Building Doors with Christy Harst | The Pro Audio Suite

You are any history story Welcome, Hi, Hi the Pro Audio Suite. Those guys a professional and motivated with text. The LEO stars George Wisam, founder of Source Element, Robert Marshall, International audio Engineer Darren, Robbo Roberts and Global Voice Andrew Peters. Thanks to Triboo, Austrian Audio Making Passion, her Sauce Elements, George the Tech Wisdom and Robbo and AP's international demo. Find out more about us check the Pro Audio Suite dot com and welcome to another pro audio suite thanks to Austrian Audio Making Passion Heard and try Booth. Don't forget the code tri I p A P two hundred to get two hundred dollars off your try booth. Now today we're breaking a tradition. We've actually had a female joining us. Yes, yes, they do talk to us occasionally. Yes, that's right, yeah, yeahs. Anyway, we're joined by she will report back and put an end Christy Hast who is a voice overtainment and also involved in Women in Promo. But you'll have to explain more because I'm not privy to all of this. I think Robbo's been chatting to you about your adventure yeah. I actually found out about this after I did a promo demo for a client of mine and a lady called Katerina Certiz who's in Perth, Western Australia, and she said, you'll never guess what this promo just got me. And I said what And she said, I've just become the Australian ambassador for Building Doors. I didn't even have to I didn't even have to apply. They just on the strength of my demo. So long story, short week or two ago. Christy and I also had a chat, and it's all about women becoming more active in what is, let's be honest, a male dominated domain, promo, voicing and especially when it comes to sports, you know all that stuff that everybody goes, Well, that's a male domain. So is it really is it specific to promo or commercial as well? Christy specific to promo, although I do track data for commercial and promo, which we can get into later. Okah, yeah, yeah. So look, it's a great cause and I when we were talking, I said to Christy, well, you've got to come on the podcast because more people need to know about this. So that's why she's here. So building doors is that like smashing the glass ceiling. No, actually it is. It's a joke. That was a joke. Yeah, oh well I didn't pick it up. I'm sorry. Ha ha ha. So Funy, now you're getting it. Yeah, that's right. You'll fit right in now, Christy, you've got the idea. Yeah, okay, thank you. Yeah. So, I actually I've been in voice acting for twenty years. I've been full time the last twelve and for the past five. I know there's a lot of numbers, it's a lot of math, but for the last five I've really wanted to combine my passion for sports with voiceover and and I have done everything that all of the people in my industry have told me to do. I've followed all the rules. I for five years invested a ton of my time and training and money. I did a sports promo demo with Harry Dunn. I did a network promo with Joseph Riano. I've done Cochecottlieb. I've done coaching with Mark Writer. I've done online workshops, I mean, you name it. And I've also done a lot of out of the box marketing to kind of get attention, the attention of my favorite teams in the NFL and the MLB and nothing was working. And I even hired a pr agent to get myself in the news and it worked. I got into the AP news, but it didn't result in anything for my voice over career. And I was reaching a boiling point. And I had a workshop with Ril Nagrin from Atlas. She's a promo agent there, and during the workshop she had me read and after I read, she was very complimentary and she said, oh, booked, booked, booked. I was like, no, sister, I am not booked. Let me tell you how much I am not booked. And I explained to her what I have been doing and what I wanted to do, and I said, so what are my chances and she's like, yeah, not so much. Unfortunately, there's not a ton of opportunities for women when it comes to voicing promos for the NFL, the MLBUFC, they're few and far between. She goes, don't get me wrong, there are women doing it, but we can count them and we can name them on one, maybe one and a half hands. And the next day I woke up and to be quite frank, I was really e finge pissed off because I thought to myself I've wasted the last five years of my life. The opportunity that I have been dreaming about and chasing doesn't exist for me. I'm not repped by one of the big four Big five agencies. They are terribly oversaturated with talent right now. It is very difficult to get in and these opportunities typically funnel through those big agencies. And so I just thought to myself, I have two choices. One I can give up and just focus on my commercial and e learning lanes because that's what I get booked for. Or Two, if there's no door for me to knock on and there's no door for me to kick in, I could build one, and I could partner with a bunch of women around the world to do it together. And so the next day I started Building Doors. And that was February ninth or tenth, March first of twenty twenty four, in honor of Women's History Month, I launched Building Doors. I partnered with thirteen other women around the world, and we revoice scripts originally voiced by men in male centric genres like sports, tech, cars, gaming, construction, you name it. And the campaign caught on. And honestly, I did this because I was pissed off the motivator. I was like, yeah, exactly, Well, what the F do I have to lose? Like, at this point, I can't get on any I can't get on any of the agencies. I can't. I've been doing everything that everyone's been telling me to do. I thought I was doing out of the box stuff. And Ariol Nagrin from Atlas She's like, go make your own noise and I was like, sister, you just wait and see how loud I'm about to be, because I was like, screw it, what do I have to lose? I have absolutely nothing to lose after five years of trying to do this. So I started it and it was going to be a couple posts. Then it turned into a month, then it turned into a year, and we just celebrated our one year anniversary. And the success of the campaign has allowed me to feature women from seven different countries. It has allowed me to speak face to face with brands like Valveleine, like Super Bowl winning brands like the Cleveland Guardians, the Cleveland Calves sportsnet up in Canada. It's allowed me the opportunity to create eight ways for women's voices to be heard in rooms that they were never heard before, and that. I can't believe it's only been a year. I know, right, it's crazy. There's so much more to do, and there's so much more that I want to do in twenty twenty five. My big goals for twenty twenty five are to broaden campaign awareness. I have two global builders that have signed on, one in Egypt and one in the UK. I'm looking to get some in Australia as well, and so they are going to lay the groundwork in twenty twenty five to potentially fingers crossed if all the work is done in twenty twenty six, to launch their own Building Doors campaigns in their native language, so that building Doors, the mission of equality and having women's voices heard where they weren't before can be worldwide. And we've also launched a LinkedIn on Instagram Live series. We also have launched a podcast, and next two weeks from now, I'm going to the w ESPN conference in Brooklyn, New York to meet face to face with top leading women in sports across all different kinds of sports, to introduce the mission to them and the campaign and hopefully form some great relationships. I think to some degree like things have changed a bit because even even since, like I remember, like you know, evening news, and now there's a lot of evening news you know who do the sports section and their and they're female, and that used to not be the case at all, and now there's quite a few, so I think maybe it's starting to happen a little bit. But it's funny, you know, even since since Christy and I chatted a couple of weeks ago, I've had this conversation with a few people audio engineers, producers, and it's funny the attitude. I didn't really realize when we chatted what she was actually up against. But since I've had some of these conversations, there are people who go, yeah, I get it, but the majority of people go spout all