Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Bill Ratner. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Bill, thanks for joining us today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

I was hosting “The Phil & Bill Show” during morning drive-time at KBIG-FM 104.3 Los Angeles—the #3-rated station in the Southern California radio market. We played “easy listening” (some called it elevator music,) the wildest tunes were a few mellow Lionel Richie tracks. But it was a great gig—my newsman and I bantered back and forth, I reviewed movies, and interviewed celebs. But ever since age twelve my real dream had been to become a full-time voice actor doing TV cartoons, movie trailers, documentaries, TV promos, etc. Living in a mobile-home park in the suburbs I dragged myself out of bed at 4:30am, drove my Dodge K-Car to K-BIG, played orchestral cover tunes of vintage rock’n’roll songs, flapped my lips on the air ‘til 11am, then tooled around Hollywood for voiceover auditions, lunch, and naps. At night I attended voiceover workshops studying with a motley assortment of coke-addled ex-radio deejays (it was the ‘80s.) The workshops were actually a goldmine of hot tips on where to send voiceover demos, who was hiring, and how to build up your storehouse of voices and techniques—especially how to be yourself on-mic, as “big-voice” announcing was rapidly going out of style. But I was frustrated. I was making a decent salary in radio but only a few thousand bucks a year at free-lance voiceover. Every time I booked a commercial or a cartoon voice job I thought, “This is the big one, THIS is going to get me on the scoreboard.” My workload at the radio station was increasing. My program director wanted more scripted features. I suggested a mock-radio-drama starring me and my trusty newsman. To do this I had to get up at 3am and start typing on a few hours of sleep—at age 33, Hollywood evenings were too fun to miss. Slowly I began to book more freelance v/o gigs. I was cast as “Flint” in the G.I. Joe TV cartoon. Directors began recognizing my voice. I landed v/o jobs for Discovery, History Channel, etc. To my shock & surprise I was earning literally three-times the money at freelance v/o than I was at my morning job at K-BIG. I snuck a look at my newsman’s salary check; to my shock and horror he was being paid 50% more than I was. For the first time in my career I decided to negotiate for more pay. The numbers were clear—I could afford to quit K-BIG, but I enjoyed being on the air and didn’t really want to leave. I decided to tell my boss, “Double my salary or I’m outta here!” After gnashing his teeth and meeting with the higher-ups he offered me a 15% increase in pay. I stuck to my guns and gave a month’s notice. I felt like I was like diving from a tower toward a tiny trampoline below. But it worked. My freelance bookings continued to multiply. For the first time I could sleep ‘til 9, spend my days as a free-lance voice actor, and party at night like a normal human. Even my moody ex-boss gave me his blessing. When I ran into him at a post-production studio he said begrudgingly, “You’ve done well.”

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My father bought us our first TV when I was five. After the deliverymen rolled that gigantic wooden thing into our living room, my father instructed me, “Here’s ‘on,’ here’s ‘off,’ don’t get too close, or your eyes will fall out of your head.” I stared at that cloudy fishbowl mounted in a hardwood breakfront and managed to turn it on. A deep, authoritative voice came on, “This commercial message will be sixty seconds long,” Across the screen rolled a Pontiac sedan filled with smiling faces. I held my breath, and when it was over I ran into the kitchen. “Mom, I know what a minute is—sixty seconds!” “That’s right, dear,” she said. “Did you learn that in Kindergarten? “No, the man on TV said it.” From that point on I’ve been aware of voices, from baseball arenas, to movie theaters, to TV, and the internet. I was a Journalism major in college, fiddled around, didn’t graduate, acted in small theaters, went to film school for a while, got a job at a radio station selling ads to beauty parlors and gas stations, and told the Program Director, “I want to voice the spots I sell.” That started it all. I proceeded to make exactly the wrong kind of voiceover demos—way too long, every spot the same…boring. One of the first ad agency creatives I sent it to asked me, “How many of those demos did you send out? If there’s any way you can get those back and burn them, you’ll be better off.” I ended up working in radio for a few years playing “beautiful music” (musak.) I dedicated myself to taking voiceover workshops. Forty weeks a year you’d find me grinding out v/o copy in a booth somewhere, practicing, hoping, dreaming. The best thing to happen in my career was being cast as “Flint” in Hasbro’s TV cartoon G.I. Joe—All-American Hero. We voiced 52 episodes over two years, and they’re still available for streaming on Hulu. What followed was the luckiest long-streak of voiceover jobs I could ever have dreamed of. I never got pigeon-holed because I think of myself as a voice actor rather than an announcer. I figure it is my job to do it all. For variety and a bit of creativity I got involved in the storytelling scene and ended up becoming a 9-time winner of The Moth StorySLAM, and a 2-time winner of the Hollywood Fringe Festival Extension Award for Solo Performance. These days I write and perform poems; occasionally one gets published. At an age when some are drinking their can of Ensure, relaxing in a chaise lounge, I’m still writing, publishing, dreaming, and flapping my lips for pay.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

I realize that my principal driving desire is to play on a creative team, be a part of an ongoing scene that produces theater, poetry, comedy, and that involves audiences, colleagues, even critics. It’s the ensemble, the group, the agreement between fellow artists to do the work, that makes it possible for me to flower, to create, to achieve the highest degree of excellence. I can’t do it alone. It’s the interaction, the falling in like, falling in love, sharing of stories, gossip, and watching each other excel and do beautiful, powerful work that truly turns me on.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

I don’t know if there was anyone who could have taught me this—maybe a wise mentor—but I wish I had known from the beginning of my voiceover career how to answer the question from an employer, “What do you charge?” Artists always underbid themselves, hoping the employer will love us if we go cheap. I finally learned to say, “What”s your budget?” And they ALWAYS offer me more than I was going to ask. And the truth is, they know what their budget is. Budget meetings precede casting on most projects. My IRA would definitely be fatter if I’d learned this early on.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://billratner.com/author
• Instagram: @billratner
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/billratner.voiceover.author
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bill-ratner-77a5316/
• Twitter: @billratner
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@billratner