VO BOSS

This week Anne and Tom Dheere discussed the landmark agreement between SAG-AFTRA and Replica Studios. They discuss how this deal will shape the compensation, usage rights, and ethical considerations of voice performances in the age of AI. They look at the details of this complex partnership, examining the potential ripple effects for both union and non-union talents. They emphasize hinges on the necessity for voice actors to stay informed and proactive in the face of advancing technology that could redefine our industry. They confront the pressing issues that voice actors encounter, such as leasing AI technology and the critical need to secure royalties and licensing fees. The BOSSES cover the intricacies of fair AI voiceover rate structures and underscores the urgency for collective bargaining and new legal frameworks. 00:01 - Intro (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss, a VEO boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza. 00:20 - Anne (Host) Hey everyone, welcome to the VEO Boss Podcast and the Real Bosses series. I'm your host, Ann Ganguzza, and I'm here with my special guest, co-host Tom Dheere. Tom, I'm so excited to have you back, yes thank you so much for having me again this has been so much fun. 00:35 So, tom, there's been some news in the industry and I think all bosses should always be following up and be current on news that's happening in the industry, because it directly affects our businesses and so there has been a groundbreaking agreement between SAG-AFTRA and Replica Studios, which is an AI company, and I think we should talk about this and how it affects us and how it affects our businesses. 01:01 - Tom Dheere (Guest) I agree. Now just to get disclaimers. One I am a SAG-eligible member. I am non-union, so I am not a member of SAG-AFTRA. So I was going to say I don't have a horse in the race. But all voice actors, regardless of union status, has a horse in the race of what's going on in both the union ecosystem and the non-union ecosystem, because they all have a major effect and influence on each other. So I am a member of NAVA, the National Association of Voice Actors. 01:29 - Anne (Host) Myself included Yay. 01:31 - Tom Dheere (Guest) And we know that NAVA, including providing health insurance and education of the industry, is also a major advocate of making sure that voice actors are both safe from predatory AI practices but also are empowered to embrace AI to move our voiceover business forward if we feel that it aligns with our value system and our business model. 01:52 - Anne (Host) And Tom, I know you and I both we have taken time to educate ourselves within the AI industry and about synthetic voices, and I think we are hoping to encourage others to do the same so that they can make smart, educated decisions, and this is going to be part of that very important discussion. So, absolutely, myself, I am non-union. However, things that happen in our industry this can be setting a precedent for how I'm going to say how AI companies work with voice actors, as well as how consumers view AI and synthetic voices, and I think one thing I remember Tim Friedlander mentioning in one of his discussions was that, if nothing else, it's really started to bring awareness to not just our community but everyone out there of what sort of impact synthetic voices and AI can have on our industry, on our voices and our rights, our intellectual rights, our intellectual property. So talk about what you know of the agreement. 02:54 - Tom Dheere (Guest) Okay, so the first thing I'll say in regards to that is about late 2021, I took a meeting with replica studios to talk about their voice cloning process, and I'm pretty sure you've talked to them too. 03:06 - Anne (Host) Yes, I actually interviewed them on the VioBoss podcast. So, bosses, make sure you listen to that one. 03:10 - Tom Dheere (Guest) Exactly, and different AI production companies have different business models. They have different reasons for entering the industry and how they go about their business. What replica studios does is they work, at least right now, in the video game bubble, which is they work with voice actors to create very specific performances. So, like I think I auditioned for the part of, like the crazy old West speculators there's gold in them, not huge Like. I'd submit it to be considered for one of those. So, and if you do get that, you get paid, and that performance can only be used for that performance, both on a technological level, because they can't turn your crazy mining prospector into an astronaut voice or another voice Now. 03:54 - Anne (Host) is that because that's established with the company? Are you talking about all companies? 04:00 - Tom Dheere (Guest) or I'm talking about Replica. 04:01 - Anne (Host) Okay, replica, okay. So Replica has an agreement in place where, if you create a voice with them and it is used for a video game, it can only be used for that particular video game in that particular instance and they cannot make additional dialogue or additional games from that voice or. 04:19 - Tom Dheere (Guest) It is my understanding. Also, I watched the Navas wonderful but two hour long question and answer thing. So forgive me if I misquote. 04:28 - Anne (Host) No, everyone should be watching that as well, oh absolutely. 04:31 - Tom Dheere (Guest) It's on YouTube. Go to the Navas website and there's a link and you should definitely watch it. It was fascinating, Cause you learn not only about AI, you learn a lot about how Sagrafftro works. Cause Zeke talked in severe detail wonderful severe detail about how bargaining works and contracts work and agreement works, and all of that. But historically, replica would use your voice as a placeholder during production of the video game, as opposed to using your voice to be cast in the video game. Smaller roles. 04:57 - Anne (Host) Yes, yes, when I interviewed them, that was their process and you were paid. You were compensated on it. Not a character, a video game character, but a character. How many characters were used? You get paid on a character basis in a monthly contract. 05:11 - Tom Dheere (Guest) Right, and that one character could be used as a placeholder in production in multiple video game production companies making multiple video games and smaller roles could also be used by that and you would get compensated for that. So this agreement Sagrafftro agreement with Replica basically just sets up the relationship how Sagrafftro members can work for Replica studios and they have set up a studio per hour rate you know of the actual performance and then they have set up the usage or licensing of what happens when your voice is used and how long it's used for and what the compensation is. I think it was per 300 lines or something like that and then there's incremental payment. Zeke made some very, very interesting points, because one thing that a lot of people have been saying is like why isn't Sagrafftro fighting AI? Why aren't they trying to ban AI? And he said that. To paraphrase, he said they had a choice they could either try to prohibit AI or they could try to regulate AI. 06:10 - Anne (Host) Absolutely. 06:11 - Tom Dheere (Guest) And he and Tim agreed that they are five to 10 years too late for prohibition of AI, even if they wanted to prohibit it. So, as a result, their only recourse is to get involved with regulation of AI. 06:23 - Anne (Host) I think we should reiterate that, Tom, yes, rather than prohibition of AI, which, look, technology happens with or without us, right? And so prohibition of AI could have been really difficult, really really difficult to enforce and probably would have, I think, destroyed the industry, to be honest with you. 06:38 - Tom Dheere (Guest) That's what he said. That's exactly what he said. 06:40 - Anne (Host) Therefore, again, we don't have a choice as members of the industry, we don't really have a choice. I mean, we either fight back and quit or we evolve and we work with it. And I think that it's admirable of a company because right now I wanna talk to you about there's no regulation for companies right now, and it's interesting because I just interviewed Auskirkowski from DeepDubb AI, another AI company that does dubbing and localization of voices, who are also very much in the fair transparency, compensation to the voice actor, and there's something to be said for companies that say right, that they are fair and transparent and compensatory. Is that a word? 07:21 - Tom Dheere (Guest) Compensatory. 07:22 - Anne (Host) Compensatory. Thank you For voice actors in the industry, but it's also another thing because there's no other regulation. They say it on their website, they say it in their policies, but there's nobody enforcing it. So I think for Replicca to come forward to SEG-AFTRA and make themselves accountable, at least to an organization that directly deals with our industry in such an impactful way, I think that that was great. Now the nitty-gritty of the contract. I've not been privy to see that. However, what makes me a little bit nervous is that, first of all, we're voice actors. We know voice acting. 07:59 Replicca is an AI company. They know AI, and so I know from working in technology for 20 billion years that there's a lot of misunderstanding. People that don't understand the technology can be talked into things. Possibly they can be coerced into agreeing to things that may or may not serve them in a positive light. However, at some point you've just got to put faith in a company that they're going to be ethical and transparent, and I think this was a good move, and I guess possibly there's loopholes in the contract, but I do believe we're working towards something that's positive in the industry. 08:33 - Tom Dheere (Guest) Here's one thing I've been talking to a lot of people about. Is that? Well, for one thing to your point is that there is no federal legislation to hold AI companies accountable for artists IP right now, and Nava has been working with Capitol Hill and there are multiple bills in the works If you go to the Nava website it has links to show you the legislation that they are working on which is great. 08:59 There are a lot of people I've been hearing in the voiceover industry saying all AI companies are, by definition, unethical. These, I think, are also a lot of the same people that have been saying for 20 years that all pay-to-play sites by definition are unethical. Neither of those are true. They're patently false. No matter where you go in any industry, in any sector of any business all over the world, a certain percentage of the people involved are going to be unethical. 09:26 - Anne (Host) Bad actors, bad actors, bad actors. 09:29 - Tom Dheere (Guest) Every industry. The voiceover industry is no different. So that means a certain percentage of people who are voice seekers on pay-to-play sites are going to be predatory and will try to rip you off, and a certain percentage of voice actors on pay-to-play sites will underbid, underbid, undercut, which damages the industry. Same thing with AI. There's no difference. It's just that people are going to be how they're going to be, so all you can do is bring your value system with you. It's like a bad client, yeah, and we all have bad clients. 09:56 - Anne (Host) And it's something that I'm always talking about. Right, it's one of the reasons why I have my voice in AI series, with over like 35 interviews with AI companies is to educate yourself, and that was really the basis for myself. Educating myself about the industry is just talking, and one thing I think that is so important is that we have a dialogue with these AI companies, we make it known and I think Nava is just doing wonderful work in helping that to happen and for really fighting for voice actors on behalf of the organization and I think that all of us just need to educate ourselves on what is happening and, just like a bad client like I educate myself on a client. There are telltale signs when I can get a feeling about a client, if they're going to be a bad client or going to be difficult to work with. And I think AI companies are no different, and I think, first and foremost, companies that are out in the forefront of the industry today and there's a lot of AI companies or a lot of little tiny ones that have popped up and not survived, but the ones that are there in the forefront, the larger companies I think that they are responsible for providing an ethical ground, Because I don't think that consumers first of all will stand for companies that are not ethical in their treatment of humans, because it becomes like this whole thing. 11:16 I mean again, we're also a product of or a slave to the industry in which we work, right? So if consumers are wanting synthetic voices, or if synthetic voices will provide a space in the market, will provide something of value to a market, and Oz said to me the other day he said well, normally there would be all of this content that wouldn't be dubbed, that wouldn't be created, because it's simply the process of doing so takes such a long time and it's kind of like the audiobook genre and the audiobook AI companies that we're trying to make audiobooks with synthetic voices, and so there is a lot of content out there that won't get produced simply because it is a process to do with a voice actor, now that a voice actor isn't desired or better. However, there's some content that it may not be as necessary to have a human voice. 