01. Rob Ricotta, "From Small Town to Big Brands"

In the first ever episode of The Power of Human Stories, Rolando Vega interviews Rob Ricotta, a professional voice actor and musician. They explore Rob's journey from a small town in North Carolina to working with iconic brands and creating impactful content. The conversation delves into the importance of creativity, relationships, and the evolution of faith-based media. Rob shares his experiences in voice acting, music, and the challenges of thriving in the creative industry, emphasizing the significance of endurance and adaptability. In this engaging conversation, Rob Ricotta shares his journey as a versatile voice actor and musician, discussing the challenges of balancing multiple passions, the vibrant creative community in Nashville, and the impact of AI on the voiceover industry. He emphasizes the importance of relationships in his career and the need for authenticity in an increasingly automated world.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:08

Welcome everyone to the first episode of The Power of Human Stories. Today's guest is Rob Riccotta. Rob is a professional voice actor, on-camera host, and musician working across film, television, branded content, and long-form audio. You may recognize his voice as the narrator of the true crime podcast, Up and Vanished, which went on to win iHearts Radio's best true crime podcast. His work includes projects with major brands and platforms such as Apple, BMW, Audi, Jeep, Red Bull, Omega, Four Seasons Hotels, NBA, NHL, ESPN, CNN, Discovery Channel, and the U.S. Olympics. Before focusing full-time on voice work, Rob worked as a radio programmer, audiovisual technician, and on-camera host. He's also the drummer and currently plays in the band for country artists, John Morgan. Rob, thanks for being here. Welcome to the Power of Human Stories.

SPEAKER_00 1:08

Thank you so much, Rolando. It's so awesome to just be with you. And uh we've been friends for a minute. So this is not, it's kind of like getting on with a friend you've been a decade plus with, which is kind of cool. But yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

Yeah, it's been it's been over a decade. Yeah, I think. Uh I still remember when I worked at my first job right at college, and I was looking for that like a voice that would immediately elevate the production value of my teeny project. And I had uh me and my buddy Brett were like already uh followers of the work that you were doing. And I'm like, man, I wonder if I could just like email Rob if he would actually even email me back. And boom, you did. We made it work, and I don't know how many projects later it's been, but it's been awesome.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

It has been, and you know it's funny is adversely, I was on the other side looking for amazing people who were doing visuals, and so it was like kind of a little, you know, marriage made in heaven kind of a thing, because you reached out and I was like checking your stuff, and I said, Man, okay, yeah, I do want to work with this guy. So it it, you know, it's always funny on the other side, especially when I always think it's uh silly almost when people, I don't know, we get these preconceptions. We only have an online presence of someone, and we think we have this silhouette of who they are, and then we get to know them, and we're like, they could live down the street from me. We could, you know, we could ride motorcycles together, kind of a thing. So anyhow.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

Hey, that I think that's a compliment that someone thinks I could ride a motorcycle with them. If you told me, I don't know, I don't know. If you told my wife, she'd like be like, really? Uh no, it's it's uh it's great that you s saw that back then. I I remember the projects I was doing back then. Oh my gosh. Like it compared to the quality work that we're doing today, I think it's it's huge uh uh the difference. But the fact that you trusted in saying yes to us, I'm really thankful. So uh I want to oh we'll get to like the projects maybe that we've talked a little bit about, but um, you know, this being the first episode of uh the podcast, I think we're gonna iron out some kinks and things as we kind of feel things out, but the goal is really to kind of explore um your story and what people say, oh, tell me your story, okay, great. There's that can mean a lot of things.

SPEAKER_00 3:27

Yes, it can, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:28

I have recognized over the years when I interview people for videos, or that's documentaries or commercial work or promo stuff, you are who you are because of the experiences you've had in your life. Um, you are the creative that you are, you pursue the passions you pursue uh because of the experiences you've had. And I think that's pretty straightforward, but most people don't realize how the kind of things line up, the breadcrumbs uh of who you are today. You can find them, you know, in some of those early things. And I think that's interesting. It could be really uh normal, boring things then form who we are today. But the goal of the podcast is to really kind of explore um our journeys. Um because I think you are, you know, based on that whole long intro I just did, like you've had some amazing uh career experiences working with some amazing brands, and people see that and they don't realize, man, like all the stuff that led to that. So part of the first part of our conversation is I want to do a deep dive a little bit into where things started, uh, where you came from, and we'll get to some of this awesome work. So let's start off with super basic stuff. Like, where did you grow up? Um, what part of the the states? And tell me a little bit about what that was like.

SPEAKER_00 4:45

Western North Carolina, as far west as you can go in North Carolina. So you're looking at the state, it's uh a small little town called Franklin, North Carolina. And uh a lot of people know Asheville or Cherokee, North Carolina. Those are our closest cities, if you will, our big cities, you know? And then it's kind of weird because North Carolina, Western North Carolina touches like four or five different states. So within a two and a half hour drive, uh, you can be in a more major city. So Atlanta, Georgia, Greenville, South Carolina, et cetera, et cetera. Uh so when I was growing up, there's 6,000 people in my town. To this day, I think it's stayed around that population. Not a lot of people move into Franklin. Uh, but it is a beautiful little mountain town. And it's close to the Blue Ridge Parkway. Our backyard is the Appalachian Mountains. And so a lot of people come there, as you can imagine. Uh, actually, just about 30 minutes uh to North Georgia, which we kind of border right there, is where the Appalachian Trail actually starts. And a lot of people are like, oh, that's kind of cool, but it is. I mean, hikers get on there, and for us in the southeast, uh, that's the Mecca for hiking. So six and a half months people take sometimes to take that trail. So the reality is that it starts in North Georgia. Our town is the first stop. So for hikers, they're all happy, right? They're like starting the journey and like, oh, we're gonna do this. By the time they get to Maine, they're just like, why did I do this? I'm dead, you know. Like, so I try to say our town is kind of this happy little like before the journey starts. And I say that about my town because I suppose the parallel for me is that that's what my town actually was, right? Metaphorically, my town was the first stop on my journey, right? So I did radio programming in high school at 17 and 18. It was a little internship, and we were on AM. So if you know anything about radio, AMFM, no one listens to AM. You've kind of got country people listening to. And ours was uh affiliated with the Faith Station. So they gave me all that, suffice it to say, they let the intern in uh high school have their morning show on Saturday mornings because guess what? There's not too many listeners on AM. So, you know, the coolest thing in the world was the freedom and independence to have like a friend such as you say we went to high school together, right? I could be like Rolando, call in 9 a.m. Saturday morning or 10 a.m. Saturday morning and request whatever you want. We'll talk on air. And it was really cool, right? For a kid, you know, 17, 18 years old. It wasn't necessarily like you were somebody. It was just like, man, what freedom I have. Here I am live on this station, and I'm able to like talk with a friend, or they're giving me a lot of freedom here. And so I didn't, to be honest with you, I didn't really think I had that choppy of a voice, as far as I've always kind of had this voice at, you know, 13 to 14, your voice changes. And I think there's a few people who are like, Man, are you a smoker? You know, like your voice is kind of sounds like you smoke. I was like, No, I don't smoke. But uh, yeah, I remember being a kid, I kind of always had a gravely voice. But uh, this was the first time that somebody went, Yeah, you got a pretty good voice, man. Like you got aside from doing radio programming, like you're you're silly and uh you know, you get trouble in school. And so maybe let's hone a little bit of that on the radio. So that was the first time, my first experience with anything that had to do with voiceover, vocal, anything, right? And uh adversely, it was also the first time at 14 that I really stumbled upon, aside from creative writing songs. I went like, I don't know why, aside from writing, kind of like some of us do, poetry or whatever other form of creative writing that we do, I don't know why I hear a melody. Why do I hear that? Like I so at 14, I had a little background in piano, but also had this background as well of going, man, I really want to play the drums. I really want to write songs. I didn't know what that meant. I could go further in that, you know, process with you, but I just knew that those two things were my things. Aside from playing soccer in high school, I knew that I loved music. I knew that I'd be in any garage band that would have me. And it was a really small town, so there weren't many. And then the other side was that I really loved doing voice work. And so that was the kind of infancy of that. Fast forward, aside from you know, growing up there, uh, town of 6,000 people, I had a a choice. And a lot of people have a choice wherever they are, if they want to stay or if they want to go. And I think the the big uh the big city or the the next step for anyone from a small town I think can resonate or have empathy with is that those environments can do one of two things for people. They can suppress what's inside someone or they can liberate them to do what they need to do. And I've seen both sides of the coin. I've seen people start businesses in small towns that are my age, uh, you know, have a beautiful family, four or five kids, and really do the actually American dream right inside my town. And I love that and I'm so proud of them for it. For me, it looked differently because I knew that there was a ceiling on my creativity. I couldn't go past that, right? So it wasn't like, oh, you know, screw my hometown. It's so small, there's nothing going on here. It was like, man, I hit that ceiling and I went, oh gosh, I gotta go somewhere that things are happening, right? So uh, you know, that growing up period of time, I would say, I finally got to a point, my English lit teacher said, You have uh, I want to retire because you've been such a hassle in my classroom. However, you're really good at accents, you're really good at dialects. I'm gonna let you speak in my classroom all through high school. And I hope you do something with that. And that was it, right? So it uh I turned 19 years old, so graduated high school, 18, 19 years old, uh, chose to move overseas. And so that was kind of my growing up period time until then moving into the college period of time.

