William "Chip" Beaman - CEO of The Halp Network | AW20

Did you ever dream of growing up and playing video games as a career? Well, our guest this week might have just lived your dream life. William “Chip” Beaman is the co-founder and CEO of the Halp Network, a business that works with various clients by supplying them with their needed professionals or services. They specialize in post-production services for animation and video games. 

Before becoming the hot-shot CEO, he was living every kid’s fantasy. Yup, he was a game tester. Chip has traversed the multiverse of the entertainment industry, going from one production company to the other. He has gathered so much experience and has worked with some of the biggest names in video games, like Disney, Activision, THQ, and Riot Games. If you dream of working in the video game industry, you need to hear his story.

Show Notes:

[4:24] Chip’s humble beginnings and his big break into the video game industry.

[12:17] Everything about the Halp Network.

[22:07] The Halp Network’s Entertainment Academy.

[36:04] Halp Network’s partnership with Skills Hub.

[38:34] Chip talk about his favorite hobby.

[41:49] Q&A with Chip during the IgTV live.

Instagram: @Alicyn
TikTok: @alicynpackard
YouTube: Alicyn Packard
Twitter: @Alicyn 

Transcript

Alicyn Welcome to Alicyn's Wonderland. I'm your host, Alicyn Packard. Join us as we journey through the looking glass and down the rabbit hole into the wild and wonderful world of animation and video games. Alicyn Hey, do a girl a favor, and please subscribe to this podcast and go on iTunes and leave us a good review. If you like the show, please help spread the word. It really helps us to get heard by more people. Thanks so much. Alicyn Hey guys, welcome to Alicyn's Wonderland, the show that takes you down the rabbit hole into the wild and wonderful world of animation and video games. I'm your host, Alicyn Packard, and tonight's guest is William "Chip" Beaman. I'm really excited. I met Chip, that's what he goes by, his full name is William "Chip" Beaman, but I first met Chip during the pandemic, we had a zoom meeting, and oh my gosh, she's just one of the most warmest, kindest, most open-hearted people I'd met. And Chip and the Halp Network, which he is the co-founder and CEO of, have such a unique business that offers a really interesting service. They help freelancers get work in video games. They also have a subset called the Halp Academy which does workshops in everything from voice acting to motion capture, and it's really awesome. So I'm so excited to bring this to you guys. So excited to see some great faces on here. SwirlyImaginationStudios, AlicynPackardFan, JaVinciCode, Sebastian, you just came over from Tik Tok. Hey, Emmy. Good to see you. Chatterbrah, Chris, always a pleasure. Darren. Hey guys. Cnet. Nika. Good to see you, Josh. And of course the one and only Chip Beaman. So ladies and gentlemen, and people of the world, please warmly welcome the one and only Chip Beaman. Ladies and gentlemen. Thanks to everybody that's jumping on and joining live. It is so great to see your faces. Hey, it's good to see you. Chip It's good to see you too. How are you? Alicyn I'm so good. You know, I wasn't kidding about how it's like extreme close up, right? Chip Can you hear? Hello. Alicyn Yes, it's good to see you. Yes, I can. Seems like our connection is good. So let's hope it can stay like that. How was your day so far? Chip A lot of, a lot of doctor's appointments and kind of like took the day away from work and kind of did my own self care for today. So I went to a therapy appointment, massage therapy appointment, a chiropractic appointment, a dentist appointment. Just took care of myself today. Alicyn Nice. Chip Time to spend some time with you. Alicyn Wisdom Wednesday. I love that. Yeah, I have a really nice day today too. I just woke up early, which was great. Got my workout in and had a breakfast, which, you know, I leave the house these days. It was really a treat. Chip What'd you have for breakfast? Alicyn A big ol' egg sandwich. That was like bigger than my head. Chip Where did you grow up? Alicyn I grew up in Massachusetts. You're a New Yorker, right? Chip I am. I am. So when I think of egg sandwich, I think of like a BECSPK you know, that is? Alicyn No. What is that? Chip BECSPK. It's bacon, egg, and cheese with salt, pepper, ketchup. Alicyn Okay, so this was a bacon, egg, and cheese, gruyère cheese. And then it had like arugula, lemon, arugula, but the bread was, the bread was fine, you know? Chip What was the bread? Alicyn No, it was like, like I want to say it was supposed to be on ciabatta but it was more just like white bread. I mean, sourdough, sourdough. Chip Okay. All right. But you had breakfast, which is good, most important meal of the day. Alicyn Yeah, yeah, you know, usually have a shake for breakfast. But today was all about that egg sandwich. And it brought me a lot of joy. Chip When I was living in New York, that's what, I mean, I would, when I would go down to the city, I wasn't living in New York City proper. But when I was, when I would spend time in the city, that was my thing. I would go to the bodega and make sure I got a bacon egg and cheese sandwich. And I was like, wait, I'm like, you know, my little sandwich. I was like, oh my god, I'm so happy. That was like the way to start my day. And I would get a hot chocolate, most people got coffee. Alicyn Amazing. Yeah, I remember just like Dunkin Donuts, bagel and like my iced coffee with just a ton of sugar in it. A lot of people chiming in that they're from New York or Massachusetts and totally feeling that vibe. Hey, Phil. Hey, Jeff. Now I know that you know Jeff as well, right? Everybody comes through. Awesome. So I kind of wanted to start at the beginning for you. You obviously you grew up in New York. But what made you make the transition to LA and get started working in the entertainment industry? Chip I moved out to LA in '95 and the main reason was because I was missing my family. My two sisters, who were both older than