Staying in the Game: Mindset Shifts for Creative Success with Paul Schmidt

Dr. Christine Li [00:00:00]:
Welcome back to the Make Time for Success podcast. This is episode number 229. What are the secret steps to make it in your career? What are the secret strategies to make sure you end up reaching your goal instead of collapsing in fear or self sabotage? We're gonna talk all about these questions and provide a lot of answers courtesy of my special guest today, Paul Schmidt. Paul is a successful voice actor, community builder, and voice over business coach. He's the creator of the voice over freedom master plan, the leading marketing program for voice actors, and the voice over pro community, a private global community for voice actors and audiobook narrators. Paul is amazing at describing some of the mindset shifts and the mindset strategies that we as individuals, as human beings, need to learn in order to stay the course, to be perseverant when we are going for our big goals. Let's go listen to his wisdom together now. Hi.

Dr. Christine Li [00:01:14]:
I'm Dr. Christine Li, and I'm a psychologist and a procrastination coach. I've helped thousands of people move past and overwhelm so they could begin working to their potential. In this podcast, you're going to learn powerful strategies for getting your mind, body, and energy to work together so that you can focus on what's really important and accomplish the goals you want to achieve. When you start living within your full power, you're going to see how being productive can be easy and how you can create success on demand. Welcome to the Make Time for Success podcast. Hi, everyone. I am really looking forward to today's conversation. My guest today is a new acquaintance of mine.

Dr. Christine Li [00:02:05]:
His name is Paul Schmidt. We met a few days ago over a meal at a conference, and we connected there. And Paul is a voice actor and voice over business coach, And we're gonna get to know him in this episode, and we're gonna talk a lot about things related to mindset and being a better performer. So welcome to the show, Paul. Can't wait to get to talking with you.

Paul Schmidt [00:02:35]:
Well, thanks, Christine. It's awfully nice of you to have me on, and I really enjoy we had interacted a little bit online before last week, but we got to to meet and share. I guess it was was that breakfast? I can't even remember whether it was breakfast or lunch together, but that was a great joy, and you're very kind to have me on. So thanks.

Dr. Christine Li [00:02:52]:
I think it was breakfast. I agree. And very nice to have you here and to see you again. And can you give our audience just a little view into who you are, how you got to be a voice actor. There's always a great story behind these things, and this is the kind of thing I love to showcase. So please go ahead.

Paul Schmidt [00:03:12]:
Sure. So, I've been a voice actor for twenty six years total, and I've been full time in that craft for the last six years. And I came up through radio. I was on the radio for about fifteen years and then came off the radio, came off air, and spent some time on the sales side of radio and then went on to hold some sales positions for high level software developers, ad agencies, technology firms, etcetera. So I was part time in voice over for twenty years. And the way that starts is, you know, hey. You did our you did our radio spot. Would you do our cable spot for us? Well, sure.

Paul Schmidt [00:03:54]:
And the client would throw me a few extra bucks, and everybody was happy. Right? But I started to notice early on that, like, the quality of what we were doing as local DJs who were also producing commercials wasn't up to what we were getting in from ad agencies, what we were getting in from national advertisers. And I sort of had stumbled on this concept of voice acting. Well, I had been, as a kid, I had been a stage actor my whole life. In fact, I started out going to college to be a stage actor. So acting was nothing new to me. But then when I realized I could pair that with being on the mic, I lost my mind. Right? So I really tried hard 1998, '19 '90 '9 to get into voice acting, but I was in Wilmington, Delaware at the time.

Paul Schmidt [00:04:44]:
And that was, like, Market 76. And what I learned was that if you weren't in New York or you weren't in LA, if you weren't part of the union, and this was before SAG and AFTRA merged, if you didn't if you weren't taking coaching and you couldn't get coaching in Market 76, right, you had to go to New York or LA, you didn't have all that stuff. You didn't work. Right? I even went so far as to I was 30 years old. I took a, an internship at Mike Lemon Casting in Philadelphia because I thought, well, maybe I can learn from the inside and figure this business out. And what I learned from the inside was that, you know, even in a market like Philly, which was twenty minutes north of me, the the on camera talent got all the voiceover work, right, because they had the relationships. So that was lesson number one. You gotta have the relationships.

