27. Meet the voice of your GPS

If you don't know her name, you certainly know her voice! The GPS Girl, Karen Jacobsen, shares why she became the voice in a billion phones, what she does to stay performance-ready at all times and how a crossword made her feel like she'd 'made it.'

Transcript

Sally: Hello. Hello. These are the final days to sign up for My Six Week Voice Makeover. So if you haven't joined, you might like to start recalculating and save your spot. Remember with your podcast code TVP you get $100 off. So once you've done that, make a legal U-turn when possible because in this episode, big coup for That Voice Podcast, I'm chatting to the voice behind a billion GPS devices around the world.

I'm Sally Prosser. You're listening to That Voice Podcast. No matter who you are or what you do, your voice matters. So unless you've sworn a lifetime vow of silence, this is the podcast for you.

At the roundabout take the second exit to continue straight. Okay. If there's one person you don't want to be hearing bad GPS impersonations, it's my next guest. Her name is Karen Jacobsen. And get this - she gives directions in over 400 million GPS and smartphones worldwide. Think Siri and Karen has also been voted the number one downloadable voice in the world. What a title and what a voice to feature on That Voice Podcast. Karen, welcome to the show.

Karen: G'day, how are you?

Sally: Fantastic. So Karen, could you do your job if you lost your voice?

Karen: Well, that's a big question. Oh goodness. Well, I would find it challenging. Yeah. I'm all about vocal health. I have to tell you.

Sally: Yeah, trying to keep my voice healthy is a big thing. So Karen, the burning question, tell us about how you became the voice of so many GPS devices.

Karen: Well, I am originally from Mackay in North Queensland, in Australia and in the year 2000 I moved to New York city. Two years after I arrived, I had someone contact me about an audition and they were looking for a native Australian female voiceover artist living in the Northeast of the United States. And I read that brief and I thought, well, that's a description of me. This job must be mine. I went to the audition and I got the job and ended up recording a voice system that has now ended up actually in over a billion devices worldwide.

Sally: Wow, that's so cool. And why do you think your voice was chosen? Like, unless you were the only person who fitted that brief?

Karen: Oh, I am a singer and songwriter and I have been singing and writing songs since I was tiny. And there is something about the way a singer has the ears quite attuned to modulating their voice. And I've done a lot of jingle work in recording studios, which led then to voiceover work. And I have to think it is being able to have, I don't think it's a sing-songy quality in the voice, but a more expressive perhaps and interesting voice. Way of using the voice to listen to is what I could point it to. And you know, they were very clear. They wanted me to sound calm and consistent. They wanted me to have a rounded accent, not to occa and not too proper and I fit the bill on all of those things on the checklist, I guess.

Sally: Yeah. Fantastic. So tell us a bit more, when you say the ability to modulate your voice, what do you mean by that?

Karen: What I mean by that? I can really best describe it by actually doing it. So I could talk in a very monotonous way where I'm really seeming almost like I'm on the one note and then I could talk in a way where it's like my voice comes up and then it climbs down and then it sticks in the middle.

Sally: Fantastic. Are all my clients listening to this? So, this is what I'm talking about when I talk about changing the pitch of your voice so you don't, so you can avoid the vocal flatline because if we always stay the same, then we'll put people to sleep.

Karen: Yeah. And I think if you haven't been introduced to that as an idea, it can not even cross our minds if we don't even know that that's a way of expanding the way we can communicate and connect with other people. But as you well know, the voice holds so much power for that, for the ability to connect in a much stronger and deeper way with somebody.

Sally: Yeah. And look, it probably goes without saying. But all your experience with being a singer songwriter, the understanding of the voice to be able to sing, how much has that helped you use your voice in speaking?

Karen: Huge way in a huge way. And I find it still fascinating that I am paid money to talk. Because it's really effortless. And I also doing a lot of voiceover work, I will be given a script, I will be asked to record that script and sound natural. And I find that very straightforward, very simple to do. But I didn't know for a long time that that is not that simple for everyone to do. So I have a set of skills that an experience that happens be ideal for doing that. And one of the things I think that has made doing voiceover work in particular, so natural for me as I was a voracious reader as a child and not just only to myself, you know, I read aloud when I was younger and then within my head. And when you are used to reading a lot and comprehending quickly and you're able to comprehend quickly. That's an amazing asset when it comes to voiceover work.

Sally: Yeah, it is definitely a skill set that comes easily to you but a lot of people don't have. So I'm not sure if I can ask but with your voice, so you do the recording and in one session but then because it's being used for so many occasions afterwards, how do they pay for voiceover work?

