A Twisted New World

The year 2020 was supposed to be a real eye-opener. Well, it certainly has, but not as expected. Amazingly, a pandemic crippled the world more than any other in history by closing down economies, shifting our health priorities with masks, gloves, shield, disinfectants, “social distancing” and more.

I don’t know about you, but my voiceover business tanked in the beginning through June. Then sometime around July, my base clients began to re-emerge and as of this October day, I was slammed all day. Several new VO clients have come to roost and roost well indeed.

I’ve always been an eternal optimist. Sometimes blind faith, sometimes through devoted prayer. I consider myself very blessed in my life. Family, friends, career, business…it’s hard to complain. Because anytime you get so far down – you KNOW it’s got to get better. So have some faith in yourself and the world around you. Twisted as it may even seem.

I’ve had some tough breaks. But who hasn’t? I remember a teacher in my growing years conducted a simple experiment. He asked each student to write down what was the one thing SO BAD that they were currently dealing with. No paragraph, just a simple, one-sentence phrase. We each did it and folded our note as instructed and placed it in his hat as he passed it up one row and down the other. After which, he shook the hat vigorously and then proceeded to march up and down each aisle as each student pulled out a folded note. No one could tell who’s note was who’s. But one look around the room showed on each one’s face, how they did NOT want what they had picked out of that hat. Without fail and without anyone speaking up, the teacher said…”So you thought YOU had it rough?”

The diminished stature of each one of us told the tale. Someone had just lost a parent, another had lost a sibling to cancer or a traffic accident, or a parent had lost their job or a sister just found they had an unplanned pregnancy…. the list could go on and on. No one knew who had put what into the hat. But we all knew we preferred to have our issue we had put into the hat, then someone else’s. It was a very quiet end to that class period that day.

In our industry, there is always something that becomes today’s headline of “OH NO!” …but there always seems to be a better day ahead if you just look for it and make everything you can out of it. I know I try. I may even try a little harder.

A New Decade – Time to Evolve?

Looking Ahead In 2020

We know it’s a new year and a new decade. So, is it time to re-evaluate and plot a new course as our industry evolves? In a word, YES, if you don’t want to get passed by.

Our VO industry is changing. Clients are finding voice “talents” that are willing to work with Fiverr standards. Well, ya get what you pay for. Right? I’ve heard from a variety of clients who say, out of the 100 auditions for a job, from one of the Pay-2-Play sites, 80% of the quality of the audio was frightfully bad. Out of the remaining 20%….10% had quality sound, but talent was below par and the last 10% were decent. However, when you’re going through 100 auditions and the quality is so shaky, you begin to lose the will to live. Aaaaggghh!

Over my adult career, commercial broadcast work was my bread and butter up until the late 90’s. Along came narrative projects, eLearning, movie trailers, video games, voices for toys, telephony, (IVR), etc. So many more items have needed our voiceover skills as each day passes. Many voice actors are now adding Audiobook work as part of their repertoire. Add in Messages-On-Hold, In-Store TV Networks, Training videos, cable TV programs, retail check-out scanning prompts, corporate training… the list goes on and on.

Seems like every day there is a new voice item being added to our ever-growing list of potential voice work. I am still supporting my regular clients that send me commercial broadcast and MOH projects, but I’m finding eLearning and Explainer videos have become my favorite forms of voice expression.

Our jobs, as the mouthpiece representing various clients with their variety of products, is an exciting and creative avenue to our ever-changing world, where a human voice is needed to communicate. True, artificial intelligence (AI) has raised its ugly head as an alternative to a live human voice, but a real human voice is still the de-facto majority.

What form of voiceover do you do best? What category excites you? Do your homework and find out who these clients are. LinkedIn is a great place to run category searches. (Thank you Tracy Lindley) Find out all you can about them. Their website, their latest news, their latest products that have gotten press. So many things you can learn about a potential client. Appeal to their love of their company and show genuine interest. That goes a long way if you are as excited about their news as they are.

As one of my favorite motivational people says, “GO GET IT!” (Thank you Corey Dissin)

A New Year….perhaps a New Direction?

     2019?  Really?  Sheesh…seems life is moving so fast, the older you get, doesn’t it?  You wake up Monday morning and stretch and then look around and it seems its already Friday!   Good Lord, what’s going on here?  I’m hoping that means that I’m enjoying life so much, that I need to stop and take a breath and “smell the roses“.  Well, I’m going to be my usual self and be the eternal optimist as my norm.  You?  Does it feel that it too is moving fast for you also?

     We’ve been doing some things a bit differently as I prepared for this new year at home, “Paradise Found“, as I call it.  I have a budget!  So that means in order to live like I have become accustomed to, I need to bring in some more dough or trim my expenditures.  I’m also on a new diet. (lifestyle eating change) so far, so good.  We’ll get back to that at a later time to bring you up to date.

     Regarding voice work…I’m re-focusing on doing more e-Learning projects, Narrative jobs and Explainer Video’s.  I like long form that you can get “into” without doing any audiobooks.  That’s just not my gig.  Been scouring the Net to find the right people behind this new avenue of interest to me.  I’ve done a lot of narrative voiceover projects during my career and as you grow, your direction can seem to want to explore some of the areas you’ve touched on before.  And this seems to be my new interest. And my studio today is more suited to it also, with equipment and acoustics with room to spread my arms out without hitting a Auralex wall.