Paul Schmidt [00:05:33]:
And so I limped along part time for twenty years. Later on, I devised a plan. I I realized that I love this work and I wanted to do more of it. And I spent six months building a plan. And once I started executing that plan, I went full time in voice over in nine months. And then a few years later, I started to realize that not everybody had the level of success that I had early on, and I don't say that to Chest Hump. I just, like, I I did okay for myself in the first couple of years, and that's not all that common. And I started to see actors leaving the business that some of which I knew were way more talented than me.

Paul Schmidt [00:06:12]:
Right? Way more skilled than me. And I went, well, it can't just be about how good you are as an actor. It has to be about something else. And I started to dig into that. And the next thing you know, a a year later, I had developed a a signature course to teach voice actors how to find work, not just how to do the work, but how to find it, and and grew that in. We've got almost 270 students overall. We've got about a 80 or a 90 at our signature program today. And so that's the other business that I have, which is teaching voice actors how to find work.

Dr. Christine Li [00:06:48]:
Terrific. I love that you have a wonderful community and that you have persevered over the years, which is amazing. I would love to ask you some more questions about that very fact. What do you attribute to the fact that you've lasted as long as you have and that you didn't really give up anywhere along the way, or maybe you did a little bit. But I would like to hear all those stories too.

Paul Schmidt [00:07:16]:
Yeah. I think I I certainly gave up after '98 and '99 because, you know, I sent out hundreds and hundreds of cassette tape demos, and I really got nowhere. I I, you know, I hit the wall and slid all the way down. And that's why I parked it and limped along part time for so long because I just felt like it wasn't viable to me. And then, you know, like I said, when I started to to to hatch this plan, it's because I saw some friends that actually from radio. They were jumping into voice over full time, and I went, wait a minute. They're they're not in New York, and they're not in LA, and they're not Union. What the hell is going on here? Right? So what I realized was in that interim, the world had changed.

Paul Schmidt [00:08:01]:
And what I mean by that is we now had the Internet as we now know it. Right? We had the Internet in 1999, but it wasn't what it is today. We now had YouTube and digital video, and every company, even mom and pops, had become media companies. Right? They're producing their own videos, doing all the doing all the things. And what I realized was that now you didn't have to rely on an agent to go get work. Right? You could go right after clients themselves as a nonunion voice actor and deal directly with the clients and build that relationship and build a clientele that way. So when I realized that, that's when the gloves came off, and that's when I said this this is what I wanna do because I know I can sell because I had gotten a lot of sales training and had given a lot of sales training and got a lot of marketing exposure, and so that's what I did. And so to answer to your original question, since then, I haven't given up.

Paul Schmidt [00:09:01]:
There is I'm gonna grab a This is on my my bulletin board in my office. This bumper sticker, it says trust and be brave. And this was the title of a keynote speech given by a voice actor named Kaye Bess, who most people wouldn't know, but you'd know her voice if you heard it. She's done a lot of national commercials. She's done a lot of great work. She's been in the business for thirty five years. And she gave the keynote at a conference one year that I attended. And that phrase, trust and be brave, literally got me through my first year to two in this business because I just knew I had to hang in there.

Paul Schmidt [00:09:44]:
The I think so many people self sabotage just by giving up, just by quitting. Right? Our coach James at the conference that you and I were at referenced a comic. Right? It's now become an Internet meme of a guy with a pickaxe digging through, digging through, digging through and he stops this short of breaking through. And I never wanted that to be me and I always I developed a habit of reminding myself that when things got really bad and I really wanted to quit, that that's when other people do, and so I would not. And I found a way to hang in there through some pretty rough times. So

Dr. Christine Li [00:10:21]:
Okay. So what would you say to a person who has their heart in the right place? They've been going at whatever project they're doing for a while. They've seen some success, but all of a sudden, they're at that pickaxe point where they're thinking, I'm spent. There are other things I could do. Perhaps I'm not meant for this. What kinds of exercise would you put that person through so that they can actually really evaluate, do I move forward? Do I stay still? Do I switch?