these historical data. Oh yeah, but you know, blokes only listen to blokes, and you know you can't. There's all these arguments out there that are completely irrelevant these days, but they're stuck in people's head because I don't know whether they want to sort of move forward or what. I don't know, but there is this underground underground and it's not just guys, I'll be honest with you. There's a couple of women that I've heard it from. You know who sort of go who sort of go? Hang on, how do I do an NRL promo without Paul PITIONI, you know who's sort of you know, the Channel nine dude here or Steve Britton. You know, I can't do promo with a woman. It's like, well you can, you just don't want to, you know. That's the thing. I don't get it. I guarantee you Christian knows more about sports than I. Ah too exactly. Do you know there's an interesting thing. I remember talking with a female talent in New York and she was talking about doing medical reads and disclaimers, and they used to a high speed disclaimer and then all of a sudden it was like no, no, no, no, don't bread that quickly, just a new normal voice. And she said, well, I thought you were trying to, you know, basically hide the disclaimer. And they said, well, that's why we've got you reading it, because people don't listen to women. That was what she was told. Wow ho Raighthoh my gosh. Yeah. I remember her telling me that, I'm thinking, you've got to be kidding me. So she said that to you it's quite extraordinarily out loud. And also for me, I remember for thirteen years I was in Australia, in New Zealand, the Voice of Lorial women's product of Ridiculous, which is ridiculously you think about it, Yeah, absolutely, because a lot of it was actually they that brand actually had to invent new words that sound like, you know, botox and whatever, so they kind of had to playing with a kind of medical thing. So they went, oh, we'll get a male to read it, because it sounds more authoritative than a female. Having said that, they've now changed and gone. You would think times have changed enough, wouldn't you, But they don't seem to have. I know, when I hear a campaign that should clearly be a woman's voice, I know it's not. It stands out it's jarring right absolutely, whereas well, I mean a year ago it may not have been so much. But because I think it's in part due to Christie's efforts, thank you, that it's so much more acute now, like a like I'll hear a spot and I go. Why isn't that a woman? Totally? You know, but there's so many there's so many things that are miscast, not just female. I hear stuff all the time. It's like, why why are you using that voice? It just doesn't make any sense whatsoever. It's either lazy casting. Or sometimes it's a client. You know, I can answer that a little bit. Sometimes it's a client who comes in with the completely wrong idea, but you can can't convince them, and not any other way. Sometimes it's that sometimes, and sometimes that comes from a stereotype that they have in their head. And other times it's as we've talked about, it's just people who are stubborn who don't want to sort of go, well, maybe I should think about this another way. It's my experience. I just think it's because sounds like the you know, the fifties or whenever. It's like the stereotypical announcer was always a male for the longest time. I mean when when when really is just the first breaking of that door to of a like female voiceovers, even in commercials, Like it's probably not until the sixties or seventies. Marcles probably came first before Promer right, and then Live announce was like you know, it was Randy Thomas and Oscars and but that was what the nineties. Yeah, when did Randy start voicing, do you know Christy when I think. You're right, I think it was late eighties, early nineties was when she was the first woman to do this, the first woman to do that. And unfortunately, and there's one thing that I'd like to challenge, Robert, something you said is that there's this sense of, well, I hear women on the radio, is this really a problem. Well, I'm asking more of the evening news on TV that I've noticed that when I was a kid, it was all you know, guys that were the sports you know, like. Oh, we're going to go over from the weather to this and do sports. And I've noticed now that there's quite a few stations that do have female anchors who do the sports section. Which why isn't that reflected in voiceover? You know here in the Rugby League, right you know, you guys have seen it over there in the States. The NRL has been over there in Vegas had their season launch. You know, we've got women commentators on the field, you know, talking to the to the players after the game. And you know, we still don't have women in commentary unfortunately, but we do have women on the field and women giving sideline comments. And stuff like that. But why is that not reflected in the promos? Why is that? Well? May I share a few stories to kind of kind of hopefully answer some of those or give shed some light onto answers that that could could definitely explain. There was recently a well known person on x formerly known as Twitter, a middle aged white man who posted a picture a screenshot of three women talking on an NFL football field after a game doing commentary for a sports channel, and his post read, the last thing I ever want to watch is three women telling me about football. They have no they can't tell me anything that I don't know about football his tweet. His tweet went viral, and I took it and put it on our building Doors Instagram page. You're more than welcome to go and look at building doors vo. You're more than willing to go and see it for yourself. Hit what he said, and unfortunately that that is a huge reason why we aren't seeing a ton more women and why when women are featured, they are disparaged. In addition, another story I went to, I actually wanted to reach out and understand more why this knee jerk reaction of you're taking jobs away from me or these This is not what women should be doing. I don't want to hear a woman in this spot. What is that coming from? And so I reached out to a professor of gender studies in the workplace at Columbia University, and what she shared with me is that this really is a bias based in roles that have been systematically put into our infrastructures in culture for the last oh onpteenth centuries. And what happens is we grow up seeing cartoons and seeing shows and seeing women depicted in certain ways, and whether we want to believe it or not, even the most well intended people have a sub conscious bias. And so I also spoke I talked to people at least three four times a week on Zoom and all different kinds of people, women, men, And I once spoke with a female reporter for the MLB and she said to me, Christy, I literally could copy and paste. It's like I could copy and paste every single headquartered office for every single MLB across the country. They're all the same. They're middle aged white men that were educated in the Ivy League. They wear the same clothes, they have the same attitude. It's literally the same thing. And one of the things that I was told when I first started building doors was that it's not for a lack of women trying to create these opportunities for women. It's what happens is that these opportunities, when they are created for women, specifically in female voice acting, they get up the chain of command, and once it hits a middle aged white man a position of power, he goes love the campaign, not the voice. Switch it to a man. There aren't enough women in positions of power. There aren't enough women in positions of power of making decisions, and that's why it's such a hard go. If you go back to the fifty sixties, I think the first woman that actually did make an impact on all of this was Lucy Obole. Not only Lucille Ball, but what about Barbara Walters. Oh ye, Lucille Ball showed the physicality of comedy in a way that no other woman had done before correct, And I feel like Barbara Walters interviewed some of the most powerful and influential people in the world, and there was no other woman doing that. On nightly news. I watched every Friday night sixty minutes with my family, and she's the reason that I majored in broadcast communications. She's the reason that I