12:08 - Tom Dheere (Guest) Yes, and I'm pretty sure we've had these conversations before in various circles that there is some content, like a product manual, that would never get narrated by a human because of you know, there's just so many of them and it's not cost effective. But an AI can do that. Our good friend, karen, vice president of NAVA, uses the example of no human can narrate the New York Times overnight, and those who are visually impaired have just as much of a right to enjoy the New York Times with their morning cup of coffee than any other sighted person Absolutely. 12:43 - Anne (Host) An. 12:43 - Tom Dheere (Guest) AI can help provide that service. It's where you get into other areas. And actually there are people who because I've had conversations with people who say, nope, that's still not art, that's still taking jobs from people. That is still unethical. There is a certain percentage of the population that there's just going to be no talking to. 13:02 So it's like okay there's going to be no convincing. And if that's their value system and they think AI is an affront to art and an attack on art, and with some of the bad actors and predatory companies, yes, it absolutely is. But this conversation and it's not really about art, it's about technology Technology always wins. It always wins. Now, when I say that that doesn't mean well, we should all surrender and sell out and clone our voices and get paid a nickel, you know five cents on the dollar and just eat dog food and live in a hovel because we can't thrive as artists in the voiceover industry and get paid rates that are commensurate with the industry standard. 13:45 But there are ways to navigate the industry, whether you are pro AI, anti AI or can't be bothered with AI and have the potential to still be able to thrive as a voice actor. And this agreement with SAG-AFTRA and Replica is a major step, major, major step in that direction. Because, as you also know, the rate structure for compensation for AI whether it's to have your voice cloned or some other service where they're gonna synthesize your voice just for their website or just for this bit of software, much less getting it put on a website where anybody can subscribe and use it. It's still the Wild West. Now, with SAG-AFTRA, they are providing, thank goodness, the beginning of some sort of rate structure that we can all start to work with and find out if it's a viable one. 14:31 - Anne (Host) I'm so glad that you brought that up, because that is still we talk about. The Wild West rates have always been a Wild West right, especially for non-union. So what's really wonderful is that, yes, if SAG-AFTRA is getting involved. And of course, I've been telling the GVAA to get on with AI rate structures because, again, how much do you charge or how much should you get paid? And of course, now you're actually doing like a royalty share really with a company that produces that voice, because you cannot produce your own AI voice, I mean literally you have to lease an engine to do that or work with a company for them to produce it, and then ultimately, they're the ones. 15:07 Let's see if they have an interface that allows you to go in there and do a text to speech or a speech to speech generation of those files. You're still leasing that engine that does that, and that is something that you do not have control over. I mean, that is not your studio, and so, in reality, you have to pay for the rights for that studio to produce that audio. That's what I think about it, and I think about it as being it's more than just a studio to produce that synthetic voice or those audio files. It is the studio and it is also pretty much kind of the voice actor in a way. 15:44 It's like a percentage of you that is being used and so we can't possibly get paid what we're probably used to because we were used to controlling that ourselves. And it can only help the more people that get involved in this discussion, because I will tell you that a couple of years ago, when I started interviewing companies and we started talking about rates, there were no rates set and in fact nobody really wanted to like even comment on a rate. There were some people that flung out oh 10%, Voice actors would get 10%. And voice actors heard that and got completely insulted, not understanding the technology. 16:21 Now I say well, who says 10%, why not ask for 50%? Right, it's my voice and their engine, so why not start at 50%? It seems reasonable to me, Any good negotiator, right, If you're going to work with a company and you're going to have an agreement on a rate structure or a fee schedule, you can always negotiate. And so if SAG-AFTRA is working with rates and we've got other companies that are setting the rates, this is the thing when the company set the rates. It's kind of like who says the number first, right, they win right. 16:54 Or you know what I mean. If I ask what's your budget? Right? That's the proper way to negotiate, right? You don't say the number first, but if you set it, I feel like we have some footage. We have some ground to discuss and talk about what would be a fair compensation. Because, again, we want our voices to be valued. And again, this whole agreement with at least replica saying we're willing to step up to the plate and we're willing to be held accountable by an organization right For fairness, transparency and compensation for actors to get paid for their value. But what is that value? That's the question in terms of a synthetic voice. 17:34 - Tom Dheere (Guest) Right, right, voice actors are in the business of licensing our art. That is what we've always done. That's always what we've done. We're the artist in the booth, yeah, which is our session fee, and then, if it's a broadcast commercial, union or non-union, then we license that performance, which is the usage fee. There is zero difference between that and what the SAG-AFTRA replica agreement is. They will get paid a certain amount for being in the booth and then they will get paid for the use of that. So, union or non-union, you're in the business of licensing your art. This is just more of a codification of it in relation to the. I don't know if you'd call AI a genre, or I don't know what you well pay to places in a genre either. It's a portal, I guess, because I've always said there are three portals in the voiceover industry for casting opportunities representation, online casting and self-marketing. Maybe this is the fourth one? Yeah, maybe. 18:30 - Anne (Host) AI. 18:31 - Tom Dheere (Guest) Maybe it's like a three and a half one, but we want to license our art. Look, unless you don't and if you don't, then you work for the seeing eye here in not here in New Jersey, but across the water or you do stuff for learning online. Yeah, and you narrate stuff pro bono, which there is a place for. That that's art too. It's just you're not licensing your art, you're donating your artistic ability to do that. 18:53 - Anne (Host) And when you do that, by the way, it's kind of scary because anytime, like our podcast, like this podcast here, or anytime I put my voice out there, out on the internet, right now there's no regulation of it and so, theoretically, bad actors, companies that are not ethical, could be taking that and making voices, which they probably have, I would assume that. 19:13 I guarantee it I guarantee that, if you're known in the industry at all, you've got your voice out there, that your voice. 19:18 And we've seen that also where there have been some companies, unethical companies that have been producing voices or taking, you know, scrubbing the internet for voices, and that is something that is unfortunate. However, it's something until there are regulations, laws in place, that I mean. Gosh, how many times we talk about it, like with our phone, have they been listening? Have they been recording? Absolutely, and so that data is theirs. They can use that to develop anything. But at least now I think that, yeah, we're kind of backpedaling, but we now need to at least make our voices heard and the more organizations that can help us to do that right SAG-AFTRA, with this agreement with Repuka Nava helping us talking on the podcasts about it, and you and I being open and transparent saying, hey, I have a synthetic voice. I have a synthetic voice partially because I was educating myself on how voices got created, what companies I would want to be working with and really, until I take those risks, I don't know and I'm not educated. 20:21 - Tom Dheere (Guest) Right, and being a voice actor is a risk in itself. 20:23 - Anne (Host) Sure is. 20:23 - Tom Dheere (Guest) Because it's such an unpredictable, chaotic, no guarantee of any income ever kind of industry. And also I've been doing online auditioning since 2006. Right, so I guarantee I've had multiple auditions stolen and I'm sure my voice has been cloned in some capacity many, many times, just like every website you've ever been to or ever will go to has been or will be hacked, and our social security numbers are all over the place, and it's terrible and there's really not much we can do about that. Retroactively moving forward, we do everything we can to protect our intellectual property and engage in safe practices. So auditioning for some text to speech thing on a pay to play site, I think is a terrible idea. 21:05 Scheduling a meeting with a AI production company and asking questions about how do you operate? Sure, what is your compensation structure? Sure, what's your licensing structure? Can I see an example of your agreement so I can take a look at it or send it to an attorney to review it? Even if you don't want to clone your voice, I strongly recommend doing that so you can just have an understanding of what the industry is, because this is going to be more and more a part of the industry and there will eventually come a point where there will be legitimate ethical casting notices on pay to play sites. In regards to AI, which Nava has done a great job with Voice123, for example, to help curb that tidal wave of felonious casting notices that was proliferating the Voice123 site until they had a conversation and said, if okay, so if clients want to post a text-to-speech casting notice, they have to answer these questions and really answer them. And then all those casting notices vanished literally overnight. So that tells you something. 22:01 - Anne (Host) It does. 22:02 - Tom Dheere (Guest) So the VO bosses, the bosses out there, need to know how to protect themselves, while at the same time understanding that this isn't going anywhere. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. Ai is a disruptive force, just like the light bulb disrupted the candle maker industry. And who gave a darn about the candle making industry, except for the candle makers? Yeah, very true, so you know what I mean. This is a part of the industry. You got to learn to embrace, adapt evolve and grow or you're going to get left behind. 22:29 - Anne (Host) Absolutely, and you need to educate yourself about how the industry is evolving and again, you will be left behind if you are not educating yourself. So, bosses, go out there and sign up for Nava. I cannot recommend that anymore. Nava is doing wonderful things. Listen to the VO Boss Voice and AI series. Listen to Tom and I talk about it. We have a couple of episodes We've already talked about it on the VO Boss episode and really just read everything that you can familiarize yourself with, everything that you can, so that we can move forward and have successful businesses along with this disruptive technology. 23:03 Because if it's not AI, it's going to be another disruptive technology, and I'd like to challenge any boss out there and ask them if they are not using some form of AI to help their business right now and being hypocritical and saying, well, you can't use my voice, but yet they might be using I don't know chat, gbt to do something to make their business run more efficiently. So there are multiple AI opportunities out there that you can utilize that I think are wonderful to help your business run more effectively, and Tom and I just made do an episode on those. That's not a bad idea. So, all right, guys. Well, tom, this has been an amazing discussion. I'm sure we could talk about this forever, but thank you so much for joining me again. 23:48 And, bosses, I implore you, if you want to take a moment and imagine a world full of passionate, empowered, diverse individuals giving collectively and intentionally, you too can help to create a world that you would like to see and make a difference. Visit 100voiceshoekerorg to learn more. Big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl. You, too, can network and connect like a boss. Find out more at IPDTLcom. Have an amazing week and we'll see you next week. Thanks, guys, bye. 24:21 - Intro (Announcement) Bye yeah.

Special guest Oz Krakowski from DeepDub discusses the evolving technology in voiceover work, addressing the importance of artist compensation and protecting voice artists' identities in the face of deepfakes and synthetic voice replication. The podcast navigates the ethics of AI, consent, and fair compensation for voice actors, emphasizing the need for trust and clarity in the dynamic between technology and voice talents.