I am, had moved out here and we're kind of settled into California lifestyle and were out here for a while. And I was kind of growing up without them. So, I'm, you know, really a homebody. I really kind of like, being with family. And, you know, they had lives out here. I had a nephew, Daniel. Hopefully he's watching, he, right now, he's, I think he's 26. Yeah, he's, yeah, he just graduated. He's about to get married. I love this kid. So anyway, I really moved out here just to be closer with my family. And I was living with my mom at the time. And I basically told her, Hey, look, I'm gonna go out to California. I'm going to spend a year in California. And if I like it, I'd like you to come out to California with us. If I don't like it, I'll just come back and I won't live with you anymore. But I'll just come back because I didn't want my mom living in New York by herself. You know, I have cousins and everything. But so I made the move. And I, my sister knew Jeff Blattner, who was the manager of the test department for Disney Interactive. And my other sister knew, I believe someone at Sony A&R and I had the opportunity to interview for both jobs, one for being a tester, and the other one being entry level at a record company. And I just decided that I'm moving out to California, right now I'm living in, right then I was living in Inglewood, but I was going to be moving into to Moss Beach. I'm going to, like I'm going to go work for a game company. You know, so I, my interview was with Jeff and I remember vividly, we, we talked for probably 15 minutes, he asked me what games do I play? I told him I play, I want to say it was Wolfenstein and some Disney game, one Disney game. I just told him two games. And he was like, Okay, that's it? I'm like, Yeah, I really wasn't expecting like, I didn't know what to expect from the interview. And then I stupidly said to him, so Game Tester, is that like, a real job? And he went, yeah, okay. And we hung up the phone. And he called, that was a Thursday, and he called me on Monday. And he said, you start, you start Wednesday. I got lucky. And that's how I got into the game industry. Alicyn So it was literally a, Chip It was a coin toss between two jobs. And a really, really crappy interview, I got very, very lucky and started working with some of the most incredibly talented people I had, I've had the opportunity to work with and you know, these past 30 years or 20-something years. Alicyn And what an amazing job. So a tester basically plays, can you tell us what a tester does? Chip My job was to play a portion of a game over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over again just to see if I could break it. And if I did, we test it again, that was my job. It was, no, it was a great job. I mean, I worked with some fantastic people. And I played, I played some great games. I mean, I remember playing Maui Mallard and I played I was the lead tester on the very first Toy Story for Super NAS and Play Station. I was having fun with Gargoyles, it was a game for you know another game for Disney on Super NAS. I mean, I really enjoyed the games and the experience. And it got me, actually, as I talk to the producers and the assistant producers and associate producers, that's when I started to learn about the business. And that's how I moved up over the course of the next. Alicyn And so what did that, the next several years look like? Chip I spent seven, I want to say seven years at Disney Interactive going from a tester to a lead tester to an assistant-associate then assistant and then associate then producer then project manager then I got laid off. That was fun. Then I spent three years at THQ, which was a publisher out in Calabasas working on Abe's Odyssey and Jimmy Neutron which was probably the worst game I worked on. Great people, horrible game. So I spent three years there and got laid off. And then I got into the audio side of things, I was always, you know, as part of my job, I was always working on the audio side of production. I was managing sound design assets, I was running voice over sessions, that kind of thing. I was making those deals, and as a producer I wasn't really the creative side at all. I never was doing that side. I was always envious because that's another brand that I just don't have, or I have very little of. It's, you know that creative and artistic aspect is just not something that I have. But I'm a pretty good, you know, negotiator and I'm pretty good with spreadsheet and Microsoft Project. And so that's the kind of the road that I took. But when I left THQ, I ended up going over to Soundelux Design Music Group. And I spent nine and a half years there managing their voiceover department. Alicyn Wow. Okay. Yeah. Chip And that's where I met the vast majority of, of my actor friends these days. Alicyn So for those that don't know what Soundelux is, do you want to just explain that to us? Chip Yeah, it's a, it was a premiere, it doesn't exist any longer, but it was a premier post-production audio facility in Hollywood. In my old companies like, for instance, and we, as a company provide, well, there was a larger company above us. But Soundelux Design Music Group was specific to video games and trailers. And we did voiceover, sound design,and music, primarily for video games, as a service provider, so people would contact us and hire us to be the studio that they would go. Alicyn Oh, that's so cool. Chip And I enjoyed that job. That was that was a lot of fun. I did that for, like I said, nine years. And I mean, I got the opportunity to work on some of the most amazing games. But again, I never, they're, they're so fleeting. And they're so fast moving, that they are like, I'm working on Metal Gear, I'm working on Call of Duty I'm working on, you know, like, I had all these great games, but they were only with me for a short period, a short period of time before they, you know, they went off and and got finished. So I never had that same feeling that I had when I was at Disney, where I was actually in the trenches, working on