Paul Schmidt [00:11:00]:
I think the first question you have to ask ask yourself is why. Why do I wanna do this? And sometimes that why is strong enough to pull you through. If it's really your calling and really your dream and something that you feel like, you know what? This is what I'm called to do. Then I think you're obligated to yourself to find a way to hang in there, to to stay in the game. There's a great book by an author named Simon Sinek, whose most famous book is called Start With Why, but he's also written a book called The Infinite Game, and it relies on game theory. And in an infinite game, there is no set time limit. The players come and go. The rules change constantly.

Paul Schmidt [00:11:44]:
In other words, business and life and whatever craft you're in are all infinite games. And if you play them like you're in a finite game like football or baseball, you're gonna lose. Right? The goal of an infinite game is to find a way to stay in the game. So to go back to his first book, that starts with your why. Why do you wanna do this? What what calls you to do this thing? Why is this your dream? And maybe through that process you find out that, okay, you weren't as passionate as about it as you thought you might, then maybe you go do something else. There's no shame in that. But if this is your calling, your dream, this is what you're destined to do, then you need to find a way to stay in the game. I'll give you an example.

Paul Schmidt [00:12:31]:
I was six months into my full time career. I had a great call with a client. We had just done a a line of 48 or 49 training videos for for this particular client, and we had it down, Christine. I mean, they would send me scripts by 10AM. I'd have it back to them by noon, and the money would be in my account by 2PM. It was unreal. We had it like a well oiled machine. And we finished that first line of videos, and we had a call that July, and they said, we love you, Paul.

Paul Schmidt [00:13:00]:
We love the the relationship we developed. We've really got this down to a science. We have four more lines of videos we wanna do with you. And they they literally verbatim said this to me, Christine, the work is virtually endless. And the clouds parted and the angels sang, you know. And and two weeks later, they called back and said, yeah, the CEO wants a younger sounding guy. Thanks very much. This happens.

Paul Schmidt [00:13:25]:
Right? It's just a fact of life. But with that, 50% of my income went out the door overnight. Right? And that was a hit. And so I did what I had to do to stay in the game. To me, at that time, it was all about not having to go back and get a corporate job because the cost of doing that yeah. A a paycheck was sorely needed and it would have been nice, but the cost of doing that means I would be giving up the same forty hours a week that I would need to go get clients for the voice over business. And so I drove Lyft. I got a little help from family.

Paul Schmidt [00:14:01]:
I lived like a student for a year, and I did what I had to do to stay in the game. Right? And, man, I don't know how many times I repeated this phrase to myself, trust and be brave, but it was in the dozens, maybe hundreds. And and I had a chance to run into Kaye about a year later, and I told her how much her keynote and that phrase meant to me. And this was actually this bumper sticker was sent to me by another friend, Brad Hyland, who's also a voice actor because he knew he had this made up and sent to me because he knew how much this phrase and that keynote meant to me. And that's the other part of it. If you don't have a strong community around you, if you don't have strong support systems, you will give up. Right? I'm a huge believer in accountability buddies and accountability groups because I know for a fact I wouldn't be in this business if it weren't for those other people that kinda pulled me along and said, no. You're not gonna quit.

Paul Schmidt [00:14:57]:
So

Dr. Christine Li [00:14:58]:
Love this. Thank you so much for sharing these stories that make it so real. And ladies and gentlemen listening to this episode, I think you can agree with me. His voice is really just wonderful to listen to. So I'm just kinda being soothed by your voice, and I love the stories. Can you talk about the self sabotaging piece? And maybe we'll call it a voice. And what you've seen maybe with the community that you host and guide and even within yourself or people that you know, what is that tension between the part of us that perhaps has a defined why and has a strong belief and the part of us that is really hell bent on making things really messy and uncomfortable so much so that you might wanna quit? Can you talk a little bit about that?

