We were lucky to catch up with Val Kelly recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Val , thanks for joining us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.
In 2013, I attended a large voiceover conference and had such a great experience. I met so many cool fellow voice actors and industry pros. I live in Fredericksburg, VA and this event I attended happened to be in Atlanta. After that event, I thought, wouldn’t it be cool to start an event like this in Virginia…. only on a MUCH smaller scale?! So, in 2014, on a 9-hour flight to France with my best friend at the time, I proposed the idea to him. He’s not a voice actor, but he still loved the idea. When I got home from France, I told my husband I was going to start my own company. He was supportive, but I’m not sure he totally believed me at the time. I wanted to start an event in the Northern Virginia area because Virginia, Maryland and D.C. are areas that have so many voice actors. I wanted to bring the epic coaches from all over the country and world to me, closer to where I live! The idea behind it was to offer an educational, hands-on event for voice actors from beginners to pros in a boutique sized setting. It would offer interactive, performance-based sessions so that actors are learning new skills and practicing them on the spot at the event. So that’s exactly what I did! I started Mid-Atlantic Voiceover, LLC – otherwise known as MAVO!
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?
My name is Val Kelly and I’m the Owner/Founder, President/CEO/Executive Producer/Director of Mid Atlantic Voiceover, LLC.
I’m a Professional, bilingual-English/French voice actress who specializes in talking toys, cartoons, children’s
iPhone apps, videogames, radio/tv commercials etc.
I was introduced to VO in 1999 and have been actively booking work since 2011. I have trained with excellent coaches such as Sunday Muse, Elley Ray, Bob Bergen, Roy Yokelson, Everett Oliver; as well as Noelle Romano, Danielle Quisenberry, Sara Sherman, Kari Wahlgren, Andrea Romano, Kim Hurdon, Jamie B. Chambers, Marc Scott, Tom Dheere, Jonathan Tilley, Celia Siegel, Sandi Small (British accent coaching), and David Goldberg from “Edge” studio.
Some of my clients include “Hasbro toys”, “Roam & Wander”, “Hungry Howie’s Pizza Place”, “Mymoonah”, “Theory Films”, “Essence Cartoon”. My voice is unique, engaging, child-like, high energy, friendly, versatile, fun! I put 100% effort into all of my work!
I’m also the host of the “Live with Squacky” podcast. It’s a unique, interview style show that dives into the worlds of voice acting and entertainment. Available on all platforms.
At Mid-Atlantic Voiceover, LLC, we offer monthly online happy hour networking events, as well as workshops with special guests from the industry. This is in addition to our annual MAVO conference that takes place every November. The events we offer are unique – especially the conference, because we keep it smaller on purpose. This allows us to keep the breakout and mastery sessions on the small side (limited to 12 attendees each), so that attendees can get much more individualized attention. We also work hard to keep the overall quality of all of our events at the highest level possible and make sure that the sessions we offer are providing value to the attendees. It is a goal of ours to not have the exact same guest speakers every year and to not have too much overlap with guest speakers from other conferences.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
Starting a small business is not easy!! I knew that going into it! I’m a very determined person though. Once I set my mind to doing something, I usually do it!! When I first started the company, I had to create a website, figure out what to put on it, make sure it looked professional, and figure out how to market my events. I didn’t have the first clue about how to design a website, but luckily my friend was computer tech guy and he helped me through that initial phase. Looking back on it, my first website design was not great!! I spent countless hours trying to put the correct content on the site to make it appealing to people. I also had to figure out how to use Eventbrite and set up and event there to sell tickets and had to figure out how to make ads myself because I didn’t have a big budget, so I had to do everything myself to save money. To this day, I still love a site called “Poster My Wall”!! It’s so user-friendly and I still create a lot of my ads for the company there today. They say that if your business makes it through the first 5 years, you should start to make a profit!!! It’s still a bit of an up and down scenario. The budgeting is the most challenging part of it for me. The event industry is unpredictable and so is our economy. You just never know if people are going to find enough value in your event to want to spend their money on it. And everyone waits till the very last minute to buy tickets too – so it can be a little nerve wracking.
But here I am, 8 and 1/2 years into this and going strong!!! We made it through Covid where I had to switch at the last minute from being an in-person event to a virtual one and we still made it work!! Patience, persistence and planning are keys to success!! Just keep going!!
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
Ah yes, social media!! This is definitely one of my favorite topics. I remember after I started my company and realized I needed to build my following on other platforms besides Facebook! My number one word of advice is consistency! When you’re starting out, you have to be on the platforms you choose EVERY DAY!! I spent HOURS on Twitter when I first started out!! People want to know what you’re up to, but they also want you to engage in their content as well! My best advice is to spend a bit of time on each platform each day, sharing content sometimes – when there is value in it, and also liking and commenting on other people’s posts. You have to engage your audience and build relationships to form your community. It takes time and a lot of patience!!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.midatlanticvo.com and I also have https://www.valkellyvoiceover.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/midatlanticvo/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/val-kelly-97679270/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/Midatlanticvo
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9qVmL5HaIxNTC37ZMPN5Yg
Image Credits
Edward Liu