We were lucky to catch up with Darrell Brown recently and have shared our conversation below.

Darrell, appreciate you joining us today. We love asking folks what they would do differently if they were starting today – how they would speed up the process, etc. We’d love to hear how you would set everything up if you were to start from step 1 today

Plain and simple, I would’ve started sooner. I was only vaguely familiar with the voice over industry prior to starting to take classes. I never considered it as a possibility for me nor did I have any ambitions of being an entrepreneur because I had a good job at the time with great benefits. However, once I started my education in the business, I fell in love with it and it sparked an interest that I couldn’t shake. Now that I am fully in it, I realize that the initial intimidation about running my own business was overblown. It is absolutely doable and manageable, and most importantly, rewarding. I would advise my past self to get started right after college.

Darrell, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Darrell Brown, and I am a full-time voice over actor. I also occasionally do some on-camera commercial work and lifestyle print modeling, but my bread and butter is voice over. Simply, I use my voice to help promote businesses and services on TV, radio and online. My specialty areas are commercial, narration, promo for TV and sports, animation and video games. You have heard my voice on projects for Google, Disney, Toyota, McDonald’s, Red Bull, Peacock, Paramount+, CBS, History Channel, ABC, Fox and many more. You can also see me on My Adventures with Superman in a recurring role as Perry White or guest starring as Santa Kitty on Gabby’s Dollhouse.

I started in voice over by taking classes locally in Dallas in 2008, educating myself on the industry. At the time, I was working at Gold’s Gym corporate headquarters in their marketing dept. They were preparing to do some radio commercials and were planning to hire a voice talent to record them. I took my shot and told my boss that I had been studying VO, and I would be happy to be the voice (at no charge of course since I was already an employee). To my surprise, they let me do it. I had a great time recording the commercial. While at the session, I had a conversation with the recording engineer. I told him that I had aspirations of being a voice actor. He shared that he was a voice talent himself and offered to help me record a demo reel (an audio file demonstrating the range of voice over you are able to perform). I happily took him up on the offer. I took a few days to prepare then we got to work recording sample. He took a couple of weeks to put the samples together into a complete demo. Once he was done, he said it turned out well…so much so, that he suggested that he could share it with his voice over agent if I was interested. Of course, I jumped all over that offer. He shared it with them, and they called me in for a meeting. We had a nice chat, and they said they would like to add me to their roster. I was over the moon! I had my first agent. This was by no means a typical experience, but it was my intro into the business.

To be clear, this was an overnight success situation. I still had a day job for many years while I did voice over on the side. Several months after getting an agent, I got a new job at Mary Kay headquarters in their corporate marketing department. It was a good job with great benefits that set my family up with a sense of stability…but voice over still had a draw for me. At some point, I told my wife and financial planner that in a perfect world, I would love to make voice over my full-time career. As my skills and my client base grew, it became more of a reality. We set some financial goals and started chipping away at them little by little. Early mornings before work and late nights after I put my young kids to bed, I would work on my VO business doing auditions and squeezing in jobs where I could….for a total of 10 years. Finally in 2018, we reached the goals that we had set and I was able to make the leap from my day job into being an entrepreneur and doing voice over full-time.

By the grace of God, I have been blessed to do what I love at a high level and make a living at it. As icing on the cake, I was recently recognized with the One Voice Award for Best Overall Performance for Television Promo for this sports narration project I recorded for CBS Sports: https://youtu.be/XiT7pfUU7ns, a piece of work that I am very proud of.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

This career, like every entrepreneurial pursuit, requires resilience. As I mentioned, it took 10 years of late nights and really early mornings sacrificing many full night’s sleep to get to where I am now. Additionally, a huge portion of my job consists of auditioning or “trying out” for roles. For auditions, you have to put yourself out there and open yourself up to the critique of strangers. It is probably similar to doing sales calls, RFPs or client pitches. At this point, I have done thousands of auditions, and in most cases you never hear any feedback…not a word unless you book the role and they hire you. It could be easy to view the lack of response as rejection. I don’t see it as being rejected; I simply was not selected (this time). On multiple occasions, clients have come back around to say that even though they selected someone else for a role, they really enjoyed my audition and they want to offer me a different role or add me to their talent roster. The lesson is to persevere and always put your best foot forward. You never know what may happen. You may not be right for a role or job or contract today, but smart clients are always keeping their eye out for potential partners. So when the time comes, be ready.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

Being professional, flexible, direct-able, providing quick turnaround and delivering high quality work. I understand that my clients are often up against tight deadlines, so I respond to their requests in a timely manner and in most cases can complete their project the same day, usually within a few hours. The convenience of technology allows me to offer the opportunity to connect remotely with clients, so we can collaborate in real-time and ensure they get the performance they need. I have a professional home studio with a vocal booth with top notch equipment to ensure clients get the sound quality they deserve.

If you have a business, product or service that needs to be promoted or a story that needs to be told, please reach out. I’d be happy to collaborate.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.dbvoiceover.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/darrellbrown26
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrellkbrown
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@dbvoiceover
• Other: https://vimeo.com/showcase/4501170

Image Credits

Headshot by Kelly Williams; TearCare, Volvo Trucks, 7-11