Meet Dillon Ford | Writer, Accent Reduction Coach & Actor

We had the good fortune of connecting with Dillon Ford and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Dillon, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
The pandemic had just shut everything down and I was laid off from my “actor survival day job” in telemarketing. Personally, I absolutely dread getting phone calls from salespeople so I always felt really bad about calling people in that job, even though we were selling a legitimate product. Either way, I was out of a job and nothing was open. My wife who runs her own business had been encouraging me to start my own business for a long time at that point and I figured this was the best time to do it. I learned my craft in acting school, having had to take classes for accent reduction and Voice & Speech for two years. As I was mastering those skills, I developed a real passion for accents and dialects in general which led me to broaden my arsenal of accents. As a result of that I’m comfortable switching into all kinds of accents of English such as Standard British, Cockney, General Southern, German, French, Russian, etc. The difference between when somebody just picks up those accents willy nilly to when I did it was that I had a systematic approach based on phonetics. Sure, my instinct took me a long way as well but if I didn’t have the critical foundation from accent reduction itself, it wouldn’t have been as easy. Long story short, this meant that I had a very systematic approach to any accent, including a “neutral” or “general” American one in my pocket AND it was a topic I was really passionate about. It made perfect sense to help other people with the same thing I had struggled with when I first moved to the United States. I started with a pretty low hourly rate since I had no reviews to back me up. I slowly built up my profiles on freelancing websites like Fiverr and Superprof and eventually made my own website. In a way, the pandemic was a blessing in disguise for me because it forced me to take matters into my own hands! Since then, I haven’t looked back. It’s really difficult to imagine going back to working under somebody else, now that I know what it feels like to really be in charge of your own work life. To anybody thinking about starting their own thing, do it!

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
I’m really proud of how my students feel about working with me. I work very hard to create a very supportive and easy-going learning environment. I’m not a big believer in learning while stressed out. I’ve had plenty of teachers in the past who made the class experience pretty miserable and I know for a fact that I would’ve learned much more effectively if we’d approached the process with a sense of play. I always encourage my students to experiment and to “fail forward”. Making mistakes is a crucial part of the process. Sure, I’ll probably correct you many, many, many times and you may even repeat the same mistakes multiple times but that happens to everybody when they reduce their accent.

Additionally, The people I work with are all adults. They have a whole life outside of accent reduction, involving jobs, family, partners, social lives, etc. I don’t get mad at all when my students tell me they haven’t had time to practice that week. Would it better if they had allocated a bit of time? Yes. No doubt about it. You’re always going to progress way faster if you make time to practice what we learn in class by doing the drills I describe, ideally every day. BUT this doesn’t mean that if life gets in the way, that you should beat yourself up like crazy. If you’re unable to practice outside of class, then we’ll try to get as much of that in inside of the class. Now, I do want to mention though that for mastering an American accent, it’s going to be pretty hard to do so efficiently without consistent daily practice. Immersion in the language, watching a lot of American TV/movies, listening to podcasts, etc. is really good as well but those things are going to contribute to your practice. Remember that! So if you can choose between scrolling and doing some vocal drills for five to ten minutes, definitely prioritize drilling if possible. I just wanted to make sure to mention that. If you only get to practice in class and you only do one session per week, you are definitely going to progress but not nearly as fast as if you had two or three sessions per week and you practice every day. I did the latter when I was in acting school and it really paid off (but keep in mind that I had a lot more free time on my hands).

One more thing. You can make this process, even if you feel like you’re short for time, much more productive by approaching it with a sense of play like I mentioned earlier. You want to approach it like you’re solving a fun puzzle, not like you’re forced to do a chore. You’ll find that this way, a lot of the “rules” and “patterns” of the language, may just slowly reveal themselves to you.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
First of all, I’d really recommend leasing a car. When I first moved to LA I was carless which was a pretty humbling experience. That’ll give you a much better ability to cover a lot of ground as well. Additionally, friends often run into problems with the rideshare apps because drivers will cancel rides or pick up and drop off a couple more people before they arrive. Once you’re set up with the car, I’d recommend checking out the Americana at Brand in Glendale. People always rave about the Grove but it’s always so full of people that I’d rather drive a bit further and have an easier time finding parking inside. I will say though that the one thing that could be really worth checking out at the Grove is World Market but they do have multiple locations so you don’t have to go to that one specifically. It’s also fun driving up to Malibu and enjoying the beach there. If you drive North and then snake your way through the hills, you get to enjoy a pretty scenic drive as well (apart from just driving up the coast line). Apart from that, I’d recommend eating a lot of good food! One of my favorite spots to hang out with friends is The Sisters Cafe on 5910 Sunset Blvd because they have great food and it’s really close to my Jiu Jitsu gym. Pho just hits the spot after a hard training session! One more thing I can recommend are the botanical gardens in Pasadena at the Huntington Library. I went there with my wife and it was really beautiful. (Though, I’d recommend NOT going in the height of summer because we were sweating bullets the whole time).

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I’d like to dedicate my shoutout to my wife, Novalee Wilder. Without her, it would’ve taken me significantly longer to build up the courage to start my own business. Working for yourself is not always what it looks like on social media so it’s really helpful to have somebody by my side who’s going or has gone through the same struggles. She’s always in my corner so I always have somebody to ask for help if I’m feeling stuck and I’m not sure how to mix things up.

Website: dialectwork.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialect_work/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dillontheford

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialectwork

Other: https://goo.gl/maps/Jqkzo45WxwZwAfR89