Meet Steve Grebner | Voice Over Artist and Consultant

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

Hi Steve, how did you come up with the idea for your business?
It all started as kind of an offshoot of my original job. As part of both the Marketing/Product Development and IT leadership of a large insurance company, there were many occasions when a need for education and or training were required. To make a long story short, I was asked to assist in the development of the training guides and it evolved into narrating the video shorts. After our production department saw our “down and dirty” examples, they asked if I could do this for other things for them as well… I said sure I can give it a try. I invested in formal training and built my own certified studio in my home and as they say, the rest is history.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
Well, after a long career in the Financial Services area, the voice over and Emcee gigs I do now provide me an outlet for my creative and outgoing nature. I truly enjoy working with the public and volunteering my time, I feel, provides me the ability to give back to the community from which I have been so fortunate. While my voice over business does provide income and is a commercial venture, I truly enjoy “paying it forward” by providing to organizations and small businesses the benefit of my services at a reduced cost or even posted out as general PSAs for anyone to use. For example, during the COVID shutdown, many small businesses were struggling and thrust into unknown territory. I provided to those groups basic COVID training mp4s to be used by them to help educate their staffs as they tried to come back from devastating shutdowns. I am also involved with local law enforcement and Senior services, and provide to them educational movies about subjects important to them that they can download and use to reach out to their residents and customers. Some of the challenges I have found in this business is how to differentiate yourself from so many others and dealing with rejection. Often times you are one of a few artists selected for the last round of the hiring process. At that point they like your product, but it is really now just a personal preference. So you win a few and you lose a few, but what you can’t do it let that get to you. Keep a positive attitude and keep working to get better and improve you product. Don’t be satisfied – keep improving I guess is my message. What I would want people to know about my brand and my story, is I am passionate about what I do and will strive to provide to each and every customer the very best product every time.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I LOVE to cook!! from smoking brisket and ribs, to making home made pasta and sauce. So when we have company, at our home one of the meals is usually a home made one based upon their likes. As for things to do and hang out, I am participation junkie, I don’t usually watch, I jump in with both feet. So if the guests would come during the summer months, activities would be golfing either at our local club or one of the very nice ones in our general area. A little post round libations and quick bite and head home to recharge. Then we could sit out on the patio, enjoy a nice fire and a few more cocktails and catch up on all we have missed. The next day we could go to one of the many state parks and hike through the hills looking for eagles and other interesting items. Really as a good host, it would depend on what they wanted to do – I am really open to anything and it is my goal as host to make their trip as enjoyable as possible.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Well, that’s an interesting question. This is going to sound really weird and completely unrelated (like what is this and how in the world does this relate??) but here goes. I grew up on a farm very active in 4H an FFA (Future Farmers of America). Each of them had areas of study for both Livestock Judging and Public Speaking. I really enjoyed both of these and did fairly well in them. While those two things seem unrelated, as part of Livestock Judging you have to provide to a group of officials, your “reasons” for why you placed a class a certain way. Critical thinking and decision making skills are tremendously important to livestock judging, as you have to decide in a very short period of time why one animal is better than the other. Weighing strengths and benefits against faults and shortcomings forces you to be a critical thinker. You then place the class and you get a score for the class compared against the way the officials placed it. That is only half the process. For many of the classes you had to take your notes you took and then justify your placing to that same set of officials later in the day. You did NOT know if your placing was correct or not but you had to commit and convince those officials why you decided the way you did and do it from memory inside 2 minutes. Very intimidating. How did this influence my career and success you ask? It is because of these organizations (as well as the leaders and coaches) that made me realize that the power of words – words that you believe in can and do have an impact on others. While that seems like a pretty big leap, all of those skills – critical thinking, commitment and ability to speak persuasively helped shape my career.

Website: www.choice4avoice.com

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-grebner-58839a1

Facebook: Choice4AVoice