A Life of Stability with an Acting Degree - Rivka Rothstein

So you want to be a professional actor...? It's glamorous, but also a hard life of late nights, frequent travel and stiff competition for roles. What if you want a family? What if you value a stable life with time at home?

What if a certain career field sounds like it would be fun and you would be good at it, but the lifestyle isn't for you? Do you have to give up on it?

My father, the illustrious Dr. Steven Simon, writes books about careers and he has made the point that a good career is at the intersection of your skills, your temperament and the market. Sometimes it takes a little creativity to find that intersection, but my interview with Rivka Rothstein, local voice artist, demonstrated this point.

But first, let me explain that I had to ask what a voiceover artist does. You know how you hear commercials all the time, but they sound different? Sometimes the person talking sounds friendly, sometimes cool and sometimes they even have different accents. That’s what Rivka does. She brings the scripts of commercials to life.

You can hear samples of her work at her website, RivkaRothstein.com.

I wanted to know how a person becomes a voiceover artist. After all, I had never met one before.

She explained that she didn’t start out wanting to be a voiceover artist. She started out interested in Theater, got a degree in it and then went to Germany to pursue acting and performance art. Somewhere along the way, she met someone who offered her English language voiceover work. It wasn’t exactly what she had imagined, but it paid the bills and enabled her to stay in Germany.

She took to it and eventually, she found herself working on an international campaign that paid very well.

She hadn’t planned on becoming a professional voiceover artist, but sometimes unexpected opportunities open up a door. It was a business in her field that offered flexibility and stability. She took some advice to invest in equipment for a home studio so that she could continue doing this work.

Since then, Rivka has returned to Colorado and built a profitable business, even though it wasn’t what she had imagined when she started.

I didn't ask, but I imagine that people discouraged her from getting a degree in theater. "What will you do with it?", they probably asked. "Hardly anyone makes a living as an actor."

But Rivka's story shows that there is more than one way to make a living with any given skill set. She has built a lifestyle that works for her, doing what she loves and is good at.

In some ways, it's a business like any other. She finds clients through a variety of marketing techniques, from networking to referral marketing. I met her at the local Women Entrepreneurs Helping Women Entrepreneurs (WEHWE) networking group, where she was in leadership. She also has her CPA, coaches and overhead, just like the rest of us.

It wasn't what she imagined, she told me, “But what it's afforded me, quite literally, is a life of stability."

The moral of the story? Be creative. Keep your eyes open for opportunities.

The world of work is far larger than most of us realize and new types of jobs are being created every day. With a little luck and a willingness to try new things, you just might find something that works better than you imagined.

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