shiny object syndrome and there's a new technology, there's a new toy, you know, a camera or whatever. And, you know, you want the latest and greatest. But I talk about in the book about having a clear path.

Author Aaron Ryan (33:02.796)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (33:10.858)
of knowing when you spend this money, how is it going to make you money? And I think that's what you're talking about in investment, right? Like it's not just an expense to me would be something that is table stakes, like, you know, internet access or, you know, some kind of software subscription that you just have to have to be in business, right? But then beyond that, having a clear idea of if I spend

Author Aaron Ryan (33:17.239)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (33:39.906)
this money, how quantify like how how is this going to make me money and having that mindset it's not it's not necessarily about the calculation right or whether the calculation is right. Accurate it's it's it's more the mindset of I'm in business and therefore if I spend money it has to have a purpose.

Author Aaron Ryan (33:48.13)
Thank

Author Aaron Ryan (34:00.886)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, I was a wedding videographer. Never again. But I did that for several years. I won several awards. I was good at it. I enjoyed it. And coincidentally, every single major vocation of my life, you excluding paperboy, of course, has been about storytelling. It's been about leaving a legacy. So wedding videographer, you're storytelling, you're capturing their legacy.

Christian Brim (34:23.607)
Mm-hmm.

Author Aaron Ryan (34:24.841)
I'm on dual storyteller tracks as a voice actor telling someone else's story and an author telling my own and I love that. you know 4K here it comes, I'm filming HD and my technology looks wonderful, the resulting footage looks wonderful but some client comes to my site, do you film in 4D? No, we actually have the know Panasonic XHA1 or whatever it is and that's still limited to HD. Okay, thanks anyway.

And so the investment was, I've got an even better one than that. The investment was getting a 4K camera and then I start getting clients who want 4K. Even better, such a minimal investment for something like Voices.com, a voiceover marketplace, it's 399 a year. I'm grandfathered in, it's higher than that now. But I have made, I think in my first year on Voices.com I made at least $50,000.

on the jobs that I did and that is a tremendously successful investment for an annual cost of $3.99. Now, did it require the time investment of auditions? Absolutely. But it also bridged that gap. Clients would leave voices.com and then become a direct client of mine or I would refer them to my agent and then they would start paying union rates through the agent.

Christian Brim (35:24.461)
Right?

Christian Brim (35:28.621)
Yes.

Christian Brim (35:34.808)
Sure, sure.

Christian Brim (35:43.522)
Mm-hmm.

Author Aaron Ryan (35:51.573)
These are little bitty investments that proved very successful.

Christian Brim (35:57.558)
Yeah, and I think that overarching thing is just a business mindset and knowing that your intent being in business is to make money, which some creators bulk at. They have this false paradigm in their brain that if I accept money for my creation, that that somehow sullies the creation.

Author Aaron Ryan (36:23.093)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (36:24.536)
But I just came from a, I was speaking at Military CreatorCon last week and listening to the panel discussion with the creator, Mara Long, that's a real name, it's not made up. Yeah, no. Of just how you navigate that,

Author Aaron Ryan (36:44.523)
Sounds good.

Christian Brim (36:52.574)
It is a real feeling that creators have that doing something explicitly for money and doing something, creating something just because you want to, those are two separate paradigms, if you will, right? But being okay and really understanding that the power is combining those two.

where you're doing something that resonates with you from a creative level, but you can also be compensated for it.

Author Aaron Ryan (37:30.378)
Yeah, you're absolutely right when you talk about the people who get emotionally hung up over, they feel they're in some kind of moral quandary. I shouldn't be making a profit from this. And I disagree. So here's where I would love, there's nothing more that I would love vocationally right now than to no longer be a voiceover artist who also writes books. I would love to be an author who also does voiceovers. I would love for that.

Christian Brim (37:40.363)
Right, yeah.

Christian Brim (37:59.33)
Mm-hmm

Author Aaron Ryan (37:59.956)
to be paying our mortgage. And therein lies the difference is one of those is paying our mortgage. Do I love what I do on both sides of that? Absolutely. mean, it like, excuse me, is it exciting? Are both of them, am I passionate about both of them? Yes. Are they both creative pursuits? Absolutely. But I've got a family, I've got a wife and two little boys that I can't just sit here and enjoy voiceovers.

Wouldn't it be cool if it also paid our mortgage? And it does. Wouldn't it be cool if it bought our cars? And it has. Wouldn't it be cool if it sent us on vacations? And it has. So I don't struggle with that. I'm always surprised by people who do. It just seems weird.

Christian Brim (38:27.403)
Right.

Christian Brim (38:43.564)
Well, I, I don't, my daughter is a figurative oil painter and she actually has an episode on the show two years ago where we discussed this and like, I think, you know, what she said, and I, and I believe this to be true, that ultimately creativity is, is of a divine nature. that what

when you create something from inception out of yourself, that you're connecting with something greater than yourself, right? That comes from someplace not necessarily within you. And I think maybe the idea that being compensated for that somehow taints the divinity of it maybe even. But you know, I would also say that

Author Aaron Ryan (39:18.003)
Absolutely.

