Most of us don’t give it much thought. You hear a narrator on a YouTube video explaining the scene, or a voice on a video game telling you to ‘Hurry up! Shoot!’ or the same disembodied voice prompting you to watch the upcoming six o’clock news, all courtesy of voice actors. Though A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) looms in the distance as a potential threat to those golden-voiced narrators, 49-year-old Jeff Martin [Smith] of Myrtle Beach feels secure. He’s been voicing commercials and various audio/video productions for 30 years and still has plenty of work, which comes in literally from around the globe - he’s the voice of FOX News in Asia, for example.

Martin is also busy with the launch of a brand-new YouTube channel (Now You’re Smarter), a fun, occasionally irreverent and always educational science-ey program designed to appeal to almost anyone – kids to seniors. Martin has eclectic hobbies, too. He’s restored to mint condition some 25 commercial video games from the 1980s, the kind you threw quarters at as a teen. He’s restored a 1968 Mustang Coupe to better-than-new condition and he’s building a Flux Capacitor, minus the plutonium, nearly indistinguishable from the Back to the Future Hollywood prop.

Before dedicating his career solely to voice work in 2017, Martin, who has lived in Myrtle Beach since 1995, was first in radio, then a successful club DJ and bar owner. He worked in radio in upstate New York, his home, as a teen and young adult, and after a move to Myrtle Beach he worked briefly in radio and then as a DJ at Yesterdays, The Magic Attic, Pirates Cove and the House of Blues. When the Magic Attic closed, Martin saw an opportunity to reach the displaced teens. In 2007 he and business partner Larry Frakes created Karma Ultimate Teen Nightlife (a teen only nightclub) in Myrtle Beach that enjoyed a 12-year run.

After that came Garden City Beach’s Tequila Mockingbird, Stand Up Carolina, and another popular comedy club at Broadway at the Beach, Carolina Comedy Club. After Covid and with changing tastes and priorities, Martin left those enterprises behind to finish the build on his home studio and throw everything at voice work. After some eight years he’s accomplished much and did so while also battling severe obesity.

“I was a football player in high school,” says Martin, “and was supposed to go play college ball, but I tore up my knee in the second to last game of the season and that ended that. I was already a beast, but super lean. That would change. The football injury was when I started putting the weight on.”

After the injury life would take a new course, one his father was not keenly in favor of.

“I was a smart kid, had great grades and was leaning toward being an engineer and going to engineering school, but had found part time work in radio and really liked it. When I told my dad I was going into radio fulltime and wasn’t going to school, he told me ‘The only radio I will ever hear you on is when you say, ‘Welcome to McDonald’s, may I take your order?’”

Later he worked for MTV’s The Grind, traveling around the U.S. and internationally as a DJ, all while still gradually piling on the weight. Even at his heaviest Martin was a workaholic, his fluctuating 450-500 lbs. barely slowing him down.

“Because I was athletic underneath all the fat, I was able to put in 15-hour days, up and down the stairs without even losing my breath. I was up and down ladders installing lights and sound equipment – it was weird. I used to say I was ‘fat-letic.’”

He started a family, had a daughter, who’s now a top-of-her-class fitness competitor and consultant based out of Myrtle Beach.

“It clicked in that I had to be serious [about a healthier lifestyle] when I was diagnosed with Type-II diabetes and had to shoot myself in the stomach every day with an injectable medicine,” says Martin. “I thought, ‘you’re not going to be around for your daughter, you’re going to die young. Once I made the emotional detachment from food, it wasn’t about losing weight, it was more like [this healthy version] is who you are now.”

With his varied interests, hyperactivity and non-stop drive (he just recently discovered he’s on the ADHD and Autism spectrum), we wondered what a typical day might hold for this creative and entrepreneurial voice actor. Martin granted us a glimpse behind the curtain to see and hear just what it takes to be one of the busiest and most sought-after in his industry.

8:30 a.m.

Having returned home from the gym at 7:30 a.m. - he’s there nearly every day at 5:30 a.m. - Martin has already had five hard boiled eggs, two turkey sausages and a little coffee. He sits barefooted behind his desk in front of an oversized computer monitor in his studio. He shares the Carolina Forest home with his partner, super realtor, and former Grand Strand Most Fashionable, Becki Lewis. The couple both have grown children from previous relationships and are empty nesters. Both he and Becki are committed to healthy lifestyles, but for Martin he credits the gym and a diet of little-to-no processed foods for fostering and maintaining his overall health.

“I basically said to myself I will eat nothing out of a can or out of box,” he explains, “Just doing that alone severely limits your calories and significantly ups the nutritional value of the food. I didn’t even go to the gym and the first 100 lbs. flew off in six months.”

This commitment resulted in him ultimately shedding 200-plus lbs. Once he started heavy lifting at the gym a year into his weight loss journey, he found he was building muscle and keeping the unhealthy weight off.

“Muscle burns fat 24/7, whether you’re at the gym or not,” he explains. He eventually had to have surgery to remove 16 pounds of loose skin. Martin is all about transformations whether breathing new life into an old car, an old video game console, or turning the written word into voiced audio tracks reaching millions.

“The first month of full time voice work I made $200 and thought ‘what the hell have I done?” he laughs, pulling up the day’s script from Captain Discovery, a small but growing and already money-making YouTube channel with some 35,000 subscribers growing every day.