SPEAKER_01 10:54

And and I before we go into that season, I have a couple questions. Um, you just mentioned that you just loved voiceover work, and that's a given now that you are a voiceover artist. But back then, what was it about that work? I mean, I think as kids, we all kind of watch movies and and we just recreate things. If we're storytellers, you know, I think about that quintessential uh scene of sitting around a campfire and we're all sharing stories, if we're all silly before we were developed that those confidence issues of not doing that kind of creative work. But well, I want to talk a little bit about that. Like what during that season of your life, why did you gravitate towards that specifically? Doing voices, the storytelling, the play acting of other things. What why?

SPEAKER_00 11:46

What happens as a thread when we're children, and then when we move into pre-adolescence, adulthood, and now adult, you know, being adults, is that we're always chasing that feeling as kids that we have, in my opinion, right? At the end of the day, you and I've grown up from it-ish, right? But we're chasing that kid feeling of really wanting to play, right? So I got in trouble in high school, and when I say like in trouble, my dad was the administrator. And so you got it at home in trouble as well as at school, because it wasn't one of those, oh, he's the principal's son, he gets away with stuff. It was like, no, you're the example. You here you are in detention all the time or summer school or whatever for getting in trouble. And half of it had to do with cutting up with a friend of mine who was also really good at accents and everything else. So you have this natural thing. I also remember asking my mother, hey, was I kind of a weird kid? And she goes, Yeah, I mean, the the weird kid part was like she'd be getting ready for, you know, church on a Sunday morning doing her hair, and I'd be in the mirror, like doing faces, or you know, I had just watched a Toy Story or something, and I wanted to do Woody's voice, or yada yada yada. So, like my answer to that, Rolando, is simply I just wanted to play. And so as soon as I got the ability, as you can imagine, as a 17, 18-year-old, to go, hey, by the way, you're not gonna get in trouble for playing. We we, you know, we came up with a character that uh helped out the uh morning show host that was Monday through Friday, kind of, you know, sell ads on our radio station. It was like that was a part of what we did. And he just let me play in that format. The other part of that was that I suppose somebody uh over time, which English lit teacher, other people in my life I could pinpoint, right? I could tell you who those people are, went, you have an aptitude for this. And anytime anybody says, I don't care what it is, like I just think when you have in this case, I wasn't necessarily a child, right? But I in some ways, yeah, because I was under 18 years old. Anytime you tell a child, hey, there's something special about you, there's something special, and I want you to know that it holds with them. I really believe that. I, you know, it could be anything, but I think a lot of times when uh an adolescent hears that, you have one of two, you can either be insecure about it, or you can go, Oh, okay. Well, like, uh, maybe I should do something with that. And they're like, Yeah, maybe you should do something with that. Um, yeah, and you have enough friends, man. The the joy of voice work, come on, half of it was in the same way that you're smiling right now. I live to make people laugh. And you know, you watch a Robin Williams who uh we grew up with, right? Who God, I wish he was still here. How many laughs we've missed out on with him being gone. But for me, it was it the same way he goes, I literally do all of this because I just I live for not the stage or show or spotlight, whatever. I live to make you laugh. And it was the same thing. I lived to make people laugh, still do. Half my friends, you know, will be on a call together, or you know, once in a while we'll catch up, or they're in person. And I'm like, if I can, if I could do one thing at dinner tonight, you know, I'll do one thing, I'm gonna make them laugh. And so it's the same with my grandmother, my mother. I I hope that answers that question.

SPEAKER_01 15:26

No, it does. I think I think that's important because there's an element of play there. I think there's an element of imagination. I mean, as a filmmaker, uh, movies had such a big impact in my childhood of like seeing these personas, bigger than life personas, and sometimes that involved voice. I think it would involve also other things, which we mean you have talked about this that as a voice actor, you've also had some acting training, that it's not just about your moment with the microphone, your ability to transform your voice, but it's you've you've had some of that experience yourself. And a lot of people don't know that that voice actors are actors uh first. At least I think they should be. For sure. So talk to me a little bit about the next stage. Oh, and you went overseas and you started developing the the career a little bit more. What were some notable experiences there?

SPEAKER_00 16:18

So I went to school for music, so you uh I kind of chose the latter, right? I was like, uh I told you I loved music, grew up with it, song wrote, but really didn't understand how to get into something professionally. So I went overseas, and there was an organization that was really pumping out incredible music, but aside from that, pumping out individuals that kind of came out with like a leadership development to them. And I just knew like one of two things. I wanted, I had an entrepreneurial spirit as like a high schooler. And I also knew that music was my lane, if you will. And so I was like, okay, I just need to be in a big city and I need to be around people who are doing things way better than me. I I knew there was enough people in my life who were like, here's the wherewithal to say, hey, environmentally, you just need to get around people that are way better than you. At like whatever music, songwriting, voice, whatever. So I kind of left radio on the wayside, which is cool because I was like, there's no money in radio, anyways, it's gonna be dead here in a few years. Sorry to radio people, uh, but I think you know it's true. Um, so I moved overseas, and essentially, you know, aside from making people laugh here and there, I chased the entertainment business, which was music and songwriting. So I learned the craft of those things in college and then understood how to kind of create a leadership part of my life in that. My second year in college, it was year-round college, you year-round university overseas. So you're getting four years done in three because you're all the way around every year. So my second year in college, I had a buddy come up and he uh he came to my side of the campus. There's another side of the campus, the other side of the city. He said, Look, man, there's a uh a band that's touring the United States for the first time. And I'm doing a promo for them. And there's a few people in film and who are doing the score and sound design. Uh, you've never met them before, and I know it may be a little weird, but you've got this like low American voice, and literally that's all we need. And you're broke, so do you want a burrito uh for payment? And I was like, heck yeah, you know, like I'm broke. I don't have, you know, I'm hungry, I'm in college. And so I was like, Yeah, of course, man. Like, tell me when, you know, he said, okay, well, today. And I was like, okay, great. So we go over to the other campus, I walk in a room, and I've told you this story before, but essentially, you know, it's the beginning of Mrs. Doubtfire. Really, truly is. We laugh about it now, the friends that I still have from those moments in life, but they're all kind of like this on a couch, and you go in the vocal booth, right? And you're like looking over at them, and they just stoic as can be. And I'm going, okay, here we go. I gotta like break the ice here, kind of a thing. And I reverted back to how I was in high school, which was to try to make them laugh. Because if they're stoic, I'm like, give me a break here, you know. So I took their scripting and then I started playing, right? So I started playing with their scripting, and obviously they asked for a low American voice, but I gave them their voice, which was in that case Australia, Australian. And so I gave them some British and da-da-da-da-da-da-some accents and tried to just make them laugh. Well, that's exactly what happened. They lost it, it cut the room, so everybody just had a good time. So one of the guys who was in there had been in film for 15 or 16 years, and uh, you know, international television and film is so much broader, I believe, than you know, North America. I think people would agree that it's just genre-wise, it's all over the shop. They have so much opportunity. So I knew this guy knew what he was talking about, and he just said, Look, man, here's the deal. I really believe that you could do this as a career if you wanted to do it. And here I am in music, leadership, learning entrepreneurial stuff. And I'm like, brother, what do you mean? You know, what does that even mean? And he pointed to the three people in the room and he said, This guy does sound design, this guy does does uh score, and this guy creates films and and posts and edits them. I said, Okay, well, what does that look like? Well, we would take a demo and it's fake it till you make it, make up some made up scripts or made up companies or whatever ads, spec ads, yeah, which I was not familiar with because I was always used to real ads, right? And radio or whatever else. I'm like, how do you make that? AI uh wasn't a thing necessarily. Well, we're gonna get to that.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

We're definitely gonna get to that, but yeah, keep going.