Karen: Well, the way it's structured varies job to job and now I'm in a situation or a position I suppose where I live in New York city, I have a great agent, a commercial agent and a lot of voiceover work comes under the Screen Actors Guild union contract. So that's very regulated and there are residuals and it's excellent. Additionally, there are a lot of jobs and jobs that I did before I was in the Screen Actors Guild, which are called buy outs and they are for a certain amount of money. You are paid to do a job and then that job is - you get one fee once and that's it. It's called a buy out. So it varies.

Sally: Yeah. Interesting. So what other voice work have you done?

Karen: Oh my goodness. I think I'm the voice on Centrelink in Australia, when you call up there. I'm in the goodness. I mean the elevators at Brisbane Airport. I pop up in the most fascinating places actually. And then I've done a lot of commercial voiceover work back in the 1990s I was the voice of Vodafone when mobile phones had really involved. But at the time, you know, it seemed very cutting edge, "if you would like to leave a message, press one if you would like me to call back" you know, all of those different things before we had full on vocal recognition and voice recognition. And just hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and thousands of commercials, television and radio commercials.

Sally: That's so cool. So do people recognize your voice? I'm guessing they wouldn't really recognize your face as you're walking along.

Karen: No. But yeah I have had my voice recognized a few times. It's pretty fun actually. And people get so excited when they know it's my voice that's been directing them around or answering their questions. And that's the best bit is having that initial, immediate, unexpected familiarity with somebody who has no - who I've never met before. But they have this familiarity with me as if we're very best friends. And there's just something really beautiful about that.

Sally: Well Karen. I can understand it. I'm very directionally challenged and my GPS - I couldn't go anywhere without it.

Karen: Right. People build an emotional connection with a device or at least with the voice, it's pretty interesting. Yeah.

Sally: Yeah. And I love how you've leveraged off your work as being the voice of GPS systems to now help people navigate change to get results and then recalculate if things aren't working. How did that idea come about?

Karen: Well, we were living in New York and ended up going back to Australia. We were in Brisbane actually for 12 months in 2009. And it was when I was back there that I had, it was really a set of circumstances. And then this vision really, I was like, Oh my goodness, I can make this connection between recalculating in the car and recalculating in life and business. And initially I thought I was going to create a travel brand and I love to travel and thought, well, GPS directions, travel. That was ideal. But what I really wanted to do was to create an empowerment brand. And I'm someone who had big dreams from a very young age. And you know, I had, there were a lot of negative voices around me in terms of what was possible and what I could do. And I guess I've just had this lifelong interest and certainly excitement about personal development and breaking through barriers and being able to feel good about where we're headed on a daily basis. And so the idea of sharing that and sharing an affirmative message to the world was really important to me.

Sally: I love that. This season of the podcast is focused on confidence because I find, and you'd see this as well. It's really difficult to have a confident free voice if you don't have that inner confidence in yourself. So do you have any hacks that you use that you'd like to share that you use to boost your confidence?

Karen: Well, that's interesting you mentioned the word confidence because when I was talking about modulating the voice earlier, that's what was coming to mind was if you don't even know that modulating your voice is going to make a difference. You don't even know that that's possible. And what is possible from it is sounding and being more confident. Different ideas on how to be more confident in general or vocally?

Sally: Oh, we'll start with vocally and then I'm happy for general life advice as well.

Karen: Well, I think that one of the most powerful tools,I've ever learned is something that I'm not sure a lot of people really learn and that is mirror work. Now we're talking about voice, but if you can stand in front of a mirror and say, even, hi, my name is Karen, you know, whatever your name is into the mirror and then explore doing it in a bigger voice, in a smaller voice, in a lower voice, in a higher voice, slower, faster - while looking at yourself in the mirror and feeling like a total idiot, but be able to do that and live through it. Live through the embarrassment of doing that with yourself and with no one else watching. There's something that we really break through and frees us up because we've already been about as ridiculous as we could think with ourselves in the mirror. And if we're able to do that, I find it makes it much easier for me to be more free and confident in real life because I've already seen what that looks like and after I get used to it, it doesn't seem as scary. I'm not wondering what it looks like. I know what it looks like.

Sally: Yeah. That's such fantastic advice.

Karen: Yeah, it's really powerful. So if you ever have to speak in front of a group, the best preparation you can do is to deliver your talk to yourself in the mirror.

Sally: And for all my clients. That's why when you come into my studio, you are looking at yourself in a full length mirror.