Voice acting is more than just a dulcet tone; it's about connecting, taking direction, and sometimes swallowing your pride. In this episode, we explore how frustrations in the booth can mirror challenges in personal and business relationships—choosing success over being right is an art in itself. We underscore the importance of humility and remaining teachable in an industry that demands constant evolution. Whether you're a newcomer to the mic or a veteran seeking to refresh your skills, this episode promises to arm you with insights and strategies to elevate your voiceover career. 00:01 - Intro (Host) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss a VO Boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza. 00:20 - Anne (Host) Hey, hey everyone. Welcome to the VO Boss podcast and the Boss Superpower series. I'm your host, Ann Gangusa, and I'm here with my very special guest boss co-host Lau Lapides. Hey Lau, hey, Annie, how are you I? Am doing amazing. How about yourself? Wonderful? Happy New Year. Happy New Year to you too. 00:40 - Lau (Host) This is our first podcast since New Year's. 00:42 - Anne (Host) That's right. Right, you know I'm starting off the New Year with some new students and I have come across this before and I want to ask you if this has happened to you. 00:53 There are some students if they're just starting out and I know we've spoken about this before Sometimes you don't know what you don't know, and sometimes it's hard for you to hear what you sound like. And there are many students who come to me thinking that they don't need coaching and that they're fine. They just need to be able to create a demo and they sound fine. And people tell them that they have the best voice, and so I like to call them voiceover virtuosos, and I was just wondering if you've come across that as well, where you've had maybe talent that seemed to think that they don't need coaching, or that they're better than maybe they are, and I don't mean to be so bold to say that, but I'm not quite sure how else to explain it. 01:37 - Lau (Host) And this is a really tough kind of non-PC conversation because we want to be kind and have some etiquette, Absolutely, and be courteous. We're not here to rip people apart and make them feel bad about themselves. That's counterproductive to who we are and what we're here for right. 01:52 - Anne (Host) Right and actually Law. I remember when I first started I did not have an ear and I would think to myself I think I'm delivering what I'm supposed to be delivering. It sounds like what I hear out there in the other commercials, and so I don't hear where my coach is coming from. I don't understand their direction, I don't see what I'm doing wrong. 02:11 - Lau (Host) So I don't think I'm doing anything wrong, and so I understand it from that perspective, because, as a talent, I felt that way a little bit myself, and I think it could be a combination of all sorts of things, whether it's lack of resources, whether it's pure laziness, whether it's not having the ear, or it could even be that I don't know what I don't know. 02:33 - Intro (Host) I don't know what I don't know, like I don't know what I'm missing because I haven't done it yet. 02:37 - Lau (Host) I haven't done the training right. 02:39 - Anne (Host) Yeah, and I don't know what it's supposed to sound like. 02:42 - Lau (Host) And so how do I know if? 02:43 - Anne (Host) it's incorrect. And sometimes it ends up being where you're like I don't understand what my coach is saying, and then sometimes you'll question the coach. Even I've actually had some people question the coach. It's so interesting. It's such an interesting phenomenon. 02:58 - Lau (Host) It is an interesting phenomenon and it happens at all levels too that I observe. I had a coaching session for a client, a brand new client, on Saturday and a working actor a working voice actor clearly booking and booking a good ratio overall was frustrated. She wasn't getting the natural read and getting commercial bookings. Long story short, she's a pro, she's working no-transcript. After we did that hour she confessed. She said I have to be honest, law, my mind is a little blown because I didn't even think of any of this stuff. I didn't work on it. I said well, that's our reality. That's why we're always in professional development. Yeah, yeah, there's new ideas, new techniques, new ways of thinking about things that bring out Something in you that you simply can't do on your own. You're not able to do it on your own right. 03:46 - Anne (Host) Well, I think, when it comes down to it, you are providing a service to someone and you need to be able to be directed To the sound that they would like to have, right? There are lots of performances out there that are simply directed to how the person that's directing here's it in their head. Now, does that mean that it is, I don't know, that natural Conversational read that everybody asked for in the specs, because that just seems what everybody asked for a lot of times. No, I mean what comes out in production. It may not be that. 04:19 However, over and over again, casting directors and agents are looking for that read. And I think when you get to the level where you have an agent and you have casting directors that are asking for that, you need to bump up your acting to that level. And just because you're booking Over and over and over again, first of all, consider the source of where you're booking, consider the source of who you're booking with. It might be an e-learning gig, it might be a corporate gig, and they may not be as how shall I put it as Selective, yeah, of a director that's looking for that natural read. Now, myself as a coach law and you as a talent agent, I am always asking my students to give the most natural engaging acting performance, because that is the only way I know to teach my students to be able to have the Versatility to give a director what they want. No matter what they want, whether they want a commercially sounding read, an Announcement sounding read or a natural read and there's. 05:18 - Lau (Host) You know, you can't skip over the fact that there's a fun factor. 05:21 There's a performative fun factor that when you're working with a director or a coach or an outside party who's giving you suggestion, giving you food for thought, pulling things out of you, there should be a right keyword, should there should be this Excitement, this energy, this yeah, herb about doing that and making discoveries and having that audience with you. 05:42 And I think if you miss out on that, you say I don't need any, that I'm gonna skip over as much training as I can, I'm gonna save money. I think you're really skipping over a pivotal part of what makes us us that when we're in the booth alone and when we're doing our own self-tape or whatever we're doing, we can call upon those experiences. It's like a sense memory thing. I can remember what my coach said to me, I can remember how I was directed and then I hear their voice, like as an actor, I literally hear their voice and I can go with that. If I miss all of that, then I almost have to put a lot of stress on myself to create that, to inspire the creation. Yeah, you know what I mean. 06:25 - Anne (Host) I think there's a lot to be said for really knowing the director, or understanding the director that you're working with too, in terms of there's a lot of things that come into play here. Where is this going to air? Is it local versus regional, versus national? Is it going to be an internal website? And so understanding and being able to supply the read that the director is looking for is so very important, and I think that the more you develop your acting skills, the better you can understand that and be able to give that director what they're looking for and also understand, like, for example, I was just discussing with you earlier that I had a local political spot right, and, of course, they ended up putting a ton of verbiage into a 30 second spot, which is almost impossible at the speed. 07:17 I was going to sound natural and engaging and conversational, because I needed to step up the pace. I kind of knew that. I knew, okay, here's a local spot, I'm going to have to step up the pace a little bit. I'm not going to be able to give this person a natural read. They weren't asking for it either, though, and so they really just wanted certain words that were inflected properly, and just having the experience and understanding what they were looking for, I was able to provide it almost I'm going to say not immediately, because there really were too many words for the scripts that we did have to cut out a couple of words. 07:48 But once that happened I mean I had a good idea in the beginning of what they were looking for. And I think as you get more experienced in this field and you start working with different directors, you'll understand. You'll be able to kind of read a director and figure out what it is that they're looking for and then be able to adjust your performance appropriately. But you need to have those acting skills in order to be able to adjust your performance. 08:12 - Lau (Host) That really is what makes you the pro that you are, because it's not only about the talent and the delivery, it's also about the timing, how quickly you work. 08:21 Are you focused, like all the bad habits that we have as people in the world we have to train ourselves out of, and we need help doing that, because sometimes we're just not aware of them that I'm constantly looking at my cell phone to check messages, or I'm fixing my whatever, or I'm not listening, or I'm not acutely taking notes on what I'm hearing, and so that's really important too, to practice that, that taking direction. 08:48 Really, that could be the kiss of death for you. If you're not good at listening, if you're not accurate about interpretation, asking just the right question and giving them what they need, then you look like a time waster, then you look like someone who's just kind of like flailing around and costing a lot of money on the other end, versus someone who can get right to. You know, one of the bad habits that I have a number of actors that do this and voice over, that do this is they explain, they start to get into explanation mode, they start giving the narrative oh, I'm so sorry, and the apologies unnecessarily. I'm so sorry. I was only doing that because you know I was thinking about my mother and not understanding the difference between what is a coaching session and what is a casting session and what is a booking session and what are really the differences, you know, and not expecting something from the wrong person, like I can't expect feedback from casting, necessarily, or from a client necessarily. 09:44 Sure sure, you're either going to book me or they're not going to book me, right? So clients are busy, right? The coaches should be giving me the feedback that I'm looking for. So if you don't do the process, then you don't get the feedback, then you literally are in the dark. Yeah, what you're giving, right? What you're giving out. 10:00 - Anne (Host) It's also hard to and again, we're not trying to shame anybody or make people feel bad. 10:04 It's just simply when you are first starting out and you're questioning. But here I feel like I sound. I sound better than that commercial, I sound better than that person. Again, developing an ear and I think there's a whole scientific process to it as well is what you hear in your head and what you hear in your headphones. If you have your headphones on and you're delivering something or you're recording something is very different than what somebody else is hearing on the other side of the glass. 10:30 I should say across the pond, across the pond on the other side of the glass, because on the other side of the glass they have their own ideas as to what they are looking for. That sound to be like Right and you always want to assume that if they've given you casting specs where they want it to sound natural, like you're talking to your friend Right? There's so many things to take into consideration. Yes. 10:53 And first of all, I'm going to say there are some clues. If it's probably someone who's been in the business for a long time, I think you can bet on the fact that they're going to be able to tell you if you're sounding natural and authentic. And also sometimes, if all they do is automotive commercials, what is it? Tier 3? Cliff Zellman would know this. Tier 3, tier 1. Tier 3 automotive commercials. That's typically a high powered cell. You'll also be able to tell a little bit by how it's written. So I think there are clues that you can research before you're in the middle of that session and also understand that when you're in a live directed session, just like you said, that can be entirely different than when you're in a coaching session. And so when you're in a coaching session with a trusted coach okay, it has to be a trusted coach, and again, that's hard for people that are just coming into the industry who's a trusted coach? Well, there's lots of ways to find that out and I think we probably have a couple of episodes on that. 11:46 How do you know, like, who to coach with? And a lot of times, word of mouth will be one of your best bets on that, and also testimonials and ask around and talk to potential coaches to see what's their experience level. Do they work in the industry? I'm not saying all coaches need to work in the industry in terms of do they need to do voiceover. There's very few out there that are good that they're not actually voice artists, but they're actors, they're teachers who teach acting as well. But also, if you've got a coach that works in the industry, that's going to be helpful too. And if you're new, just because you're frustrated and that's a big thing law that I see is that people get so frustrated and when they don't understand well, I don't understand what you're asking for, or I don't understand what I'm doing wrong, or you're not. 12:34 - Intro (Host) And they start to argue and they say you are not. 12:36 - Anne (Host) I don't understand your direction, and so they'll start to put the blame on the fact that there's not good direction. Now, sometimes there isn't good direction, right, sometimes there just isn't if you're not with somebody who may have been in the industry for a while and is good, which is why I don't love pure lead workout groups law only because I don't either. When you're listening to direction from another peer, who may not have enough experience. 13:00 - Lau (Host) that may set you on the wrong path, in a way though, annie, isn't it good in the sense that you're going to get bad direction at times? Yes, you really are Like we can't assume that. Oh, they're professional, they're a company, they're going to give us great direction. Sometimes you're being directed by Jim in Cubicle C who knows nothing Absolutely. It's kind of an interesting improv exercise to learn how to say yes and learn how to say oh. That's interesting, okay, let me try that. Oh, how, wow, okay, and you're thinking what? That's ridiculous. I don't even know how he came up with that. 13:32 - Anne (Host) That's half my directed session. That's your whole world. 