the game, building the game with the engineers and artists and the writers and everybody. Alicyn All the Metal Gears? Did we work, because I worked on Metal Gear Survive? And Metal Gear Solid, the last two, which, Chip I don't think we worked on, though, I don't think, honestly, I can't remember. We worked on Revengeance, we worked on, I think we worked on the last three. Yeah. Alicyn So I guess we've worked together. Hey, we didn't even realize. Where did they record that? I think we recorded at Techinical. Chip Oh, then that was before. Alicyn It was after. Chip Yeah, that, I think they had it before we took it up. Yeah, we stole it from Tech. Alicyn And now. Any take, takes us in. So nowadays, you are the co-founder and CEO of the Halp Network. And it seems like you've kind of taken your skills that you learned at Soundelux, and but also added on some more. Can you tell us a little bit about Halp? Chip Yeah, so after I left Soundelux, that was, was it 2000, I think 2013, I went over to Formosa, Formosa had just started a division, a company there. And Formosa only had like four or five employees at the time. And so myself and this other woman, my partner, Julia, she and I went over and founded Formosa Interactive. So we were employees, five and six of Formosa employees wanting to Formosa Interactive. And we built that from the ground up, it was an amazing journey, just learning how to build the business and grow it and the personalities that you have to deal with, whether it's my boss, or, you know, it's all of the people that we had to bring on. But one of the things, some of the things that I learned is that we wanted to keep our staff small, you know, that makes the bosses happy, right? You don't have a whole lot of overhead. And we ended up having a lot of freelancers. And we just built all of these relationships all throughout, you know, throughout town with all of these fantastic freelancers. And once my stint at Formosa was over, we thought this is a business here, we had built so many relationships that was really hard whenever we were slow to watch those freelancers, in some cases suffer because we were giving them so much work. We were a busy shop, and we were giving them so much work. It was hard to watch them not be able to make ends meet when we were, when we have a slow month. So you know we decided to to kind of create this business where we are going to employ freelancers as much as possible. So we have no overhead. This is my office. Back into it. This is my home office. Yeah. Alicyn Really like you're in the real office actually. Chip I'm actually in my garage. Let me just put you here before I break anything. Alicyn Oh, look at those lights. Chip And that's the garage door. So I'm actually, Alicyn Is that a motorcycle? Or, do you ride motorcycles? Chip I ride that one as of about four years ago, three or four years ago I started riding. I was doing a lot of commuting back and forth down to the South Bay or down to West LA. And I live in the valley. And that four or five traffic is ridiculous. So I get on the motorcycle, I can do it in 20 minutes. And I don't, I'm not one of those crazy people on a motorcycle. But I do it for the commute. Alicyn Amazing. That's so cool. Fun Facts, guys with Chip Beaman. By the way, if anyone's just tuning in, and this is your first time, this shows called Alicyn's Wonderland. We are a show where we sit down every week here on IgTV, and then we rebroadcast the audio later as a podcast. And we interview people that work in animation and video games. So everything from voice actors, to animators, storyboard artists, Chip, we're still getting to all the multitude of things you've done on the business side, you're sort of the first person with this skill set that we've interviewed. So this is very exciting. So if you guys have people that you think need to be on this stream, right now, go ahead and hit the paper airplane button at the bottom, and you can send this to them. And if you want more, feel free to subscribe. So Halp Network. Chip You know, five years after, you know, being at Formosa, we decided to launch this business. And we reached out to all the people that we had been hiring over the course of the previous five years. And what was very unique about the time that we spent in Formosa was that the more that we tried to help our clients, find the things that they need, the bigger and better our roster became, because our clients would come to us for voiceover. And then they'd say, okay, we're gonna come in here, and we're gonna do and we're gonna do a film shoot, you guys know any, like, cameramen? We're like, no, but we'll find some. Do you know any makeup people? No, but we'll find some, you know, and then we got into localization. And we started doing all of these different, all of these different things. So like I said, when we started this business 2018, we had this roster of people that we went to, and we said, Hey, we're doing this, would you like to make a deal with us and see if we can kind of see what I can do about getting you work. But you still have to have your own business. Like, I don't want to feel bad when I'm slow. Like, I don't want you to suffer when you're slow. So you still need to promote yourself, but we'll help you promote this. If you partner with us, we'll give you training, we'll give you, you know, we'll give you social media training we'll, you'll have access to our lawyer that you can ask, you know, questions on a project for us or a project for somebody else. I don't, we'll give you training on how to be your own CFO, you have your own business, you want to know how to run your own business, we'll, we'll help you with that. And we'll promote you, you know, if you're doing something cool, whether it's with us or not, let us know. And we'll get on our social media and tell, Hey look at what Alicyn is doing. Check this out, you know, we'll hopefully help build your business while we're still helping our clients. Alicyn So are you kind of like a headhunter or like a temp agency, I mean, Chip I shied