“YouTube requires a minimum of 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of viewing time before they start sending checks,” he explains. Captain Discovery – a small operation from Asia, handles the final production combining Martin’s narration with visuals and music. Martin is paid for each script he narrates. These come in around once per week and there are more than 80 Captain Discovery videos archived and circulating.

With multiple repeat customers needing new material weekly, Martin has most of his days planned, whether voicing instructional videos for JBL users, random Coca-Cola commercials, or voice work for Bell & Howell, AARP, Budweiser and other international brands. His unique voice and style are in such high demand that his voice has even been stolen. The technology associated with A.I. has allowed content thieves to literally steal his voice, run it through a modeling program, which can make this ‘fake’ voice say virtually anything, and use it without his permission. He’s fighting back and not too worried about it….yet.

“A buddy of mine directed me to a website that shocked me,” he recalls. “I heard myself reading scripts I had never seen and had never voiced. I’m in the process of suing to get it taken down.”

The same A.I. modeling technology used to steal Martin’s voice was used by sound editors to ensure actor and narrator James Earl Jones – who died last September at 93 – would live on as Darth Vadar, and presumably other characters that may evolve in the future. Jones signed over the rights to his voice in 2022 after retiring from working on new material. With the deal inked a Ukrainian tech company got to work saving Jones’ voice into perpetuity. The seminal voice of so many documentaries and movies including Star Wars, The Lion King, and the miniseries Roots, was originally paid $7000 for his voice acting work in the first of the franchise, 1977’s Star Wars IV: A New Hope.

What began as a side hustle for Martin has turned into something substantial, but how does someone with a good speaking voice turn the skill into a full-time vocation?

“I have friends in radio who say they can’t seem to find voice work and I tell them ‘I’ve just heard ‘No’ more than you. You’ve got to hustle, and be thick-skinned and not be so sensitive. I’ve been told ‘you suck,’ but I kept going. I had a bruised ego in the beginning, because I’d had a great radio and DJ career, and I sounded like a radio guy, but in this business you’ve got to NOT sound like a radio guy. You’re a voice actor, not a voice announcer.”

When did he know there might be real money and a future in voice acting?

“When I voiced a job for [pro skater-turned MTV show host] Rob Dyrdek back when he had the shows Rob & Big and the Fantasy Factory, I felt like this could be a career.”

He loves recalling the day NBA superstar Kobe Bryant was a guest on the Ellen Show. Kobe and Ellen were shooting hoops in one of her many celebrity games on a large basketball arcade game brought into the studio, Connect Four Hoops, a version of which can be found locally at Dave & Busters and at arcades around the world.

“Clear as a bell you can hear me telling Kobe Bryant to ‘Hurry up!’ and Ellen and her audience laughing.” Martin lights up at the recollection of a voice acting career highlight. “I made Ellen and Kobe Bryant laugh.”

8:55 a.m.

In the soundproof booth (a closet under the stairs) Martin whips through the Captain Discovery script using a dog training clicker to make an identifiable blip on the screen every time he makes a mistake, and there are plenty, but he moves at lighting speed.

When finished the read-through and back at his desk he cuts and pastes watching for the clicker blips, knowing exactly where fixing is required. In no time he’s knocked out a script for a 12-minute video, no mistakes, perfect and ready for emailing.

“My dad was older – he was born in 1930 – and he just couldn’t understand how I was making money, he never really got it. I’d say ‘Dad, I’m heard in 49 countries.’ He’d say ‘How?’ I’d tell him I’d get the script, do the work and email it to them instantaneously. He’d say “What do you mean you’d mail it to them? Like on a cassette tape?’ I’d say ‘No Dad, email.’ I am the youngest of the kids. My next oldest sister is 13 years older than me, so it’s like I’m from a different era.”

Respect

“The money changed significantly when I started getting some coaching. To this day I meet with my [voice] coach like once a month and we go through pacing and other elements of voice acting. I have an audio engineering degree from Five Towns College in Long Island, so I can handle both ends of the business, the voice acting and the editing and production. Some of the top voice guys in the business have to hire engineers because they can’t do it. I’m very fortunate and it’s a real advantage.”

9:45 a.m.

Martin will spend the rest of the day on scripts, minus a few breaks to tinker with some project or work on one of the other vehicles he’s restoring. A healthy lunch awaits and then back to his computer to finish the client projects before a deep dive into his passion project, Now You’re Smarter.

“I’ve been doing this for other people for so long now, and they’re potentially making the big money, that I’ve figured I should be the content creator and producer of my own show,” he says. “The show is filled with fun facts, different what-if scenarios mixed with comedy, funny characters, live shots, stock footage, fair-use clips, all produced right here. They’ll be 15 – 20-minute episodes, some shorter content, some longer. One episode explores ‘Cilantro; is it Food or Satan’s Soapy Salad?’ Another is ‘Why do Men have Nipples?’ I’m shooting for 100K subscribers in 2025.”

A far cry from the McDonald’s drive-thru voice work his father predicted, Martin has the skills, experience and drive to continue to make big things happen.

“My dad was a huge Red Sox fan, and before he passed away we were watching a game and a Budweiser commercial I voiced came on. He looked over at me, grinned a little and nodded. That was cool.”

Check out Now You’re Smarter at YouTube.com/@nowyouresmarter