AI vs. Human: Why Artists and Creators Still Reign Supreme with Katherine Dollison, Founder of KatVoix Media | S2 Ep. 180

0:05Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Founder Story. Today, we have Catherine Dollison. And Catherine, you are the founder of Cat Voix Media. You've been a voiceover artist, digital marketing strategist. You've done a lot of things. You even have a show, The Majority Mindset. And I'm very interested to hear your thoughts. We're going to kick it off. And normally we go into about how you got started and stuff. But before that, I want to do something different. I was having a conversation with someone recently about the future of voiceover artists. with AI and all advancements of technology. I'd love to get your thoughts to start it off with, how are you seeing technology impacting this industry?

0:49Well, here's what I will say. So for the Academy, for instance, there's voiceover snippets that I have for interactive modules. And I actually did try voiceover AI to see how it would sound. I believe that we are miles away from a robot being able to take a voiceover artist job, to be perfectly honest. I think it was something that was very that was very worrisome at the beginning. But at this juncture, I could very distinctly see the hear the difference. It sounded very mechanical. I think it has a place for a lot of maybe corporate videos. But what I've seen is in mainstream, generally, when someone does try to hire AI for a voiceover job, they actually end up going with some, you know, with human representation, which is good.

1:38That's very, very good. But as far as how technology and AI can help with things like editing, actually, there's quite a bit of advancement that has happened with editing, like with audio editing software and having those AI capabilities. And the same thing actually goes for video editing. So I do believe that there's definitely a way to use technology and AI to make things easier on the editing side. But I definitely think we're a long way away of being able to have a machine essentially completely mimic a person's voice without essentially spending more money up front than you would just hiring somebody.

2:14Hey, that's good news, right? Or maybe that person can, you said they can use the editing, use the tools, makes them better digital marketing. But at least there's still a human somewhere. Let's dive into your story. So what made you say, I want to be an entrepreneur and I want to go into this. I want to help these people in this industry. Well, it actually goes back to when COVID occurred and I was working as a full-time voice actor in Brooklyn, New York. And a lot of on-camera artists started working behind the scenes because obviously, you know, toll sets were shut down. And so during that time, I realized that I needed to try to market myself better.

3:01I got a quote for website design. I know how to design websites, but I got a quote for it just to see. And the price for me was just astronomical. And for somebody that knows what work goes into it, I was like, this doesn't really seem right. I feel like you're kind of taking advantage of people that might not have the education to understand how long it takes to do just a out of the box site that doesn't have a lot of backlinking strategies, that doesn't have a lot of tagged URLs, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so as time went on and I started learning more and more about digital marketing and data science, I realized that there is a unmet need going on right now where people should understand just a little bit of everything if you're going to be in the entertainment industry to be dangerous.

3:49I think sadly, a lot of times novice performers, they get taken advantage of, whether it's in auditioning, whether it's in voice, like let's just say voiceover or in-person in fees. If you don't have an agent, there's an issue with maybe you're not getting paid the appropriate rates, et cetera, et cetera. But you shouldn't need an agent to be able to navigate that world well and be able to kind of circumvent any issues that could happen just as a result of you being new to the industry. You bring up a great point around figuring things out. I think that's a big difference between, you know, with entrepreneurs or founders or anyone who wants to in business is unless you have an unlimited amount of money, many times you're forced to figure things out.

4:32And I think it makes you good at that. It's like a skill that you develop. And it sounds to me like you're very good at that. Is there a tip or strategy or how do you go about, you know, making sure that you figure these things out? Like, how did you learn how to do a website? How did you learn how to do these things? You're not specifically to websites, It's just in general, how do you break things down where you you figure out how to do it and then you do it yourself? Well, actually, when I first started college, there was a professor that really helped me understand how to do something called short term, like short term, long term, like now, next, you know, down the road where you set these small short term goals.

5:15And that's actually been a really good strategy for me, learning new things where let's just say, for instance, when I created a completely online learning management platform using, you know, basically learning management platform software, but it's all bespoke for voiceover and sound engineering and auditioning. That's never really existed before where you have in-person interaction as well. And so I essentially had to learn how to create modules. But I was like, all right, let me go ahead and try to figure out how I'm going to do this by breaking it down into smaller pieces. So before I learned how to create a learning management platform, I had to learn how I was going to segment the lessons.