13:35 - Lau (Host) But the point is that's the reality, right. We have to deal with that Absolutely. We have to be able to tolerate that and you have to be able to deliver and not argue. 13:41 - Anne (Host) Not argue it Not question that you have to be able to deliver what they're asking for and, by the way, anybody that coaches with me, of course you can give me the read that you hear in your head, but that's not the read I'm looking for and even if the script doesn't seem like that's what it's written for. That's the biggest argument I get is people are like but the script isn't written that way and I'm like I don't care. 14:00 The worst thing is that you'll get a script that's written very advertising, very selly, and then you'll get the specs that say give me something like you're talking to your best friend, and then, ultimately, my student will deliver it the way it's written and very advertising and very annoncery and other things. But that's not what I asked you for, but that's not how it's written. I'm like that doesn't matter. I'm asking you to give me a very engaged read and that is a very tough read and one of the reasons why I insist on that is because if you can get yourself to that level, to a very engaged, authentic read, when it's written very advertising, very selly, that's going to get your acting skills Up to the level that I think you need to be able to give versatility. 14:43 - Lau (Host) Yeah. And ask yourself this question, which really we could ask ourselves in a lot of situations like being married. I've been married 23 years. Sometimes I literally have to self direct and say, all right, do you really want to argue that? Do you really? Is it that important to argue that? Do you want to be right, yeah, or do you want to have a happy marriage? So, in terms of your business relationships, do I always want or need to be right, yeah, yeah, absolutely or do I really want to have success in this connection? And I choose the latter. I try very hard to choose the latter. By the way, did you see that catch of the light falling over? That's my theater experience. 15:21 - Anne (Host) I don't know if you caught that. No, I didn't, it was falling right on me. 15:24 - Lau (Host) I was making a point, I put it right there. That's kind of like the metaphor of life. You always have things falling on you, right, but it's just kind of like is it more important to have it perfect or is it more important to have it done? Just get it done, please, the client, have that callback for the next job. It's not that important that I make the point that the script is wrong. 15:46 - Anne (Host) Oh God, absolutely. That's the last thing you want to do. 15:47 - Lau (Host) That's what I'm trying to say we never answered that funny question at the top about how do we deal with all the talent that come in and they really kind of think they're ready for certain things they're not ready for. 16:01 - Anne (Host) Well, and then there's always the difficult position. If they think that they don't need additional coaching or additional sessions, then they think that you're trying to take advantage of them. 16:11 - Lau (Host) Oh, of course, and make money, yeah, to make money, that's right. 16:15 - Anne (Host) I mean, look, I guess you just have to know who you're working with and there is a level of trust you have to have. And again, it's so hard for people that are just starting out in the industry and we always emphasize to see if you click with your coach, Trust your gut instincts as well about your coach. I'm going to say and I'm going to say that, like if you don't know the industry and if you start questioning your coach, then it becomes like is that a relationship that you want to continue? If you're? 16:44 at that level where you're questioning if what they're saying to you is correct, exactly. 16:49 - Lau (Host) And if all else fails, you have to do what we used to do in the theater when we'd go to see our friends in a really bad show and a really bad performance, and they'd always come out backstage and go what did you think of it? Did you like it? I was like great, I worked hard. You have to think diplomatically. What would you really say to them? And we would have a ball coming up with things like. That was interesting. You really challenged yourself. I was moved. I mean, you really surprised me there, right? 17:19 So you have to think about how do you respond to people that really need a lot more. They need more training, they need more time, they need a better demo. And they're like oh, I just spent 3,000 on this demo. You telling me I suck. I'm like no, I'm saying this is your starter demo. This is your first demo. It's a process demo. It's good for what it is. Now you want to get to the next level of things. It's not about yes, no, right, wrong. It's not structurally black and white in that way. It's much shades of gray shades of gray nuance, nuance, nuance. You know what I mean? Absolutely. And the talent has to realize that it's not. You're good and it's done, or you're not good and it's not done. 18:00 - Anne (Host) Gosh, that's so true. It's not like, okay, I'm good, I have my demo, I'm good, I'm ready, I'm ready, I don't need any additional training. I'm constantly telling my students actors spend their lives honing their craft. Yes, I feel as though, like if you're thinking about like Meryl Streep, do you think Meryl Streep achieved her acting from the get-go, from the very beginning? Has she not, over the years, improved, taken on more challenging roles and just really challenged herself? 18:28 And I think that, as voice actors, we all need to do that, whether you're just starting out even if you get booking after booking, after booking after booking and again understand who your client is. If you're doing a lot of e-learning, you may not have a very demanding client. They may just want you to read it nicely and articulately. But when your coach says to you, please do not just read it to me, I want to feel as though you're my teacher, I want to be able to listen to you for the next two hours and be engaged, then understand there's a reason why they're saying that and maybe not question that and say, well, it's good enough, because I think to really get to the upper echelon right, to make it and to be successful, it takes time. 19:12 It does, and I think there should be a whole episode of like how long does it take? I know I've done it before, but I feel like it bears with eating. Yeah, and there has to be. It can take more than a year and honestly, it should take more than five or six sessions with a coach to be a good actor. Goodness gracious. No, it takes much longer than that. 19:31 - Lau (Host) Absolutely, absolutely. And just know that there has to be an element, or there should be an element, of humility and being humble and having some modesty about your work. I always have a red flag If I work with people that they're very egocentric and they're all that. They're great. You should recognize that I feel like the best actors talent colleagues I know are people that have value. They recognize their confidence level, their self-esteem. But there's a lot more to learn. 20:01 There's always there always so humble I think there isn't that sense of like. You're talking to me. You know who you're talking to. I'm a pro. I always have a red flag about that, because I feel like they've stopped their process. 20:13 - Anne (Host) They stopped their learning, they stopped their growth, they stopped their learning. 20:16 - Lau (Host) Yeah, they stopped their growth and they're going to challenge you. They're going to question you, they're going to argue with you, they're going to take it up with you if you don't agree with their mindset, and so I think they're going to be harder to direct harder to work with. Yes, yes, yes. So I think it all goes hand in hand. It's like be kinder, be more open and modest, be a little bit. I'm not saying be insecure about who you are. 20:37 I'm saying have security, have confidence, have joy about who you are and what you're doing, but also leave a lot of space for growth and development and discovery. You have to have humility in order to do that. You can't think you've done it all and know it all and are ready for everything. None of us are ready for everything, yeah. 20:55 - Anne (Host) Yeah, agreed, agreed. And also, when you are challenged from your coach right, and there's something that you're not agreeing with, try to keep an open mind. I think that's the one thing that we can ask of you as an actor try to keep an open mind about what they're saying. So try not to take it so personally, number one, like when somebody is telling you that this is not. I don't think a coach will say, oh, that was horrible. But there are some that might say, oh God, no, no, no, no, no. Let's try that again, and it might be, really fighting with your confidence level. 21:30 So really just try to. When you're being challenged by your coach, try to keep an open mind, try to not take it personally, and I know it's so difficult to do that because to me it's like, oh my God, like you're telling me, I'm not good, and that's the first thing that comes into my head. I'm like, oh my God, I'm not good, I'm not good. 21:47 - Intro (Host) And so then that just ruins the next read. 21:50 - Lau (Host) It's a catapult and don't explain. Yeah, don't narrate, don't explain, don't justify, don't do any of those things, because it's not a blame game. It's a time to give more information and more detail. And then on our side, we promise, annie, and I promise not to say things like don't quit your day job. 22:09 - Anne (Host) Exactly, exactly, unless it's a joke unless it's a complete joke and that you're aware of it, of course. 22:14 - Intro (Host) But yeah, I basically don't say that. 22:16 - Anne (Host) But I am tough, I don't want to waste my student's time and I don't want to waste my time, and so if a read is not going the way that I like it, I will say nope, nope, I'm going to stop you right there and let's pick it up again. I'm not going to have you go through an entire read and then I'll say no, because, first of all, I think that for a lot of the work I do, it's long reads anyways, it's long format, and so it's better if I stop at the point where I can make a teaching moment and the student can learn from it at that particular time. But sometimes people will get discouraged by that and it's such a tough thing it really is Because, again, what we do is so personal. 22:54 And if a coach is continually stopping. Nope, nope, that's not it. Nope, that's not it. Okay, I don't believe you, I don't feel that You're not connected, and that's what you can look for with your coach. 23:04 - Lau (Host) Right, how does your coach respond to you, give you feedback, give you critique? Do they lose their temper? Are they getting angry? Are they getting irritated? Is it taken personally? I mean, just start looking for that. 23:14 - Intro (Host) Right. 23:14 - Lau (Host) Some people love that. I've had people come to me and say look, be tough on me, S&M style, rip me apart. I'm tough and you know, the funny thing is the first thing I say they fall to pieces because I can be really tough and they're like Really, Are you really think that I'm like? I thought I could be tough, so? But I mean, I think that there's a professional barrier there. Yeah, absolutely, that you have to pay attention to just as a best practices protocol. Yeah, you don't want people tearing you down. You don't want people making you feel bad about being a person and what you're doing and the choice that you're making in your career. You want someone to say I'm going to make the leap of faith and assume you want to be doing this, You're going to get good at this and you care about it. Now let me take you to the next level of where you're at. 23:58 - Anne (Host) I work with people all the time because long format narration right, and it's tough. Yeah, I work with people at a very intense level and so it's frustrating. People think they're going to get it by tomorrow and it's one of those things. It's no, it's just really difficult. I really ask a lot of my students and so there are a lot of times my students will get very frustrated and they will start to take things very personally. But it is not that at all for me. 24:22 I mean, I'm an educator and anybody that's worked with me knows my heart of hearts is to educate and that is what I try to do. And even though it is very tough sometimes then it becomes like not only am I educating on the acting part of it, but then there's the whole mentality part of it where you've got the added oh gosh, now I'm hurt, right. Or I've instructed somebody, I've given them direction and they have now taken it personally, and so that then is also affecting their retake or their read again, and so there's a lot of things that can build up. So just know that if you've got a good coach that's working with you, their intent is to really make you a better actor. I think that's something that your gut intuition can really tell you a lot about that. 25:05 - Lau (Host) Yeah, and be honest with yourself. 25:07 Like, take a checkpoint and say how much honesty am I willing to take? Can I put on a little bit of armor and be able to take the truth? I've had a lot of people say law, just be truthful with me. I'd appreciate it, because they're spending money and they're spending time, and so truth does not mean like kick my butt. It does not mean like rip me to shreds. It means be truthful about what your perception is, so that I can get better. That's all it is. You know what I mean. Absolutely. I love this Great conversation. 25:37 - Anne (Host) Yes, law. Oh, my goodness, wonderful conversation. So, bosses out there, we know, we know you can do it, but I want you to just give yourself some grace, listen to your gut and really find a trusted coach that you can work with and work through all of this, because it's not something that's simple and, more than likely, if you haven't been doing this for a few years now, you may not be as good as you think you are, and I mean that in the nicest way possible, I mean that in the most teacher-centric way possible. So give it a shot, guys. All right, yeah. So take a moment and imagine a world full of passionate, empowered, diverse individuals giving collectively and intentionally to create the world that they want to see. You can make a difference and you can find out how at 100voiceswhocareorg. Also, big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl. You too, can connect to network like bosses. You guys have an amazing week and we'll see you next week. See you next week, bye, bye. 26:42 - Intro (Host) See you next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, ann Gangusa, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at vobosscom and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via IPDTL. 27:09 - Anne (Host) Hey bosses, woohoo, I'm so excited to announce our third audition demolition coming up live September 27th and our uh, it died. Ugh. Oh, all right, damn it. Good morning, kiss me off. Kiss me off. That was good. I didn't know. F***ing sh**. Audition deadline the 20th. Okay, september 27th, all right, that's my problem. I just don't have it in front of my face, so that'll end up with bloopers.