interned at MTV. She's the reason that I wanted to kick her out of her chair, and I didn't. I ended up getting into voiceover, but some other things I wanted to Sharetistically. When I started the campaign, I didn't want it to I was getting flack and people were saying, Oh, Christy, you're just complaining because you can't get a job. Huh okay. So I did a survey of the voice of her community and about two hundred people submitted responses, and it was pretty even in terms of gender, fifty four percent where women. The rest were men. And what I discovered was that seventy three percent of male voice actors claimed that they received five plus promo auditions per year, leaving only twenty seven percent of females to claim the same. Why do seventy three percent of male voice actors have more opportunities more auditions being sent to them than women, Because those opportunities don't exist. And what's interesting is the more data I collected on my own, the more I saw just how much that matches up. For example, I tracked all of the promos and commercials in the AFC Championship Game, the Bills versus the Chiefs, seventy seven percent of all commercials and promos were voiced by men. Kinda is similar to the seventy three twenty seven percent that I just mentioned. Then I took it a step further and I got volunteers, one in California, one in Georgia, and myself in Cleveland, Ohio, and we tracked all of the promos and ads in the Super Bowl. Eighty five percent of all promos and ads were voiced by men in the Super Bowl. And when you break it down per genre, females in auto twenty two percent, Alcohol females zero percent, finance zero, food, thirteen percent were voiced by women. Finance twenty five percent was voiced by women, movie promos zero, network promos thirteen percent. This is not equality. This is the farthest thing from equality that you can imagine. And it's twenty twenty five. Then now let's take Now, let's take something. I'm currently doing this a poll and I have about three hundred and fifty respondents. I'm keeping it open as long as I can, and it's about women at women attitudes of women in advertising. The first question I ask is, do you notice when there is a female voice or a male voice when you're listening to maybe an ad in streaming or TV or radio whatever. Ninety percent say yes, they notice ninety percent regular people, regular people. This is not just this is not just voice actors. Right. I said this thing to my college, so I got young people send it. I mean I sent it out everywhere, right, and put it out publicly. And so when you look at all this data that just I'm collecting, right, brands are leaving billions, billions of dollars on the table by not including more women in front of and behind the camera. It is statistically known that eighty three percent of women worldwide hold purchasing power in their homes. They are the ones that research insurance policies and choose which policy to buy, are the ones choosing which cell phone carrier to go with. They are choosing what camps their kids go to, what swag they buy, what season tickets they go to, what camps they go to. Yet brands are ignoring the purchasing power of women and not including more women. My survey even goes further, and I'm not going to get too much into it because I do want to make a big deal when I announce all of the findings, But one of the things that I ask is would you be more apt to buy from X y Z brand or industry if they included more women? Overwhelmingly, there's two categories that say yes, sports and cars. Dominated and. Two male domin. Do you see what I'm saying? Like, it just doesn't add up. The more puzzle pieces I find and try to link together, the only thing that I'm linking is a straight line to billions of dollars lost. So the question I have then hearing you talk about all that, is there any genres way women are more prevalent that aren't sort of you know, washing, washing powder, washing powder, or yeah, women's products. I mean take those out of the equation. Is there is there some Is there anywhere where women are sort of starting to pop their head up? I think you can see a percentage in the data that I've collected. Can I just take a pause? Can we talk about that word data? Is it data or is it data? Who knows? Well, if it's data, let me tell you say that. So is it data or is it data? And I've had clients in learning tell me to say data. I've had clients in learning tell me to see data. Some people blame Star Trek next Generation because oh, just stuck into the kra of like the you know, the zeitgeist, like it just became data. But I that's what some said, Yeah, is that what happened? He was an absolute beast when it came to the English language. Who will pull you up in everything? That was one of these pet heights when I'd say data and you'd say, stop data, it's data. Interesting. Interesting. Well we've settled that one. Okay, we'll continue. If we can fix these other problems as quickly as we fixed that one, we'd be set. So data, the data I've collected says that finance and medical actually has an increasing percentage of women voicing them. And this makes sense if it goes back to the data that i've data that I have that I have collected. You know that women are the purchasing are the ones who make the decisions in the household for purchasing, right, so when it comes to finance, when it comes to medical and plus medical, you know, I know we haven't talked about a I'm sure it'll come up, but you know, AI will find its place in the voiceover industry. But one of the things that I think is something that I've seen is that when it comes to an e learning module that tells you how to insert or insert a needle into your arm for whatever reason, it's more likely that you're going to have a woman telling you to do that than it is a man and a real voice versus an AI voice. There are certain things that just lend themselves to human voice and a female voice, and I feel like medical is grasping onto that. Every year for the past three year five years, I've been doing the Dirty Dozen, which is the top twelve most hot topics in medical, at a conference that they do in Boston. We should also mention we use the Dirty quickly too for Aussie listeners who probably won't get this because it's not the same here, But medically in America is actually a really big segment of the advertising revenue. He drug companies over here aren't allowed to advertise, so we don't have this. So just for those listening, we're not talking about your band aids and you know, your little death swamps way talking drugs in general. But it's also more than that. There's all kinds of long form medical stuff too. I mean, I've done plenty of that and sometimes Actually, one of the funny things is is that, I mean, it's like a whole genre of people that just know how to say all kinds of crazy words. Yes, Like I remember my first sessions doing that, and this is before the internet, and we would have to call up a pharmacy and we would just be like, how do you say and no meet garrito and they would they would kind of tell you, and they'd be like, why are you asking, because because we're here at night, and that's because they're buying the studio time when it's cheap, and we got to read this stuff and we have an hour, and but it's. A whole genre of just knowledge beyond. Yeah. I had a client who who had me do oncology E learning and they had somebody come in. This is back when we went in to studios and they had somebody from the company there as a rep to make sure I was saying everything correctly. And I think that if you can learn how to say difficult words, if you create a process for yourself. I mean the scripts that I got were cold, as we all know, most of the time we get cold scripts but it looked like somebody's damn cat walked across the boarder. They press print and gave it to me. That's what those words look like. And it wasn't like one word in one paragraph. The whole damn paragraph was catword, comic catword a catword literally and catword com a catwordt word. Yeah, so you have to catword. Yeah, yeah, it is a huge it's a huge genre here. I think I don't know about in Australia, but here in the States, I do a lot of work like that because once you get known to be a person that can say these words easily, and it