Meet Steve Dubbz | National Director of Hip Hop and R&B Branding for iHeartRadio. Voice actor and freelance producer.

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

Hi Steve, have there been any changes in how you think about work-life balance?
This is a big one. Probably the most important issue I’ve faced in my career. With success comes that craving to always achieve more. Enough is never enough. Work was life for a long time. 12-13 hours a day at my actual studio and then another hour or so of work at home. I work in an industry that doesn’t shut off and one where personal boundaries aren’t always respected. As a creative, it’s very easily to burn out and I was well past that point. I started to lose the love of my work and focused on all the negative that came with it. Covid changed all that for me. I made the conscious decision to cut way back on the amount of time I spend at work. Purely for my own mental health. The world had slowed down and I took that as an opportunity to take back a bit of my life. To start, I made mornings mine. As a parent, I’m up daily around 6am. Getting lunches made and the kids off to school is a daily role I took on a long time ago, but what changed is instead of dropping the kids off at school and then rushing to the studio, I now go back home. I relax and start the day on my terms. Another cup of coffee, a good workout, never obsessing about the clock. I no longer have any early morning meetings, VO or production sessions (unless it’s urgent). I come into the studio when I’m ready.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I started my radio career as a 19 year old college student in Connecticut. I don’t know if it was my love for music (Hip Hop and R&B specifically) or the fact that I had this natural ability to produce, but I was immediately infatuated with all of it. This was in the late 90’s when digital technology was just starting to come into play. While going to school fulltime I taught myself how to use these new programs. DAW’s (Digital Audio Workstations) were so new to the industry that I ended up even teaching some of my college classes due to the fact that the professor didn’t know how to use the new technology. I interned, networked and lucked out. At the time, radio was still the main source of how people got their music and connected to their community. The industry was very saturated and gigs weren’t easy to come by, especially as a kid fresh out of college, however I landed a job in Albany, NY fairly quickly. From there my production work gained the attention of some voice actors who were very big at the time (and still are today). That’s when I started getting offers to take on freelance production gigs around the country.

Here I was, this 22 year old working in a mid-sized market in upstate New York, now producing for some of the biggest radio stations in the country. This is when I knew I needed to move to a major market and expand my career. At 24 I was offered a job here in Miami and haven’t looked back. There was nothing I didn’t love about South Florida, especially coming from the Northeast. Fast forward nearly 20 years, on top of my day job at iHeartRadio, I have my own company where my voice and production can be heard on hundreds of brands worldwide and I have handled projects for some of the biggest names in the music industry.

Nothing is given to us in life and especially when it comes to career longevity. I attribute a huge part of my success to the fact that I was willing to take on as many jobs as possible. I didn’t care about the hours or how stressful it was going to be. I knew that if I wanted to be a house hold name within the industry, I needed to have my work showcased in every major city in the country. I’ve put in the countless hours, I’ve networked with the right people, I was signed to a talent agency in NYC and LA and I’m just getting started. My next career goal is to truly break into voice acting outside of radio and streaming platforms. From TV and animation to video games, I’m auditioning weekly and juggling multiple levels of my career at once.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
There are a few names I’d like to shoutout from early on in my career. People that helped me get to a position that allowed me to truly excel and takeoff.

– My first boss, Dave Delaney in Albany, NY. I did a summer internship for this guy and the company he worked for. He hired me right out of college and that’s where my professional career really started.

– Pat Garrett and Dr Dave. Two legendary voice actors that heard my work, realized my potential and hired me as a freelance producer for some of the biggest brands around the country.

– Jake Redman and Rob Roberts, who hired me in Miami. It was a dream job and location. Who knows where I would have ended up if he didn’t take a chance on me.

Website: www.SteveDubbz.com

Instagram: @SteveDubbz