away from using those terms. I don't, I don't think of us as an agency, we don't have any, for the most part, we don't have any formal agreements with anybody. We don't take 10% from your pay, or anything like that, arrange a fair price that you want to get paid. And we go to our client, and hopefully that price is low enough that we can go to our client and say, you'll pay this plus a little extra for us. And that's still going to be less than if you went to them directly. And we're hoping to make it up in volume. And we have. Alicyn And do you work on a per project basis? Or is it more per position? Chip Most of it is per project. So I mean, we have some stuff that's going on with say Nintendo or Activision or Riot, and they'll come to us with a very specific need. And we hire that freelancer for that need for that project. Alicyn Oh, do you want to finish with that? I was just gonna ask, Are you able to share some of the projects that you've worked on? Chip Yes. But I have to think about it for a few moments because there are some that are still under NDA. And, but I know you know what I can do, very quickly. I can tell you because I have them on my website. Those I know I can talk about, some of the projects that we've worked on. We've done some dialect coaching for Riot Games, we've done Medal of Honor, Call of Duty, Cyber Punk, Age of Empires, Madden, Crash Bandicoot, one of my favorites, Tony Hawk, Valorant, which is also from from the riot universe. We've done Star Wars. We've been working on Star Wars since day one, this is veal. So those guys have been with us at Bioware forever, and they are fantastic. I don't know why they're not on our website. Alicyn Did you do Squadrons? Chip No, but I mean, those are just like, just a handful of them that we've done more recently, but we've been like I said, we've been doing this, I mean, we put out a new project feels like every couple weeks. But NDA life, you know, right? You can't talk about it. Alicyn What a fun career even so like even you're where you sit in the process, because then you get to work on so many different things. And you're not just like married to that one game for X amount of years. You can kind of, Chip That's bittersweet, though, Alicyn, because there's something to be said about those moments. I go back to Disney. But there's something to be said about digging in. And really, you know, I was, I'm very fulfilled doing what I'm doing. Like this is, I know, this is where I want to be, right? We are definitely 100% helping people. And that's what I want. Alicyn Halp Network typed in Final Fantasy 14. Chip Thank you. Thank you, hon. Keep throwing them in there. I don't remember. But yeah, but those days back at Disney, there was something to be said about those people who can, and again, I'll say that I was kind of jealous about sitting next to those people who, those producers, and those writers, and the game designers who had these amazing ideas. And it was just a conversation in a room with five people. And the next thing you know, there's a sketch and the next thing you know, there's a drawing and, and then there's a blueprint, and then there's a Bible and there's a book and then there's, you know, playables. I thoroughly loved being a part of that environment in this industry. Yeah, and watching those people work. And I'm deeply I love watching people, who are our artists, and designers, and musicians, and actors. It's something I can't do. So it's really something for me to watch and see a project come to life. It's a beautiful thing. That said, I love having all these credits. I love the fact that people you know, keep you know, they trust us with their work. And their, and with their, with the stuff that they're put so much effort in. And they come to us and they say, can you help me finish this? Can you help me find someone who can do this? And that's what I do. Alicyn Amazing. So Halp Network also has a branch called the Halp Network Rntertainment Academy. What can you tell us about that? Chip So when we launched the company, we we launched with three ideas. We wanted to do a production arm, which is what I kind of explained, it's, a client comes to us and asked us for help for a particular need, whether it's a full production, can you just take this and run with it? Or can you help us find the pieces. There's a recruitment, which is a company, same companies come to us and they say, I need a full time editor who is going to be a you know, an employee here at the company, we're having a hard time finding, or I need a finance manager or a VP, or whatever it is. And we help find them. So that's a little bit more permanent position as opposed to project. And then there's the Halp Network Entertainment Academy, which is our education arm. And there we're putting out webinars, panels, classes, anything to help uplift our industry, to help educate people, to help people who are brand new to the industry get into the industry, people who want to hone their skills and people who are, have a skill set that is possibly in music for TV, but want to understand music for games, or they want to understand, there are actors who have been working on in theater, but they've never worked on a video game before, you know? And so what we're trying to do is put out these classes and grow. And it's not just actors, as engineers, as musicians, we're really trying to broaden up right now it's a lot of actor work just because that's what we know. And we've done a lot of it. Yep, yeah. But over the course of the next couple of months and years, you're gonna see our course curriculum grow and be more versatile and varied. Alicyn Hey, guys, this is Alicyn Packard. Sorry to interrupt, but I just wanted to let you know that if you like the show, please, please, please remember to subscribe to this podcast. And leave us a review on iTunes. It really helps us to get heard by more people. Thanks so much. Alicyn And a lot of your courses are free, right? Some are paid, and there's, but there's a whole bunch of, Chip We have a lot of free