Do you have belief in yourself and others?

Hey neighbors. It's your buddy next door Mason Stewart and I'm so excited to be back in the booth with each one of you again. It's been a fantastic week for me. For the most part. We'll kind of dig into that a little bit more later on, but overall really good week. A lot of things to talk about today. And we've got a fantastic fun food adventure. We've got an actual taste test here in the booth today. So really exciting. Make sure to stay all the way through the video so that you can make sure to catch it. All right, so let's start with the weekly recap. weekly recap. We're going to kind of meld everything together. And then I'm gonna go into some specifics about voiceover and the experience that I had this week with it. So weekly recap as far as my week went, is pretty normal week. Work is pretty normal. Nothing too crazy going on there. I have a few more extra responsibilities going on and my day job. So it makes it so where I can't do voiceover as much as I would like during the day but still trying to find times in downtime. My job is very flexible, very understanding and they're very supportive. of me doing some voiceover stuff, if I've got downtime going on. So I'm very, very glad for that. I'm very grateful for that. I'm very grateful to be working from home, where I can just step away from my computer for 10 minutes, go record an audition, send it off. And then get back right to work. And that's the way it should be. So I am doing it and eventually won't have to step away because it will be my full time gig. This past week, Sinha or my wife I guess I should say, had a good friend from her Twitch streams come up from Texas and so they were able to have some time together do some things that was really great for them. It was really fun to be able to have somebody and have somebody who's never experienced Utah to come and experience Utah and all the fun things that come along with it. Other than that, it was a really normal week. My lawn is filled with crabgrass. I can't figure out what's going on with it. But that's a whole other story. I think we may need to talk to the lawn people but yeah, like I said another story on Tuesday and I'm recording this on Saturday the 13th and on Tuesday we're getting our brand new beds so expect a little bit of an update on our brand new bed next week because I am very excited. I'm pretty sure I slept wrong and screwed up my shoulder over here. So you hate to see it but yeah, so moving on.

Let's focus down on the voiceover stuff for this week. It started off with my class, right my home studio class where we're making sure our home studios are good and that how we're able and learning better how to direct ourselves in those and that's been a really hard thing for me is being able to direct myself. And so that class was really hard this week, just because I didn't perform at the level that I expect myself to perform it and that the teacher expects me to perform it so because of that I was having that happen on Monday that happens at the beginning of week this coming Monday is going to be my last one but at the beginning of the week. I really struggled with knowing whether or not voiceover was something that I could actually continue to do. I didn't know if I was cut out for it or anything like that. I was able to go out to dinner with my father on on Tuesday. Just kind of have a nice chat with him. We're talking about all these different things and what what it means to me and he said, you know, the one thing I want to say to you Mason so I'm very proud of you not giving up and I hadn't expressed a lot of this feeling to him I had in the past but not recently. He said I want to say that I'm very proud of you for not giving up from the tenacity to stay in there when things aren't necessarily looking as good as they should or as you expect them to be. And you're making progress towards that stuff.

So then he kind of he kind of hit me with a bombshell to be honest and said that, you know, he and my mother had talked and they were willing to to invest in me and in my voiceover journey. Monetarily speaking so I could maybe get a little bit more coaching and get maybe reefer, redo a demo different things like that. I told them I would think about it and I thought about it during the week. That's a very difficult thing for me to think about because of the feelings that I had had the Monday before because if this is something that I feel isn't going to work out, I don't want to take money from them and have it more or less go to waste right? I want to really be putting my full foot my full foot wow I'm a voice actor I can I can speak clearly right? put my best foot forward. So I took some time and I really thought about it and I knew I had a class coming up that I took earlier today that we'll get into and I also was able to get into a class with Jennifer Hale and amazing voice actress been in tons of video games, tons of work really well known in the industry. That's kind of for people in my position like stuck not knowing what to do next not knowing how to progress different things like that.

