Oct. 26, 2020

The Voice of Pharmacy | Kim Newlove, Pharmacist, The Pharmacist's Voice®

The Voice of Pharmacy | Kim Newlove, Pharmacist, The Pharmacist's Voice®
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Kim Newlove is a pharmacist and the founder of The Pharmacist's Voice®

thepharmacistsvoice.com

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Transcript

Transcript Disclaimer: This transcript is generated using speech-to-text technology and is intended to capture the essence of the conversation. However, please note that it may contain multiple spelling errors and inaccuracies. It should not be relied upon as an exact or comprehensive record of the discussion.

Mike Koelzer, Host: [00:00:00] Well, hello, Kim. Hi Mike, for those who haven't come across you online, introduce yourself to the listeners and tell them why we're talking today. 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: My name is Kim Newlove. I'm a pharmacist, voice actor, and podcasts. Wife and mother, and we are talking today because I have a business called the pharmacist 

Mike Koelzer, Host: voice.

Kim, you reached out probably a year ago when I kind of started up the podcast. You were really taking your time getting going. Cause I would say, Kim, do you want to do this? And you're like, no, not yet. Should we do this? And you're like, no, not yet. I know we wanted to get to this point, meeting each other, getting you on here.

And so on. Then I'd go to your LinkedIn, and I'm seeing all the stuff you did to prepare for this, this being your voiceover business. A lot of work. You did leading up to this. 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: When I first started in the voiceover industry, I didn't know I was in the voiceover industry. To be honest, I had this idea that I wanted to narrate pharmacy, continuing education journals into some sort of an audio format.

And in order to do that, I needed some training. According to the audio engineer that I met to get the training I had to. Go to different instructors. And early on, I met an instructor who told me that as long as you're in the business, I don't know if it was her that told me this to be honest, but. People in the business have told me, as long as you're in the business, you should plan on training once a month with somebody to improve your performance for as long as you're in the industry or until you die, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: keep improving.

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: Yes. Keep improving, sharpening your skills, learning how to do new things. It'll help you go places. And one of the types of training that I've had is improv training. Which I never saw myself doing. I'm a kind of straight-laced person, kind of a serious formal person, but improv has helped me play the villain instead of the nice stay at home.

Mom, it's been really eye opening. It helps me go places. I had 

Mike Koelzer, Host: a guest on for improv and I know what the yes. And, and it keeps the story going in that kind of stuff. How does that help? With your voiceover, because I'm imagining the voiceover is quite prepared. You're doing a script and you're doing it sometimes within 30 seconds.

Well, that's obviously prepared and this stuff that you're doing with the continuing education, that seems to be prepared at least at that to be prepared for me. Cause I know I couldn't talk about anything that's in continuing education without something in front of me, but, so how does the. Help you with this new career of 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: yours, I've only had level one training out of all the three levels.

I've had level one. What it's helped me with is going places that I need to, when I'm being directed, say, I've, I've been in a session before where. The director wants more smiles in my voice. And I think of all the things that I've ever said in improv class, which is usually hilarious and not exactly G-rated

to get me. Who's kind of a straight laced person to go outside my shell. It takes me a little effort. Let's just say 

Mike Koelzer, Host: you normally are not. F bombs and things like that. But improv improv has pulled, you know, I'm just kind of joking with that, but that's pulled you to do some of this stuff. That's not so G-rated 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: right.

Or to allow myself to smile and laugh and let my guard down and to end up having things come out of my mouth, that sound like I'm. It helps me go somewhere with my voice, my delivery. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: I always told my staff years ago, I'd smile when he answered the phone, because people can tell it's true. When did you get that idea that you wanted to use your voice?

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: I can probably tell you the exact moment, not the date on the calendar, but I was in, it was a bedtime routine. I was in my older son's bedroom reading to him, and I thought of the joy that it brought me to read to him. We got to the point where we were reading. Books like Percy Jackson, for example. And I have a 17 year old son with autism and about four years ago when he was 13, we're reading these books and I thought I enjoyed this so much.

And I've got the best audience ever. Right. My son's right here. He loves it. Right. And I thought that it could take me someplace. As a pharmacist where I could narrate something that maybe somebody who needed it narrated could enjoy it. I wanted to find out if there was a gap I could fill. Does anybody need me to read [00:05:00] this pharmacy continuing education stuff?

And as I went along years later, pitching companies. The world hasn't been ready for that. There's been so many nos, you know, I've actually interviewed with a company recently who seems like they want to say, yeah, I'm ready for that. Let's do it. And that's when I really realized that I wanted to do this narration business.

I was laying in bed reading with my son and thinking, just dreaming, like, how can I get paid for this? Because I love it so much. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: You thought about that. And then you started before you probably had everything set up. Are you saying that you started putting the bug in people's ears right away? Pretty much.

And nobody really seemed interested. And what year was 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: that? I started putting the bug in people's ears. Oh boy. I would say 2017. How long 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Was that after you were lying with your son and you thought of this? 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: I would say less than 12 months. Okay. I thought about it, you know, I thought, how can I do this? One day, I just got up the nerve to call a local studio and meet with an engineer and just ask him questions.