courses. The general intent here is just to make sure that people are learning, you know, we've never from the very beginning, and this is another mantra that you know, Julia and I have had, so we don't need to be rich, right? Yes, it's a capitalistic society and we all want to make money and pay our bills. But we don't need we can be comfortable and give back to the community and some people may not have $175 to take a class. Yeah, right. But maybe you've got 25 or if you don't have 25 we're gonna we're gonna have a whole set, every month, we have called classes that are 100% free. Webinars that you can take that you can just come and join in and learn something. Alicyn And where can people find you on Instagram, Jeff, by the way says your free stuff is gold. Actually Halp Network, maybe you can type in the Halp Academy, Instagram and I'll pin it at the bottom so that people can just go from here and find it, because it's Halp Academy, right? There's the Halp Network and Halp Academy. Chip Halp Network is the more corporate side, that's the production and recruitment side. That's not necessarily the focus of the Academy. The Academy is all about classes. Alicyn Cool. So somebody wants to type that in, I'll pin it at the bottom. So anybody can go check it out. I mean, can't say no to free resources. Chip You can check us out at, you know, halpnet.com. You can see everything that we're doing there. Certainly Our classes are there, you can buy them, you could get them on them, right? And we have our Halp, there it is @HalpAcademy, you can link to all of our classes, so you can get to all of our classes on Instagram, Facebook. Alicyn Awesome. And so you also have a program program called SWAAT (S, W, A, A, T) Can you tell us a little bit about your SWAAT team. Chip Sure. So SWAAT stands for Specialized Workshops And Actor Tactics. And that's just a really long fancy way of saying, so what we're trying to do is get, again, uplift the craft of narrative writing. And where table reads typically take place is after you've already cast your project, right? It's, I already know who I want to have in my game or on my TV show, or in my movie, and here's the script, let's all sit around and discuss, you know, and and go through the script. What we're trying to do is have that happen prior to casting. So this is all about making sure that the writing is good. So we bring in we have over 50, I think we have 55 really fantastic actors, names that you would know, we've said that we you know, just as a as a rule, we've said that we don't want to tell everybody who those people are. But I can tell you that Jennifer Hale, Cissy Jones, and Sarah Molly are the co-captains and they are the ones who have the Nexus. They are the ones who had the idea. Cissy, and I had lunch one day. And I was like, I think I can do something with this. And we ended up coming up with this program that we've put out to all these developers. But basically, our clients call us up and they're like, hey, I've got this script, I want to make sure that it sounds good. I want to work out the kinks. Before we get into casting and recording. Can you help us out? We give them two two-hour sessions we bring in, like I said, we have 55 actors. So we kind of take a look at your script to kind of understand a little bit of who we've got here, what you know what your characters are like. And then we put out a call to the actress who can fill these roles. And we schedule a time for you and your developer and your writers and whoever else on your team wants to hear it. And they will all come in and sit down and the actors will just read through your script. And you can give them redirects, make sure that it all sounds good. And one of the cool things about it is that absolutely allows people to not only hear mistakes in the writing, workout, you know, story beats that just don't make sense. But it allows you to think outside the box like I, but I think of this soldier that I've written for I think of no this Private First Class. He is a white guy who is scrawny, and he's, you know, just getting into basic training. Why can't that person be female? Or why can't that person be Asian or Hispanic? And when we have the actors come in, we have, you know, a diverse cast that will read that way. And it gets the writer thinking, I didn't have to make it this way. I can make it a different way to write it. So that does help. Alicyn That's great, because you are a minority owned and women owned business. Correct? Chip Right. Yeah. And we are, we're just we're doing so much work towards our ADI efforts. We're working with our clients to help with cultural sensitivity and consultants and diversity in the workplace. You know, we're trying to make sure that we're, we're reaching out to the underrepresented and getting them into the video game industry, getting them acting jobs or writing jobs or editor jobs or whatever it might be. Alicyn That's amazing. It must feel good to know that you're actually able to make an impact. Chip Yeah, I think that's the you know, I think that's the most important thing is if you're admitting it's one thing to say that you want to do it. It's another thing to actually Go out there and do it, you know, make the effort. And you know, it can be uncomfortable. And you'll have uncomfortable conversations. We've partnered with Brickhouse Talent, which is a cultural sensitivity talent agency. We've partnered with JP Karliac over at Clearbox Academy, and to talk about issues as it relates to the LGBTQ community LGBTQIA plus community. And we, you know, if you're not having those important conversations, you're really not making a headway, right? You're just kind of saying, I want to help, you know, putting up a black box on your Instagram really doesn't help it. So we're trying to make an impact. Alicyn Have you heard of Rise Up Animation? Chip I know. Yes, I have. I don't know much about who they are. But I have heard of them. Alicyn A few months ago, I interviewed one of the co-founders Monica Lago Kaytis on the show. And she, that's