SPEAKER_00 20:33

But yeah, so you know, so much of it, man, was uh the beauty of the people in the room, the people who actually said you could do this. But um, I think as you know too, some of those people were, and I say coming up in the industry that they were in, we were all at a very similar space. I think they were a little further along than me by a long shot. But I mean, if I'm to be real with you, we all made things that we were passionate about in that season of life. So the next year and a half in my second year in college, uh, I would say the next year and a half, we created a few things that became essentially the benchmark for faith, uh faith-filled or faith uh visual elements for a global church. So the best way to say it is I got my start in faith-filled uh environment, which I'm very like happy I did in a lot of ways. I think that it probably rounded the fact that you can't you can either televangelize things in faith, uh what I mean is faith messaging, or they better feel genuine.

SPEAKER_01 21:45

Right. It's like that that's that tension, especially back then, that this the period that you're talking about, like for the people listening, there was not a lot of good thought provoking critical content out there that it was Multi-layered uh artistic uh in the faith community. Uh there was a lot of cheap one note, one-dimensional things. And the work that I interacted with at the time when I met you, you you that team was creating amazing artistic work that that asked tough questions and made people think and feel. And just like anything important, uh any storytelling that's important is like it's gonna hit all those and it's gonna leave you feeling like not with all the answers, but with like moving you. And that's what back then the content that you guys were creating resonated with a lot, also coming from that kind of that faith-based creative space myself, trying to tell stories that that people could resonate with that they could ask hard questions about. The work that you guys were doing, man, it was it was set pushing the bar higher, higher. And now I I think that probably we live in a different time where there's a great creative in every industry right now. Yes. Back then it was like, no, the great creatives were here, and everybody else kind of like didn't get that. So um are those the people that you're talking about? Is that who I'm thinking about? Solomon and and Ryan, without like mentioning too many specifics. You mentioned, oh, like these people did went on to do amazing things. Where are some of them now? What like what kind of rooms and spaces are some of these folks now? That what what's kind of the work that they're doing?

SPEAKER_00 23:30

Well, I always laugh and say, I'm a failure when we're on a uh phone call together. I'm like, look at what you guys did with your lives and look at me. But uh, you know, that's obviously the kind of the thread joke with our relationship and our friendships is that they really pushed and propelled me more than necessarily I, you know, brought something to their project. But they'll always say, you know, it will it really was this uh amazing amalgamation of work that we were able to do together. It weirdly enough, man, it feels like if someone, if someone threaded the same uh doll together, like, hey, I'll take the arm and I'll take the leg and you take the head. You know, it felt like that. You know, for whatever reason, it was like this score with this filmmaker, with this voice, with this sound design is just a match made in heaven. We don't know how to describe it other than it just works. And I can honest to goodness say, over time, it just kept working. It it wasn't a one, you know, uh in the music industry, we always hear the term one-hit wonder. It's like, oh, we had that thing that changed everything. It's like we kind of had multiple things that changed the climate of again, how this kind of faith-based um, you know, uh uh visual came into. And one thing I was gonna say about that really quickly is that for the first time ever, really what I feel I just just I guess you could call it 17 years later view um of all that was that for the first time, faith-based content uh really grabbed a hold of the darker side or cinematic side, which I believe was the shift. Yeah. Right. When I look back at it, I go, here's here's my uh compare contrast. It's like putting drums in bluegrass. Bluegrass goes, whoa, no drums in bluegrass. We don't do that. And it was like faith-based content went, whoa, we don't show like this darker kind of, as you said, artistic side of war.

SPEAKER_01 25:32

The dark night of the soul, you know, equivalent. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:34

Exactly. Uh, you know, we don't put a guy that sounds like uh, you know, he's smokes cigarettes, and we don't put visuals that are super dark, and we don't put a score that makes you, you know, empathetically feel this, you know. We don't put sound design that like makes your ears go, ooh, what's happening? I don't know. Like this is too thriller-esque, you know? Uh and so that to me was the shift. But to answer your question on that, these guys, these guys, uh, have gone on to make some of the highest and most sought-out commercial work and feature film content uh over the last 10 to 17 years. So Solomon, I don't even know where to start with him, but when it comes to music videos, commercials, uh, when it comes to even some of the most more short film or now feature film uh content, he is a staple of inspiration for filmmakers. And I'm not one, uh, but I can honestly say I've touched the post-side of things in terms of putting a film together or the pre-side of things being a producer on projects. Um and yeah, I would say anybody in our industry, uh, Rolando is it it's he's a standout and has continued to move the mark of I thought I was cat, like I'm sure for other filmmakers, like I thought I was catching up to, you know, he's like way better.

SPEAKER_01 27:00

He's got like this endurance that I I don't see work from him for a couple years, and then boom, he comes out with something, and it's like, whoa, how do you how do you have that tank of creativity so full still? And he's pivoting, he's not always the same. So amazing source of inspiration there for sure.

SPEAKER_00 27:17

And a lot of people don't know, and I will say this um, you know, all these guys are dark horses. So Solomon is actually a major hit songwriter as well. And when I say hit, wow. Uh he's also someone that writes, directs, produces, can kind of do it all. And so, as a writer, he's just a stunning storyteller, whether it be through song or whether it be through film. Uh Ryan Talbert is working for Han Zimmer. He's on Zimmer's team.

SPEAKER_01 27:48

That's all that's all literally you need to say. I mean, that's you don't even need to I mean you can that's crazy. Well, maybe one day we'll be able to get him on the podcast to hear a little bit about his he's so accessible, man.

SPEAKER_00 28:00

And what I mean by that is accessible is that he is a heart guy. Yeah, you can't make the music he makes without having the biggest heart. And uh and Ryan, you know, truthfully, will work on these projects to name a few recently, but like even one that stand out for me. I remember texting him one day and being like, Hey, so I think I just saw your name on Russell Crowe's Robin Hood. And he's like, Yeah, it was me. I was like, oh, just beautiful. And he's and he's done so many things since then that are just standout. I mean, go look him up, Solomon Lithhelm, the same way. It's L-I-G-H. Oh, wait, lit L-I-G-T-H-E-L-M Lithhelm. Got it. And uh, and then some of the other guys, Emil Freeman, the guy who actually, and I will say this and look him up too, but um, Ben Fielding is uh sorry, Ben, yes, Ben Fields, I say fielding. I have two friends, Ben Fields and Ben Fielding. Ben Fields, um he honestly is the guy who like looked at me and said, Go chase this. And I said, Okay. And he was in the room and and continues to make some absolutely standout films and documentaries specifically. Uh, but those guys, yeah, man, they've gone on to do just award-winning work, stuff that is not only standout, but they're titans. I hate I, you know, they're titans in their industry. And the craziest part, too, is I would say we're still a lot of us, like this weird kind of little group of us, is still kind of on the outside of mainstream, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 29:33

It's like we yeah, and and that's the mainstream. I mean, really, when you think about it, the mainstream is actually so uh exclusive. Uh, it's hard to say, like, I've got buddies that say they got a credit on a feature film and they take that screenshot at the end of the movie that when they stay after everybody's left, and like, yeah, this is the thing. And it's really hard to do that again and again and again and stay in there. So um, I just think it's less about the accolades and the big names, and more about in my mind, the endurance that you have to stay in it in the creative space, and I want to now shift back to you. You have some amazing things in your resume, but if it's anything like my experience as a creative, to have that endurance to face rejection over and over again and still go out there and first of all, make a living at the baseline of things. Like, make a living, pay for your your your lifestyle. You know, you're married now, so now you have a lot more things to worry about when it comes to that at the baseline. I talk to creatives a lot about that because a lot of people like to just talk about, oh, I'm artistic, I'm creative, here's the work I'm doing. But like, okay, are you like living though? So doing that first and then actually thriving. It's a very small amount of people that I meet that do that for a long time. And they don't have to be mainstream, but they are still doing what they love. And it seems to me like this group and you are are still in it.