So I told myself, I am going to put everything I have into voiceover and continue doing what I'm doing. I mean, I'm on like yearly subscriptions for pay to plays different things like that. So I'm going to push forward and do do everything in that but these two classes right. The class I took today will kind of jump into that now deals with Joshua Alexander. If you guys are a voice, talent or if you're looking to even just start a business in general. Joshua is a fantastic coach when it comes to business stuff. And I learned so much today from him about how like I a lot of the stuff he talked about, I was already doing but I wasn't doing it to like the best level that I could have been doing it. Right. And so it was just a reminder and as I took the class today it was very apparent to me, like I was getting excited about about the different things he was talking about. And about the you know how to reach out to clients how to do these things, and I was learning and I was taking notes. I took like six pages of notes. And in that moment I knew this is something that I definitely want to do. Now, truth be told for any industry for any sport for any activity for any career, whatever it may be. There are times where even if you have the talent and you've done the coaching and you've done the stuff, things just don't work out sometimes. And that's the unfortunate hard truth about things. But the point is that you keep going one way or another right? Whether that is to continue in voiceover or to push it off to something else. So this next class that I'm taking, like I mentioned before, it's for actors that feel kind of stuck. They don't really know how to progress and get into the field. I'm doing a lot of things right. I know that. But there are things that need refinement on my end. And so that's what I've committed myself to doing.

So I've committed myself to refinement, through coaching, through workshops through you know, marketing, just refining everything down to the point where I am extremely comfortable with everything that I'm doing. And part of that whether or not I accept that financial funding from my parents, I have yet to decide. But either way. I'm trying not to get super emotional right now. Try not to cry. But it's so fantastic. To know that you have people that believe in you and that's kind of my big message for this week. The message that I wanted to share not necessarily the good feeling it is to have somebody believe in you. Excuse me but the fact that I have had the opportunity to feel how it feels to have someone believe in you.

reminds me so much that it's important that we as individuals find others to believe in as well.

The world in general, especially in this day and age with the Internet can be an extremely extremely callous place. And praise or belief and support can sometimes be hard to find in a non superficial setting. But what I experienced this week is when someone truly believes in you and you feel that it makes all the difference. I feel like I could take on the world right now if I'm being honest. And so that's my challenge to you this week. Find a way to believe in someone Yeah, I said someone that's someone can be you. When you truly feel like you're believing in yourself, and you know that you can do something because other people have told you and you struggle with depression or anxiety, anything like that. Those are very real things. And I understand that. But find the time that you can believe that you can do something believe in yourself, because you are the most powerful person there is. In the class I took today, Joshua Alexander with his class taking vo from a hobby to an enterprise that's what his whole class was about. And he said in voiceover marketing is going to change auditions are going to change. It's a very roller coaster type of, you know career. It's a very roller coaster industry. Things will change and he said there's one constant one thing that if you want to succeed, it can't change. And it's you. If you want things to change around you for the better. You have to be consistent in what you're doing, whether that's marketing, whether that's auditions. Whether that's getting coaching, whether that's upgrading demos or doing different things. You have to be laser focused. You have to be on top of everything. If you're not, then things are going to crumble and things are going to fall apart and it's going to seem impossible. And looking back at this past week, I definitely realized that I had gotten off track on a couple of things haven't been working on LinkedIn as much. I haven't been working my Instagram stuff as much as I should. Reaching out and contacting new people. I'm doing lots of email marketing, and I've been trying to work on my CRM, but you know, that's just a small part of it. I gotta be doing everything. So I my whole goal is I'm really gonna bunker down, I'm gonna do everything that I need to do to ensure that my consistency is bringing about everything I need. And all of it stems from belief. Sometimes, like I mentioned before, it's really hard for someone to believe in themselves, due to, you know, mental failings of the human body, the human mind. But if you are able to provide that belief in someone else in anything, whatever it may be, that is going to give them that may be that tiny push, they need to believe in themselves and say, I can do this. I know I can do this. I'm gonna get this job. I'm gonna succeed in voiceover, whatever it may be. You can do it. And that's what I want to say to each one of you is you can do it whatever it is that you have your goal and your heart set out on you can do it. I want you guys to say that say it with me. 321 I can do it. All right. That's kind of where I want to leave it. It's kind of a heavy end. But you know, we're gonna we're gonna kind of liven it up here with our with our food adventure our food take so first and foremost, I want to say thank you to everybody that watches us I know there's a nominal few of you that do watch this and it really does mean the world to me that you guys take some time out of your day. To watch me rant about my week about voice over and about food every once in a while. And maybe in the future, we'll get some more stream clips going up. Once that starts rolling out all sorts of stuff, but I want you all know that I'm extremely grateful for each and every one of you because as you watch this, it helps me know that you guys believe in me. So thank you. Thank you.