also their mission to train and educate diverse voices in animation. Could be some synergy there. Maybe, someday. Chip You've made a connection. Alicyn Yeah. I was one of their volunteers. It's primarily people working in animation on the animator side storyboard writing, etc. Very few. I think that that's sort of mainly their focus, but I have mentored some people. So Rise Up Animation. Yeah, I can definitely picture that. So yeah, I mean, so now you are, you've moved into this new role, well new-ish, right since 2018, with Halp as a CEO executive? And I'm just wondering, have there been, I mean, challenges becoming, you know, the CEO of your own company? Chip Yeah, I would say that one of the, and it kind of goes back to what I was talking about before, one of the biggest challenges is, you know, and this was actually happening back when I was at Formosa, as well is that I've taken on the role of running a company, and not taking on the role of building a game. There are people on our staff that helped build the game, saw producers, but I am not that person who is down in the trenches any longer, right? I'm the one who's working on spreadsheets, and projects and contracts. And it's, so that's, that's the hard part of being in this role. It's this is very business oriented. It's not as creative. I have another creative outlet. But it's another business that I run. But this is, you know, this is where the bread and butter really is. But that's the hard part is like I kind of miss, you know, really jumping in there and like interacting with the staff and the crew and the people that were actually playing. You know? Covid. Alicyn Yeah, I know, this is COVID related sub question, do you or did you ever have an office? Or is it mainly everybody's working remotely? Chip No, we were never intending to have an office, it was always going to be, we want to keep our overhead low. There was no reason to have an office, we work out of a variety of different studios in and around town, and elsewhere, across the United States and outside of the United States. So there's no real reason. So yes, it's always been it's always this and that's the other thing is, because I've been sitting in this room since 2018. It will, I do miss the camaraderie that I would have with having everybody. But that's okay. That's all right. I still think that what we're doing is more important. Alicyn If, now knowing what you know, now, in your new position, is there any advice you would go back and give yourself when you're starting out? Chip Don't take yourself so seriously. Yeah, I think that's that's one of the I, I yeah, I think that I have a good time with the people that I work with, and all the people I have worked with, but I, I can honestly tell you that I stay up at night, thinking about this business and how to make it better. And there are times when I just need to take a break. And there's so many times my therapist actually said, you're doing fine. Relax. Now, don't take yourself too seriously. Just let yourself do what you're doing. Because you're doing great. You've got a great business, you've got great partners, you're, you've got, you know, great, you know, crew and staff. So I would probably say, go ahead and do what you're doing. Just smile and laugh. Alicyn I want to like tickle you right now. So I saw I actually just signed up this week for this brand new website called skills hub, which offers on demand coaching for voice acting, primarily, I think, just voice acting right. And yeah, I'm gonna hopefully coach because I think it's a great I mean, well, I could and would be happy to coach but that I'm so busy with my podcast, it would be more about getting coaching specifically for auditions, although it would have to be something that's not under an NDA. I suppose. But. Chip I mean, it doesn't have to be, it could be under NDA, we have a series of NDAs that sign up. And all of our coaches are under NDA. And I should say, our coaches I'm an affiliate of those have it's Jennifer Hale's. Alicyn Is it Jennifer Hale that started it? Yeah, I tried to reach out to her actually about getting her on the show to talk about this. Because this was I mean, I have to say, this is such a good idea. Right now, the agencies have all closed down their studios, and, you know, you know, trying, there we go, Okay, I'm going to pin this one. Now, you can get 10% off your membership at skills hub, using that code that's tapped at the bottom, which cherica save 10%. But but I think it's it's, I think it's a genius idea. Because also you the on demand thing is key. Because your additions come in the night before you don't know what you're going to get. And you don't know necessarily what time you're going to have to work on it or which ones you're going to need help with. Or sometimes just having another person in the room I think helps tremendously. Chip Because it's something about something else. Alicyn It's a great idea. So what else can you tell us about Skill's Hub? Chip Yeah, Jennifer. Sadly, Jennifer came to me with this idea, like, three years ago, shortly after we started the Halp Network. And we tried really hard to come up with the technology, the back end behind it. And we just were not savvy enough. So she went off and did it all. And then came back to us a couple of months ago, and was talking about what she had put together. And it is right now I don't even know how many coaches are on the site. But I think there's around I want to say this probably around 50. There might be more. But these are like these are names that you would absolutely know you should go to the you know, acting.skillshub.com. Yeah, Julie is on there. Jennifer's on there. Chris Borders is on there. We've got so many fantastic directors and coaches and language specialists and dialogue specialists. So many people are on this site to help with anybody who just needs 10 minutes. Like I just need to brush up like I, you know, it could be I want someone to coach me and I need an hour. Absolutely. You can do it there. I need 10 minutes, I'm about