You record people everyday. I've seen your website, they produce commercials and whatnot. How do I do that? But with this idea that I want to move forward. And that's when he told me you need training. And then there wasn't even the moment I found out about the voiceover industry, he just basically said you need training and to be able to deliver that and to be able to record, edit and produce audio, he clued me in on a lot of the stuff I didn't know.

And that's really, when I got started 

Mike Koelzer, Host: 2017, 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: yes. I would say October, 2017. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: So exactly three years ago. 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: Pretty much. Yes. I could probably show you the notes. I keep detailed notebooks of my day-to-day to-do lists, but I knew before that I had actually formed my LLC right around that time. But I was in talks with an attorney that summer.

I told myself as soon as the kids go back to school in August, I'm going to meet with an attorney. I'm going to form my LLC. Between the time where I was reading in bed with my son and the time I talked to an attorney, I had the company name. This was before I went into the voiceover industry at all. I knew I wanted to do something with my identity as a pharmacist.

And I knew I wanted to do something with my voice either literally or figuratively, you know, like in writing 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Kim, I ain't no genius, but, but it seems to me that going on. To even the attorney and setting something up, you either had a little proof of concept somehow that this was needed or did you sort of build it and it will come kind of where you said, if I get this going.

I know I'm hearing people on the radio and on the internet. And if I get this background and this infrastructure going, something's going to happen, was that kinda how it went? 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: It was definitely the ladder, the faith part. I build it on faith for sure. Yep. I saw what I thought was a gap that needed to be filled.

There was no proof of concept. I didn't even, I didn't even know there was a PA. I didn't even know there were podcasts out. At that point. I found that I, as a consumer, as a pharmacist who has to complete pharmacy, continuing education, Personally would like to have it in audio format because I'm a busy mom.

You know, I've got things to do at the time. I think I had two dogs. You have to walk the dogs, you have to do the beds, the dishes, the laundry, the dinner prep. You gotta cook, serve and clean up so much stuff. And I want it as a consumer. I want to. Content in audio format. And that is what I thought the gap was.

There was written content. There was no audio content, hence a gap. There was 

Mike Koelzer, Host: live CE where you were getting this kind of crappy audio sounded like it was in an echo chamber for the CE. And that probably had to be. Well, parts of that had to be live, right? It had to have at least the live question answer and so on at the end.

But the gap that you could not find was CE that properly counted as not live CE, but it was 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: audible. Let's use an example. There was one company in particular that had short, conversational CE, and I wanted to turn that into audio format because I thought that. The very best candidate to get this ball rolling.

Yeah. You mean 

Mike Koelzer, Host: short, conversational. It was written as short, conversational. 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: I'm going to drop a name here. The pharmacist's letter, [00:10:00] 

Mike Koelzer, Host: their information was short and to the point and that kind of stuff, you're talking about their letter itself, it was short conversation on that back and forth, conversational, but conversational pros, I guess they call it.

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: Written in a conversational way, short and 

Mike Koelzer, Host: punchy. You want her to see that in or hear that audio and nobody was doing that? 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: Not that I could find my research could never have been exhaustive. I could never have looked at every piece of CE and I didn't even really get into the live webinar thing at the time.

I mean, I still don't get into the live webinar 

Mike Koelzer, Host: thing. Yeah. The whole webinar thing. I mean, that's come a long way. COVID, but that's still a little bit, uh, because it's, it's live and a lot of times it's free and it's live, but then if you don't catch the live part, then after a few days, they charge you, you have to sign up for something like that.

So it's not terribly clean. I think it encompasses a lot of different formats and stuff. That's just my guess. And you think there was some of that. Going on for 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: CS. I didn't think there was anything going on where it was professionally recorded, edited and produced where somebody was behind a mic and there was no distracting audio.

It doesn't sound like somebody is in a bathtub because they've got their laptop open and they're speaking directly into it. That sort of thing, but 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Do you think some of the webinars were doing that or you never checked into that? 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: I didn't check into the live webinars. People told me all the time they would turn on a webinar and just drive their commute and listen to it and consume it like a podcast or like audio CE.

And I thought, well, yeah, that's what I want to do. But I want to work with companies to produce some sort of audio where it's short and punchy and lists, lists inable, you know? Cause if you read a text. How is that mic? Yeah. If you read a journal article, how listable is it? Right? I, one of the mistakes I made when I first started looking into converting CE into audio format was I realized that it was not meant for the ear.

It was meant for the eye. And in fact, I think it was podcast number four for the pharmacist's voice podcast. I mentioned mistakes I've made, and that was one of them. I assumed that you could just read. You can't, they're not written for the year. They're written for the eye. And that's a huge point because they 

Mike Koelzer, Host: talk about like figures and 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: stuff or what there's that.

But my biggest point is they're really long, complicated sentences. Something that needs to be broken up into four shorter ones. I can't 

Mike Koelzer, Host: even read those. They can pick something. And you might be able to read it cause you can kind of keep your place and things like that. But in a spoken language, those should be like four different 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: sentences, either that, or change the sentence so that you get directly to the 

Mike Koelzer, Host: point, they would fluff it up a little bit with those longer sentences or why would they be longer?

Do you think if they could have gotten to the point 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: because it wasn't written by a copywriter. Oh yeah. Right. Gotcha. Uh, the intended audience is someone who's sitting down reading it with their eyes. Somebody who wants to read all the parents' medical references? You know, this was published in a journal of the American pharmaceutical association this year, this issue, and so on, you know, it's, it's meant to be published in some sort of a journal.