Paul Schmidt [00:15:48]:
Yeah. I I there I think there's a couple different levels of self sabotage. I think the most common level is what we commonly refer to as the comfort zone. Right? We have little boxes that we put around ourselves and for good reason, right? We're hardwired to keep ourselves safe, right? We're hardwired to avoid risk. And so our brain is constantly trying to keep you know, some coaches will use the phrase to keep you small or to keep you safe. And that's essentially what the brain is trying to do because if we eliminate the risk of the unknown, then we stay in our tiny little box and we stick to what's familiar and then, you know, the the old Einstein's definition of of insanity, right, if we keep doing what we're doing, we're gonna keep getting what we're getting. And Right? If we keep doing what we're doing, we're gonna keep getting what we're getting. And so we have to buck, we have to counter program that deeply wired programming in our DNA that keeps us small and safe, and we have to learn how to step outside and push the boundaries of that comfort zone.

Paul Schmidt [00:16:50]:
The other, I think, flavor of self sabotage is when we're it's it's a little it's a little more conscious, a little less subconscious where we we we just make dumb decisions, and we get in our way by, you know, doing things that that are just not smart. And I think that's another form of self sabotage. I think it's probably less common than the first form, but probably no less effective. But I tend to think of it in those two ways. I think, you know, the more that I talk to voice actors and coach voice actors and and see the the same recurring mindset issues come up, the more I believe that it's they're not unique to voice actors, and they're not even unique to freelancers. Although starting a business is is almost a a self development course in and of itself. Right? It will test you in ways that maybe normal life, quote, unquote, might not. So but I think I think it's something that we deal with across the board as human beings.

Paul Schmidt [00:17:56]:
There's imposter syndrome. There's perfectionism, which I think is an is a pandemic. So it's certainly an epidemic in this country. And so many more. There's fear of failure, fear of success. There's so many boxes and ways in which we keep ourselves small and safe. And the first part of attacking that is to identify it, to be able to recognize it when it comes up, and that's that's a tricky skill that has to be developed.

Dr. Christine Li [00:18:24]:
Yes. And I agree with you that getting the support and having consistent support when you're doing that journey is just gonna up your chances of surviving that. And sometimes, it really does feel like a game of survival. Right? That you're you're gonna take your being, your dream, and get to the finish line. And it is an infinite game where lots of things are gonna happen, but so much is this is the this this is the result. Right? And

Paul Schmidt [00:19:01]:
Right.

Dr. Christine Li [00:19:01]:
And that we can share with people and perhaps give a moment of strength to people who are listening. Right? Where are you at a crossroads? Where are you potentially self sabotaging, and you know it or you don't know it? Right? Where do you really wanna get to and why? And maybe review these things every once in a while with your big lens of the future next to you, that you're not playing inside that dark box where you can't see what's gonna happen to you in a month or two or three. So I love it. So I love this whole experiment that we're doing. Anything else? Can you talk to us about, let's say, procrastination? Why don't we bring that topic up since it's one of my favorite things to talk about? How do you help clients to recognize when they're procrastinating? What are your thoughts about the topic in general?

Paul Schmidt [00:19:55]:
Yeah. To me, a big driver, it's probably not the only one, certainly not the only one, but a big driver of procrastination is perfectionism, what I talked about before. Right? We believe that unless we act perfect, and and Brene Brown talks about this in her work as well, and she says it's actually a defensive move, right? We believe that unless we we behave perfectly and act perfectly and look perfect, that we're not deserving of love and approval. And so we don't put anything out into the world that isn't something that we deem perfect, that we deem above disapproval. And that to me is a huge, huge mistake because anybody that's accomplished anything in this world will tell you it's not despite failure, it's because of failure, right? We don't get to six they're they're one and the same. They're inextricable success and failure, and you've gotta go through a lot of one to get to the other. That's what makes life rich. Right? Being able to to fight and battle and overcome all those failures to be able to get to some level of success.

