One night, I told my wife it had always been a dream of mine — voice acting. Not in a "yeah someday" way. In a "I've thought about this since I was a kid and never said it out loud" way.

She didn't even blink. Just said, "So do it." No notes, no "but how would that work," just — go. So I did the only thing I knew how to do: I bothered every voice actor who would talk to me. I asked the same annoying question over and over — how do you actually get into this? I took classes. I figured out what happens in a booth by being in a booth. I learned what not to do one mistake at a time.

Eight years later, I've got 80+ credits across anime, games, and commercials — including One Piece and My Hero Academia on Crunchyroll. Past me would not believe it. Past me also thought he would never be "good enough".

That's the part that stuck with me. I took the long way around. I collected information one slow, scattered piece at a time, and a lot of it I only found by getting lucky enough to ask the right person at the right time.

Not everyone gets lucky. Not everyone has a partner who says "do it" at exactly the right moment, or stumbles into the right conversation with the right person. Most people just give up before they ever get a real shot to find out.

That's why I started teaching. Not because I have it all figured out, but because I know exactly what it feels like to sit on the outside, wondering if you're allowed in. I built Dare to VO so the next person doesn't have to wait eight years and a lot of luck to get the things I had to piece together myself.