It wasn't meant for. Uh, spoken audio, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: especially with the goal of short and punchy. I think 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: there was a Harry Potter book once, and it was different from all the rest. And I can't remember which one. It was all the Harry Potter books that were meant to be read with the eye, but they turned them into audio books.

Of course. But then there was one that was meant to be read as a play. That's kind of 

Mike Koelzer, Host: like that movie on golden pond. We're seeing that one with Jane Fonda and. It's old, you had to be an old fart to watch it and hear it. Never seen it, but you could tell it was a play. You could tell it came from a play because all of the conversation was short, back and forth kind of stuff like that.

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: It's just different, you know, and I'm not condemning the way that journals are written at all. I would love to work with companies to turn content into audio. But if it's not written for the ear, it's just plain old, not written for the 

Mike Koelzer, Host: ear. That's really interesting that damn Harry Potter, have you read that?

I've 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: read the Harry Potter series multiple times. Yes. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: I've read the first page of the first Harry Potter. Probably about eight times something about a black cat in a driveway or something like that. And I've never got, is that, does that ring the bell? I've never gotten past that first page. Oh my 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: gosh.

Yeah. I I've read that first page a couple of times too, but I did make it a little further than you 

Mike Koelzer, Host: never made it further 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: than that. Some people just are not Harry Potter 

Mike Koelzer, Host: people. I would like to be, but my, you know, my kids and my wife and everybody has read it, but I can never get [00:15:00] past the black cat thing.

So you're thinking someone's got to have something a little bit more exciting than this and the stuff you're coming across is. Well, first of all, it's probably not great technology. Yeah. As a rule, it's probably not great technology. It's probably read by someone who's not used to reading. And it's probably rather dry because it's visual instead of being meant to be verbal from the start.

So you're looking around for this stuff. You call some companies. You don't have much luck, you know, you have a lot to learn. Where does it go from there? Then there's a step 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: that you may not know about where I make a demo, I take their content and I narrate two minutes of it and I send it to them. So they know what it's going to sound like.

And what I do is I'll, I'll take something of theirs and I'll take it directly from the website and I'll read it. Maybe that's why I don't hear back from them. I don't know. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: I think that's fantastic. 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: If I took it and I copied it, you know, I, if I wrote it the way that it needs to sound, if it's. In some sort of a e-learning course, they might say, oh my gosh, this is what we've been missing out on.

I don't know 

Mike Koelzer, Host: you're reading what they have put out there, but your skill is also in making it pithy 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: is really what it's all about. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Listening bubbles better than even short something that's listening. 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: It has to be something that the intended user is going to enjoy listening to. It's really all about the list.

And I'm not saying that people are putting out content that is bad. I'm not saying that at all. I'm just saying that what I'm looking at, I would change. And I would like to work with companies to help them change it. I don't really want to do the writing part, but I do want to connect them with the idea that there's a different way to do it.

And there's people out there that are instructional designers that do this for a living, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: You know, To say that this could be a little bit more exciting to read, but you would even reach out for that. Help yourself to get that done. 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: I just want to be behind the mic because my time is limited. If you know what I mean?

I would love to, you know, work with people. If I wish I had the time to work with people to write content. And there's, there's part of me. That's a little self-conscious about bringing it to the attention of others. That what they've got is not listening well because I'm telling somebody essentially that what you've got is a great, a great product.

Great to read. But if you're going to change it into audio, it may not be as listable, it's a hard conversation to have without, I guess maybe I'm just sensitive. I don't want to accuse somebody of what they've written, this beautiful thing written by a PhD is not good enough. You know, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: They probably get off the phone and they say, boy, that Kim was long-winded.

Why didn't you just say it was boring? That's what she meant. 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: It's not even a boring thing. I don't know how to 

Mike Koelzer, Host: describe it. I understand. I'm just teasing it. It's just different. I'm 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: sensitive mics. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: You know what author? I read a little bit of. I don't read very much, but, um, I don't mean very much fiction, but it kind of reminds me of like James Patterson, you know who I'm talking 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: about?

Yes. I've read many of his, the Alex Cross novels, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: James Patterson for, for the listeners that don't know. Is, uh, very popular, what would you call it? Suspense, not mystery so much, but suspense author. And he started as an advertising executive. And one of his clients who I guess is not even in business anymore.

So maybe I shouldn't be saying he did a good job, but it was a toy R us. And so he invented things like where a kid should be a kid or something, or wait, maybe that's that, that might be. Chuck E cheese. I don't know, but the toys R us thing, but he came from an advertising world. So he basically did similar things that you're talking about.

Not all the way to voice, but he doesn't have any chapters that are really more than two pages, you know, to speak of. And so he wanted a page Turner, so he basically took all of them. Fluff out and he just really moves the story along, but that came from his copywriting over the years. Just really every sentence, you know, means something.

Now it's not good for the person that likes to sit there and maybe read M T S Eliot. Was he the one with the [00:20:00] Lord of the rings and all that stuff. I think that's, I think that is 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: JRR Tolkien, right. Or something. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: You put two initials in the front name and it messes me up. I have no idea what the hell I'm doing.