can be and quickly. Yeah, they don't want to waste time. Yeah, well, of course, because all these medical products have videos that go with them, like how do you stick yourself with this thing and put a tape over it? And like and often it's like for kids, and so the mothers again are the ones that are taking care of their kids, and they're the ones that have to go through these processes of you know, whatever it is for some poor kid that's got some thing that they have to do every morning or whatever. But Christy that the question that comes to my mind then is for your average on the street voiceover dude out there who's listening to our podcast? How can they help? I mean, you know, can they should? Would you be hoping that they're sort of spreading the word about you what you're doing, or having conversations with producers they're working with, or or god forbid, we should they turn around and go look, I actually think you should cast a woman for this one, you know what I mean? It's like, how can how can they? How can they help? I mean, I guess some people might be sitting there going, yeah, that's all well and good, but what can I do? I guess is where these question is coming from. Yeah, there's so many ways. And what I hope Building Doors serves as is as a spot of inspiration and people can look to Building Doors for how we are doing it and take note even in other industries. So I'm going to reel off some things right now and I'll eventually get to my point, I promise. So Number one, the best way you can support Building Doors is by liking, tagging, and sharing our content. It's the cruxt of what we do and it is what we were founded on. Because I don't have money, I have zero money. And I'm doing this. I have zero funding finance investors, and I'm doing it all with grassroots marketing and kmvook. So what happens when people join together under a like minded mission and they agree to press a button? I don't I really really believe that people today don't understand how powerful their voice is, and they don't even have to open their mouth. They can press one button, and that pressing of one button has changed the lives of women in this campaign, the very first person that was affected by someone just simply pressing a button to like, share, and tag was Ashley Toronto. Ashley Toronto was featured in our inaugural month of March of twenty twenty four. She revoiced a spot that was done by Honda Sport, originally done by a man. Ashley Torado is not a low pitched voice actor. She's young, she is a ray of sunshine. She has the cutest darn smile and she read this Honda Sports spot. And what happened with our community that we were just forming is that enough people liked, tagged, and shared so that Ashley's voice was seen and heard in front of millions of more women than otherwise would not I'm sorry. Millions more eyes and ears than otherwise would not have been someone she has no idea who saw her building doors reel sent it to an ad agency in Florida. That ad agency then reached out to her and hired her to voice a slew of Honda spots. Wow. That is the power of coming together under a like mind admission. So if you are listening to this and you say I want to support building doors, it's a great cause. Go to our content like tag and share it. You are putting someone's voice in front of millions more eyes and ears that otherwise wouldn't hear it. It advances our mission, it advances the brand, and it helps women in general. That's number one. Number two, take that concept, Take that concept of simply pressing a button to use your voice and apply it to something else you're passionate about. Maybe yeah, you like building doors, that's great. But maybe you're really passionate about the LGBTQ plus community. Maybe you're really passionate about immigration reform. Maybe whatever it is, you find community, you find like minded people and do nothing but grassroots marketing by simply texting somebody a post, Can you like this? Can you share this to your community. I know that we all agree on this. Could you do this? There's so much power in your voice and it's needed right now. Can you spell out really clearly to those who are, you know, maybe not quite sure, what are the hashtags they should post when they do share something. So that's interesting about hashtags because when I started the campaign, people were telling me that I should be really focused on hashtags. But then what's crazy was with the advent of AI, is that now on Instagram and on LinkedIn, you're penalized. The algorithm penalizes you for using hashtags because the AI actually picks up what you put in the text of your post, so it's kind of like keywords, right, So it's kind of like what you do with your website. So I will occasionally put hashtag building doors. I do keep track. For example in YouTube, we have over a thousand posts that mentioned building doors. That's great, But I don't focus so much on hashtags as I do the concept of like Sharon tag and encouraging people to do that because I have proof positive that that works. Okay, so you're talking about tagging the. Brand brand, So for example, people taged Honda in Ashley spot most recently, which is super exciting. Alie Murphy. She's a twenty twenty five door builder. She has a beautiful accent. Two spots in one but one was for a national car rental. They ended up laking and commenting on her spot. Wow, are we understanding now? Like that? And she's not the only one, She's not the only one. It's working, it's working. I think I may have inadvertently added to your campaign then, because I'm actually working on a demo at the moment for a lady who works with you, a lady called Diane Weller. Yes, and yeah, Diane, she's obviously we were having the conversation about about the project and all that sort of stuff, and so we've actually written or I've written a spot for her for her new demo, which is her playing a trade selling a ute, which for Americans is a pickup, you know. So it's like, you know, whenever I'm on site, I need a youte that's reliable, you know, blah blah blah. And it's a woman. And I would imagine that's probably the first time anyone will have heard that in Australia. So that's that's kind of nice. Well, it's interesting with all this because and this is a change that I've noticed as well, because of my daughter. She did the job with a couple of films that were recorded. First of all, go to the beginning. She got sent an audition from Lotus in New York, and she did the audition with an American accent, assuming that's what was required. So she booked the job. We got on Source Connect to do the session, and the client she did a read with an American accent, and then the client said, can you read it with more of a natural delivery? And I was sort of thinking, I don't even know what that means. Do you mean a natural delivery with an American accent? Or I had no idea anyway. To cut a long story short. What they meant was in your natural voice, your natural accent. So she did the campaign as with her you know, sort of light Australian accent. I guess for a company that recycles bottles, plastic bottles and makes contact lenses out of plastic. Great little films she booked too. Yeah, it's really cool. But so they've got a young female Australian doing these campaigns for an American company that's awesome, nice, and I don't know why they would go Australian. They just it just struck a chord. They heard that voice and they're like something about that voice. Let's just hear that voice. And to that point, our first post ever was Bavnisha Parmar. She is she's in the UK, Yeah she's she's in London. Yeah, she is of Indian and there's another I don't want to misrepresent her culture, but she did an NFL spot and I cannot begin to tell you how many people commented and sent me messages saying, Christy, that spot made me stop right dead in my tracks. Number one. I never expected to hear a woman, let alone an accented woman, and I listened to the whole thing. She's got to kill it and immediately got my attention. Yeah she does. She's amazing. She's absolutely amazing. And so when you think about that, let's take it back to what I was saying before about brands leaving billions, billions of dollars on the table. Tension is something that is a gold right. We can't get people's