We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Mike Hathcote a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Mike, appreciate you joining us today. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.

I’ve been in voiceover of and on since 1995 when I began my career in radio. After taking a detour to be a pro skateboarder for a few years while my body would let me, I decided to get back into VO about 10 years ago as a side hustle.

When I was downsized from my tech job, I had to make a decision to either go out and get another job, or pursue VO as a full-time gig.

I’m so glad I chose the latter because it has been the best career decision I’ve ever made. It was scary and hard at first, much like most new ventures, but has been very rewarding, both financially and psychologically.

You can only make so much money working for someone else.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I started my career in 1995 in radio, thinking that it was the best path for me. After a few years, I got sidetracked with another passion of mine, skateboarding.

As a pro skateboarder, I traveled around and entered contests and did demonstrations. After a few years and broken bones, I decided it was time to switch gears again. But this time, stay in the skate industry. So, I opened my private indoor skatepark.
The X Games caught wind of this and offered me a job running their chain of multi-million dollar skateparks across the country, so I did that for a few years, all the while doing VO projects by word of mouth.

When ESPN decided to shutter those parks, I switched gears again to the tech world and worked for GoDaddy for eight years as an internal communications manager.

When that role was eliminated, I was given the choice of moving to a different role or taking a severance package.
I figured that this was the universe telling me to pursue VO full-time, so I went for it.

I now provide voice services for commercials, eLearning, phone systems, video content and audiobooks.

Now, I’m an award-winning VO actor of thousands of projects for some of the world’s most trusted brands like BMW, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Comcast and many more.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

In radio, it all about sounding slick and polished like your typical announcer type. A lot of it is about your voice. I had to unlearn the announcer style and learn to be natural.

In voiceover, it’s not just about your voice. You don’t need to sound like Morgan Freeman or Scarlet Johanson to succeed in VO. You just have to sound like a real person.

Anyone can read out loud. You have to connect with the script and make the listener feel like you’re talking to them. If you can educate, entertain, motivate someone with your voice, you’re in the club.

Of course, a nice voice doesn’t hurt.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Social media is as much about the other person as it is about you. Sure, if you have content to share, feel free to post it. But also like, comment and share other people’s content as well. This builds relationships.

Also, use the hashtag system to get in front of potential clients who aren’t necessarily connected to you.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://mikehathcote.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mikehathcote/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mikehathcotemedia
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-hathcote/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/mikehathcote
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-RR8IKEQZzQ1ifFtu4I2vg