Karen: Yeah, exactly. Really powerful.

Sally: Fantastic. And what about before you go to speak on stage, is there any preparation that you do for both your voice and also to get your mind in the right set?

Karen: My life is one big preparation to be on stage. You know, the way I live my life daily is to be performance ready. Highly recommend being able to be performance ready. What that means is if somebody called me and said, we need you in 30 minutes to go and deliver your talk, I could finish this podcast, put some lipstick on and go and do that. And I could. So I live that way and so I'm going to list some of the things that have maybe able to be performance ready at all times and they are to consistently get seven to eight hours of sleep a night. To drink, I'm not sure what the- this is about hydration and drinking water and I'm not sure what the equation is in metric. But in Imperial it is you weigh yourself and in pounds, whatever your weight is in pounds, halve it and drink that many ounces of water per day.

And that's, it's actually a lot of water. But if you can stay hydrated, it just automatically, your vocal health just skyrockets. Hydration is huge. Don't ever yell. I carry a scarf with me 12 months, a year, just a light scarf that I can put around my neck if I'm in air conditioning or if it's outside and I might get a chill. So I'm constantly employing those tools and you know, staying well, if I'm about to go on stage again, I like to kind of clear the deck so that the night, the day before the night before is not a mad run around. If I'm traveling to speak or go on stage when I arrive, I like to be able to not again have back to back meet and greets. I like to be able to have some time to myself, some restful time.

And then excuse me, there's one thing you're going to have to edit it, so I'm sorry.

Sally: Maybe not.

Karen: And then before I go on stage, it's really having the outline of what I'm going to talk about, you know, just kind of refreshing my mind with that. If there's something bothering me to deal with it, there's a phone call that I need to make and you know, a bill I need to pay an apology I need to give, you know, I really find that clearing those things out of the space is very important in staying centered and to be at my best when I'm onstage. And then in terms of my grooming, you know, really making decisions about what I'm going to wear and how I'm going to prepare myself in my appearance so that I feel really just feel like 1 million bucks before I'm going on stage.

Sally: Karen, so much great advice in there. Thank you so much for sharing. Now to finish, and I apologize because I can imagine everybody asks you to do it, but I'm sure everybody listening needs to hear it. Are you able to give us a little bit of your GPS voice?

Karen: Oh, of course. Let me see. You have reached your destination.

Sally: So good and do you feel like, you know, starting from Mackay and now living in New York and everything you've done in between. Do you feel like you've reached your destination?

Karen: Oh, that's such an interesting question. Well, I'm in the process of writing a musical memoir, a one woman show, which I am previewing this year and it's called Mackay to Manhattan. And I'm really revisiting so many interesting experiences over the years that I'm including in the show. And I, people started to tell me that I had made it when I was a clue in the New York times crossword puzzle. So there are a lot of other things on my list of experiences I would like to have, but that was actually pretty interesting that other people were telling me I'd made it. So I've got a lot of creative projects on the boil. I'm making a new album, you know, the news show so many different things and I'm just having the creative time of my life and I feel like it's all part of the unfolding actually. I'm really enjoying it and yeah, let's see. Let's see what the future holds.

Sally: Yeah. So fantastic. And a lot of people look at the crossword - more than you would realize.

Karen: I love that.

Sally: Fantastic. Karen, thank you so much for chatting. Would you like to take us out by in another GPS voice saying thanks for listening to That Voice Podcast.

Karen: Oh, sure. I sure would. Oh, and I love chatting with people if they want to get in touch online @realkarenj.

Sally: Yes. I'm so distracted by asking you to do, asking you to do impersonations. I've forgotten to ask. What I always ask at the end is how can people get in touch with you and work with you?

Karen: No worries. So @realkarenj on social media and thegpsgirl.com is my website and would love to hear from people and, and to connect. And I'm back in Australia twice a year. So really love coming back and let me see. Oh my goodness. Well thank you for joining That Voice Podcast.

Sally: That's brilliant, thanks so much!

Karen: You got it. Bye!

Sally: Did you recognize Karen's voice? It's scarily familiar, isn't it? And what a fantastic woman. She was so easy to chat to.

Next week. I'd love to tell you all about TikTok. If you don't know what that is, tune in to find out. And if you do know that, I hope you're following me @sallyprosservoice. It's been a crazy time. I went from 45 followers to more than 14,000 in 10 days, and I'm excited to tell you all about it.

Thanks for listening to That Voice Podcast. Remember last chance to join My Six Week Voice Makeover would love to see you there.