I'm not messing that up. Token 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: The token was Lord of the rings, I believe. Yeah. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: That's a different story. I mean that you read those because you like to read you, you like those words go on through your eyes and you like the feeling of that, because I heard those are kind of like. You know, long books like that?

Well, 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: it takes all kinds. Here's the thing. I just went through this really long non-fiction audio book, narration course with, uh, instructor, Sean Pratt. He did a fantastic job teaching me and he said, no matter what, you're reading, it's your job as the narrator to make it sound interesting and to be excited about it.

And. If somebody wanted me to read journal articles, I would, and I would try to do my very best to make it sound exciting and engaging and interesting, but I'm in pursuit of something a little bit. I like e-learning at this point, medical narration tends to be a little shorter, but e-learning, I like the idea that I get to connect somebody with the material and I get to pretend that I'm a teacher at a school, you know, in the classroom, teaching people who are really interested in this and I need to make it sound like I'm geeking out about it, no matter how it's written and whatever it is.

I trust that I trust in my performance training, which I'm continuing to improve all the time to bring out the best performance possible because making a connection with the listener with the audience is important. It's everything. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Now you said e-learning, is that, are you saying there that it's okay for this stuff to be a little bit Hetty right now, because that interests you rather than just reading, advertising copy or.

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: I'm not really in this for advertising. It's 

Mike Koelzer, Host: okay for it to be a little bit, a little bit thick, right? 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: Yes. I kind of expect thick. I think people come to me thick because they know that I'm able to handle thick, right? 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Yes. What quickly comes to mind for me is your ability to pronunciate the drugs and make it sound natural.

What are other skills that you've learned? Of reading thick. You know what else is in there? Let's say you have a great advertising reader. Who's never done medical before or never done pharmacy before. Where are they going to stumble? Do you think that some of your skills you've worked in. 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: This is a really interesting question and I want to break it down into two parts and I'll admit, okay.

Somebody who hasn't done medical narration, not only do they need to learn how to pronounce the words, they also need to learn how to deliver them. When I first started. I had a huge chip on my shoulder and I told everybody this, I thought, oh, I'm a pharmacist. Give me whatever I can pronounce, whatever I can do better than anybody starting out.

And I'm not really one of those proud people like that. But I really thought that I had this. When I went into my first group medical narration class, I realized that my pronunciations were fine. My delivery side. Bad. It was kind of like a boring read. Like it sounded like I was reading. And then you wanted to know how, where would somebody start?

Well, they have to figure out how to pronounce the words. I don't care if they get out a medical dictionary and challenge themselves to learn all the words in a piece of copy that has been given to them. Or if there are the top 200 drugs on so many different websites, you want to start there, learn how to pronounce.

That's on them, but to deliver it, one of the skills that I've learned in medical narration training and nonfiction audio books training is to do what's called suck the juice out of the fruit. There'll be a word we already talked about sounding like you smile when you're saying something. I was talking the other day on my podcast about how much I love tickets to ride in Switzerland.

And you can just hear me smiling when I say Switzerland, because I love that map. You know, my mom's distant relatives are from Switzerland. There's some love of Switzerland. When you hear me say Switzerland, and when you're saying something and you're trying to communicate an idea and you want somebody to feel a certain way about it, your voice changes.

And maybe you slow down when you're getting to the end of something. And I'm not saying I deliver everything perfectly. I still have plenty to learn, but I've got some skills in my pocket because I've had training. [00:25:00] I am training with a new instructor. Uh, I just started with Debbie Irwin and she's fantastic.

And I love how hard the material she's been giving me is. She gave me yes. Yes. She'll give me scripts for trying to think if it was the important safety information ISI for a drug that I had actually never seen. And it was talking about all of the different microorganisms that this drug killed and I'm like, oh cool.

I've never heard of that. And there were different microorganisms I had never heard of, and I knew the second word, but not the first. And, you know, I did a little basic research and then I had it and she told me I nailed all of them. And I was like, yeah, that's right. But the delivery still needed just a little bit.

Of polishing, let's just say, but it's kind of awesome to start with that foundation where I can pronounce things that I had never heard of, but yet I can research it and quickly catch up. It really cuts the learning 

Mike Koelzer, Host: curve. I like to play piano. And I only do sight reading. So in other words, I won't play things that I've seen before.

And I'm on a website called scribed. I think it's called S C R I B D. And it's got books and things like that for nine bucks a month or something. But the main thing I have for me is piano music. So I can always read something that I've never read before. And I've been doing this for years and years and years, and it's fun as I keep getting better, because if there's like.

One low note that I don't know exactly where it is or one quarter or something, it sure is pleasurable to move right along. And then when you get there, you spend a little bit more thought or time hitting it, but it doesn't drain you. For the rest of the song, then you keep going. And I imagine that's close to what you're talking about, where you've got that base down so well that if you have to learn one word or something, that's fine.

Your head's not spinning because you've had to think through the whole thing. It's kind of getting to be more of a, more of a habit almost when you say yes, 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: It's almost like you've got more patients because so much of it is easy. You know, if you've got half of it in the bag, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: then you've sent out these recordings to these companies and the response.

Wasn't great. I 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: often don't get a response. And what I do is I'll send something out first. I'll make connections with people. You will first. Yes. Usually on LinkedIn, I don't usually cold call or email. There's usually some sort of engagement prior to that. And in fact, I'll try to mention a mutual acquaintance.