SPEAKER_00 31:10

I thank you for that. I was I thought you were about to say, and that's not you, Rob. Uh it just seems like you're a mess. And I'm like, yes, exactly. And look, I don't, you know, the thriving in that is that uh you hit it on the head, man. It doesn't always look like the greatest health necessarily, but thriving meaning continuing to do the work. And I I would agree with you in that you stay in it. Um, you stay in it. And, you know, maybe the I would love to almost toss it back to you on this too, but I would say my experience is this, and I would love to know yours as well, uh, like genuinely, because you've done very virtually the same uh as far as taking a gamble on yourself. But I would say that uh this work, the whole jack of all trades and the master of the one thing. I've always struggled with that, right? Because uh where I go, I'm a better songwriter than I am a drummer. I'm a better voiceover artist and actor than I am, those things in music. And you can start to kind of define places in your life where you go, I have more aptitude, capacity, et cetera, et cetera, on one thing over the other. However, I've chosen personally in my own life to continue to do all of it because I feel like as far as you know, coming to my dad uh just this last year and going, how do you like I had trouble growing up saying what it what you did for a living? How do you describe what your son does for a living? And he goes, it was like just two seconds, like just like that. And I was like, wait a second. He goes, Yeah, I just say you're in the entertainment industry. And I was like, why have I never thought of that? Like, and he goes, Yeah, like it's all encompassing. Like what you do, you know, when you copyright, when you script write, when you're a songwriter, when you're a drummer, when you are a music director, when you're in the studio playing drums, when you're on a microphone, when you're behind a camera, when you're helping produce a creative project, whatever, it's all entertainment. I was like, oh my gosh, I've been missing it the whole time. How to describe people, what I do. Now I would say, even as of like literally maybe two weeks ago, if somebody were, or you were to ask me, like right now on this podcast, hey man, what is it you do? I would say I'm a creative architect. What I do is I, in every form of what I do, I architecturally take something creative and make sure it makes semblance of sense in whatever format that is. Script, on camera, on whatever. And I know that sounds silly, but like that's what I've come up with with my if I had a job title, if I'm working for uh, you know, R Ricotta LLC or whatever like that, I'm like, I'm a creative architect for them. That's what I do. Uh which is weird, but I'm like, okay, that that uh chat GPT helped me a little bit with that. I was like, what do I do?

SPEAKER_01 34:02

I think I think it's interesting. You're talking about something I I think about a lot because I'm on LinkedIn a lot. Okay, so LinkedIn, there's there's sometimes so many trends and messages that are shoved down your throat about like, here's how to achieve success, and these gurus have achieved success this way, and these these thought leaders have achieved success this way, and this famous author is promoting their thing that tells you how to achieve success. I think um this is just my opinion. I don't think it's right for everyone because like I've seen people succeed pursuing just one thing. And there's a lot of messages out there of niching down, like find your niche, do that thing really well, become a specialist in that thing really, and people will pay you more and more. It's not gonna be about exchanging time for money, it's gonna be come about exchanging expertise and your experience for for value, and that's makes a lot of sense, and I think I think I still have some of that uh in my life, but I think there's another element of also being okay exploring, um exploring different things and not not having to only just do one thing, and I struggle with that tension because like in my business, I do tell maybe one or two types of stories, one or two types of videos. It's tends to be my bread and butter of the kind of work me and my team do is Vega Productions video solutions powered by human stories. This is where the name of the podcast comes from. At its simplest, it is literally sitting down with people and getting them to be themselves and letting that shine. That's I'm a one-trick pony in that. But at the end of the day, I'm also open to other parts of my life, and whether that's a hobby or income remains to be seen. But I think sometimes people like compartmentalize too much. So, like what you've described is maybe you're feeling maybe a tension to like simplify. And as long as you can find a way to remain fulfilled and energized across all the different things that you touch, and it doesn't become like a hindrance. I think it's also seasonal too. You know, there's a season where you could be doing five things pretty good, and then another season where you're like, no, I just want to do three things really, really well, and that's okay. I think it's we're all on that journey of figuring things out. I think you're a unique individual though that gets to say that you get to do all these things. Uh, I don't know how much you get paid equally versus, you know, for one thing versus the other. I can tell you. But but I think a lot of people would love to say, Oh, yeah, I do voiceover. Oh, I'm an actor. Oh, I'm also in a band. Now, uh, the parent who's listening on this, like, um, are you saying you're unemployed? Very unstable. This sounds like you're a creative way of saying you're unemployed, you know. Um so back to you. Um when you shifted. Well, let me just make sure. That was my answer. I don't know if that was satisfactory.

SPEAKER_00 37:10

That was actually a very, very good answer. And I was gonna say, like, you know, in my humble opinion, not just saying this for the podcast, but I always kind of try to tell you're not a one-trick pony. And I think you do relationships so well and you study humans in a way without really meaning to, that I believe that just comes out in your business, and that's why you're successful in business, really, is because or telling human story, if that would, whether it be writing or doing the visual portion of that, or really clientele, why do they like adore the person you are? Well, you're really, really, really great at relationship. And that's what that's been my experience with you. And so I think that it's easier probably for you to tell human stories because that's all you know. Like, yeah, that's all you know is like real relationship. And whether that be with your wife, whether that be someone like myself, I've gotten to be a benefactor of that relationship over the years. And then I would say we both have even told other people, or when people, you know, ask about the work we do, it's like, well, man, I suppose we cut up for about 10 minutes and then we got into the work, and then we got super, super deep for about five, 10 minutes, and then we like signed off and said, See you later. And then next time we worked together, and that came out in the work every single time. Well, why is that? You know what I mean? So it just came so naturally.

SPEAKER_01 38:29

So I was gonna mention that just so you don't pay for that endorsement. I think thank you. I think that's if I was a one-trick pony, it'd be relationships. I think that's literally why I wanted to start this podcast is just to make it a hangout session for all my buddies. Eventually I'll I'll run out of my buddies and then I'll have to talk to strangers, you know, and hopefully they'll I've run out of friends. Yeah, but um, I want to go back to talking now about the peak of your of your voice career uh after and and your music career, because it's all downhill from here.

SPEAKER_00 39:03

That peaked years ago.

SPEAKER_01 39:05

That was after you guys and this awesome motley crew of awesome folks went out into the world and started really putting the years under their belt and specializing and and just ranking achievements. You started doing that, you started working with awesome brands. Talk to me a little bit, just give me a highlight of some of how things escalated, how how you got to interact with some cool brands. I think that's the really juicy part people would love to hear about like what's it like?

SPEAKER_00 39:31

Sure, yeah. I so a lot of projects, and and Rolanda would know this in the sense that projects are so time sensitive. A lot of times, like deadline is uh is a real thing in the entertainment industry, whether it be in music or in film. But let's talk film for a second. When you have a client or TV or film or commercial or whatever, like there's such a deadline and such a you must execute, and it's like a machine, right? Once you're in the machine, it's pretty wild. But one of the experiences I think that really stood out was years back when Connor McGregor, uh, he's a UFC fought uh Floyd Mayweather. And uh again, I had maybe done a few, I would say athletic or like top elite athlete things over the years, but they were more with teams. This was more like an icon, as you know, is like aside from just an icon, he's a bit of a crazy person in that way. And I think we all know that, which is hilarious. But um he had this amazing way with people, right? And so I was like to even be kind of uh put in that category of being on his team in a way. So essentially got uh contacted out from his team, uh, who was or an agency that was affiliated with his team to do an ad uh for the fight. And here's here was the deal. There was another agency that was involved that they were looking really hardcore at. And you'll know this very, very well, Rolando. There's a there a lot of times is they'll pin agencies against each other and say who can make the best yada da-da-da. They'll pay both in the process, and whoever the best wins, right? It's like making the best film or whatever wins. So this group of uh filmmakers who I kind of had gotten some brief relationship with, uh, had said, we are flying. This is them on a call. We are flying into McGregor's hometown. We have two hours in the boxing ring when he was a younger teen with his trainer who trained him coming up into UFC and boxing, wrestling, grappling, all that kind of thing. We have two hours to film in the ring. That's it. And you know on the production side what that means, Rolanda. It's like that's it's impossible.

SPEAKER_01 41:50

Like a heavy pre-production project.

SPEAKER_00 41:52

Oh my gosh, you know, project.