     And may I say that I truly appreciate what the good people at GVAA, The Global Voice Acting Academy, have done over this past year.  They have documented and refined a living and breathing document called, The GVAA Rate Guide.  They have taken feedback, input of all kinds, from all avenues of voice talents and blended it into a working Rate Guide that makes sense, reflects today’s voice workplace and is fair to clients. When negotiating working rates, I simply send them to the guide and say, I fall in line with those prices and support them.  About 95% of my clients have not balked at all.  If everyone is on the same page, the only difference is the quality and style of the chosen voice artist.  Ya gotta love it.

     What are you doing differently?  I hope you too have challenged your “typical normalcy“, otherwise, it’s like they say, “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, is the definition of Insanity.”  Hey, I didn’t come up with that…But it’s true.

Summer of 2018

     Well, I got to admit, I’m hearing a lot of VO folks saying that business is slow.  Yup, me too, except this month, I got lucky with one of my clients who sent me enough scripts to shake the bank account into an unexplored arena and I am so very grateful.  I feel blessed when the planets align and I am able to breath a bit more comfortably.

     We must be aware of good times and bad.  Whenever it get a bit sparse, use that time to your advantage.  Send out your Thank You cards to your latest clients who were smart enough to use your talent recently.  Perfect timing.

     Or super-serve that new studio who is using you for the first time and hopes to complete his project and make his client happy.  I just did that this morning in a session.  They were looking for another style of read that would please their people.  Our success is based on making all the clients, of those clients, of their clients happy. Follow?  Yes, it all trickles downhill. And it begins with our ability to give them the best that we can as voice actors.  In fact, they received exactly what they asked for, but their client wasn’t totally pleased.  So, another session was scheduled to make their client happy.  Not only did they receive another read, as they requested, I gave them a variation of friendly and conversational, corporate, another not sell-y or pushy, but prideful. plus, a backup version with minor little personality gestures to make it special.  They were very pleased.

     Going the extra mile to release your inner being and to show your versatility will come back in spades.  Producers remember who makes them sound and look good. Especially with a new talent that can do it again and again and doesn’t act like they are doing you a favor by hiring them.  Yes, they are still out there.  But they are thinning out a bit.

     Marketing, re-branding and basic communication is the key to utilizing this “extra” time we have during slow periods.  Thank God for our foundation clients that use us on a regular basis.  They keep the bread on the table.  But in order to get the butter, one has to be looking down the road and adding in new clients and sprinkling in those special gigs that only come to us when we have been available at the right time and looking in the right direction.

     What do you do when your biz is slow?  I’d be anxious to hear your insight.

Closing one season and opening a new one…

     How was your year?  Did you improve your standings and income?  Did you gain any big clients or lose any?   For me, it’s been a year of change.

     Last year (2016) began with one of my favorite producers retiring from one of my biggest clients.  Hate to admit, they were a majority percentage of my income. Plus, right before that, another agency I worked for, decided that one of the “cheap spots” online services, could cut their voiceover expenses and do car spots for $35 a pop.  Wow.  I was surprised, but not without knowing, they were cheapening their product.  Apparently it was time to kick in a major VO marketing plan myself. BUT…just weeks later, I was moving my entire life from Indiana to Arizona for the first time in my life.  If you’ve ever done that, it can be incredibly consuming.

     My plan in Arizona, was to settle in and ramp up my voice marketing and also purchase one of those Vocalbooth.com  sound booths for my new rented condo, until I found the “perfect” house.  My last quarter had been very good, and I didn’t realize at the time that those client loses wouldn’t be replaced with new clients as quickly as they always had been.  So a move, a new  sound booth and some serious foundation loses began to shape my move after I got to the Southwest.

And then…

     I found a fabulous home just north of Phoenix in mid-winter of 2017.  I decided to build my ultimate voiceover studio.  Auralex Acoustics helped me design it to their specs with my contractor. And we did utilize the previous VocalBooth, as part of the north foundation wall. It turned out to be an incredible sounding room. It was 8x 11 and it was so awesome, Auralex wanted it to be their new voiceover example of their products in action.  You’ll hear more about that later.  I am so pleased at the result.  So happy to go in there each day and knock out such superior sounding voice work in such an incredible studio – now proudly called Anthem Studios.

     Even with the income loses, I did pick up a few new clients that have made 2017 palatable.  I was certainly not eating TV dinners. But I am looking to improve my client base this next year for sure.    I call my home, Paradise Found.  It truly is. Life IS good. I am embracing my challenges and continue to develop my career.

     I hope I can enlighten my fellow voice talents to diversify.  Be sure you have a variety of clients.  Clients that are not so big, you rest on your laurels.  This can drop the bottom out of your income base in a second.  I learned that the hard way.  And I knew better.  I even spoke to several of you about this, way before they pulled out.  You just can’t have too many eggs in one basket. Please look at your client list now and be sure you don’t have anyone being so big, if they pull out, you’re in trouble.

     I am quite a positive-based person, that I can continue to learn, improve and drive my career to that next level, as I have done throughout my career.  Have faith in yourself and forge ahead with A PLAN.  One that takes all considerations into your career path.  What we do is not rocket science.  But it is talent-based, and our thick-skin allows us to take the audition rejections with the same zest as we do as we DO when we get the voiceover jobs.

Research – Plan – Follow-thru

     Make 2018 your year to take your VO career to the next level.  I know I will be.