Prior to sending them something, I'll say, Hey, Hey, I'm a pharmacist, voice actor, and podcast host. And I would like to propose that we work together and I'm going to send you this. What I try to do is find somebody that I know a warm handoff, so to speak here between an organization and the person in charge of learning design, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: learning design.

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: You know what? There's all kinds of creative names for it. I could get out my marketing binder and tell you all the interesting titles these people have. There's a 

Mike Koelzer, Host: million different titles. I'm not sure why they do. 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: Instructional designer learning designer. They have some creative titles, let's just say, and it's kind of fun to see how they themselves identify themselves on LinkedIn.

And they do that. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Why did they change the designation so much? 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: I work with some really creative people and I think they're just expressing their creativity. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Oh, they're creative. And so they want to, they want to say. I can't really be creative in my name. It fits, you know, Joe Smith. I'm not going to change that.

I maybe could be like that token dude and just put a few initials in front of that. And they can't be creative about their company for which they work. The only thing where they can be creative is by putting it in. Job description. 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: Is that it? I think they're creative in their job 

Mike Koelzer, Host: too. Yeah. But nobody can see that offhand.

They want to put it right in their name. So it's clever. 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: Those are the people that I pitch though. I got their email and I sent him a 10 minute sample and I'll send them the piece of copy that I read so they can follow along and see how it matches up. And I often don't hear back. And I wonder sometimes if maybe I should take this to my accountability group or some of the other groups that.

And just ask if it were you, what would you do? Because that's what accountability groups are great for. You can ask and then they make you accountable for following up. You haven't had to come back and yes, [00:30:00] but often what you have to accept is silence. You have to accept that sometimes they just don't get back to you and you can keep trying, but in some of the performance training that I've taken on, The business of the business is included too.

And that is something that I've talked to instructors about and they say, oh, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: oh geez lady, my new lab, 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: Haiti. I love dogs. Sorry about that. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: That's fine. We thought we had our last dog. It was like a 10 year old little dog. We thought she'd lived till she was, you know, 15 or something, but she passed away. So we got this one.

So we're back in the dog business. Your teacher was telling you something. 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: My teacher was saying that it's going to come to the point where you have to just let go. Sometimes you can only follow up so much. I can probably revisit some of these things as my business progresses, and I learn more ways to work with people.

And maybe I'm not approaching them in the way that they need to be approached. Maybe they're not ready to hear what I have to say. I'm not sure. I will never know. It would be so helpful to me to understand why they decline or why they don't even get back to me. But I just don't have that information.

Mike Koelzer, Host: It's interesting though, because you look at advertising and now people are maybe a little spoiled more than they were years ago. When you had just broadcasting. Now you've got more zoomed in, you know, marketing, but. You'd have people, it would happen often where you'd say, you'd say to a customer and it's harder in a pharmacy because with hundreds and thousands of customers, you can't really sit down and give them an interview of where'd you hear about us from.

And so on. When you ask people, how did you hear about us? Why are you here? You know, I saw you at the health fair. I saw you on, you know, when I was watching the news, I saw you on this show and commercial and you haven't been. There People create the stories in their head. They don't know where they've seen you, but there was something that got, I suppose to the tipping point of them, then finally trusting you.

So a lot of times you just are not going to know, and you don't hear back from people either. 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: And I don't take it personally. It's time to move on to the next project then, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: like when I'm interviewing people for a job at the pharmacy, I don't even recognize them until I've heard from them three times. Because I want the employee, who's going to press a customer.

Who's going to say, you know, I never got ahold of Mrs. Jones, and I want to make sure that she understands that her medicine's not coming until two days from now. Send it tomorrow. So I'm going to call her now at two o'clock, I'm going to call her at five o'clock. And before I leave, I'm going to tell Sally the other technician to make sure, to try to call her in the morning, because I want to make sure.

Blah, blah blah. So now I don't know if the people that are hiring you need to see your tenacity, but I need to see the tenacity of a future employee. So let's say that I get X applications and from a job post I put on, let's say a college board or something like that. The application comes in. That's one.

They don't hear from me. An email comes in from. Well, depending on how hard I buy him, but an email comes in from them, you know, and I may not do anything. It's finally, when that third, that text comes in or they stopped by the store, they do a follow-up a week later and say, Hey, I wasn't sure if you were this or this or that.

If you've seen this. And so on now at that point, maybe I've missed a lot of other good people. If I had plenty of time, maybe I'd call them and do something more. More polite or something, but I know that third person that's coming that third time they're coming after me. They really want it. So I'm not saying you do things three times, because like I say, they may not care at all.

If you've got the sticktoitiveness and the tenacity when you're going to be their voice. But I always tell people, I say, don't stop at least until the third 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: time. At least three times. What I'm talking about is my direct marketing. That's not the only way I get. You know, I'm on rosters for things I am on, what's called pay-to-play sites.

It's online casting. I do not have an agent at this time, but I get word of mouth references. Uh, there, I mean, there's more than one way people hear my podcast and they, you know, that's another thing. I didn't realize how much my podcast would really get my name out there and give people samples of what my voice sounds like.