to go out on an audition. This is the perfect place to do it, you know? I, you know, you don't want to spend that $150 or $200 for somebody who you only really need 10 minutes with time. So this is the best site. I mean, like I can't believe how, and we launched it on the 25th of July. No, it was just three days ago of June. Yeah, okay. Yeah. And gangbusters. I mean, so many people are already on everyone's booking time. And I think from all reports that we're seeing on social media, people like it. Alicyn That's great. Yeah, I love the idea. I can't wait to try it out. Chip Yeah, and there's so many other benefits to it. There's an opportunity board, there's a minute where you can hear a little bit about each of the coaches, and what's important to them what their goals are, that should have been off. Sorry about that. So there's a lifeline, if you like, I just need help. And I need it from anybody. Like we have this thing called Lifeline where you literally can send out a mass message to all the coaches and be like, this is what I need. Do you have, I need it today, I need it right now. And that, you know, you'll get answers. So this is just really spectacular. Alicyn Amazing, Great, well, we pinned your code at the bottom, if anybody is interested in signing up for skills hub, they can click there can enter that code and you'll get 10% off so so just kind of chip By the way, are you okay to take a couple questions from the audience at the end? Yes, absolutely. I'll make sure that I ask anything, too weird. But I was also you know, I know you're super passionate about cooking, and I'm always interested to hear about people's hobbies. So yeah, is that just a hobby? Or you know, are you like, just, Chip it's it's release? It's, it's how I it's how I cope with the day. You know, I there are times when I just want to go on the kitchen. And just and just cook something delicious. So with that, come on over, bro, I'll cook for you. It really is just a release from me. I it's it's not like I ever have a It's not like I have a real passion for it. Although probably if I wasn't doing if like the entertainment industry didn't exist for me. I would have gone to cooking school or I would have run a nightclub. Wow. One of them one of the two. I'm not sure which I think years ago I would have said because of the I was a nightclub promoter back in New York. No way. Yeah, before before all of this happened before I moved out here. I had a company and we did DJs bands, catering florists, you know for sweet sixteens and weddings I planned. I don't have any weddings and And part of that was that I would go into the nearest city and, and con my way into telling people that I was like the promoter and and then I would start the business by trying to get people to go to the club. And next thing I knew I was a nightclub promoter for five years. So I thought that might be what I would do. As I got older, I would own a nightclub or something. But then as I found this kind of love for cooking, and just enjoy, I just, you know, I did like everybody else. During a pandemic, I bought a bread maker, not a bread maker, a stand mixer and made pretzels and all sorts of crazy things and just had fun. And it was, and that's when I kind of realized how much of a release it is for me just being the kitchen Ninja, you know, and then like, I watch all the cooking shows, and I'm like, I'm pleading and I'm like presenting for my wife. familia. Take a look at that. But she's like, it's too salty. I definitely enjoyed it. Alicyn Oh, that's great. Do you do you have a favorite recipe? Or what do you think is your best recipe? Chip My family likes my spaghetti sauce. I made an incredible chicken pot pie. Several months back that I absolutely loved. I took a bite at it. And I was just like, I will have to keep this recipe. The crappy thing that I can never remember once I do it. Like I get on there. And I'm like, I am a person who tends to measure things. But sometimes I just throw things in there and like, Oh, this sounds good. This sounds good. And then it comes out great. And I'm like, What did I do? I have no idea what I did. I can't recreate it. So but I think the chicken pot pie recipe was was one of my favorites. And then I do like a French toast. I did a French toast egg. bacon sandwich. So basically it was French toast. French toast. Yeah. Which was really good. Alicyn Cheese newish let's get dinner. We have about 10 minutes left to the interview. So let's take a couple questions from z audience. Let's see. This is a great question from the help. piggyback center. Last thing if you can describe the Health Network as a food dish you've created, what would it be? Unknown Speaker Come on? If I could All right, what is it? Is Borg? Is it all you can eat buffet? Chip Yes, thank you. I like it's an all you can eat buffet, you can get pretty much anything that you like. Wow. Chip All thanks, salad was never anything green. Chip I put that out. There was never anything green. Alicyn Christina yote says Do they cast voiceover for union jobs or non union? Or both? Chip Yeah. Julia is our coo. And she's also a casting director for us and resolve vs. Casting. J. Julia bs casting. But whenever we whatever the project is, whatever it calls for, we will cast for it. It doesn't matter for geniune or not, we have the ability to Alicyn and if any voice actors do not currently have representation, is there any way for them to get in your pool? Or do you mainly go through agents, Chip we go through agents though, if you're non union and you want to send us information you can send it to help at Health Net. And we will gladly add you to our roster with industry real and things like that. Of course by we we tend to especially for union work, but not always we will go to we will go to agents. Alicyn Great. Kate asks, what sort of feedback or critique is expected of a Video Game Tester? Are you expected to give feedback as well or just break? Chip It depends on the producer. I mean, I've worked with a lot of producers over the course of the years