All right. Let's jump into our food adventure. I've got it right in front of me. I would say it's fresh out of the fridge but we've been sitting in here for almost 15 minutes. Now. So not quite but still very cold.

Melissa and I my wife we went out to get some drinks the other night. We're big soda fans. I've been on a kick of zero sugars just because you know I'm trying to lose weight trying to cut out as much sugar as I can. Different things like that. But I noticed and I saw a new limited edition Coca Cola that coca that coke has put out. And so I figured might as well give it a shot. So let me hold it up here and see if we can get a good picture of it. Yeah, there we go rotate a little bit since we got a little bit of a glare on the White can as you can see right here. It is a Coca Cola they are working with marshmallow marshmallow is a music DJ. You've probably heard some of this stuff and not realized it. But it's called like the it's called the artist of marshmallows limited edition. So this is the flavor that they are talking about here. They say it is watermelon strawberry flavored. Now, if you know anything about Mason's is that I love watermelon drinks, and I love strawberry drinks. So the fact that this is watermelon, strawberry sounds delicious, but then you get the thought, Coke right. And I'm sure all of you have had freestyle Cokes. In the past different things like that. My favorite is when you get the freestyle coke. I do the coke. I do like half Coke, lime, and half Coke, vanilla. It's really good. Vanilla lime coke. Oh, his spot is really good. I can't say I've ever done any of the fruit flavors into Coke. Most of the time if you are getting a fruit flavor into a Coke, it's the cherry and I'm not a big cherry fan. I've had the orange coke. It's okay. It's not my favorite. But I can't say I've had a strawberry Coke or a watermelon coke. So this is going to be an interesting taste test. So let's crack it open and see what it tastes like. Let's see if we can get a good ASMR crack here ooh, that was nice. That was nice. Okay. Immediately smell there's like a fruity smell. I can't identify if it's watermelon or strawberry. It smells like a weird it smells like a fruity coke. I know that's that's so generic and such a terrible reaction to it. But it smells like a fruity coke. Can you smell the coke and be like, there's something weird about that coke. It kind of smells like it's got candy and under something that's kind of what it like a fruit candy like a starburst or a Skittles. That's kind of what it smells like. But let's go ahead and let's give it a taste. Oh my gosh. Apparently I'm really bad at drinking too. Okay, here we go. The watermelon and strawberry are incredibly subtle. The the like cola taste is pretty absent at least on that first go around. Let's try it again. One more try

Yeah, that is a very mild soda. That is a very mild soda. There's not much flavor happening at all. It's almost as if they took all of the cola aspect out of it. And the there's like there's like a hint of fruit in there. It's so bizarre, because maybe there's a there's Yeah, so the cola taste isn't completely gone. It's like It's like there is like kind of the background music right? And then you have these just like weird little like flourishes little splashes you know when you know on ratatouille when he's like eating the cheese and he's got his eyes closed and he's like, all fireworks are like and he eats a grape and it's got like the different lines and whatever and then he eats them together and then does that that's kind of what this is doing but in like a in like the most subtle way possible. You start off and you get kind of like the base layer of that cola taste

Yeah, you get the base layer the cola taste and then it starts and you kind of have like a if you've ever had a watermelon Arizona drink, it's kind of like that watermelon type of taste and that slowly fades away and you kind of get like a like a starburst, Skittles strawberry thing, but it's a very fascinating there's not a whole lot of flavor, so I'd probably give this I'm probably getting Mr. Marshmallow like a 6.5 out of 10 It is great to try but I don't think I will ever buy this again. Marshmallow Have you ever do any soda collaborations in the future? Make sure they put a little bit more flavor into it. That's what I would say. But that's gonna do it for your buddy next door this week. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and weak. Make sure that you find someone to believe in to push them to do whatever it is that they want to do. And in turn, you'll believe in yourself and they will believe in themselves as well. And that's really what it's all about. All right, neighbors find a chance to be kind to someone help someone do anything you can to make this world a better place. And we'll catch you guys on the next one. See ya