And they get to know like, and trust me, they're from the podcast that I wanted to be a business tool. Well, where I positioned myself in people's minds as a pharmacist who does voiceover work, that was, that was my end game. But the extent to which they. Getting to know each other, and trust me, has been really interesting.

I've had people from the other side of the [00:35:00] planet in Australia come to me by email and say, I want to work with you, but I don't know how this is going to work. And they kind of lay it. Just this one client laid it on me. You know, you come up with an idea and let's work together. I didn't have enough information.

I asked for more information, but we didn't end up working together. And I think they found somebody to do the thing that they needed to do. But I thought that was interesting. I had no idea work would come to me really that way. That was really 

Mike Koelzer, Host: cool. Now wait a minute. No lake and trust. I thought that people were supposed to just pick one of those.

Usually the more they know me through the podcasts, the less they like me. And trust me, come on now. It's all three of those. I didn't know. I think podcasting is a great way to go. I think it's great. I mean, especially because of, I mean, it's right down your alley. I mean, you know, you know, the voice and so on it's voice.

Yeah. There's a few great things I love about podcasting. One is the theory that more people have time to listen than they have time or the ability to read. Let's say that you're able to listen to it. 10 units a day, whatever the unit is reading, but maybe you can only do like three of those units.

You know what I'm saying? And there's a few places where you can read more than listen. You know, you could, you know, like if you're pretending you're paying attention in church or something like that, you could be reading something else, but not listening to something else. And you know, at work, you could maybe read something where you shouldn't have something on your head, but in general, people can listen more.

Secondly, as some people. Not maybe in our business so much, you know, there's people that are not going to read stuff. That's not in the format of what you're talking about or, you know, the pharmacist letter, things like that. It's just too much. But the third thing I like is that. It's the first time where people can go deeper and stuff.

I was just talking about podcasts that, you know, the news will come and do a story and I'll be at, there'll be there for 30 minutes and you're lucky to get 15 seconds on there. And typically it's going to be the 15 seconds that's in the direction that they want it to go where the podcasts, this long form, it's really the first time where you can take apart stuff and really, you know, really get into both sides of 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: it.

What do you like to listen to for news? 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Um, I just made up my own news in my head. 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: I'm a big fan of Up First by NPR. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Oh, I don't like that. Those NPR people put me to sleep. 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: Have you listened to Up First?

Mike Koelzer, Host: I don't know, but it's just, they're always so calm and they put me to sleep. Are they different?

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: I think they have some energy. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: I would need a show where they do a line of cocaine before they get on. If it's NPR 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: It's not your father's NPR. Not at all. A hundred percent. I love it. 

Tell you what, there are some things I can do with my tools. Let's just say I have a dog, a digital audio workstation. Sure. What do you use? I use studio one artist. What do you use? I just use 

Mike Koelzer, Host: audacity, which is a free program. I 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: started off with audacity. I'm totally with you on that. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Yeah. It's like Wikipedia.

Where, what do they call that group thing? Kind of a group, whatever it's built for free by hundreds of people that, well, what would be Firefox is like that Wikipedia would be an example, you know, it's written by the people, you know, so Udacity is the same way written, you know, made by the people. I have to be an IBM guy because.

Programs at work and so on, but I'll use like, I guess, logic X or something like that. So why'd you go to your other one versus 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: audacity? There's a number of programs out there. When I first started working with Sean Pratt for the non-fiction audio book, narration training, he had suggested that I get a program that allowed something called punch.

Do you know what that is? 

Mike Koelzer, Host: I know what punches typically that's punching in right away for one word that got 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: missed. I found out when audio book narrators narrate an entire book, they often make mistakes, which, you know, that's a given, how do they fix it? That's the question. So I learned a little bit about how you listen to the, you know, five or 10 seconds prior to that, maybe even speak along with it, to make sure that you're pacing is the same.

And, you know, if. Energy is a little different at that time of the day when you originally did it. Yeah. Cause this could be a month later when the proofer gets it back to you. I've had to become quite the audio engineer. Yeah. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Yeah. You really do. And I, I think the better that you get at that, the more relaxed you can be, not that you want.

Fix everything in the edit. I'm sure a lot of times it's better to do it live and so on, but the more confidence you have in it, like I know exactly what I can do on audacity. I know what I can fix and what I can't fix. I know going [00:40:00] into it that I can't fix someone. Who's got a bad echo, you know, but I know I can fix it if there's a.

Air conditioner in the background, things like that, but it's nice to know that going in. So you're not wasting time later on. A lot of people 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: ask me what I use and we talked about how I used to use audacity. And then I switched to the studio. One artist that's really important to know is that there's communities out there that can help.

And that is huge. When I first started using studio one artist, there was a huge community out there, and there were people who taught classes about it. Anybody that's listening to this and wants to start a podcast or go into voiceover, whatever door you pick, whether it's audacity studio one or whatever.

Make sure there's a community that can support you or courses you can take because that's huge knowing who and how to get help, how to get help, who to get help from. It's 

Mike Koelzer, Host: huge. Um, my theory with the podcasting I know has been. Just do it, you know, the old Nike slogan, and I can afford to do that because, well, number one in podcasting, a lot of people don't call back to your early stuff, you know, they're, they're going to your, your last half of your shows and so on.