In this episode, we talk all about relationships with your agents! We provide insightful advice on timing your communications effectively, being respectful of the recipient's time, and staying top of mind by sending short, meaningful messages. Also, we stress the importance of following up and consistently being professional. In the latter part of the episode, we highlight the essence of open communication and mutual trust between voice actors and agents. So, whether you're a voice actor looking to break into the industry or an established talent seeking ways to enhance your networking game, this podcast episode has you covered. Join us as we bring you the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today! 00:01 - Intro (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss, a VO boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza. 00:20 - Anne (Host) Hey everyone, welcome to the VO Boss podcast and the Boss Superpower series. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and I'm here with my lovely, amazing boss, co-host Lau Lapides. Thank you, ann, awesome to see you today. Hey Law, yes, so awesome to see you too. 00:38 So the other day I was prepping for a new year of my VO Peeps group, where I have guest directors come in once a month to do online workshops, and the very popular ones are typically ones that have agents such as yourself and casting directors. And I was going through the list okay, what casting directors, what agents do I know? And there are some agents that I don't know but I would like to know, and agents that I do know that I've dealt with before, and I thought there has to be a protocol because I need to introduce myself to them. Right, and I know a lot of people when they want to get an agent, they have to introduce themselves to an agent, and so I thought it would be a good time to talk about protocol when working with an agent or reaching out to an agent or casting director and then maintaining a relationship. 01:29 - Lau (Host) That's a great topic. Let's talk about that. Yeah, absolutely. 01:33 - Anne (Host) So I'm going to ask you, because you are an agent, so tell me, what is your preferred method of? Let's say, a new talent wants to be represented by you. What do you recommend, or how do you prefer that someone reaches out to? 01:48 - Lau (Host) you Right, that's a great question. 01:50 I'm one of those people that is out in the world, so I'm not just at the office, I'm also out in the world. 01:55 So I'm speaking at conferences, I'm invited to events, I'm doing online training. I'm like all over the map and partly it's to educate and partly it's to meet new talent, and I make that very clear. I'm very transparent about that and that's a very New York LA sentiment for actors that if they want to meet casting and agents, they oftentimes will take classes, they'll work with those people in the training, in the conference, in the group, so that they can see a little bit of their work or at least get to talk to them, because I feel like a human interface is so much better for me than just getting an email if possible. So I love it when people are in a class, in a group, in a session, and they point themselves out, and that could be as simple as maybe they ask a really smart question or maybe they volunteer to do a read, if they're allowed to do a read, or maybe they put their contact information in the chat if it's online. 02:51 My point is I love proactive people because I know proactive talent are going to be much easier to work with than talent who's passive or shy or just unknowing or newbie and they're waiting for magic to happen. I love people who are partnering with me and creating magic on their own too, so I love when they reach out in person at an event, at a class, at a happening. Number one that's my favorite. If it doesn't happen that way, it's okay to email and submit. I welcome that and I need that because we're still growing our roster. However, I will say one thing Kiss it, keep it short and sweet. I get too many emails and I know you do as well that are three, four, five, six paragraphs long, telling me everything that's going on. Do it Even with someone. I know I can't get through it. I just don't have the time to read through that whole thing. Just one paragraph right and just throw in your links. 03:51 - Anne (Host) I think anytime you send an email these days, the shorter and the sweeter you can make it the better, the better. Every person has time to read a full page of email. 04:03 - Lau (Host) No, and I need to see it right up front, like we call it, above the fold. So if I get to the website for instance, if you have a website that's terrific. Anything you have online I just need to see it quickly. If I have to scroll all the way down or go to another page, it's hard because I don't know what I'm looking for and I don't always want to hear all of the animation, demos or all of the other kinds of work that you do. It's a great reference point to have, but I don't always need that. So targeting the person you are courting is really important. If I'm courting a commercial agent, the commercial agent just isn't going to be as interested oftentimes in your animation work. 04:40 They'll like to know you have it, because they'll consider you're working pro, but they may not represent that kind of work versus an animation production house. You have to have your animation demos with an S, not just one, but more than one, and that's got to be front and center. So I say target your market, know exactly who you're reaching out. To. Keep it short and sweet, kiss it. Keep it short and sweet and give them exactly what they're looking for upfront. If they want more info, they'll ask you. 05:08 - Anne (Host) Oh, I like that. So how do we know what information to send? 05:12 Because here's the thing, right, let's say, if there is an opportunity to meet them in an online workout or at a conference, that's a great way to get in front of an agent and I think that that has worked really well for a multitude of students I know that have gotten taken on a roster after they've appeared in a workout at VOPEAPS and also at conferences. I've seen that work out really well for people. But what if there are some agencies that maybe are not looking to fill their roster just yet, or maybe their roster is full but yet people want to introduce themselves and maybe make an impression? Is that a favorable thing to do and how should they do that? 05:48 - Lau (Host) Absolutely. And you have to remember just because you're in front of someone does not mean they're interested in working with you. It doesn't mean they're even interested in receiving a submission from you. So I do find the more I meet fellow agents and casting and producers, the more articulate they are. If they're on a panel or if they're doing a workshop, they'll tell you oftentimes the very straightforward people and they'll say hey, yeah, I'd like to see your submission, I'd like to see your work, or no, I don't give out my contact information. I'll check in with you in a couple of months if I need anything. So typically they're pretty articulate to say if they're comfortable you contacting them or not. 06:27 And if you do contact them, what exactly are you contacting them for? They don't fool around across the board. They wanna know exactly who you are and what you want. What are you contacting them for? Otherwise you're bothering them. You know what I mean. Like it's a typical letter that you would send out to any prospect in business. Like say don't give me your life story, no one cares. What they care about is why are you coming to me? Sure, what are you looking for? 06:53 - Anne (Host) And I think that it's very important to understand. Just as in direct marketing, I deal with this with the VO, boss Blast, right. I have a lot of clients that are like look, I sent out my marketing materials to all these people on the list but nobody's contacted me. It's very much a timing issue, meaning there has to be a need. It's not like you've submitted auditions right. When somebody's come to you with auditions, right here I've got an audition for the spot. There is a need, right. It's a demonstrated need that I've got a commercial I'm producing or I've got some sort of promotion that I'm going to produce and I need a voice artist or I need a voice actor for that. When you're direct marketing and kind of saying hi, I'm here, can I get on your roster you don't know at what time you're reaching right. Is there a need for you on that roster? And if not, it's gotta be one of those things where it's a gentle sort of inquiry into and, as you said, keep it short and sweet, because otherwise you are bothering them because maybe there is no need. 07:54 And I always go back to my old how do we buy? How do we purchase, how do we acquire things, or how do we get things that we need Right now? It's been a crazy holiday season, right? So I am signed up for all these mailing lists, right? And I get three or four emails a week from the same companies, but yet I don't have a need for anything that they have. But when I do have a need, I'm then looking at that subject line, I'm looking into the email, and that's a very important part of determining whether I'm going to read that email and then purchase or, let's say, entertain the option of having somebody on my roster. 08:34 So the timing has to be right, and so sometimes you could send emails and nothing happens, and that's very true, I think, with reaching out to Asians or casting directors, right. I mean, you may not get any response, and then you might be like, oh gosh, have I done the right thing? And I'll tell you that, the one thing that you want to do, just as in yourself, right? You don't want people to be annoying. You don't want to read a book because I don't have time to get through that book. It needs to be short and to the point and respectful of their time. 09:04 - Lau (Host) I would agree, oh my gosh, totally agree. And I would say, you know, it's the old FOMO thing. It's like keep top of mind. If they see you, enough, you're branding yourself, so you're seeing you they get to psychologically feel that you've been in business forever. Even though you've been in business for two years, they start to say, oh, they've been around, I don't want to miss out on just seeing quickly what John Smith is doing like and then they trash it. Great, that's what you want. So that then when they have the need, they think John Smith, I always get his stuff right. So it's that sort of keeping your finger on the pulse of what is happening in all of their worlds and not falling into that mindset that you and I speak about all the time, the narcissism of, like I'm ready to work, I'm here, why aren't they hiring me? Well, they don't need you. 09:51 - Anne (Host) Right, top of mind is so interesting for an agent, right, like I love that. We said you do need to be top of mind. So that means you reach back out, right. If you don't hear anything, you reach back out. But how often, law? This is the question. How often do we reach out Now for marketing and soliciting voice acting services? 10:09 I think you can reach out to somebody once, twice a month, three times a month, and if you give them the option to unsubscribe right For direct marketing, that's awesome. I personally think we should add that option to unsubscribe if you're reaching out too many times to an agent or a casting director, because that will tell you right away if they have a need or not, or it shows that you're considerate of their time. And I actually just kind of came up with this right now. I'm like gosh, that would be nice, a nice option, if you just threw at the end of your email just say hey, I would love to connect with you. Please let me know I'd like to follow up with you. Maybe not next week, but I'd like to follow up with you in a few months. If you would prefer that I don't, please let me know by hitting reply and that kind of thing. 10:52 - Intro (Announcement) I love it. 10:52 - Anne (Host) I think that would show number one, that you're considerate of their time. Number two, that you know how to conduct yourself professionally and not be a pain in the butt, because I know that when people send me unsolicited emails, I get annoyed. If there's more of them that come in the next day, or what happens in I have Gmail, it shows in a thread. So I see like, oh, you've sent me five emails already pretty much following up and I have not responded to you, so you would think take me off your list, right? 