Kill the Noise with Kesha Monk (ColorVO Collective series)

In This Episode…

Kesha's journey through radio into voiceover 3:35
Trailblazing goals 13:34
Advice about getting into the voiceover business 18:55
Redefining the word rejection 22:56
Success is... 30:40
Closing advice 37:21

Key Points

Voiceover is about more than the voice. It's not something that you think you can get into just because you have a nice voice. We're in the era of realness and connectability, so a lot of voices that you hear on television, radio, and so on may not have this melodious beautiful voice, because it's just about real people. It's about your ability to connect that script, with the people who are listening to it, which isn't easy to do.

If you don't have tough skin tough to accept rejection and not be willing to learn from that, then voiceover is definitely not for you.

If our initial reaction is that we're being rejected for these jobs, a helpful way to reframe it is to say "I wasn't rejected, I just wasn't selected. I wasn't selected for this part." Use that as fuel like you said to get better, to improve and don't always just come to that knee jerk reaction of 'what's wrong with me, Oh, they don't like me, maybe you know they don't like the way I sound or maybe they googled me and they saw what I look, maybe it's a political thing, or maybe they just don't like black people. You can think of so many reasons why you're "not good enough." So audition and let it go.

Connect

Kesha Monk’s professional career began as a radio personality. Her talent took her to many cities across the country including major markets such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago. After 20 years in radio, her career path shifted to voiceover after a devastating cancer diagnosis. She managed to obtain representation almost instantly and hasn't look back since. Her work includes Emily's List, being the promo voice for POV, a weekly documentary series that airs on PBS, A Little Late with Lilly Singh, and live announcing the Soul Train Music Awards.