SPEAKER_01 41:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:55

To think that you could light it, smoke it, all the different production elements in two hours, much less. Like you need a day for that, right? So, to give you an idea, a lot of people who aren't in production, it was an almost impossible feat to get something that would be really standout. However, they said, we're gonna fly into his hometown in Dublin in Crumlin specifically, shoot this because we feel it's the best take on go where the guy started. And then they shot footage the rest of the day after that time of this young kid who had never acted before. They said he was a boxer from the gym. They said, Hey, go around and just, you know, put your gloves on, do your thing. We just kind of want you to look off, do your thing, run, jog, do your exercises, all that, like your training, and we'll just film you doing it. Okay. So, all that to say, not to be long-winded, but they got a hold of me and they said, All right, so we don't have too much visual. We're just gonna give you what we are doing. However, we want you to do an Irish accent and we want it to be from Belfast. And I was like, holy crap. So they're taking my voice, which the grit and the kind of chest voice, my natural tone, I suppose you should say. Now put it in this character, but put it like he's fighting for Ireland, right? So all that to say, we make this ad together in crickets. You hear crickets, and you're going, I don't think we got it, man. I don't I don't think they made the time, I don't think we made the edit, I don't think da-da-da-da-da. It was just a race to the finish line. So I had a friend and I was living in Western North Carolina at the time in Asheville, North Carolina, and they had said, Come over, we're gonna watch, you know, watch the fight and whatever. We have pizza and and soda and whatever, just let's hang out, you know? So came over, it's legitimately one of those times where you're just like getting pizza, not thinking anything in the world about it, and just sit down like this, and then I look up. And it's our ad on it's your voice. And it's my voice, and it's all the things. And I'm uh you know, it's kind of one of those moments you're like grabbing the friend next to you, like, and they don't care. Get off your phone, they're eating pizza, they're eating pizza, they don't care. And you're just like, I made it, and they have no idea what you're talking about. It's great. You know, the context for where you're at, the environment is like, we could care less, you know. But for me, obviously, it was one of those times where I went, man, you know, you I see the ad now, even and it stands out. I guess how many years later from that fight? Uh, but beyond that, it was one of those examples of we need we need you to pivot on the spot doing something you necessarily have never done before. Be completely convincing to the culture it comes from. You're talking about someone's culture where they grew up in and everything else. You can't just like phone it in. Oh, yeah, I'll just do an Irish accent. No, it's like you have to do kind of that dialect, get all those pieces in order because you're representing a nation, right? And here you're representing a nation and a guy who came from nothing and made his career up to this point. This is his pinnacle. So it's like the delivery on that has to be, you know, epitome of where they're at in their career and another global icon they're fighting. So you're like, this is crazy. So, anyway, that was one of the ones that is standout for me over my career to think that um, you know, they'd choose somebody who was North American, that they would choose somebody in this way who some Italian kid, you know, to do an Irish ad. That's so, but yeah, it's pretty much uh, you know, that was one of the most standout ones, I think, over the years for sure.

SPEAKER_01 45:39

Awesome. And like, talk to me, just quick rundown. What are some of the car commercials? Because I I saw I see some of those, and I'm like, oh, I think that's a Rob one.

SPEAKER_00 45:47

Like, I can't Well, even actually, as I'll tell you, as of now, a really exciting one for me. I adore legacy brands. I believe that heritage brands that have been around for a hundred some years are ones that you go, how in the world, how through all these different ages have they changed their messaging to still exist?

SPEAKER_02 46:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:10

You know, you think about ourselves, we're like, we don't have a hundred-year period of time for our names to be around. But if you were to build a business and you are, say, Vega Productions, you know, you're gone. But Vega Productions went on and it's been here for a hundred years, it's like, that's something to say. You know, uh your marketing, your messaging has either stayed the same or you've given a million iterations of the one messaging that had value to it. So uh I'm currently the voice of Indian motorcycle. So anytime that stuff comes on, uh dude, even just that statement is so badass.

SPEAKER_01 46:42

I'm currently the voice of Indian motorcycle.

SPEAKER_00 46:44

Like I love the brand, and I, you know, in many ways, uh the there's a few that you get pinned against each other, right? In that realm, you know, I I think a lot of people would say, Oh, you could say, oh, Toyoto and Kawasaki and all these kind of things. But I mean, let's be real, in America, it's Harley and it's Indian, right? They have been in a war of who's the best for ages. And uh beyond that, I just think that both brands are absolutely American, absolutely stand out, whatever you want to say. But I think there is something incredible about being around for 130 years. Yeah, yeah. Um, and how to create that messaging. And then someone where you'd go, this guy's in his 30s, and we're choosing him to be our voice for a legacy brand that's been around for 130 years. Um, so there's a high honor to that. And then I think beyond that, getting asked uh multiple years to do it in a row. So last year they found me and they said, let's work together, and we did the branding on it. And to get, you know, asked again for a recurring year to say we you we like we like this relationship and it was mutual, I think that's cool. But that and when I say Rolanda, that's in the last like three weeks. Um so that's pretty cool, you know, when you're watching television, you're watching something else this uh online or you're at a dealership. Um, that's something current that I'm that I'm doing for sure.

SPEAKER_01 48:08

And I want to also tell the audience like you hear of Rob here on this podcast, so you might see like, oh, I think I understand Rob's voice, but you're like a chameleon because the the one ad that really threw me out what was the Scottish uh there's been a lot of those.

SPEAKER_00 48:26

I think maybe the one you may be referencing is I did a spec for BMW when they were trying to do stuff in Asia, and I they wanted this very specific vocal. And, you know, to this day, I think for myself and for other people, you always think of like kind of very uh convincing roles, right? You look at a Heath Ledger and you're like, he embodied the Joker, or you know, look at all these different actors. It's the one that I can, I don't want to say I'll never hang my hat on it, but what I mean is is that it still surprises me and other people of like, there's no way that's you, you know. It's 80s, you know, a guy who very much sounds like he's at the end of his life in his 80s, and he's either very, you know, I suppose you could say kind of a Celtic person, you know, like it's a little bit of Scottish, a little bit of English, a little bit of Irish, but it has that kind of vocal that you'd go, no, no, impossible, that's not you. And uh, and yeah, those are standout ones for sure. I mean, there's a few of those in my career that I can say I've tried to do the work the best I could, man, is just to say, I hope that this culture is okay with my version of what they've done, you know?

SPEAKER_01 49:42

No, that's great. I think so you even just the posture you have in like thinking about that is is I think refreshing because we're taking on characters and personas, and uh we do that in the entertainment world. There's an art to it. I think you you research it. I had another buddy of mine who was thinking about going into voiceover, and he would talk about it in the same way. Like it's like research and and diving deep into a role just like you would on stage or on the screen. So um I want to shift now the conversation, if it's okay with you, to how have you managed your passion for music alongside of that? How has that like blowing? I haven't. No, I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_00 50:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:29

Like, how have you managed that? Has has it blossomed? Have you had to put it on the back burner? Like today you're you're still touring, right?

SPEAKER_00 50:36

Yes, I am.

SPEAKER_01 50:37

So yeah, share, shed a little bit about more light on that.

SPEAKER_00 50:40

Okay. I'm gonna give you the abridged version because it's the last specifically uh anybody who's in music, uh the last six years I've been very active. We did 120 dates last year, to give you an example. So almost every weekend of the year, um, you know, we're out and about. When you're in town, like and when I say in town, like music cities, like in LA and New York, a Nashville, that are very known uh globally for music-related touring or events, that kind of a thing. Um the term weekend warrior is a big term, right? When you talk about people who and what what does that mean for people who aren't in this industry? All it means is on a Wednesday night or a Thursday night, typically, you and when I say night, I mean like pretty much midnight, almost like near the end of the night. And a lot of people would know this if they have friends in the industry, but people who don't, they have no idea this world exists, you know. You get on some form of transport. And why I say some form of transport is that's looked like for me personally, uh like a lot of bands over the years, you start in a truck, in a 15-passenger van, in a luxury bandwagon, in a bus. It's looked like all of those for me. I've done pretty much every iteration of those, including obviously normal travel, which would be just flights or whatever else. But for the most part, a lot of people leave in a some form of transport at midnight, and they arrive in the next city in the morning or in the you know, mid-afternoon portion. The rest of the day is setting up sound check, and then you play the gig wherever it is in the United States or overseas. Um, and so that's been my life for the last six years. So a lot of scheduling, and and to answer your question, it's a lot of, yeah, sure, the juggling effect of going, how do I do both? Right. And so that is looked like, you know, it's hilarious, but I go, hey, man, here's the interesting other part of life. So I moved to Nashville specifically. You're like, why are you there? Is it a big acting voiceover hub? No, not yet. Um, I would say, you know, film in Nashville is about two, three years away. And that's just my professional opinion. A lot of it has to do with to code studios and all that kind of thing. Uh, aside from that, it just has to do with like scouting locations and locations not being the easiest thing to access, which is why people go to Oklahoma or Atlanta. But I moved to Nashville to be a songwriter, which is kind of weird for people to be like, oh, it's weird. You do voice acting. And I I moved here because I went, okay, I am not willing to move to LA. And all I mean by that is I'm not willing to trade my lifestyle-ish for going and auditioning in person all the time. And to be honest with you, the last 10 years, as we all know in film, so much of it has been done remotely, so much of it has changed. The climate has changed and how to do that. So I was just kind of like, I'm not willing to do that. I looked at New York and Chicago and Vancouver, these big acting and voiceover uh hubs, right, for my industry. But I just went, you know what? Nashville's up and coming on film. I can do continue to voiceover and grow that on my own, but I can't be in a city that it's full of the best songwriters in the world. So if I'm not going to go to LA and I'm not gonna go to New York and, you know, sell your car, move in a 600 square foot apartment, all the things, or have six roommates, which is very normal in New York, right? Use the subway all the time. Okay, well, I'll move to Nashville, continue to do what I was doing, try to continue the acting chops and craft of that, but I'm gonna songwrite. That's what I'm gonna do. So that looks like over the years, trying to toss up where to do voiceover, songwriting sessions, and songwriting sessions start here at around 11 a.m. in most of the industry. And then if you're in pop music, they start at 11 p.m. I know that's crazy to think about.