5:58Before that, I had to learn exactly what verticals I was going to teach. And then once that foundation was in place, I was actually able to go, all right, so this is how I can visualize this. This is when I'll use H5P content. This is when I'll use big blue button interactive modules, et cetera, et cetera. So that's always been really helpful for me is breaking things down into smaller goals that lead up to bigger accomplishments. So, Catherine, I know there's been so many challenges for everyone in business, and I feel like we really learn from those challenges. Has there been any challenges that you faced?

6:33And if so, how are you able to overcome them? Yeah, there definitely have. I will say that one of the, I think one of the biggest challenges that any entrepreneur faces is understanding that failing doesn't mean the end. So if I were to talk about my foray in real estate, where I've got two properties in Philadelphia right now, but one of them I had to sell because it got rented, but people had to move out. It was during the winter. And so I had to put it back on the market and I only made like a couple of grand off of the sale. But that showed me that the next time I, uh, the next time I purchase a property, for instance, I need to make sure I have at least one year just available for the mortgage with no kind of profit whatsoever in order to sustain that.

7:19So, um, that's like an example of kind of understanding how to like fail forward. Uh, another example would have been And that when honestly, when I started the Academy, to be perfectly honest, like I didn't realize, even though I've worked in digital marketing for so long, I didn't realize how much you have to increase your brand authority before you get enrollments to just start rolling in for something. Because essentially you're a cold business. If people know you for your voiceover, that's fine. But if people do not know you as an educational platform, that's a completely different, like horse of a different color.

7:54And so all of these things, they've just been learning lessons where thankfully, I'm really glad that I learned the lesson in real estate because that's actually helped me with the learning management platform where I'm like, no, I can sustain all of this, all of the marketing and everything else for up to a year before turning a profit and still be OK. it's not going to mess anything up that I have going on. So, um, I think that honestly, understanding that every lesson that you learn, that might be a hard lesson in business always has its place later on in life. And knowing how to move forward from that is a really, is a really solid skill that you have to have as an entrepreneur.

8:31I guess there's silver lining there. You learned a lesson and it doesn't sound like you lost too much money. I didn't. Making even a little is like could be an amazing thing where you could have lost a lot. Right. I keep in in that place and lessons hard when you're going through it, but great, you know, afterwards. So I'm curious about your show, the majority mindset show with Asha Bland. What are you talking about in that show? And how has that been? Because we have a lot of people launching podcasts, launching shows. And I don't think they realize going into just how much work is required to continue it and be consistent.

9:13No, you're absolutely right about that. No. So honestly, I can say that that process was a lot more involved than I thought. Asha and I were work colleagues and we kind of formulated this idea together. I'm so grateful for her because of everything that she knows about social strategy and how much she enjoys going into the back end of like content strategy planning and things of that nature. Storyboarding is wonderful. And then, you know, some of the nerdy stuff like editing and things like that. That's the stuff that I'm doing. So thankfully, having a good partner in this has made it so much easier.

9:56and honestly the work while it can become cumbersome at times I think having somebody that's willing to kind of pull the weight with you has made it a lot easier and I think that can be applied to pretty much anything that you decide to take on if you're going to have a business partner it needs to be somebody that can actually fill the gaps kind of like a relationship honestly it really could be like a relationship right like if you want to build a partnership there's always that joke around like you know if you want to be a business partner you can't just go get married, you have to, you know, go to a coffee, go on a few dates with that person, in quotes, dates.

10:33You really have to understand who they are because you're basically marrying the person, right? You're going to have contracts. You're going to have things. It's going to get complicated. But Catherine, this has been amazing. If people want to get in touch with you, they want to find out more information. They want to watch the show. How can they do so? Well, we've got YouTube, The Majority Mindset Show. You can actually visit our website to learn more about us, or you can go ahead and check us all out on Instagram, the Majority Mindset Show. Amazing, Catherine. Thank you so much. I had a great time.

11:03Thank you for joining me. We had a great conversation yesterday leading into this as well. I can't wait to see how your company continues to progress and the voiceover and the entertainment. I'm very curious how these industries are going to change. In a few months, come back. Let's chat about how it's advanced from now till then, and then how the Academy is going and everything. I'm really excited about that. But Catherine, thank you so much for joining us today on Founder's Story. Thank you. I hope you have a good rest of your day.