11:19 - Lau (Host) Right and I think that that's honestly. I think it's inferred nowadays that if I don't want to get your stuff, I go to the bottom of your email. I find my preferences, I find my M subscribe me or my assistant can do it in like 15 seconds. It's okay, I'm used to doing that. It's like that's part of our thing that we do these days. But most of the time I actually don't do it, unless it's a big box store or a huge corporation that I have no interest in at all. 11:42 I want to know what my talent's doing. I want to know what prospects are doing, and what we will say is we try to be really kind, both as the studio and an agency. So if someone comes in and they're sending me their stuff and they're not a good fit, we'll write to them, we'll let them know. We won't just let them hang in the balance. We'll say, hey, you're not a good fit for our roster right now. Could you please come back and check in in the next three to six months? Perhaps you'll have updated materials, perhaps you'll have a couple of cool jobs to share with us and we'd like to relook at that later which we would we would, and that's really nice of you, but not all agents will do that. 12:16 No no, they won't, and so if they don't. 12:18 - Anne (Host) I think that it's absolutely a professional thing to actually, in the email at the very end, just say I would like to contact you in three to six months Again, if that would be okay with you. If not, please let me know that kind of thing and that just shows that you are respectful of them and their time. And also don't forget, bosses, to really research the person that you're sending out to, like you should know like what is this agency specialized in? What does their roster look like already? Are you filling a hole in that roster? Because, again, there has to be a need. I have to have a need to buy from Old Navy that pair of shorts or that T-shirt. 12:55 - Lau (Host) I'm glad you said that Because so few people are Googling or going to websites Like you should be. Before you blast anyone, go to the website. Make sure they're legit, see where they're located, see if that's the market you want to cover. See the kinds of voices that they're working with. Now when do you fit in that whole realm? It only takes you five minutes or less to do that. And let's say you're going to paste. What I call pasting is doing a blast of like 50 or 100. 13:20 - Intro (Announcement) So spend a Saturday doing a little bit of research. 13:23 - Lau (Host) It's worth it, because what if they're interested in working with you, then you know nothing about them, right? You want to have some working knowledge if you meet with them or if you go back and forth with them. I also want to say any, too, because so many talent have a lot of reps, which is great if they're freelancing, if they're not signed exclusively, they should. Our agency is freelance, not exclusive, so we know they're going to work with six or eight or 10 different people. Sure, keep them straight, keep them straight. Here's what we found. We found a number of auditions that come in every couple of auditions have the wrong slate on them, with the wrong agency, because agencies, as we all know, on the national front, will get some of the same science and some of the same scripts and be very careful that you don't do. 14:11 We were really offended by that oh gosh, yes, I would be offended because number one, that told us they weren't playing it back and listening to it, but number two, that they would send that in. And number three is, like, have an awareness of like who's sending you what and who's doing what I'm just going to say. 14:27 - Anne (Host) Way to get yourself kind of blacklisted. 14:29 - Intro (Announcement) You know what I mean. We didn't do that, but we were making an impression when you do that. 14:35 - Anne (Host) And that impression sometimes lasts for a long time. 14:38 - Lau (Host) We won't forget that. We know exactly the people that did that and they didn't do it on purpose and we're not going to have any malice towards them, but we're watching them. If they do it again, they could be dropped, because we don't want to not hear that, because we're too busy. Send it out to a client and then it goes to another agency. Okay, so that's one thing. The other thing too is like when you sign a contract and I'm sure most of these places you're going to have you sign a freelance agreement of some kind. Read it. Some of the folks are not reading it. 15:07 And we've had a few people that don't have source connect and they're up for bookings and we're like wait a second, you signed her agreement. It said right, we've dropped a couple people over that, because we're like, we're not going to be at your home doing this for you. 15:21 You got to do it for yourself and that's sad, but it's like that's the nature of the protocol and etiquette scene. Oh, another question. We get to law. I don't want to offend anyone, so if I'm getting the same script from a couple different offices, how should I treat that? For us, it's very simple. For me, it's simple. You do my script. Well, some offices do say that they actually threaten the talent. I've heard that behind the scenes they will threaten the talent to drop them if they don't do theirs, which I don't like that. I don't like scare tactics. I would say it's up to you. You can either go with the first one that sent it to you for time sensitivity, just go with the first. Or, if they're coming in the same time, two or three offices, just choose the one you have the best for them. 16:01 - Anne (Host) I agree, I agree. 16:02 - Lau (Host) It's up to you. We're not going to be offended in any way. Oh, and the other thing I want to say too is please and I'm only talking for us, I'm not talking about every other agency, I'm only talking about MCVL Don't tell us you're passing on a job, just pass, because we could get 20, 30, 40, 60 emails saying sorry on vacation, sorry, I'm passing, sorry I'd be like it's okay, we got plenty of talent. We're going to be submitting for this, it's okay. I think sometimes talent feel like I'm being selected personally for this audition. 16:37 - Anne (Host) I feel like I have an agent who does select personally, and so if I can audition, they will get upset if I don't. But you would know that. See, that's the thing. You should know your agent enough. Exactly, you should know your agent enough. 16:48 - Lau (Host) Yes, we do that too. So if we have a hand selection, we'll say, hey, we chose you for this Exactly, or our producer asked for you and we did it. You would know that. Otherwise, just assume it's coming to a number of people, not just you, right? Unless you hear from them. 17:03 - Anne (Host) Well, I remember when I initially signed with you, I was like, look, if I cannot respond to an audition, you won't be offended, right, because I do have an agent. That will be like, no, why did you not respond? And you were like, no, that's entirely fine, that is up to you, and so it behooves you to understand or have a relationship enough with your agent so that you know about these things. 17:23 - Intro (Announcement) You know if it's appropriate to respond, Just ask Now look. 17:26 - Anne (Host) How do you feel about people keeping up with you on their latest accomplishments? I think new demos are always good. Hey, you know, I just produced a new commercial demo. I wanted to send it to you so you can have an update. 17:39 - Lau (Host) Yeah, they do it, annie, they do it, it's fine, our pros do it. Pros in the roster will do it. That they'll say, hey, we got a new demo or we just did a job for this, or whatever. Tim and I always give really positive feedback and it's really great Just to kind of know what's happening. I don't need that. If you're not represented by us, I really don't need that. What I would need is, clearly you're submitting to the agency. So every couple months, just send a nice little letter and have your website updated and that's enough. We don't need to hear every single thing that you're booking or everything that you're doing, unless it's so huge. Now we kind of have to know about it. 18:13 You know what I mean Just be careful how much time and brain space you try to take up of people that you're working with. Less is always going to be more. I also wanted to talk to you about something that recently happened with one of our roster talent quite by accident, I think, not intentionally and that was this person auditioned for a gig in September and the clients didn't make their decisions. They're now whittling it down and checking availability. So we put it out to the couple talent we're checking. 18:42 - Anne (Host) That's three months bosses. By the way, that can happen, just FYI, over three months. Yes, over three months. 18:47 - Lau (Host) Yes. And this person came back and said, yeah, I'm going to pass on this because it's not up to speed with the rate guidelines that I'm looking at and I'd feel more comfortable and I know this talent and their phenomenal right. And we came back and we said, listen, we have to tell you you already auditioned for it. You forgot about it. Here's the MP3 right here and you have, in essence, agreed to the terms that you auditioned for. That's not to say we're not ready and able and willing to go fight for some more money, which we do, fight for more usage, which we do. That's like innate with us to do that. And that talent came back because they're a fabulous person, and said, oh, I'm so sorry, I literally forgot. It's okay, I'll follow through, I'll execute, I'm available, I got my source connect. That's what we call a mensch in the industry. That's a good person. That's a person that says, okay, I may not move forward on those kinds of jobs in the future, but I already accepted those terms when I auditioned. 19:43 - Anne (Host) That we make really clear, like because we may not be able to get more money on that or more stuff on that, sure and it shows that you're working together in partnership, and I think that that is something that is so important for voice actors to understand that it's not a one way relationship. It really is a give and a take and you are working together in partnership to get this job. I mean, you're both there to satisfy the client and make some money, and I feel that if a voice actor is not gonna follow through or they're gonna all of a sudden become difficult and then start demanding I mean, look, I am all about getting a fair wage and getting fair compensation for our voices, and I think we've been fighting for that all along, and if you don't have belief in your agent that they are also fighting that battle for you right then maybe you shouldn't be together anymore. 20:33 I mean really. 20:34 - Lau (Host) I mean that's the job of the agent. I mean the job is not just to accept the terms and say, oh this is great whatever, but to say, okay, that's what we call leveraging. 20:43 So if we have a great talent that comes on because, remember, the talent is not seeing the relationship in the background that you have to assume there's this whole like a horse with blinders on, there's this whole thing going on that you're not privy to. That is, how well do we know the client? Can we go back and forth with them? Can we shimmy, which we always try to do? Tim is great at it and I try, on my end as well, to say, hey, we got you another 500 bucks and another 1,000 bucks on that one because they saw the logic behind it or they saw it was difficult to get the talent for it. But the truth is I know the truth is non-PC, but the truth is, if this talent decided not to do it, I would still love this talent because they're awesome person and fabulous, but we can replace them in a second. That's just the truth of it. 21:31 I have a hundred people in that category right now, ready to sort of kill nuns to get that job. So it's not something that our agency would be willing to give up. So it's a balance, is what I'm saying? Like, we wanna be fair to the talent, we wanna be fair to the client, we wanna have good working practices, we wanna come back and do more work. So we're pushing. We're always like pushing, pushing, pushing. But sometimes you have to stay and you have to make the decision if you're gonna move forward or not. And it's okay. If you don't, there's other talent who will. 22:02 - Anne (Host) Absolutely Another great discussion. So I think always important to really just get to know your agent, get to know your manager and really educate on the agency. Educate and really be a human being. I think Just be a good human being because that's really when it comes down to it. We are interacting with human beings and we both want a positive experience as a voice actor and as an agent. 22:27 - Lau (Host) And if you do get a manager, I would say make sure the manager knows your agencies and works well with them. You don't wanna hide people under the rug, you wanna have a team, have a team approach. A lot of people feel like if they tell me about their other agencies they're cheating on me in the marriage and I don't treat it that way. I feel like you're making a viable career that makes me happy. That you book something somewhere, it's great. So have that team approach Makes you more marketable for you actually. 22:53 - Anne (Host) So yeah, for sure. All right, bosses, simple mission, big impact, 100 voices, one hour, $10,000 four times a year. Bosses, visit 100voiceshoocareorg to join us and big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl. You too can connect and network like bosses, like Law and myself. Find out more at IPDTLcom. You guys have an amazing week and we'll see you next week. Bye. 23:21 - Intro (Announcement) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, Ann Gangusa, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at vobosscom and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via IPDTL. 23:51 - Lau (Host) And it's 4th of July. I noticed that I have no idea why. 23:54 - Anne (Host) Move your mouse. Maybe that's so funny. I don't have a mouse. 23:58 - Lau (Host) Oh, my God, that's so funny. I'm back. I don't have any mouse. This is amazing. It's almost like your screen. 24:03 - Anne (Host) It's almost like your screen is going to sleep or you're making it Going to sleep. 24:08 - Lau (Host) Yeah, or you're making it explosive, I'm making it explosive, I love that.