attention nowadays. Everything is so quick, quick, quick, and here is Babnisha showing up using her authentic accent, and she's a female voicing the spot for the NFL, and people said, damn, that made me stop and listen to the entire thing. Billions of dollars left on the table? May I go back to how to support building doors? Yeah, of course, totally totally. Let me just say real quick, I'm so glad to hear that is actually making traction. I watched a client of my toil and toil for a very long time to try to get the attention of a major auto manufacturer and it failed, and I felt so bad for her. I mean, she worked so hard, and so to hear this being done in a group thing where you have group thought and momentum and the viral relativity of it instead of just one person going up against the world and against the big brand and launching campaigns and this is just is so great to see. What I kind of like about is it's kind of like a positive spin on it. Instead of like this like name and shame and why aren't you doing this and you're bad for not being this and that, it's more like, hey, this is a good thing, this is cool. Why not just open your eyes instead of being like negative about the whole approach. I think it's really good that it has a positive spin to it. Too much cancel culture out there. You're right, and I think you know, taking the positive spin is definitely the way to do it. Well. I think people are just more receptive of it when it because if not they you know, it's like the last thing you want to do is admit that you know bias towards this or that. So how do you not admit it? You just ignore it? Well, let's be frank. I mean that kind of mentality is what gets the wrong people elected in office if all you do is rail against the audience. I know, but we're going to talk about that. The whole climate right now is so anti DEI and what's going on, and that has to be a wind against what you're trying to do here. Have you noticed that that is in the recent months, Like has there been like it seems like a lot. Of people are more in bold and to be like, yeah, like, that's the last person I want to hear that from. And they and they're willing to say all this shit out, excuse me, all this stuff out loud. Culture. Well, I will say this to George's point, I learn really quick which companies I can have a conversation with. It's very obvious, and I don't waste my time. It's not my job to convince somebody to think differently. It's my job to find people who think like me and partner together and find out ways that we can make this bigger. So it's very easy, it comes very quick. I can tell who I'm going to get through to and who I'm not. And to your question, yes, I get a lot of flack, especially at the beginning. Why are you mail bashing? Why you brand bashing? This is all you're doing If I was doing those things. If I was doing those things, do you think that Valveline and the Calves and the Guardians and the creative director at Sportsnet, amongst many others would have would lend their public support to my campaign. No, they wouldn't. And as somebody asked me before the presidential election, they said, what if Kamala wins? What if the other guy wins? Like, what will it mean for your campaign? And obviously if a female was elected president of the United States, that's huge for my campaign. Right, Brands will be bending over backwards to find women to voice anything and everything, But I also see it as an opportunity that she lost. And here's why it's so much easier for me to know who's on my side. It's so much easier to to It's like all of the noise, it juste was like a path that just opened up for me. And it's so much easier now to scroll through my feet in LinkedIn, to scroll through my feet and Instagram and see what companies are aligned with our mission reach out to them because those companies now they want to make noise. They want to partner with people like building doors because again, we cannot be silenced. We cannot because if we are silenced, if I stop posting, if I stop doing what I'm doing, that other side is just gonna get louder and gain more steam and that can't happen. So if I can partner my grass roots movement with someone that I might meet at WESPN next week, with someone like a Valveline or the Cleveland Guardians, it only brings credence to what I'm doing. And also I'm helping them. I am of service. They have now a direct path to global female voices. Yeah, I mean, I mean, I mean you become like a like a like an agent in a way. I don't want to be. I have no And that's another thing is that people thought I was trying to take their jobs as an agent or a casting director. People were asking, how do I get on your roster. I'm like, I don't have a roster because I want to make it very clear and I try to make it and I appreciate the opportunity to make it clear on your podcast, which is this. I am not a talent agent. I don't want to be. I am not a casting director. I don't want to be. We are not a casting site or a PDP. I don't want to be. I want to have women's voices heard in rooms that they were never heard before. The women who are volunteering their voice to read a real that was previously voiced by a man, no matter what country they're in, they are not just volunteering their voice to do that. They also sign up to like, share and tag everyone else's posts. They also agree to share content outside of those posts. They are down for the mission, they are down for grassroots marketing. They sign on the dotted line to do a lot more than just read a script. And that's what building Doors is about. It's about a mission based social impact movement that is meant to elevate women's voices in ways that have not been before. If someone were to get a job because of their real they can either negotiate that rate one on one with the client, or they can take it to their agent and have them do it. I want nothing to do with it, and that's why I am in dire need of funding. That's why I'm applying for grants. That's why I'm trying to find investors because I need I'm one person. I'm doing everything, and so I need help who. Does all the engineering and whatnot for revoicing the spots. So what happens is at the beginning, I picked all the scripts and sent them to them and they could pick this year, they picked their own, and they record their audio and their video on their phone. They send both the audio and video to Brandon Miller. Brandon Miller is known as the Vocraftsman. He's a voiceover actor. He's really great at social media. He has volunteered for free to create all of these he has from day one. In fact, I had that conversation with Ario and Nagrin. I called him because I was so pissed off. He's a friend of mine and we were talking about it, and together we came up with this idea of women revoicing scripts originally voiced by men. And so he said, I'm down, Christy, I'm totally down. I'll help you with any way I can. I'm like, well, can you create the videos? And he's like sure. So he has stayed on on a volunteer basis. So he did almost forty, almost thirty some reels last year and now we're only doing one woman per month. We were doing four per month last year, so he's doing it an additional twelve. But he's doing it for free. And I am greatly, greatly appreciative of Brandon doing that because I do all. This rabo just felt volunteered. I saw him, Oh did you. Not out of the question, more than more than happy to do. Yeah, I'd be happy to do a spot or two and even volunto them. Yeah. If you see the spots, it's a combination of a woman inner studio voicing, right, and then at the top you see the original spot and Brandon what he does is he'll take the original spot and mix it with video like stock video. Footage, so it's not we're not like we're totally ripping it off. And then he grabs some stock music, so we're not doing the same music, but you get the same essence of the commercial. And the feedback that I get is people love seeing voice actors in their booth doing their thing because you know, some women they hold their hands certain way, some are really animated, some are really you know, and they love it. And I was interviewed by Crane's Business. Yeah. I don't know if you're familiar with cranes. I don't know if it exists in So Crane's Business is this nationwide, nationwide