Christian Brim (39:40.212)
you know, I believe that your vocation is your ministry, right? So, like, I think the two are completely compatible if you'll let them be.

Author Aaron Ryan (39:53.52)
Absolutely. Yeah, no, I love that. I love that. And I do look at voiceovers certainly as a ministry. I do look at authoring certainly as a ministry because now no one is going to really get particularly moved about an alien invasion up here and make a life-changing, you know, just make life choices based on that. But they may on You Are My Whole Earth, which is a book I wrote for my two boys. It's about being a daddy.

not just being a father, but being a daddy and getting down on their level and letting them know how incredibly important they are. That's my biggest investment, by the way, is my two sons. I just love, I love the fact that I get to do what I love to do. They say, find what you love to do. You'll never work a day in your life. I think it's absolutely true. And I get to come out here to this shop, which was an 880 square foot concrete and framing shop.

Christian Brim (40:22.766)
Hmm.

Christian Brim (40:31.979)
Mm-hmm.

Author Aaron Ryan (40:49.16)
that we had turned into two thirds rec room, play room, one third office and voiceover booth. And I get to make things as a person who serves, who will claim Christianity and serve the creator. I love that I get to mirror that. I love that I get to create. It's the coolest thing to come out here and create and then just leave that storytelling legacy. So really satisfying.

Christian Brim (41:16.682)
When I wrote my book, I interviewed Todd Henry, author, I think his most successful book was the accidental creative. And he was talking about how the root word in Greek of passion is pericos, I think I don't remember exactly, but it said in the Greek, it means suffering. And his statement was, you know, we tell people to follow their passion.

But if you're telling them to to basically follow their suffering that that has a different resonance, but I I think I think the thing about it is is that it's something you're willing to suffer for it's not necessarily that you would suffer or going to suffer but that's how deep it is in you because When you're sitting on the toilet with your face in the pillow, right? You didn't quit

Author Aaron Ryan (42:03.411)
Yes.

Christian Brim (42:15.296)
And that's because it was passion driving you. If it weren't passion driving you, you would have said, I'm going to go find something else to do. You said felt it in your teeth. Like I've not heard that. That's a pull quote right there.

Author Aaron Ryan (42:18.216)
Yeah.

Author Aaron Ryan (42:23.921)
Right, absolutely.

Author Aaron Ryan (42:32.645)
I loved just the very notion of working for my own dream and the notion of working for someone else's dream just no longer appealed to me. This is my dream of my own that nobody can take away from me. This is mine. I rise and fall on my own merits. I'm not dependent on anyone. I was given this phrase though by a gentleman, one of my very, very first clients ever when I was right in the middle of all of these

Christian Brim (42:47.224)
Mm-hmm.

Author Aaron Ryan (43:01.19)
you know, technical kerfuffles and mishaps with my computer. I was telling him, I don't know how much longer I'll be able to serve you because I'm having all these problems and blah, blah, blah. And he said, just remember this, he said, and I believe this is a Confucius quote, I could be wrong, but he said, the temptation to quit will always be greatest just before your greatest success. And I look back now on nearly two decades of self-employment. Is that right, 2007? Yeah, no one said there'd be math.

Christian Brim (43:22.894)
Hmm.

Christian Brim (43:29.506)
Yeah, pretty close. Yeah, no, it's close.

Author Aaron Ryan (43:30.896)
I believe that's right. Almost two decades of self-employment where I was this close to giving all of this up. If I could disable the screen saver, you'd see a beautiful voiceover studio behind me and the shop and the house and everything. And I almost gave that up over two additional sticks of CPU memory or computer memory. It just blows me away in hindsight.

Christian Brim (43:34.178)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (43:43.726)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (43:52.502)
Yeah. Yeah. Yes. I love that. So how do people find out more about you and how to get your books? What's the best way to do that?

Author Aaron Ryan (44:04.898)
Yeah, my favorite question by the way, thank you. They can go to authorarronryan.com. Let me enunciate, it's not awful, arronryan.com, it's authorarronryan.com. On a whim, I actually purchased that domain as an investment to forward to authorarronryan.com. Now that I've thoroughly confused you, authorarronryan.com or you could...

Christian Brim (44:23.342)
So you can go to awful author, awful Aaron, if you want. Okay, so, okay. Okay.

Author Aaron Ryan (44:28.389)
I didn't renew it because I was like, that was funny for a while, but I was like, I don't think I still have it. I have to check. But yeah, authorarronryan.com has all the links to the sub-sites for other books and book series and the socials. Or authorarronryangroup.com will forward you to a private and exclusive Facebook page where I give author tips, videos, encouragement, discount codes, giveaways, news on my books.

that have been adapted for the screen and are being pitched to streaming networks. Right now I'm really excited about that. And so it's it's kind of a private community that you can go to. those are the two.

Christian Brim (45:06.89)
love it. Listeners will have those links in the show notes. If you like what you've heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. If you don't like what you've heard, hit the little envelope and shoot us a text and tell us what you want. And we'll get rid of Aaron. Until next time, ta ta for now.

Author Aaron Ryan (45:29.116)
Bye.