My first real showbiz job was on a Nickelodeon show called 'Hey, Dude.' That was my first real paid scriptwriting job.

I still run into people in the business who skip over any other credits I have and say, 'I loved 'Hey, Dude!' This was back in '88, '89, '90. It was a goofy show about kids working at a dude ranch in Arizona. We did 65 episodes; I wrote 13 of them. We didn't know what we were doing, but it was writers' boot camp. It was great.

Hey, Ivory. You did a great job.

He said, 'Hey dude, I wrote this script. Would you consider doing it?' I asked him to talk to me next Wednesday and went on the road for the weekend. He hit me up and I told him that the script was great. I hadn't even read it.

These guys are good, there's no question about it. But hey, we get paid like they get paid. We've got a job to do like they've got a job to do. Who wants to do it better? That's the whole key.

'The Voice' was the first real job I've ever had that wasn't just messing around with music.