business periodical. Right, it comes out every week, and most businesses subscribe to it, and they have different like they'll have cranes, Cleveland Business, cranes, La Business, cranes, you know, Miami business. And Crane's Cleveland Business interviewed me about building doors and the reporter called me to interview me, and he stopped me. He goes, you know what, I spent the last forty five minutes on your website. It is so fun to just click through and watch all these women read, read their reels and read their scripts. I could spend forever on here and to someone outside the industry, somebody who is not in vo it is fun. It is fun to go to the website and watch all these different women bring something to the mic that they probably hadn't heard before. And that's one of the biggest things that I hear after I have these conversations again, very grassroots. I have three to four zoom conversations with a variety of different people in all these different industries, and I often get text messages or emails or direct messages that say, Christy, ever since you and I talked, I pay attention, and you're right. I was watching TV and did you know that bet the Black Entertainment Network was featuring the women's Final four Division one basketball tournament and a man voiced the promo. I'm like, no, girl, I'm not shocked, and you know, and they'll say to me, oh, I was just watching this sporting event, and you're right, I only heard one woman the entire time, And so it's putting that seed, planting that seed of awareness. And until somebody does that, you don't realize how few women you have. You have no clue. I wonder how many women producers and writers are still casting men just because of like some programming and other pressure that, you know. I think I think even that happens because I just know, as doing like like a lot of spots and whatnot, there's a lot of female writers at the agencies, and but it's still You're right, it's still a lot of male voiceover, and it's like, why is that? Yeah, I kind of feel like I think we talked I said this at the beginning, but I kind of feel like it's not so much them. I think there are women who sort of want to do that. But as Christy's saying too, is it's it's as you move up the food chain, as you go from from writer to client to you know, agency creative director to you know, up the food chain, Somewhere along the way there you inevitably meet someone who goes, why are we using a woman on this? You know, it's like. And to your point, there is a woman who voiced in the first month. She did a spot for a construction company and it was construction equipment. So the original spot featured a woman using a chainsaw in the middle of like of a storm to get the tree that had fallen down on her car. Right, So there's a woman using a chainsaw. Then there was another of a man using a baco to get a dirt out of something. Right, So that's all this equipment, right, And they used a male voice, so she revoiced it, and out of the blue, she sends me a message and says, the producer of the original piece saw my reel. So again, like tag and chair, it somehow got to the woman who was the producer of the original spot, and this producer sent her a direct message and said, I love what you did with the spot. You are ten times better than the man that we used. Right, That's exactly what I was going to say. I think that there's a thing where women rise to a certain position, and I think this happens in other situations too, and then they don't want to push what they feel is right because they don't want to disturb their own like I've gotten here and I don't want to rock the boat whatever, And I think that's unfortunately. May I share another story? So again I talked to a lot of people, and there was some women in women's sports. Women's sports is huge right now, especially basketball, it's taking off. Women's sports is hot, and so I was talking to some of these women in sports empowerment leaders and they shared the story with me, which blows my mind, but goes to the point Rob that you just mentioned, which is this. I don't know if your listeners in Australia will understand this, but in the United States, we have this thing called D one schools, Division one schools, and there are the big the top ten, the D ten, right, so it's the top ten of Division one schools. We're talking Nebraska, Ohio State, Michigan, LSU, like we're talking about the top ten in sports, right. So there was a Division one school in the top ten, and they wanted to make sure that they could get to the top five because they're in number five or below and they want to get to five and above. They want to be in the top five. So they hire a consultant to come into the school and do an analysis of everything that they're doing and what they could do to get up in the ranks the top five of D one schools in the United States. So this guy, middle aged white guy does his thing for like three months whatever. Everybody gathers in a conference room and everyone's sitting around this big table in this conference room to listen to this guy's findings, and there's only two women in the room. The rest are all men. So we're talking maybe twenty five people total, and only two are women. This guy opens his mouth in the first thing that he says, and this, by the way, was in twenty twenty four. The first thing this guy says, after my team and I did this analysis, we firmly believe that the first thing you can do to improve your status in the top D ten, to get above D five is you have too many women in positions of power, and these women would be better served at home. He told me that story when we chatted last time, and I nearly fell off my chair. These are the words that came out of this middle aged white man's mouth. Now just so happens that the women who are sharing this story with me are friends with the two women that were in the room. Those women both said I was afraid to speak up because I didn't want to lose my job. There was only two women in the room, and I knew that if one of us spoke up, there would be an issue that we would either be one of us would be reprimanded, or we would potentially be fired and not one man stood up and said anything to this man in contrary to what he said the first words out of his mouth, that you have too many women in positions of power. They'd be better served at home. It's like a feedback loops. Man. We've never had a bigger imbalance of freaking power than we have right now in so many ways. It's fucking staggering that in this day and age that that attitude can actually still exist. But it does. No, it's emboldant. It's emboldant people now feel that they have the right to say these things. I mean, I can't begin I can't even begin to tell you the messages I get from men. I won't because they're disgusting. Is it something that's high on the conscience of women in America? Because when you, I mean you look at you know, let's take a look at abortion and all this other stuff where women are actually their rights are going backwards. Is it in general or is it just in the media here that's all we see, but in general in real life? Is this what's happening? Is it? Is it a cultural thing over there? Let me just jump in with one thing really quick. Shocking women's soccer league, This is crazy. There are if ire the statistic rate, there's like three women coaches out of the entire league in the women's soccer league. Yeah, yep. And to answer your question, yes, women are very scared right now. The thing that strikes me if that guy's brave enough to stand up in front of a bunch of blokes and say that, surely the consensus he's he's thinking, well, the consensus of the blokes around the table is going to be the same, right, because he's not going to go out there and do it. If yeah, he feels comfortable, Yeah, he's comfortable saying it. Absolutely so to me, that says that's like a cultural thing. Let alone anything. No man, No man stood up and said. It, that's right, exactly one man in that room. Consider that, maybe they all agreed with him. Maybe they all went, well, yeah, you're right mate. Yeah. Fucking those women they should be a barefoot and pregnant. Fuck me, what are they doing in. A bunch of sicker fans too? Totally yeah, or they're just so scared, like like like everyone is