that I've been doing this when I was a test tester they wanted we had a bug database, a bug is a problem. And we will give them what we thought was supposed to happen. So if you're if you've got a character that is jumping across the screen, and it comes to a block, and he can't jump up on the block, we we would write we think he should jump up on the walks and we want you know, they want us to say tell us what you think is supposed to happen. Give us your real feedback. But also tell us you can't jump up on the block. Tell us what the problem is. But I know that there are I know producers who just thought we know what's supposed to happen. Just tell us what the problem is. Don't don't get into your feedback and don't expand on anything. What's the trees the trees don't get into that? Yeah, there are definitely producers are like, right Why did you choose that song? Alicyn Especially if you play it for like, you know, hours upon hours. Chip That was probably the hardest thing because you were not playing a very big piece we're playing not a level we're playing section. A very, very, very small section. Wow. or days on end. So it's really not like playing the game tells me you could play this piece this one The second piece over and over and over. Alicyn And then would you want to play the game on your time off just to like complete that like desire to finish it? Or you're like, never played. Chip That was done and honestly to this day is still my favorite game. My only Mallard was the first game is it was a Donald Duck, kind of jack Lord game and anyone look it up. You'll see it it's the artwork is fantastic. The music was Michael J. Keno, who I worked with and has then gone on to win Grammys. It's a it's a side scrolling platformer. It's Donald Duck turns like Hawaii Five o into a into a ninja suit. And it's crazy. But it was quite honestly, Mike, it's still to this day, my favorite game. Yeah, look at it. Cole Chateau Maui Mallard. Just look, look it up on the internet. It is just a fun game play. Let me find 90s 96. Alicyn Okay, so that answers this question. indirectly. We answered a couple questions here. This is a good question from Jeff, what's been the most surprising thing about taking things virtual during COVID? Chip I would say that probably when COVID hit, we were launching into on like, I'm sorry, we were launching into in person classes. We just spent some time actually putting together and we actually we shot some commercial with with our instructors. And we were literally days away. We had Jamie mortar lero and Amanda Wyatt and somebody else I can't remember. But we shot these commercials. And we were days away from launching. And the lockdown came in. And we had to kind of shift gears really, really quick over the course of six weeks, I think. And we put everything online. And I think the very first thing that was ultimately surprising for me to see was just the community of of instructors and people just wanting to give to all of the people who were really starving for information. Like how do I get into this industry? How do I hone my craft? How do I do all of these things? I was kind of shocked because I really didn't think that we were going to make go of it or at least as quickly as we did. But all of the instructors were like, use me use me. We didn't charge a dime. For any Not a single class panel webinar. We didn't charge anything for four months. I like May, June, July, August, probably I think we started charging in August. So for for all of these instructors, we're just giving up their time now like sure you use me for an hour. Sure I'll do a class for you. No problem. Just I just want to get back to the community I want to help out. And I think that was one of the most surprising things is that there was it was such camaraderie within the industry. And people wanting to help our cause, you know, one of the health the Health Network and went help me and Julia do what we were trying to do. But they're really we're just trying to help their fellow man, which was great. That was why I had hoped that was going to be what would happen. I'm was happily surprised that happened. So Alicyn well. That is surprising and amazing. That's that's a great, I think place to end, I just have one question that I asked all of my guests. Just kind of a silly question. But Chip I'm William Beeman and you're watching Allison. Allison is wonderful. Yes. So you do that? Would you like me to do that again? I'm William chip demon, and you're watching Allison's? Alicyn And if you had a song in your heart, what would that song be called? We're all together. Unknown Speaker That's so beautiful. Chip I think that's what it would be. I don't know how it would go. And I can't say it. And I can't sing. So don't ask. But I think you know, we are in a place in a time where we all have to remember that we're on this planet together, you get one life, you might as well make the most of it be happy. smile or laugh more. Spend time with family and friends. When you can be safe. Be so whatever, that's those down into a song title. That's that song. Alicyn worked on it to ask her gets it? Oh, yeah, you're gonna keep going. It's more of a guitar tune, I think. Well, thank you chip for your time. I really, really appreciate it. And thanks to everybody who tuned in live. We'll see you next time. Okay. I'm actually going to be on vacation. So we're gonna miss that. But in two weeks, we have Christina V, a voice actress of Miraculous Ladybug and get an impact and she's going to be on the show. So hope you guys tune in for that. Thanks. And if anybody is still down to hang, I'm gonna jump over I'm gonna upload this video and then I'm gonna go jump over to tic Tock and play some music. So find me there if you want. Okay guys, bye bye. Thanks for tuning in to Alicyn's Wonderland, where we explore the wild and wonderful world of animation and video games. Please remember to subscribe and leave us a review. For more episodes of Alicyn's Wonderland please visit us at www.AlicynPackard.com. See you next week.