And that's when the numbers start to drop off a little bit more. So I came out with my first podcast. Damn. If I don't just do this, I could overthink this thing forever. So, I mean, I just started with, uh, you know, talking into my phone, basically recording a phone call and, and putting it on. And, um, and then once you get a little traction, you'd say, well, okay, I did that part, you know, but I suppose yours would be a little bit trickier because you're not able to come out with, you know, you probably want your sound and your performance to hold water from the start.

Would that be fair or not? 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: Yes, and no I'm one of those one and done people. I really don't have time to keep doing it over and over what you hear. I usually just record it. And then if I listen to the playback and it sounds. Unlike what I want it to sound like I will do something or part of it again, but really a lot of times my husband will say, okay, I'll give you 20 minutes because you know, I, I have other responsibilities and I'll just go into the closet and I'll record it.

Sometimes they're three and a half minutes. Sometimes it's five minutes. Sometimes it's eight. Sometimes it's 17. I really literally do not have time to keep doing it over and over and over again. And when I tell people. They talk to me about building their own podcasts. I'll tell them to just start. And here's the thing.

You don't have to publish everything that you record. You can practice podcasts and just hide them from everybody. And maybe someday you'll look back at it and say, oh, I guess that wasn't that bad. Let's put it out as a bonus episode. You can do that. Um, but your question is, does everything have to be pristine and perfect and polished and super produced?

Nope, not for me. No. I mean, I make an outline. I often write my show notes first and then I, I wouldn't say I read them word for word, but it's pretty much what I was going to say anyway. So I've got some clues in case I forget what I was going to say. And then I just say it and then I'm done. And then I have to edit it and I take out any gasping breaths or, you know, uh, anybody slamming a door and it gets put out there.

Mike Koelzer, Host: I'd take out any time that I went down with myself, like a boring path, you know, and people don't realize that I record 10 hours of this and get it down just to one, because I take out so much on my stuff. 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: I'm just going to say, we're really scheduled for like an hour and a half. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: This is only going to be a minute show came when I, when I get down with it, to your point of that, when I first did my show, I realized quickly that I wanted it to be an interview podcast, but I had put out probably, I don't know, five or six, like three minute things, you know, and yeah, once I got a few episodes in, I said, I don't want those on there anymore.

I just took them off, you know, just took them off the feed. What difference would I make? From three years ago, if I had hired you to do something, I imagine a lot of your training is gaining confidence in yourself and. That's probably a big one right there, gaining confidence in yourself, knowing that you've done the work, but wouldn't differ.

I'm going to play devil's advocate. What difference would I really hear from three years ago? If I said Kim, I'm going to have you do this for me. 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: Audio engineering has come so far. I know how to do so much more 

Mike Koelzer, Host: And that's essential, right? Because as you're starting out, I mean, there's no way you're going to hire someone to do your audio.

You just have 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: to do it. I might disagree with that. I was recently interviewing April Jones. She's a pharmacist and also an author and she narrated her own audio book. She went right to a pro studio and she had the engineers record her. That was so smart [00:45:00] and I'm not trying to take business away, potential business away from myself, but if anybody wants to cut the learning curve completely and just have a pro studio with pro equipment and you don't have to buy any of that.

You can just rent it, but how long can you do that? I mean, that's expensive. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Your goal though, is to get into the heart and soul of this. And that I think includes the technical part. If you asked her what her skills are, it's going to be, you know, pharmacists, this and that and author and all that. Able to convey that maybe even being a speaker or something, but it's probably not a voice talent.

She probably would not describe herself 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: as that. Right, right, right. Between three years ago and now audio engineering has come a huge long way. I'm able to remove something called mouth noises, which I didn't even realize I had. And when I had audacity, I didn't know how to do that with my ears. Now hear better.

My ears are so much better trained and I just love to learn all this stuff. I continue to learn and the performance I continue to improve my performance with the goal being additional demos, I'm training with a new medical narration. I plan to train with her either every month or every other month.

And I'm going to, hopefully pretty soon here, we'll be starting with an e-learning instructor, just so I can get an e-learning demo just because I've used the work doesn't mean I can put it on my website. There are non-disclosure agreements and clients don't want their internal stuff put on my website as demos.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Right. Right. So I'm guessing that three years ago, the stuff I would have heard from you. Would've been good, but you would have noticed a difference. Would we all have noticed a difference? 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: You would totally have noticed a difference. I have come across stuff that I, yes, that I recorded almost three years ago.

I didn't even know how to use a USB mic. About three years ago, I had to pay somebody to teach me how to do that. You mean. No. I know how to plug it in. Like, here's the thing. Oh, I'll tell you. I've talked to many people who have a mic and they're using it. And then what ends up happening is I'll say, you know what?

Something's not quite right. Do you mind if we take a moment, I need you to go to the preferences for zoom, for example. And I want you to look at what your computer has selected as your microphone. And they'll say it says internal microphone and you know what I'm saying now, Mike, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: right? Yeah. Well, I did that by accident.

I had a great interview set up with Scott from the American pharmacist association. This is like six shows ago and we were having problems. Connecting. And so I said, Scott, let's hang up on both sides. We'll both restart our computer and get back in. And it wasn't until I mixed this thing down that I realized that when I came back into the show, I was on my internal, I was on my, whatever the hell.