scared to say anything because everyone's like, I don't know, but that's the. Kind of stuff because no one will say anything. Everyone's too scared to say anything because if if you say something. One of the things that crosses my mind is that, like here, it's very easy to point out. It's like, you know, female voice, you can see it, you know, female spokesperson. But in all the other industries, it's so much harder to see this. I mean, say, just trying to be a composer for film and whatnot, and I just think it's like it's another male dominated industry. Really when you look at it like here, it's so easy to point out. I'm not saying it's easy, but it's much easier to make it clear the way the way you've kind of you know, structured your campaign, and you think about other industries, and it's so much. More well because film composing is so much more behind this really dark behind the scenes that they really never mentioned that. Yeah, I mean, I mean you point it out to the people who are involved within and then it's the same thing where it's like if you don't want to admit something, just don't acknowledge it. So it's even harder to bring to light because there's no way of even exposing here. At least you're exposing the public consuming. What's interesting about the point you bring up is that it lends itself to tell another story, a story of why there aren't women in positions in production, audio engineering, There aren't women in the insurance industry, there aren't women in auto sales. It goes towards the fact that we don't encourage young girls. We don't have examples to show young girls. So, for example, I was talking with the creative director of Sportsnet and he shared a story with me and said, it's not He goes, I want more women here. I want to put more women in these positions, but Christy, I can't find them. We had a position for a content manager in No it was audio engineer. It was audio something. I forgive me. I've seen this with audio engineering here. You're actually actually very correct, like I mean, just even in the schools. And he said, I put an ad out and we had three hundred people apply. Two were women. Two out of three hundred were women. And he said, one of the women made it to the final round because she was good, she was worthy of having the job. She ended up not taking it. We offered it to her and she had not taking it. But I am a well intended man. That wants to hire more women. I put a job posting out there and out of three hundred, only two women, and so he and I talked about it. My daughter plays golf. My daughter cannot tune in on Sunday and watch anyone but Roy McElroy, Uh, Bryce and d Chambeau. Uh. She has no one to watch. I physically had to drive her to take her to watch Nelly Corda, the number one female golfer in the world. I had to drive her to an event two weeks ago we went to Ohio State University to watch their Division one ladies play. There is no one on TV. It's just not even broadcasting. It's not even broadcasts. So if we are not showing little girls that there are opportunities in audio engineering, that there are opportunities in insurance, and what women look like doing these jobs, you will never have women applying for these jobs, which means you will never have women rise up in the ranks of positions of power to make decisions to put more women in positions of power or more women on their teams. It just won't happen. It's a really interesting thing. So, first of all, a good friend of mine and I'll just throw a name out there, Katie Mindemann. She was my assistant and she's now one of the I think senior engineers over at NFL Films doing like I don't know what, all their documentaries and lots of other stuff. But it's one of those unfortunately few stories of like a couple weeks ago, I went down to my old school and I did a seminar and exactly it was like the whole class, like fifteen twenty kids. I think there was. Two or three girls in the whole class. And what it reminds me of is my dad. My dad's job, his second job actually was he would lobby the schools to like he would try to get the schools to have more teachers or more students study science and math because we were importing all of our science and math teachers. And his whole job was to try to like bring this back in. And it needs a campaign like that where when you go to the schools and when you're recruiting people to go to college and whatnot, it's like, hey, here's a whole degree program that you didn't think of that you can go into and you. Can did you know that they recently did a study and they tracked. They asked kindergarteners to draw doctors and scientists, and for the first time in history, there were more women drawn than men. Nice. Wow. And if you look at why, it's because of the last decade, this push of women in STEM, of girls in STEM. It's this push and showing more female doctors on TV and showing more female scientists. And that's why. And so when you look at not only you take building doors right of what it's doing for voiceover, but when you take how we're doing it and what we're doing, if you can apply that to other industries, then that's when we're going to see real change. I'm not trying to change the world. I'm trying to change a small niche within my own world. And I have a friend who works in insurance, very male dominated, and she travels a lot for work, and she goes to all these conferences and it's always happy hour at nine in the morning, at one at three whenever, right, and it's all a bunch of dudes with a sprinkling of women. And so for the first time ever since she's been working there, she went to a conference and a bunch of women decided to coordinate a women's tea, a women's an insurance tea, and there was a room full of women that got together and they were able to have stories, shared experiences, get to network, get to know one another, and create a support system that before wasn't there. I think that if more women in these male dominated genres, because they are passionate about they are good at it, there's no reason why they shouldn't exist. Right. The more people band together around a shared mission and take action and are not afraid to take that action because they have a bunch of people around them, that's when change is going to happen. You know. Hearing you say insurance companies just occurs to me. I did a spot for an agency here a month or two ago for an insurance company, but it featured a gay couple and a male That's awesome, a male gay couple. And I also did one about a year and a half ago for an instant coffee and it was another gay couple, but again they were male. And it occurs to me that I actually had and it's starting to happen here in Australia. You know, gay couples more and more. But I can't remember seeing a female gay couple. It's always male. It just occurred to me when you were saying that. Do you know the weird thing is, though, because if you think about it, there's a stereotypical view of a gay man. That's true, But what is a stereotypical gay woman. Yeah. Yeah, well that seems to be the case, right, But it stands to what Christy's talking about. They're out there. In fact, there's probably more gay women than there are gay men. I don't know. I don't do that sort of stuff, but you know, I think there's a lot of women that wish they were gay. Quite possible, especially given the attitude that Chris has just been talking about far out you'd be better off being gay, christ or Mighty. But yeah, it's interesting, isn't it. It just occurred to me wh as you were talking about insurance. It was like, shit, yeah, even the gays are all male? Crazy? Yeah, I think the reality is that, Like, I don't think it's like a I think that most men would not go like, oh, we got to do something and keep these women out. I think it's quite the opposite. Like somehow this is like some sort of weird societal feedback loop that like, like you said. Is because you don't see a lot of examples. It's what it's how power works. It's powerful. Yeah, But I don't think it's intentional on all cases. I mean maybe maybe with someone like you know, the group who's in power now, but not across the board. I don't think that everyone is like, ooh, like we got to do something. There's too many women coming into this. I think quite the opposite. It's