This week’s Mompreneur features Jennifer Knight, a former occupational therapist turned freelance voice actor for the last eight years. I’m featuring Jennifer because her band is one of the opening acts for Napa City Nights on June 3rd, from 6:30 pm – 10:00 pm (I have heard Jennifer sing and, trust me, you don’t want to miss it!).
Jennifer has been deeply interested in the performing arts since she was young. Inspired by the 1980’s musical film FAME and its subsequent spin-off television series, Jennifer told me that performing has always been her first love even though her parent’s Midwestern, puritanical work ethic prompted her to move in the direction of a more ‘practical’ career. Instead, she went to off college and graduate school, ultimately becoming a successful supervising occupational therapist. She admittedly liked her work and found it rewarding, but she was also feeling unhappy with the stress and long hours. When I asked her how and when children came into the picture, she was honest: “I’m not a big planner, but I knew the time frame [for having children] was shrinking.” When she did become pregnant with her daughter, now 7, Jennifer actually saw motherhood as her ticket out of her day job. And that alone communicated something important to her.
And so, with her creative side beckoning, Jennifer took the leap of faith – or, as she described it, she ‘course corrected.’ Even so, she admits that it was the idea of being a mother that actually served as the ultimate catalyst for her professional shift. After all, she didn’t want her daughter to grow up with the example of a mom who settled for a profession she didn’t truly love simply because it seemed like the practical thing to do. “I’m very intuitive and try to listen to inner voice,” she reflected. “It doesn’t always look practical but it’s served me. I’ve had lots of adventures, but I don’t always know how the path will unfold.”
So out of all the performing art mediums, why did Jennifer choose to do voiceover?
Jennifer has actually been a singer for years. She sung throughout her health care career in bands, studios, and has even performed musical theater, so she found voiceover to be a natural extension of singing and a way for her to be involved in the performing arts while earning a living. “With voiceover, scripts are always different and there is good variety,” she remarked. And she enjoys the creativity of putting on new hats or personalities, and seeing how the voice, video, and music all combine into the finished project. Jennifer also explained that voiceovers are actually a genre of acting, and she does indeed consider herself an actor. However, life in front of the camera made her feel too vulnerable and out of her comfort zone. Instead, she has found her home behind the microphone. “Voice is freedom,” she quips. “You can take on anything.”
As for her family, Jennifer appreciates the variety and flexibility of being an entrepreneur and how it has woven in with her family life. While there is no real ‘typical’ day, Jennifer finds entrepreneurship gives her the freedom to create the day she wants or to address the needs of her children more readily than if she was in a salaried position. She smiled as she recounted the daily ritual of her husband bringing her coffee in bed (lucky her!), walking her daughter to school, making a smoothie, and then going into the bedroom’s walk-in closet which she has converted into a real studio. It is there Jennifer locks herself away in her ‘padded cell’ and reads her scripts.
So how does she achieve balance as a Mompreneur? Jennifer admits that she has been guilty of putting the needs of her children and her clients above her own self care, but she also knows she needs personal space – whether taking a walk, reading a book, or watching a movie. This is especially true since her husband is an entrepreneur as well, and so career and family continually intersect throughout the day. As a result she’s never quite sure exactly where that point of balance is. “It is more like keeping many balls in the air while focusing on each one at a time,” she tells me. Nevertheless, balance is something she strives for and believe it will become easier as the kids get older.
What has not only helped with balance but has actually been a ‘game changer’ for Jennifer and her husband is their decision to hire an au pair (foreign nanny). This gives them a team of three tackling the family responsibilities instead of two. Besides forcing them to be more intentional about how they schedule their time, having an au pair allows them to build in date nights and hobbies. And, unsurprisingly, creative performances are their hobbies as Jennifer sings in a band called N2L while her husband plays guitar in a different band named Moxie. In fact, both bands will have public performances during the upcoming Napa Porchfest on July 31st (www.napaporchfest.org).
As for technology, Jennifer admits she’s not too good at high tech, but she also doesn’t need much: a good microphone, mixing board, legal pads, and… lots of sticky notes! The legal pads are for lists along with everything else, and the sense of accomplishment she derives from the ‘old school’ act of using a pen to cross off a completed task on a list is something she refuses to concede. Part of her research includes scouring the web for inspirational work while effectively curating her own. She also finds that FreshBooks, a simpler version of QuickBooks, meets her needs just fine. She tried Twitter and Instagram, but they seemed to need more time to master than she is willing to give them.
What Jennifer loves most about her career, however, is the creative side of her business, being part of projects that are fun and engaging. One of her biggest clients is Pandora, for which she has done several hundred commercials. Other clients produce national television and radio commercials, and she can be found as the voice behind the Fisher Price toy (a talking / singing airplane) and a game from Hasbro. “[Good advertising] is not just the throwing out of information,” she argues, “but makes an emotional connection. To be part of that kind of creativity is inspirational.” And of course, she is particularly amused whenever a television commercial with her voice unexpectedly pops up in the middle of a show.
But it’s not always fun. “Being in a little box studio can sometimes feel isolating,” she recounted. And so she has found her professional community on Facebook, which she calls her ‘water cooler,’ for it is there she has formed many professional friendships with colleagues the world over, gotten and given advice related to her profession, and learned so much from others about her craft.
But when not working her business, this Mompreneur can be found at home hanging out with her husband and two children. While her husband is the super-active one who likes to go biking and play ball, Jennifer describes herself as a ‘homebody’ who loves a lazy day with her family: slowly waking up, talking, cooking breakfast, and just hanging out. In fact, cooking and baking is something they do a lot of since they are interested in nutrition and intentional about their diet.
Her words of wisdom to other Mompreneurs? Listen to your intuition, or inner voice. It will steer you into wonderful things and out of not so wonderful things. Most of us have a lot of mental clutter, so it’s important to carve out some kind of meditative time where we can just sit and get in touch with that voice.
Jennifer Knight Website: http://www.jenniferknight.net
Jennifer Knight Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JenniferKnightVO/
N2L Website: http://www.n2lband.com