Paul Schmidt [00:21:04]:
So I don't believe that that we need to be perfect to be moving towards success. In fact, I believe that we need to be more accepting and more embracing of our imperfections so that we not invite failure, but certainly embrace it as a means to success. So I think that's number one. I think perfectionism is incredibly detrimental to to the mental health of anybody who suffers from it. I'm a recovering recovering perfectionist myself, and it's a skill that I'm still developing as I, you know, inch towards 60. So, you know, these are lifelong pursuits, lifelong skill developments. So impostors sorry. What did you the original question? Procrastination.

Paul Schmidt [00:21:57]:
Procrastination. Thank you. I was I could not get perfectionism out of my head.

Dr. Christine Li [00:22:01]:
There you go. The other driver

Paul Schmidt [00:22:03]:
of procrastination is fear of failure, right, which ties back into perfectionism as as I was talking about before. And then, you know, occasionally, it's fear of success. And we saw some of that in the room, maybe even I don't know. I can't speak for you, but in small ways, I identified it in myself too in the in the conference we were in last week. Well, if I if I if I do this thing and it's successful, then I have to deal with all these other problems that I don't wanna deal with right now. But, you know, I think we we consciously, we believe that once we have a level of success that there are no problems. That's not true. There's just a different set of problems.

Paul Schmidt [00:22:41]:
And life and and business and entrepreneurship and self development is all about developing your problem solving skills.

Dr. Christine Li [00:22:51]:
Yeah. I love that. I'm also thinking just even as we're recording this, you know, the spontaneity of our putting this together Mhmm. And also just being open to what might happen. Right? There's a part of you that wants everything to look and sound perfectly, and that's okay. Right? It's a reasonable thought. But if that thought prevents you from actually delivering on a performance or a project or a thing that you just wanna put out into the world, that's something that hurts you, I think. I think of it as, like, a personal pain.

Dr. Christine Li [00:23:22]:
And then when the mistakes come, you can feel hurt by those too, but you're gonna survive those. And the good news is that you've actually put yourself and your work and your voice, your literal voice sometimes, into the world, and what's gonna happen from there. Right? We don't calculate sometimes the ripple effect, the impact, the beauty of being free of all these constraints like self sabotage, these irrational thoughts, delay, not getting jobs, right, not having people know about the work that we can share with people. That's some personal pain that we have then on top of those things. And that's whole that's what drives me is I just wanna spare people

Paul Schmidt [00:24:04]:
some

Dr. Christine Li [00:24:05]:
of that internal drama when I can, when I can show people, you know what? There's a better way. There are lots of different ways in an infinite game. I love that. I'm gonna read that book. I've read the first one.

Paul Schmidt [00:24:15]:
Oh, it's fantastic.

Dr. Christine Li [00:24:15]:
I've read Start With Why. I have not read Infinite Game, and it sounds like a good one. Yeah.

Paul Schmidt [00:24:20]:
And to your to your point to, Christine, there's a concept in business called speed to market. Right? And the concept is while you're still overthinking everything, I've gotten my product in a minimally viable way out the door. I've already failed half a dozen times and have iterated on that by the time you get iteration one out the door. Right? So speed to market is a great way, that concept is a great way to battle those procrastinating, overthinking sort of thoughts. Get it out there, collect some data, figure out where the holes are and reiterate on it, right? I think that's really important. In in sports, in basketball and hockey, there's a stat a statistic called shots on goal. Right? That's what's called hockey. And the idea is the more shots you take, the better chance you have.

Paul Schmidt [00:25:08]:
Right? Because when you get the puck near the net, you never know what's gonna happen. But if you don't get the puck near the net, you don't have a chance to score. Right? You get the puck on the net, and it might hit somebody's skate. It might bounce off of somebody. Somebody might pass to another. You don't know, but you gotta get the puck on the net. And that's the same concept in business as speed to market. Get it out the door.

Paul Schmidt [00:25:30]:
It doesn't have to be perfect. You'll start to understand where the holes in the Swiss cheese are, and you can start to plug them.

Dr. Christine Li [00:25:36]:
Yeah. I love it. I love it. Love your attitude. Congratulations again on

Paul Schmidt [00:25:41]:
Thanks.