just people don't think about it. I never hear that. I never hear that anymore. I don't hear that. In Australia. It's really obvious when someone makes some sexist comment. It jumps out. It does the usual. Absolutely yeah, even in like the clubs and stuff, like in the locker rooms. But I think it's just like unsaid, it's just like some sort of undercurrent that is like like the flow goes that way, so it keeps on going that way, and then the river carves deeper going that way, and it's actually, you know, you have to start at the root of it with the education system. Really, I think you're absolutely right. I'll tell you. I tell you when it was really really bad, we had a female crime in the state my first ess and it got to the point where she did one of the most amazing speeches in Parliament about misogyny. If you get a chance to Julia Gillard's speech, well. It depends on who you talk to whether people think it was great or not. I mean, I not disagreeing with you, but there is an element out there. He'll go yas blah blah blah. There is that element. They did means the whole campaign to ditch the wind Channing locker up. Yeah, yeah, no, no, I don't think that will happen here made No. Yeah. I have to say, this is a really great podcast that we've done, because so many of our podcasts are like I. Don't think we mentioned one piece of tech the whole time. Where we about a mic drop. That's about as close as we got. Yeah, exactly, Yeah, I know. I look at what George is on. I know, I love George Chursy. You were going to say, before we all had our thoughts, how everybody can best participate in this campaign and support the campaign. Oh, do me two favors, tell us where to go to find out more. But I also want you to give everybody a challenge to get off this podcast and go and do whatever it is that will serve you best as soon as they finish something awesome. Thank you for bringing that full circle. So Number one, you can follow us at building doors vio. Our website is buildingdoorsvo dot com. On all social media, we are at building Doors vo so you can find us on YouTube. You can find us on Instagram, LinkedIn. The only thing we aren't on I believe is X I wonder why. Yeah, but you are on social Yeah. Keep searching. Yes we are. Yeah, We're on blue Sky and Substack. I'm not as active on those as I should be because again, I'm one person and I'm trying to do. Do you keep up with all that? Christ I have enough trouble keeping up with Facebook and LinkedIn anything else. It's hard, Yeah, So follow us. Please like Sharon tag so when you see a woman voicing something, please heart it and share it to your network. If you can't tag a brand, that's fine, I get it. But just pressing the like and the share means so much to our campaign. We know it works. It helps spread brand awareness. We have launched our Instagram and LinkedIn live series. So every month, the second Wednesday of the month is LinkedIn. The fourth Wednesday of the month is Instagram, so if you want to tune into those events, it doesn't talk just about Vio stuff. It talks about stuff that affects all people. On our base audience is mostly women and men who are supportive of equality, so that's outside of Vio. And what I love about our community is that we're small, but we're very engaged. If you find yourself listening to our podcast on Spotify or on Apple or on YouTube music, and you'd like to support us monetarily, you can do so by going to buy me a coffee. I don't know if anyone's heard of it, but buy me a coffee is such a non icky way to collect money. It's not like a GoFundMe where someone's saying, I'm as to my ten thousand dollars. Go on, they need three thousand more dollars, Please don't it. It's not like that at all. Buy me a coffee is a way that you can donate one dollar, you can donate five dollars. You can sign up to donate five dollars a month. It's very small nominal action, you know, fees or rather donations. So far, I've collected almost five hundred dollars yay, yay, and so that money goes back into the campaign, specifically right now, into paid advertising for the podcast. So you can, like Sharon Tag, you can listen to our podcast, you can join our events, you can share content, you can buy a cup of coffee, and finally, I just appreciate you know. We have a hotline. It's a Building Doors hotline where we ask people to share their thoughts about the campaign or a live event or a podcast, and then I turn them into audio posts to share other people's voices, because that's what we're about. We're about sharing other people's voices. The phone number is two one six three oh seven, nineteen seventeen. And the name of the podcast is Building Doors Podcast. There we go, simple, simple, everything's. Building Doors vio. So if you go to Google and type building doors vio, I'm sure it'll all come out. And I just want to say thank you very much for the opportunity to have this conversation. It's been a great conversation because it was real and authentic and it came from, you know, just organically and a lot of podcasts I'm on they have a set list of questions. So I appreciate the opportunity you're not organized to share. Yeah, no, I appreciate it. And I think that this is a great example of how conversations can really can really be enlightening and you can learn something from other people that you didn't know before. And we're a bunch of dudes. I mean, we've just spent an hour and a half talking about this, and and I'll be honest, I could talk about it for another hour and a half. We're only wrapping up because we've got another episode to record before we finished this our session today. But I mean, it's such an important thing, it really is. I think it's great. It is super important, and I think I mean, I mean, I'm biased, but you know, my daughter is just getting into this, and I know she's got this uphill battle and uh and I was gonna say, I'm I like, don't be a surprised. I'm gonna have KEYK and Rebecca. Rebecca's the CEO of Source Elements and Keyk's of marketing, and I'm going to have them reach. Out to you. Thank you, thank you, and to anyone who's listening and who's a man I encourage, did you to think along because I just we'll end with this. I pitched building doors to an accountability group in vo and a middle aged Latino man raised his hand the first question, and he said, Christy, are you sure that you're not gaining access to these opportunities because of your gender or maybe you're just not good enough? And so what I want to encourage people like him who may be having these thoughts listening to this podcast, like you're just whining, Christy, Like there's plenty of women doing this, is that would you talk like that to your mother, to your daughter, to your aunt, to your grandmother, to your niece. Every single one of us came from a woman, and every single one of us have women in our lives. Would you say those things directly to them? Because when it's a stranger, it's one thing, But really think about the opportunities that the women in your life may not have access to, and maybe maybe that'll kind of change your perspective a little bit. But and the other thing is like meritocracy is great, but it's nothing without opportunity. So like for for people to discount opportunity and to say everybody gets someplace because of their skills, doesn't say anything about like opportunities that are provided. Oh yeah, you heard luck, favorites, favorites, they're prepared. I mean, how much have people had success in their lives because of where they are, who they know, their station in life. There's race, there's sex, all those things that is that is doesn't just falling of. That's so it's like all those people like, oh, meritocracy, and it's like it should only be that way. It's like go freaking think about it for a little while and come back and you won't. Yeah, it's like this makes no sense. Thank you so much. Thank you for the opportunity. I appreciate it. And Austrian audio recorded source connect Andrew Peaches and mixed by Rovo. Got your own audio issues just ask Rovo dot com Tech support from George the Tech Window. Don't forget to subscribe to the show and join in the conversation on our Facebook group to leave a comment, suggest a topic, or just say today, drop us a note at our website our audio Suite dot com