Joan Baker
(shown with husband, Rudy)
New York, USA
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Life Ain't What It Seems
When I chose to participate in the Self-Expression and Leadership Program, the
thing I was most interested in was the opportunity to “empower” my self
expression. The leadership aspect came as a great surprise - I had not focused
at all on that part of the program title. A second surprise was realizing that I
had not fully distinguished the concept of self expression - For me, self
expression had been about speaking up for myself. As an actress, it was about
improving my odds in the auditioning process. In the Self-Expression and
Leadership Program I became aware that self expression is not just about
expressing your feelings and emotions.
I always said I wanted to deal head-on with the issues that stop me in life and
the Self-Expression and Leadership Program was perfect in this regard. The
course had me powerfully examine my impact on the communities in my life and
create a project.
I'm a voice-over actor and I teach voice-over skills to novices and
professionals. Voice-over actors are the people you hear but don't see on radio
and TV commercials, cartoons, video games, and even phone answering systems.
I've been doing voice-over work for fourteen years; my clients include major
television networks, a presidential library, and many others. The project I took
on was writing and publishing a book about how one can break into and sustain a
career in the voice-over industry.
The project - Room with a Voice - was also inspired by the parallel between
voice-over work, where an actor is alone in a small room speaking into a
microphone (just the actor and their voice) and the impact of Alzheimer's
disease, which often leaves its victims seemingly alone in a room with no voice.
My father had recently passed away from complications of Alzheimer's. Although
he had lost the ability to speak or understand speech, it occurred to me that he
did indeed have a voice: it was the voice of his teachings and stand in life
that would forever be with me.
In honor of my father, I declared that the book project would aid the
Alzheimer's research for a cure. By the end of the program, I said I would have
a completed manuscript with an offer of contract from a literary agent and
publisher. I didn't know anything at the time about the inner workings of the
publishing world.
I asked 18 other nationally successful voice-over actors to write the stories of
their individual career journeys for the book. Each of us wrote our stories
based on specific questions I created so that readers could clearly pick up the
practical lessons necessary to create successful careers of their own. But this
wasn't going to be just a how-to book - critical to its success would be that
readers capture the emotional and psychological courage one must summon to
create a career. I wanted the book to call forth the unspoken intangible skills
no one ever teaches you - how to deal powerfully with the obstacles each of us
throws in our own way whenever we try to achieve anything in life.
Through the Self-Expression and Leadership Program, I learned that
“transforming” my self-expression was about generating my creativity from
nothing - manifesting my word and vision in the world by speaking it and being
in action to have it be so. And with the persuasive support of course leader
Carla Satoff, my coach Barbara Storey, and my loving husband, Rudy Gaskins, I
chose to get into action, calling and emailing literary agents and publishers,
reaching out to voice-over actors, agents, managers, celebrities, and
organizations. Rudy was instrumental in creating a compelling query letter to
literary agents, an influential letter of request to attract potential
celebrities for writing a foreword to the book and partnering with me in writing
a stand out book proposal to book publishers.
In this process, I was enlisting the leadership of various people, asking them
to take on different aspects of the project. I found that I didn't have to know
everything or even anything about publishing. All I had to know was that I had
the power to speak my vision into existence and make powerful requests of others
to fulfill the vision through having them see the opportunity that was present.
Now I am a published author! I have a publisher, a literary agent, and a major
financial institution as a sponsor, and a publicist for the book. Four-time Emmy
Award-winning actor David Hyde-Pearce (Alzheimer's spokesperson) wrote the
book's foreword, the president of the Alzheimer's Association wrote the
afterword, and the industry's top voice-over agent wrote the introduction.
The book is called Secrets of Voice-Over: Top Voice-over Actors Reveal How They
Did It. The publisher changed the book's title, and that was yet another lesson
of the program: you make plans and plans change. What there is to do is make
adjustments to continue forwarding the plan. Regardless of the change in title,
the book's essence and connection to Alzheimer's is that a community of
voice-over actors who depend on being self-expressed for their very livelihood
would in turn honor those who no longer can. I wouldn't want to forget that
aspect of the project.
All of the book's royalties are going to the Alzheimer's Association, earmarked
for supporting finding a cure. I also dedicated the book to my Dad and to those
that have suffered from and continue to live with Alzheimer's.
This is an enormous accomplishment for me personally, and for several larger
communities as well. I wouldn't have done it, couldn't have done it, without
many very special people, but most certainly not without the extraordinary
experience I had in the Landmark Education and the Self Expression and
Leadership Program.
For me, the Self-Expression and Leadership Program was an elaborately crafted
social masterpiece calling me into the realm of my greatest dreams and desires
and greatest fears. Like all of Landmark's extraordinary classes, it offers an
opportunity for you to remove the barriers that normally stop you in life.
See more articles about
Grads Breakthrough Stories.