You know, camera, I was on that mic. Thankfully sky had enough material that I just got to enjoy the show and, and put some comments in, but it wasn't a talk heavy show for me, but I even considered recording the whole damn thing over, just my own questions again, on my external mic then to what I had. 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: I'm assuming my ATR 2100 is great.

Said the girl who, you know, just said that people don't know how to check their preferences, but yes, that is something that I did not know how to do three years ago, that that was trouble. And then delivery. I didn't know about giving yourself a running start. You start talking before you use the recorded stuff.

So the first thing that's out of your mouth is not your lips parting. There's so many little things. Interesting. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Is your stuff taken out all the time? 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: Uh, sometimes on my podcast, if it is loud enough that I personally find it distracting, I will either reduce it by about 10 decibels or I will remove it completely.

Yeah. I'm a bit of a heavy breather. I have. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Yeah, my standards are lower. I at least take out any belches. One of my passions is like a lot of people have, like, they like to golf or go to movies and stuff. I can't concentrate through all of it. And I suck at golf and I can't concentrate through movies very well, but one thing I've always enjoyed is computer problems.

And I don't mean like coding problems. I don't know how to do that crap, but I mean like just problems, like getting a new microphone the same way. Uh, where do I plug? You know, I've always liked that stuff and it takes my, it takes my mind away. And I think the explanation for that is the reason I never give up on that stuff.

And I'll fight to the death to figure something out because I've been trained that way in the pharmacy. 30 years. You know, if a computer goes down or something at the pharmacy, you don't have a choice. I mean, you don't go home until it's fixed. So in the morning you come back and you can continue business and that'd be the, you know, a printer or a modem or things like that, and not a microphone, but I've always [00:50:00] enjoyed those and I've never given up.

And I'm sure you, once you get money involved with all this, you don't have the choice just to say, I can't figure this out. You've got to figure it 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: out. Of course. Yes. There's so many online communities that I'm part of. And I ask for help. I'm trying to think of some things. Okay. When I first started podcasting, I used Skype and e-com Skype call recorder.

And because I have those things on a Mac, there was something that was not right with compatibility. And you may have heard of this. My guest would sound great. And I would say. Very quiet and comparison. And I, I don't want to say anything negative about Mac products because I use them. I love them, but for whatever reason, Skype and E cam didn't work so well, recording interviews.

And then I'd have to bring my guests volume down and mine way up so that we were the same. So you're not writing the volume knob, listening to one of my pockets. But then I just gave up after a while. I thought, oh boy, I only paid 40 bucks for this, it's time to let it go. I think it was right about the time that I interviewed Allie zoo.

She was in Australia. I was, of course, in Ohio, here in the U S and as I'm listening to this playback, I'm like, oh, this is the last time. Darn it. You know, I just hate having to do all this engineering stuff. I know how to do it, but then I switched to squad cast, and squad cast has. Fantastic. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: I was with the squad cast for my first probably.

Probably the first 60% of my shows. And I was having problems that when they switched over to doing the echo echo cancellation echo cancellation, I think mine was always stuck on because it was ducking all the time. So if you hear the guest talk, mine would duck out. And I wrote them numerous times. They were very helpful.

They tried to solve it, but I think there was something stuck. So I switched over to another one called uh, remotely.fm does the same. Same stuff basically, but that problem hasn't happened. One of my biggest errors in the podcast was thankfully it was my brother and he owes me for all the torture. He gave it to me when I was a kid, you know, somehow we cut it out after about 20 minutes and we came back on, we were talking for about 30 minutes and he said, " Hey, Mikey, is this?"

Is this thing supposed to be counting? And so when I came back in, I forgot to, I forgot to press record, but that was boring stuff he was talking about anyway, but your brother says what your brother said. So Kim, we had the option of doing this earlier. Tell me again why we were delaying this a 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: little bit.

I had a personal goal of finishing my audio book narration program prior to being on your podcast. That was a personal goal. And I achieved that in September. The second I worked one-on-one with an instructor. I improved my performance. I learned about the business of audio books. How to get on rosters, I'm on the roster for audible.

For example, I 

Mike Koelzer, Host: interviewed at least one person on this show and they said when their book hit audio or really took off, you were really surprised how well it did compared to print. Was that 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: Tony Garah by any chance? Yeah. Tony. Yeah. Yes. That was a really smart move. He broadened his audience by having an audiobook version.

That's the 

Mike Koelzer, Host: stuff we were talking about, about going from, you know, whatever 10 points, you know, you just get more points of contact with that. Yeah. Tony said he did really well once he got to audio. All right. So Kim, you finished up your class. I know that you've had different training sessions. Does each of these then open up a little bit, something more, or at least give you the confidence of 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: it?

Once I get trading in a certain genre, I feel like I'm more prepared to work in that genre, whether it's audiobooks or explainer videos, medical narration, e-learning, there's so much out there. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: That's great. Kim. I wish you all the best on this stuff. 

Kim Newlove, Pharmacist: Thank you very much. I appreciate you having me on your podcast.

Pleasure 

Mike Koelzer, Host: having you on. I'm going to be following you. It's going to be strange because all of a sudden, I'm going to be sitting there and I'm going to hear your voice come over. Like the pharmacy. Unless you have your Darth Vader, I'll teach you how to do that. So, all right, Kim pleasure meeting you. All right.

Bye Mike.