Dr. Christine Li [00:25:42]:
Making all these principles come to life in your own life and career and for sharing your gifts with the people that you do and now with my audience too. We're very

Paul Schmidt [00:25:50]:
You're very trying to have me on.

Dr. Christine Li [00:25:52]:
We're very grateful.

Paul Schmidt [00:25:53]:
Huge opportunity, so I appreciate it.

Dr. Christine Li [00:25:55]:
Well, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Alright. Paul and I have designed a way for you to stay in touch with him, and he has kindly given us a free download, which is seven steps for starting and developing a career in voice over. You can use this as a way to connect with Paul and as a way to find your way into a voice over career if you so choose. And the URL to get that free download is maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com/vo,thelettersvo. Again, maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com/vo.

Dr. Christine Li [00:26:37]:
And I just wanna say thank you again. This has been a total delight, Paul. Thank you so much.

Paul Schmidt [00:26:41]:
The the pleasure's been all mine, Christine. I'm really grateful to you. I'm glad we met. I'm glad we're gonna be friends moving forward, and I'm glad I'll I'll probably get to see you in August, although that's our next event. But I also might have to move my son into university that weekend, so I'm not trying to trying to figure that out. But it's, it's been a pleasure to get to know you thus far. And, certainly, if I can help you or if I can help anybody in your audience moving forward, just have them reach out to me.

Dr. Christine Li [00:27:06]:
Thank you so much. Your spirit of generosity really is apparent. Could you say maybe one last piece of advice for our audience to just kind of seal the deal for us?

Paul Schmidt [00:27:18]:
Yeah. I think, you know, when when when we were chatting here to four, the one thing that popped into my head was that I think if there's a most valuable skill to life and business, it's what Angela Duckworth calls grit. And if you haven't read that book, I highly recommend it. It's that ability to, as Jeff Goldblum says in Jurassic Park, right, life finds a way. If you can find a way to stay in the game, sometimes you're gonna have to do some uncomfortable shit. Right? Sometimes you're gonna have to do things you may not want to do in the short term to keep yourself in the game. And I'm not talking about being dishonest or sacrificing your integrity, but I'm talking about doing things that are outside of that comfort zone. If you can find a way to stay in the game, the sense of accomplishment that you your future self will have down the road is immense.

Paul Schmidt [00:28:13]:
And I I won't say I wish struggle for anybody, but I know the value of struggle in my life. And and I and I do wish the the benefit that comes from it for everybody. I'm a big believer in doing hard shit and staying in the game. And because I know that that's the only way that any modicum of success happens. So find a way. Develop your grit. Develop your perseverance. That would be if I could teach everybody in the world one thing, that would be it.

Dr. Christine Li [00:28:42]:
I love it. I love it. I'm sure your son is gonna do just fine in college as are you as a parent of someone who's flying the nest. As a what what do they say? Fleeing the nest? Not fleeing.

Paul Schmidt [00:28:53]:
Launching launching fleeing the nest to I don't know. Sometimes they flaunt. Sometimes they fall out.

Dr. Christine Li [00:28:59]:
Sometimes they flee, but best wishes to you both. Sometimes they're kicked. But thank you so much for taking us on this journey today. It's been amazing. So thank you everyone for listening to our conversation today. I hope you got so much out of Paul's gems of wisdom and his life experience, which will take him either even further going forward. Let's get you going as well. Avoid that procrastination.

Dr. Christine Li [00:29:27]:
Believe in yourself, and maybe don't be so afraid the next time you see a struggle. I'll see you next week on the Make Time for Success podcast, and thanks so much. Bye. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Make Time for Success podcast. If you enjoyed what you've heard, you can subscribe to make sure you get notified of upcoming episodes. You can also visit our website, maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com, for past episodes, show notes, and all the resources we mentioned on the show. Feel free to connect with me over on Instagram too. You can find me there under the name procrastination coach.

Dr. Christine Li [00:30:06]:
Send me a DM and let me know what your thoughts are about the episodes you've been listening to. And let me know any topics that you might like me to talk about on the show. I'd love to hear all about how you're making time for success. Talk to you soon.