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

Hi Mark, thanks for joining us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

Prior to creating and building Kardavox Academy, I worked a lot of entry level gigs that felt like they had no future. I found myself in call centers, sales jobs, assistant roles, and so on. There’s nothing wrong with that work. We all start somewhere and need to learn the ropes before we grow. But it was clear to me that these spaces were not interested in my development or future. They wanted me to fill a seat, do a job, and keep quiet. I of course grew frustrated with this and began trying to find my way out. I have been a singer and metal vocalist for almost 15 years now, and this turned out to be my ladder upwards. People spoke very positively of my voice and my abilities in our music videos, and so I thought “Hey, what if I could teach people to do this too”? I had done most of an undergraduate program in Speech Language Pathology and had a strong understanding of how the voice works. So, I took this knowledge and started marketing it online – and Kardavox Academy was born. Over the years this grew into a passion for trying to help people create a space for themselves in the music industry. If I can train someone to be an amazing vocalist, they can then use that to become the touring musician they dream of. I train a lot of hobbyists, but the real payoff for me is when I see a Kardavox Academy alumni releasing music, playing shows, and even touring with their band. It’s a huge feeling of success because if they work hard, think smart, and use their voice, they can get our of the grind and do something they are passionate about.

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.

I started off as a young kid who just loved metal music and wanted to create it. I had gotten through most of a Speech Therapy undergraduate program but unfortunately had to drop it due to some pretty serious health issues I was facing at the time. I moved from Flagstaff back to Phoenix and honestly – I met the right people. My band mates were seasoned music veterans at the time and taught me how to be a vocalist. By that I mean, yeah I could sing and scream, but they showed me what it meant to take it seriously and work hard. I spent hours and hours each week just driving around the city practicing these deep, dark death metal growls in order to perfect them. It became an obsession. We wrote music constantly, released it when it was ready, and we all grew into our sound. As mentioned previously I started working on Kardavox Academy as a way to leave the workforce and work for myself and soon after met a fellow by the name of Quigs who helped with a lot of business strategy. He no longer works as part of Kardavox as he’s devoted to his new, and very exciting musical endeavors, but his help was definitely important. Honestly, I’ve always been a believer in following what works. Your demographic will tell you what they want through their interactions online. Fast forward to today and Kardavox has grown into a decent sized presence in the metal vocal education landscape. We offer free educational videos, paid online courses, and one on one lessons to help our students learn how to master our voice safely and efficiently. We’ve even grown to bring on another voice teacher, an an amazing artist by the name of VERONNA, who teaches the cleaner, less distorted side of the voice.

The biggest hurdle for our students is building a relationship with their bodies. Our voice is an instrument and that instrument IS very literally our body. So we offer so much more than just exercises. We teach our students to understand their instrument and learn its strengths. We teach them not just how the voice works, but how it grows. Our goal is for all of our students to be vocal mechanics, in a way. Not just driving the car, but understanding what’s under the hood and being able to self assess and guide their voice to their goals.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

There is an intense amount of pressure to be someone you are not when you market yourself online. You look at your peers and your competitors and you as yourself “How do I BE them” or even “How do I act like them, but better”? You want to stand out from the competition and that often makes you think you need to change who you are entirely. This is something I rejected less than one year into working for myself. It was miserable. And the truth is that your clients will tell you what brought them to you. I would ask students what made them choose me as their voice teacher and they would say that I was kind, approachable, knowledgeable, wholesome, able to demonstrate what I taught, and laid back. Those are the things about myself that come naturally and sure enough, those are the traits that were driving business. So I got rid of the over exaggerated voice and the cringe-worthy YouTube persona that I honestly wasn’t very good at and instead just focused on amplifying the part of myself people already like.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

Being a voice teacher means being an educator. This means that there is a large expectation for you to be an expert who knows everything and never makes mistakes. Or, so I thought. I used to avoid reviewing and analyzing so many songs, which is part of our marketing strategy on YouTube, because I felt like I wasn’t allowed to talk about them. I felt this way because I thought there was this army of people scrutinizing my every move with a checklist of things I had to know, ready to attack me in the comments if I got something wrong. And to a degree, this is true. There are internet trolls everywhere just waiting for you to fumble. But there’s actually a near foolproof way around this. You simply admit what you don’t know and turn it into a call to action. Boom. Now you have demonstrated honesty, humility, and a willingness to learn. This made me incredibly relatable and drove a lot of clients towards me. They saw me as someone who had expertise to give but also much more to learn, and this made them comfortable with me as an instructor. And then on top of that, those troll comments have less power and just boost engagement on the content. It’s a huge win. And so essentially, I had to unlearn this idea that you have to be perfect before you get started. No, not at all. You need something to give, of course. But you are allowed to be growing while your business grows. This is a journey, and people like seeing you on it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://kardavoxacademy.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kardavox_academy
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/KardavoxAcademy

Image Credits

Zachariah Beam Photography
Julian Morgan of TrueBear Imagery
Riley Smith Designs