SPEAKER_01 54:42

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 54:42

Yeah, so one's through the night, the other one's through the day. And uh, you know, some genres uh spend, let's say, anywhere from an hour to four hours on a song, like can be done one and done like that. Others spend 12 hours on a song, and that's different genres of music. Everything's here, rock, pop, blues, you know, bluegrass, you name it, is here in town. And so I chose here to know that it's this myriad of a place that caters to a person who does multiple things in the entertainment industry. And you know what? It is so typical. I I know it's crazy to think about this, but like I am for sure not an anomaly. There, you go inside a coffee shop, and what drew me to this place was like you go inside of a coffee shop, and I know this exists in other places, but I don't know if it exists like it does here. And you're like, that person's building an app. Later on, they have a songwriting session. That night they're going to do vocals for a recording, like there's they they're a powerhouse singer, and they'll wake up and they're on a theatrical production the next day. And so many of these people have are so good at uh like just several different things that it's not weird to be like it's the question here in Nashville is hilarious. It's like, what do you do? What do I what do I not do? You know, like everybody's kind of this not just dreamer, but it's like, well, that girl builds websites. She's also the best Broadway singer you've ever heard. And she, you know, does social media marketing for these four artists who are crushing it, and da-da-da-da-da. It it everyone's like that, you know, in a lot of ways. And I I'm kind of like this to the people around here. And that's why in this environment, it it impassions me to go, well, it's not like I'm just like special here. Like everyone's hustling, everyone's in this place of like, they're doing a million different things. And it's not just out of scarcity, by the way. They're just good at a lot of different things, and they choose not to go, I'm just gonna be single-minded on something. They're incredible at all those kind of different things, and that's what I think, again, gets me excited about it. But yeah, it's been a really difficult uh toss-up. And the answer that I could give you would be the most solid answer would be I certainly took a major step back from on-camera acting and songwriting this last year. And as you can imagine, 120, 20 dates a year, uh, you've got travel days, you know. We went all over the show, you know, the shop to uh to get to these places and do it. And a lot of times when you are on a headline tour or a mainline tour is direct support for people.

SPEAKER_01 57:29

Um You guys are opening for Yeah, you name it.

SPEAKER_00 57:33

Uh you name it in country music, especially. Uh, there's really not been too many we haven't opened up for, which has been a beautiful uh gosh, what an incredible opportunity. But I will say as well, like a headline tour uh looks like a whole different animal, right? So you have four shows in a row, one day off, four more shows, one day off, four more shows. And so your night after night, you know, 95 minute sets giving your all because you want to people paid a ticket, you're giving them an experience, hopefully of a lifetime, is my, you know, what I try to give. I'm like, hey, man, you you paid for a ticket. I'm gonna give you a show, that's for sure. And uh yeah, so it's looked like having to back off at times from that. And then this year, you know, Rolando, it's the the answer to that is I'm backing off from touring a lot more to focus on songwriting, on-camera acting, voiceover in a way I maybe haven't for a couple years now in in music. And it's just out of pure um non-negotiab for myself. What can I do? What can't I do anymore? Place in life, you get it. When you're married or when you're thinking about a family, or all those kind of things, you go, I need to pivot. It's constantly a pivot. You know that.

SPEAKER_01 58:48

Yeah, that's actually a great segue because the journey is not a straight line. Um, and then it's also you're kind of um reevaluating your priorities during each season. And you've tried out, you could you keep going doing these five things, but now it's like now I want to focus on these, and then you might change your mind five years from now. I don't know. You know, so now where you're at, why is that focus going to be the focus for you?

SPEAKER_00 59:21

Yeah, so I I believe that in everything in our lives that we've put our hands and our heart and our minds to, that you always are doing, and I don't know if you agree with this, I know we've had personally these discussions. But where is your health at in those you know, spiritually, physically, emotionally places in your life? So I'm making decisions based upon what is of health to the things that I value. And I don't mean material things, I mean my relationship with my wife, relationship to my family, relationship to sure friends, relationship to the people in business that I do relationship with. And a lot of people would say, you know, touring is a very uh it is uh the most non-habitual, most difficult part of life to sustain or create, let's say much less create, but sustain habits and also I would say it, it it tosses up those three for people. You're on in a constant juggle, I think, than more than any other industry, spiritually, emotionally, physically, you're constantly checking up on your mental health. You're constantly checking up on your physical, your emotional health. It's why there's so many, there's so much priority to people now in the industry. Uh, I think it's just a rampant thing where people go, I'm exhausted. And what do they mean by that? I'm exhausted in every one of those places. And so for me, for touring now, it's looked like I need I understand that these places in my life have to be healthy in order for me to be a husband, a brother, a son, a friend, a good business guy. Now I could easily just say, well, I'm a better voiceover artist and actor than I am a drummer. That's true. But we've also seen some really amazing move the needle metrics and results from, you know, it's awesome to go in my truck right now and listen to top 40 radio and be like, oh, I'm playing drums. Cool. Yeah. You know what I mean? That's cool, right? That's great. And what I mean by cool is you work as a 14-year-old to be able to be in your 30s and go, okay, maybe I have something to show for, I guess, whatever. But I think beyond that, it's looking and going, well, I'm not going to trade my emotional, physical, spiritual health anymore and what I want for the future and the now for something that looks like accolade or spotlight. It's not worth it. I can tell you that right now. It's why I think so many actors, like a Shia LaBeouf, when's the last movie you saw of him? It's like he had to take a second and go, whoa. I think Shire was so like, yo, I was doing it. I was at the height of what I was doing. However, every part of my life was crumbling underneath me. So being able to step away from that and you're going, you're, you're, you are the epitome of an actor, right? Like can do anything. But he had to take a step back from it and go, this is not, it's the, you know, the spiritual parallel is what is it if I gain the whole world, but I lose my soul?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:30

It doesn't matter. You know that for your business, you're like, what does it matter if I got, you know, a nine-figure salary or whatever you want to call it? The trillionaire, baby. Yeah. Um, no, but you know, what does it matter? What does it matter what I'm building if I'm an awful father? Yeah. What does it matter? You know, here are these guys. And so that's what it's been for me, man. And the shift in focus is also to go. You know what? What fills me up inside in those three areas of life? And I can like, you know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, tell you as clear as possible an answer on that. And right away. What fills me up is acting and voice acting. And obviously the relationship that comes and that circles that uh it fills me up to the nth degree more than I could ever, you know. I've been out on stages where there's a heck of a lot of people out there, right? And it's wonderful. And I guess what? I got the best seat in the house. I'm on the drums and we're on the riser. I can see people as far as you know, you can see, and the spotlights wonderful, and those warm lights that everyone talks about, you know, for for that, you know, 95 minutes, you're a rock star. But what does that really equate to? You know, it's funny because, you know, if someone were to go, would you trade, would you trade that with 35,000 screaming people for a booth in your basement? That you I I would 100%. I have no problem trading that and talking with someone I love to do relationship with because this fills me up in every way than this does. So that's why that shift is for me right now, and in the same word uh same way, the the comparison with songwriting, uh creating in a room with other people in that way, same thing, Rolando. Like I'm able to finally go, it fills me up in these places in my life like that never could.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:30

Yeah, but you needed to experience all that, of course, to kind of for years to kind of like know, okay, I've reached the summit of this mountain. Yes, it's nice and it's great, a lot of amazing people here, but there's something else, or maybe it's retreading old ground and just realizing how great that was for me. So, like everybody has that, you know. I think I think the question is, do people get to explore that in the ways I think you've gotten to explore, which I think is awesome that you've based on your story up until now, you've had a lot of opportunity to explore different avenues. Sometimes people maybe are too scared to go out there and try things. But if it you don't mind me asking, how old are you right now?