Anne Ganguzza and Tom Dheere, discuss fresh strategies to balance work, health, and personal life while excelling in the voiceover industry. We share our trials and triumphs in navigating the voiceover industry from home. We open up about the challenges we've faced transitioning from a structured office job to the freedom of working remotely, and we discuss the importance of creating our own systems and structures for success. Tapping into our entrepreneurial spirit, we delve into time management strategies that have kept us afloat in the world of self-employment. This episode is chock-full of practical tips and insights. So get comfy and join us as we demystify working from home in the voiceover industry. 00:01 - Intro (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss, a VEO boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza. 00:20 - Anne (Host) Hey everyone, welcome to the VEO Boss Podcast and the Real Bosses series. I'm your host, anne Gangusa, and I'm here with my real boss co-host, mr Tom Dheere. Hey, tom. 00:32 - Tom (Co-host) Hello, hello, hello, hello how are you, I'm good, how are you? 00:35 - Anne (Host) I'm excellent. You know, Tom, I dressed up today just a little bit. I still got a little bit of sparkle going on here and if you're just listening to this, bosses, you'll just have to trust me on this. But I did dress up, and you know that's very unusual, tom, because I work from home. And I cannot tell you how many times I'm in the booth here in my sweats and t-shirt and shorts, or whatever it might be. 00:58 And that's one of the advantages that I really love working from home. But I'll tell you what. I've known a lot of people that work from home and it can be a real adjustment. I think we should discuss that and let's talk about what it means really to work from home, because sometimes it's really hard to be productive or sometimes it's hard to stop working. 01:17 - Tom (Co-host) Yeah, that's one of the biggest challenges for people who are transitioning from being in a full-time or part-time environment, possibly for decades, and then coming home and then working from home. One of the biggest challenges is that if you get a job and you someplace you go to whether it's an office or a restaurant or a bank or wherever that you're working you have a set job description with set hours and you're supposed to do this then and that then, and this is when you can have a lunch break and this is when you go home and this is how much vacation you can take. 01:48 - Anne (Host) Yeah 95. 01:49 - Tom (Co-host) And a lot of people are like, oh, I hate it, it's so oppressive, da-da-da. But then they come home and then there's zero structure, there's almost no job description. 01:58 Apart from auditions and bookings, there are no deadlines. So at first the newfound freedom is very liberating and refreshing, but then they're like I have no idea what to do. I have no self-discipline, so I'm kind of all over the place. And to your point, and since I don't have any set hours, some people are working two hours a day, some people are working 14 hours a day, and neither of those are particularly good. Obviously, working not enough is not good, but working too much is not good either. 02:25 - Anne (Host) So, yeah, the struggle is real. I'm in that category, yeah. 02:28 - Tom (Co-host) Where I tend to work those 14 hours? 02:31 - Anne (Host) Yeah, I try not to, but it's very difficult. And there are some people who just it's not conducive to just joy, bringing joy to them, because they find it so hard to either turn off or to focus or to concentrate to get things done or they need that social aspect of being out in an office. I know that my husband was working from home for a good couple of years. He is now again working from home and he's much more attuned to it. He's much more adjusted to it. The first couple of years he was working full time from home he hated it and I know that for me, working full time from home was a big adjustment. I mean, it took me a good year or two to get used to it. I think I was really like okay, so when should I like market? Okay, I've got auditions to do. I know I can do that. Now what do I do? 03:23 I was also still trying to grow my business, and so I think in the beginning I wasn't as happy because I didn't have any direction, I didn't have any guidance, I didn't know what I was supposed to be doing and I thought maybe there is a formula right. Is there a formula for success in working from home? 03:40 - Tom (Co-host) There is. The problem with it is that everybody has to build their own formula. Everybody has to create their own systems and their own structures. I talked to my students about systems of thought how to think about what you're supposed to think about and systems of execution what's the practical application of your systems of thought? And there's so many different parts to it. I basically break it down into time management and workflow how to manage your time and then how to develop systems to do all the things that you need to do. Time management is very, very tough, especially if you're going from a job job a nine to five job where all the time management is taken care of for you for the most part because this is your hours, and you have to do this within this amount of time, and either you get it done or you don't, and if you don't consistently enough, you will no longer have that job. 04:32 That's it. 04:33 - Anne (Host) You know what I mean Exactly. 04:35 - Tom (Co-host) So, understanding how to prioritize and understanding how to focus, those are the two big things. What is more important than other things and how much time should you spend on it? And how to be able to maintain mental, physical, logistical focus on any given subject marketing, billing, audition, booking, balancing your checkbooks, invoicing you know all of that stuff. 04:58 - Anne (Host) Well, let's break it down in terms of your business, Tom. What is your first priority on any given day? 05:03 - Tom (Co-host) Health. 05:04 - Anne (Host) My health. I like that. 05:06 - Tom (Co-host) Understanding that if I am not physically, mentally, spiritually, psychologically, emotionally in good shape, I will not be able to engage in effective time management, and the rest won't matter. 05:17 - Anne (Host) That's actually really an excellent point. Thank you. 05:21 - Tom (Co-host) The third part of it is what are the things that I need to do 24 hours a day to maintain optimal health? Obviously, some days are better than others, some weeks, some months, some years are better than others. 05:31 - Anne (Host) Sure, I got you there, yeah. 05:34 - Tom (Co-host) It starts with and this is a big one, for a lot of people is waking up in the morning. When do you wake up in the morning? Some people are night owl, some people are early risers, and all of that is fine, as long as it's like oh, I'm not an early riser, I'm an night owl. You get out of bed and start working on stuff at like two in the afternoon and then you're done at four. 05:58 - Anne (Host) You know what I mean, unless you had the six hour work week. 06:00 - Tom (Co-host) Yeah, Getting up exercising if that's what you need to do, having a good breakfast for a lot of people, showering, cleaning yourself up getting dressed getting dressed on some level. Making the bed and making the bed, making the bed's big for a lot of people. Our friend Corey Snow, voice actor. He puts on a tie Because it mentally prepares him for his day. 06:20 - Anne (Host) Yeah, absolutely, well getting dressed up and putting makeup on helps me to just, you know, okay, I'm prepared now and I'm ready to go and exercise, of course, now, but that was not the case. As you said, some years are different, right? I mean that was not my priority during the pandemic, which it should have been but it wasn't. But things evolve and change. But now I find that I need to get up and do that Because and sometimes it's exercise after the day is done, because that helps to really relieve stress. 06:47 - Tom (Co-host) Helps you decompress? Yeah. 06:49 - Anne (Host) So it really kind of fluctuates a little bit for me. But yeah, I love that health being number one for you. And what would be your second priority, would you say after that? 06:58 - Tom (Co-host) The structure because, like I said, without the good health you can't operate within a structure. Structuring your time, getting up at roughly the same time every day is extremely important, and then setting up a system like, for example, roughly between 7.30 and 8 am every morning for me is auditions. 07:17 I get as many auditions, as done as I can between 7.30 and 8. That's between the pay-to-play sites, my agents and manager auditions myself, marketing, regular clients auditions. I do as many as I can, so sometimes I sit down, do that and then shower and get dressed and have breakfast. 07:31 - Anne (Host) Sometimes I do it in the inverse, depending on timing of the auditions are all so based on timing. Now I have agents that like to send it around 6, 5 and 6 o'clock and I try to get them done that night if I can, if I'm not too exhausted. Just because if I wait until the morning, I will have a morning voice, which is kind of cool in certain instances. 07:50 But I might need to do some warm-ups to get rid of that voice. But for me right now it's funny because years ago I would never have said this. But right now I am preferring my morning voice. And so I will prioritize my auditions to do the ones that I feel will call for a lower voice first. 08:08 - Intro (Announcement) I do that too Before. 08:08 - Anne (Host) I go ahead and do a series of a bunch of them. 08:12 So, that's very interesting. So, yeah, auditions I think the things that you cannot always depend on being at a consistent time, because auditions for me come in at different times all the time. But I like how you have a period in the morning where you can do those auditions that are not necessarily like I feel like all of my auditions that from my agents I feel are more timely, where I feel like I might have to respond to them within a certain amount of time, and maybe I can't wait an evening or a morning, but certain other ones I can wait, and so I put it in two categories. So I have a specific time, like I like, in the morning, to do auditions, but I also, if anybody needs them right away, I will have to respond right away. 08:51 - Tom (Co-host) Oh, of course, and I tend to batch them. So when I sit down at my desk in the morning at 7.30, I see what I've got, I prioritize and I do the warming up the voice based on what it is. 09:01 But then I'll probably do another batch, like right after lunch, unless there's one, and then maybe I'll do one or two at the end of the day around four-ish but usually by then my voice is kind of like it's not great because I auditioning all day, I've been booking all day, I've been working with students all day, so around four o'clock I'm kind of like on my way out vocally. 09:22 - Anne (Host) That's typically me too, because I've been yapping all day either coaching or doing auditions, and then, yeah, I have to be very careful. Sometimes I choose not to respond to auditions until the following morning when I have more energy because my performance is going to be better. 09:36 - Tom (Co-host) Right and my next priority to actually get around to answering your question. I like to manage my finances. 09:42 - Anne (Host) Next Okay. 09:43 - Tom (Co-host) I like to balance my checkbook, pay my credit card bills, generate any invoices that I need to, reconcile any invoices that I need to. I like to do that first, Like I do my auditions. Then I like to do my finances because, well one, it's the easy to check off boxes, but also I don't want to have those tasks lingering in my head while I'm doing my other things, like my marketing or auditioning or booking or working with students. 10:11 I just like to be like okay, all of my financial stuff for the day is done, it's out of the way it's over here because I know it has a very strict beginning, middle and end balance checkbook, pay credit cards, generate invoices, send invoices, reconcile invoices. 