SPEAKER_00 1:05:15

I just a few days ago turned 36 years old.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:19

Okay. I'm about to turn 35 in about a month. And yeah, it's crazy even saying that. I know, trust me. But there's, I think I'm recognizing in the 30s, a lot of my peers are starting to recognize that that you're out there 10 plus years. You've if unless you've switched careers midway, which it's okay if you have. Like totally um, there's people that have been there, and okay, you squeeze as much juice as you can from the experience, and then you're like, Is this what I want? And sometimes it's going back to the thing that you thought was just okay. It's like, no, this is my my sweet spot. This is where I have the inner child in me is still connecting in that, or it might be just I'm gonna move on. the next thing but that awareness is so refreshing and it's freeing especially in a world where it's not it's not easy to have that freedom uh to to pursue that or to take that risk uh considering there's people that literally can't make those decisions because they have to be in this job as to be a creative and to be making living is such a huge blessing and then and to be able to change your mind and go somewhere else afterward and still pursue that confidently that that even more is like so awesome. I think that's an encouragement to all the other creatives that are listening. So are you a f what are you afraid of? And I'm gonna ask you a leading question.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:40

You no I'm not good.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:43

If you you're pivoting back into this space okay in the same way you said radio is going to die isn't voiceover going to die with uh AI?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:53

No. And why I say that is that even first of all AI being trained if you will are prompted by humans uh I can say okay let me give you my professional opinion on it then I'm gonna give you my non-professional opinion your manifesto okay here's my professional opinion and I I can speak from experience okay so thankfully uh the biggest director for AI content in the world and I are able to on a consistent basis weekly work together. Um his name is PJ Accetoli but he uh PJ has been a filmmaker and storyteller for so long and is an incredible filmmaker. Uh beyond that he is up there with uh being in an industry right now that is taking real directors and he's the producer but taking real directors and having them direct and prompt AI to do commercial work for major brands. Okay, why I say at the end of the day and this goes uh with also saying that we just as of over the weekend, I know this is hilarious to say, but over the weekend they have just gotten the technology well enough to get this right for ADR.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:15

So what I know they've been working on that for multiple languages you know redubbing movies in another language and just changing the the lips.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:23

And so that's very that's been a holdup for art of the AI has been well you can't get this to seem smooth and and whatever you can prompt it all day but this technology is just not there yet. So they just as of recently have come leaps and bounds of that because they had to catch up to it right so what I will say with this is you have like Art List IO you have man just a bunch of them and I'm not this is not shots towards them I actually think it's so incredible uh something I I may or may not have a membership to these websites. Are you kidding me? I think it is so amazing and you know shots fired back at me on LinkedIn or wherever this is going to be AI is a tool bar none. Like it is it it's an incredible tool in so many different ways. I use it on the daily um and I mean from anything from how do I tell you know how do I give empathy towards someone who just lost someone in a way that will resonate with them. I don't want to you know what I mean it it can be used for that or it can be used for you know what help me with help me refine these things in my business or whatever. And I think it's an incredible tool. Anyways so a going back back to a platform uh like Artlistio or some of these other AI platforms that have vocals or whatever I have found that the only way that it has really affected my industry whatever it may be or our industry if you will is that the pre-production part, which I actually think what a great tool for you. Rolando doesn't have to and this is this is true, he doesn't have to call me anymore and go, hey Rob, so we're doing this project can you do a scratch read for me and I can give you said said whatever well that's great. It it it it helps your budget at the end of the day I get it being a post guy too or doing the pre-part of something oh my gosh it's so much better to be able to use a voice that has some of the elements that mine does to be able to put on a timeline or use your own voice and say it into a microphone and say it like that in the way the intention you would have it said, put it on a timeline and go, okay, what's it missing? Oh better call Rob. It's missing the human part because I don't feel what he's saying. Man it sounds good. Ooh does it sound good you know and the difference between me doing a demo and trying to get a trumpet sound and like playing it on a keyboard and going you know what it's just not like the guy and the guy comes out and goes you know and you're like whoa there's the human element there it is. So going back to PJ PJ and his team hires me uh now to make something human and all that is is you can go all day on AI voices but they don't bring the human commercial element or film element that it needs to happen there.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:14

And it's incredible but because you know what's really scary is I use it for music too and music has become all convincing in terms of Suno Suno is just I mean we're not no we're not sponsored by anybody in this I know it's like we're throwing out we're starting but if you want to we're available. I mean the irony of having AI companies sponsor a human podcast uh but there's something I listened to a uh song from a somebody who sent me one like oh yeah we had one of our volunteers write us a song for organization I'm like oh my gosh like it's crazy yeah so there's a lot I think what you're you're describing something that I'm gonna just unpack a little bit. Yes please yeah there's there's still a lot of friction to get to human. Now the question is can you use AI to get human sounding things? I would assert that potentially you can but you still have to work really hard with very much prompt engineering and a so what I think a lot of people need to do is get their expectations in check that you might have the potential to produce it's one thing to produce voiceover for a social like consumable item asset that's going to be consumed in a week and forgotten. And the minimum amount of effort that you have to prompt engineer a pretty good voiceover for that yeah you'll get 90% of the way there.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:38

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:39

Again less friction because I don't have to call someone like Rob or post on voices.com or whatever. Um now if I wanted you like if I wanted to reproduce you which I haven't tried by the way just be I'm being honest with you I on friend to friend I have not tried to say I'm gonna try to make this sound like Rob. There's a lot of layers to that that it's not just your voice but it's also you know going in how to read which we're not gonna spend the rest of the time unpacking because that's all layered and there's a lot of you know preparation but I can tell you Rob this is what I want this is how I'm thinking it should read and you filter that through your like a direct it's like when a director tells an actor look here's what I'm looking for the actor doesn't immediately just do what the director said they actually they perform they it goes to their filter of processing like oh I think what they really mean is they want me to do this this is what I'm gonna do. And so many aha moments that me and you have had on our recording sessions where I'm like I don't think I'm explaining this clearly but here's what I'm gonna try to tell you and then you're like and then you're like no I got it I got it and then you do it and you're like oh my gosh that's what I wanted but I couldn't I didn't tell you exactly it was all of that intuition that collective experience that you had now can someone who spends several hours hone that in maybe get there I think it's possible but that still creates way too much friction for the average person who's got a budget who has high risk like attached to the project like I just saw one of your latest CounterStrike videos plug in because I'm a CounterStrike player. Oh I didn't know that's awesome. So I'm like oh that's so cool that's Rob's voice and and you're like oh a large company with a large product and following and brand has high risk they could tell their in-house marketing person to spend time crafting a voiceover version of you but the the risk and reward ratio is just not there yet.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:47

But for small and mid-sized people it might be you're also delivering a product to humans so at the end of the day if I've got a group okay yesterday's a great example I'm working with a uh brand in the health space and there's the CEO of the company and the rest of the five staff that are their marketing team. And then I've got my director who's directing me through the session but director for the entire spot right it's all AI driven the entire visual their uh I I should say their like a like a Geico their storyboards and artboards and stuff? Yes and and actually the the entire commercial project is all prompted. So what I would say on that is it's like the the equivalent for those like listening and and watching would be like the the first time the Geico Gecko came out. They have a spokesperson that's animated right so in this case there's an AI animation of the character that is their sponsor for this or their mascot if you will of the brand and we're voicing this you know voicing this character and that kind of a thing. Now you'd think wouldn't it be easy? Well I'm looking at the the edit and they have an AI voiceover in all the spots for this character. But to really encompass this is hilarious but to encompass the character in the the scenario that they artificially made it still has to have a human prompt to it. So what do they have me do? There's three stages of it yesterday we got preliminary honing the character's voice in what it looks like today when I get off with you it will be I'm on a ring light setup and for a bust of me from here out I'm using the same kind of things they would use in like a Lord of the rings to get the dragon or a it's not the capture. Yeah it's not the dots anymore they have that you know we're able to do it now just over our phones. And so they take all my movements and they're putting it into the AI character. So yes you're able to as you said you're able to prompt something I mean why is Morgan Freeman making a stink right now he's the highest you know he is the uh the legend of all legends when it comes to film and and vocal a dis a succinct and distinct voice and character that we've all fallen in love with over the years. Why is he worried that AI kind of gets his you know gets his performances the only other thing I would say is like it's a person I've said this before for years with you. It's a personal responsibility for me to take on the direction from people in my lives of saying don't be a one trick pony in what you do. Yeah you know what at the end of the day you have the Rob Ricotta tone. Cool. I hate to speak to myself in third person or whatever. But what I mean by that is somebody comes to me for my product, my brand okay he speaks over microphone his natural voice with a smile is welcome everybody. You know it's like this real nice warm tone. Great. Yeah me and a million bazillion other people that do this for a living the one trick pony thing is can you be a million different other characters that don't sound like this voice because that's how you stake it stay around because to me I'm like let me give you a bridge version of it. If you put my voice into AI and it makes an AI version out of it okay what's the worst possible scenario that happens with that Rob Ricotta goes away that vocal brand goes away well then I'm going oh no or I'm going okay because I'm so glad I have a hundred other voices in this body that can work and continue to work on a consistent voice you know basis doing something else um yeah in my industry in the same way that you go you know what I've I've been doing universities and I crush university and they love me and I do all the things then it goes away and you're like well it's a good thing I can go brand health content. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 1:19:01

Like absolutely I you're you're you're talking about um uh the ability to have just uh agility and flexibility and pivoting which is makes a lot of sense there is something I want to go back to that I think is actually a real important piece of this and maybe it's the makings of a theory that I think I'm going to test moving forward. You described this whole production where is all AI generated the visuals and it and in the voiceover part they say voiceover and like it is it's like almost like if the creators are saying we're okay with all of this being AI generated but here's where we want to have a a human component to it. I'm curious is if as consumers as we psychologically consume these pieces of entertainment and media if our brains will always latch on to at least one human characteristic in something to keep us grounded otherwise it our brains do this sorting where it's just AI slop I want it like I'm just gonna throw it out not going to pay attention to it. If there's something unexpected that can grab us whether that is a voice but I will also argue what if a video has a human visual component and AI voiceover is that enough I don't know but there's something visual about it in the formula that that is not a hundred percent I'm curious if we're we've been trained so long as entertain like consumers of entertainment that it'll be very hard to pass that test. It's kind of like the uncanny valley in a in like CGI where you try to have characters that are full CGI there's something uh uncanny about a human being CGI that doesn't feel quite right. I'm curious moving forward if producers will always want to have at least one human element in the mix whether that is voiceover whether that is real actors that you're shooting your vehicle ad for the family getting in the nice safe car driving away I I'm just curious because the time the first time I watch a whole fully AI thing and I'm okay with it that'll disprove this theory but I think you have something there.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:27

Um I'm just yeah yeah the pivot too and that we can make right here and there uh let me pivot to the music side of life so have spent a ridiculous and stupid amount of time my wife would tell you if she was here she'd be like you he spent way too much time but I spent a ridiculous amount of time in music with AI. And what has that done um it cuts out the demo guy or girl which is kind of crazy. So the person that would make something to be able to pitch to a major artist in any genre, it's cut out that person which is an invaluable part of music. And then beyond that it is uh it's something that's very it's crazy. It's it's stopped a whole job for people. But I I will say here's the interesting part of that and this is where it was fascinating when you were saying this because I want to make a music parallel for you. Okay. So in the same way that commer uh major brands by the way like okay let me give you this example and I'd love here here's some homework for you. When we get off go watch the ad it's actually everywhere right now and I don't say that like oh it's everywhere. I say like it's everywhere because it's blowing my mind. I mean if you knew like it's blowing my mind that people are receiving it. Uh we made one of the first AI ads that we made together was for CalShi. Calci is a company it's a betting uh based company like odds you know odds company where you're um what are the odds that this and this and that and um has a lot to do with trades and and value.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:03

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:03

But uh CalShi made a ad, uh our team made an ad that I would honestly reckon to say like I'm I don't want to say like I would just say it feel I feel an accomplishment with it because it's it's meshing real with a director that directed it in a way that feels not disingenuine to a process of art. And then creators who created this kind of very cinemac cinematic scope of things with AI. Now look it's not perfect there's some time there's some things with it that I'm not entirely happy with and I'm sure the rest of the team aren't however it's a good grasp of something go, I think for the first time you sit back and go, well I don't mind that you know like I don't mind that change. It's not my favorite but I don't mind it. But it's kind of everywhere at the moment as far as an example of AI commercial gone wild billions of views. What I mean is like not on the actual metric, but like it's just out there. It's continuously grabbing attention which is interesting to me. So let me make the musical parallel to that so as songwriters obviously we get in the room to either there's an artist in the room and what I mean in every musical genre or we are songwriters in a room trying to get something to get to an artist, right? So you name it in in in the industry, but like so recently over the last probably six and a half months I've had the opportunity to pitch to the I suppose you could say like superstars in their genre with AI demos. And how do I know they'll receive those okay I made sure that their team was okay with that before I sent them something but I wanted to make sure that so here's the interesting part there's two humans in a room it's me and a producer we're creating who's also a songwriter we're producing this song we have an idea musically of where it's going and we have a rough idea whether him singing it, me singing it, we have a guitar, real instruments, real native instruments then we're plugging that into with prompts into like a Suno or some of these other softwares and we're getting the idea of what would be like in their experience of things. We'll add these because these are the people in their band add uh background vocals because they have people that sing background vocals. Make it tailored to them. So then that's gone straight to the artist. Wow so this is this is my thought in this and I know you're picking up on it because I can see you light up on it. That artist either translates that as this is so ridiculous, non-authentic artificial whatever else or the human element is I can hear past some of the AI elements of something because the song was made by humans. I can hear past some of the instrumentation that choices that AI made are prompts because the lick, the guitar lick, the vocal hook, the whatever was made by humans and I can hear that in the song.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:19

You know what that AI vocal obviously isn't a human vocal. However it does a lot of the mannerisms I do so as an artist. So I can hear past those things. So would I say that it's like a it can be beneficial to getting a song cut, it getting a commercial made people on a marketing team being happy with a product of feature film a film a commercial so far so far yeah it's proving to that human element's in there enough now I agree with you at some point is it going to get to the point where we're just like desensitized to or the other the other part of it which is just like I just can't consume this any longer. There's nothing human about it.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:08

I don't know and we'll have to see because we're we're all living this experiment right now in real time. So hey maybe we'll have you in the podcast like a year from now and or and then you'll be like do you still have a job do you still have a job um and and or or have you switched completely are you half AI Rob have you gotten something installed yeah no I mean this has been awesome I before we leave because I have to wrap things up I in a kind of a short few sentences here how would you again summarize this journey that you've been on from here to here to where you are now what you're looking for um how has your creative identity changed over time or just your identity uh changed

SPEAKER_00 1:28:01

Relationships, the one strand I can say that has carried me through all of this. And what do I mean by that? People don't come back for my tone of voice. People don't come back for what I can do behind a microphone or for uh, you know, what I can do in front of a camera. They really don't. I mean that wholeheartedly. They come back because of the experience. We are still friends beyond what we do. We still work together because of the relationship behind something. I'm not just saying that for the podcast. I mean that as in, you know, when the world went to crud years ago with somebody, even that, it was like, you know, you have to ask yourself, why am I working right now? Why am I busy? Why am I busy in a time when the world is shut down? That makes no sense whatsoever. It was people who called up and go, You're, you know, on my Rolodex, you're up there. I can tell you why. And you know, most of the time that it really comes down to relationships. So that's carried me, including the people and the mentors that I still get under and say, I know I haven't arrived yet. Oh, I'm doing pretty cool things out here. No, like yeah, I haven't arrived and I've got a long way to go. But I would say relationships the one strand where I would say that, and I know you know that for yourself, and we talk about that personally, is like it's undeniable that those relationships are the ones that call back up because it's not just we have a good time, it's like we make great things, and beyond that, I know the person that I'm working with for the most part.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:32

Maybe I'm not with you every day, but we know each other in some way or another.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:37

That's an um amazing segue because I think that's the whole reason I'm even doing this podcast. You know, this is hopefully the first of many. Um, in the episodes ahead, I am hoping to be sitting down with other creatives, entrepreneurs, and leaders to kind of explore how um their stories can maybe shape who we are and how we see the world and where we're headed next. So I'm excited. And Robert, thanks again for the conversation.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:07

You know, I'm grateful, man.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:09

Thanks for being here at the beginning.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:12

Well, I mean, we were both at the beginning of our stages in our career and when we met, and it's only fitting. And I actually had no idea that I was one of the first, if not the first, with this podcast. Or maybe I just didn't read the fine print. You're like, I told you. No, no, yeah, yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:27

I feel like we needed to start with a strong voice. Oh man, I appreciate it. So thanks again. We look forward to the next few episodes. Keep an eye out for those. This is the power of human stories.