10:26 Sometimes it takes five minutes, sometimes it takes a half an hour, sometimes it takes an hour. But I like having all that done because I want to allocate the creative energy when it's time to get creative or work with students or do the booking. So I like to kind of get that non-creative stuff like done out of the way. You know what I mean. 10:45 - Anne (Host) Now for me I hire an accountant, so my accountant takes care of managing the balancing, which for me is just makes me very happy. She's been working with me for about 10 years so she knows pretty much the categories. But we do meet when we need to and we also have a once a month kind of standing meeting where we make sure everything is synced up and she understands, like if there's any bills that are outstanding and I'll have to check on them and that sort of thing. So my accounting part, for me it takes a little less time, just because that's not one of the things that brings me joy. It brings me joy. I know it does. I know it does I? 11:21 love to do it and I totally get that and it brings my account and joy too, because she loves doing stuff like that. But yeah, and this is a daily thing for you. Do you have to do it every day or no, not every day. 11:32 - Tom (Co-host) I'd say solidly twice a week, once earlier in the week or once later in the week. I mean, I used to say that a project isn't done until the invoice is sent and I used to be very disciplined about sending the invoice as soon as I send the audio files. 11:45 - Intro (Announcement) I don't do that as much. 11:47 - Tom (Co-host) It depends on the gig, obviously. If it's a long form gig or a long term gig, you know if it's an audio book or something like that. But if it's like a quicky explainer video that may require a retake or two that I'm not gonna charge for, I'll just whip it up and send it off. You know what I mean. But sometimes I batch them. Sometimes I'll wait a couple of days and do all the credit cards Because if I'm reconciling invoices, I'm updating my checkbook. You know they're all related to each other. You know what I mean the bills, the checkbook and the invoices. I'd say twice a week I'm probably doing that financial stuff. 12:18 - Anne (Host) Sure, well, the nice thing for me is that I live by my calendar. I live, live, live by my calendar, especially with students and coaching. So I have days that I coach and hours that I coach, and different coaching happens at different times, and so I know when I can set aside time to. You know, I have to go to the doctor or I have to do things like get my hair done or do my nails, and they are in certain days where I'm not working with students. And thankfully I work a lot of non-broadcast stuff so that I have some time, so that if I am in the middle of getting my hair done I don't have to audition or respond right away. I have a few hours. 12:53 I'm always able to like finagle the schedule of when do they need a job done by around my other schedule. But understanding my calendar and having it that consistent is important for me. To have a schedule like what I can make consistent, I think is beneficial If you can make something consistent to make it consistent, because then it starts to emulate, kind of like okay, I can expect to be coaching during this time or I can expect to be doing auditions. For the most part during this time I can expect to be marketing at this time and that makes it easier, I think, to manage the time and focus as well. 13:27 - Tom (Co-host) I agree, I am a huge Google Calendar person, are you? I call her Google. 13:30 - Anne (Host) Calendar Google Calendar. 13:31 - Tom (Co-host) You're a Google Calendar. 13:32 - Anne (Host) Google. 13:33 - Tom (Co-host) Calendar is the best. You want to talk about a great time management skill Like. Here's just a little secret bosses, mm-hmm. Right here. This is my monthly action plan. Everything I know that I'm going to do in November priority tasks broken down into Catch for Tool, technique, marketing and Health. Taught to me by Dan Duckworth of Voiceovers Unlimited, who has since retired one of my teachers. 13:52 - Anne (Host) Dan Duckworth. I remember Dan Duckworth, absolutely Wonderful human being. 13:57 - Tom (Co-host) He taught me so much. So one thing that I do is I take all of these checklist items, I put them on my google calendar. Now, that doesn't mean I have to do that that minute, but the nice thing is that I can kind of slide it around. 14:09 Oh yeah so, like this is a new thing I've been doing lately is like I'll take all of these and I'll schedule them after like 4 pm, so to be like Monday I'll be like, okay, I did my auditions, I did my finances, did whatever. It's like okay, so what do I have Dan here? Okay, I've got these things. So I'll just start oh, I'm like, oh, I'll do this one, I'll drag it up to nine, to nine, thirty, and I'll do it, and it's like done. And then I'll be like, oh, what else can I do? Oh, nine thirty to ten, oh, I'll drag this one up, I'll do it and it's done. I use that to kind of slide everything all over the place. 14:40 Now there's certain things I know like. If my blog comes out on a certain day, I want to promote the blog on social media that stuff does not move. 14:47 It'll definitely get 100% done that day, but I know between nine and noon I'll probably do it, but with the other things that are less time sensitive, it needs to be done at some point during the month. I'll front load my google calendar with all of this stuff and then I'll just start sliding everything around because you never know what your day is going to be like. You never know what auditions are going to come in, or bookings are going to come in, or the cat's going to explode the washing machine is going to break down Absolutely. 15:13 - Anne (Host) And that's what's so different about being your own business, running your own business and being an entrepreneur is that you don't always have like a predictable day, and a lot of times you don't know when is that job coming in and now, how long will it take you to do that job? And then how are you going to rearrange that around the other stuff that you have scheduled. So there's a lot of, I would say, time management. That is, tom, as you mentioned, so very important to do when you are working from home and working for yourself. 15:42 - Tom (Co-host) Yeah, yeah, the other big one is understanding workflow. I break it down into physical workflow, digital workflow and mental workflow. 15:50 A lot of what we just talked about is a lot of the mental workflow. The aforementioned Dan Duckworth taught me. The five categories of my voiceover business are exactly what you saw in the action plan Cash flow tools, technique marketing and health. So when it comes to managing your workflow about all the physical things you need to do through your day, right over here Are five binders and they're labeled cash flow tools, technique marketing All the physical stuff that I need for all of those invoices in cash flow, warranties and manuals and stuff is in tools. All of my acting lessons and stuff the vocal exercises and techniques, so on and so forth Are in those binders. So that helps my physical workflow. Also, having everything in the same physical place On your desk consistently Develops your muscle memory, so my calculator is always right here. Yes, I use a calculator. It's an old school calculator, but it's just like the Like. 16:42 I'm really fast at it and I know my right hand. It's always like right there when I'm bouncing the checkbook or adding stuff up, sure, and making sure that my pen jar is over there and my audio interface is over here. My phone always hangs out over here, my mouse always hangs out over here. Develop muscle memory. Your body likes to do things over and over again. It likes the repetition. So Can you see a? Logically, I don't think that's a word, but like, a big part of your time management and workflow is training your body to know that the same things are in the same place. So every time you're going to do a thing, you reach over here and it's there, sure. 17:15 - Anne (Host) And I'm going to kind of tack on to that, though, is understanding how you can become more efficient in your workflow, and for me, I just discovered dictation I knew dictation existed on the Mac, but I'm having like with auto correct these days. 17:29 Sometimes it completely rearranges my word and it gets very frustrating sometimes when I'm typing and so I'll just hit the function key twice and I'll just start dictating and it's surprisingly accurate and it really really helps me to be quite a bit more efficient and I know we've talked about this before on a podcast, but something simple like chat Gbt can help me to write emails to my clients. It is one of the biggest helpers that I have. Like, I think trying to write a professional email to a client sometimes takes me some time to think of the right words, whereas I can use a chat GPT to help me reframe some bullet points and frame it a little more professionally and, using those tools as they exist to help me become more efficient, it really really helps my time. 18:15 - Tom (Co-host) AI has a lot of benefits when it comes to being sort of a virtual assistant for you. I'm a hyper right fan myself. I actually don't use chat GPT. I discovered hyper right and it's good for all the stuff that you just mentioned. It's also a good like blog assistant. It helps you clean up blogs. So, like I'll record my video strategist blog, I'll record it, videotape it and then I'll use Google's hyper right. Hyper right, yeah, and then I'll use Google's. See, I'm going to write that down now. Hyper right, hyper right. 18:44 - Anne (Host) I use copy AI. Oh, there you go, yeah. 18:46 - Tom (Co-host) So I record my blog and then I use Google's speech to text to transcribe everything that I said, and then I copy and paste that into hyper right to help clean up all the verbiage. And then, once it all gets cleaned up, then I ask it to help me come up with a good title. That's nice, and then I can use it to come up with that short description which we embed inside the blog itself For searchability reasons. 19:08 - Anne (Host) So, yeah, yeah, for SEO, and I use a program for this podcast called Podium, that you can upload the MP3 and it will give you the show notes, it will give you takeaways, it will give you, you can even generate a blog on that. 19:22 - Tom (Co-host) I'm writing that one down. 19:23 - Anne (Host) Yeah, podium is good. It's a paid subscription, but I'll tell you what it works really well. I'm very pleased with it. You can also create video clips if you want, but Riverside, as most of you know that I use to record this video and the separate audio tracks also has a really great built in AI functionality to generate short clips, and so that has really impacted my workflow in a positive manner. Now there's always the and tweak, the and touch Sure, which I find that I still have to put in on the AI generated stuff. But as we speak, the tools are getting better and I'm not a hypocrite thinking oh my God, ai is out to ruin us and ruin our industry. I'm using AI to make my business more efficient and, including Tommy, you and I have talked about this including exploring having our own voices and being able to use those for our clients who may want to use those and make them available so that we can have a passive income stream. 20:19 - Tom (Co-host) We love passive income streams. 20:21 - Anne (Host) That, we do, that, we do, yes, we do. 20:24 - Tom (Co-host) There's another thing I want to talk about regarding workflow, which is digital workflow. Not just what we talked about, but I use Dan Duckworth's five categories of your voiceover business with my email. So I have Outlook and Gmail and they're synced, and I organize all of my emails into cashflow tools, technique, marketing and health. 20:41 - Intro (Announcement) So when I'm done with an email, it goes into one of those five folders with various subfolders. 20:46 - Tom (Co-host) And just looking at my browser right here I'm on Google Chrome. 20:49 - Anne (Host) So do you delete email? That's my question. Do you delete any email? 20:52 - Tom (Co-host) Oh, I delete emails all the time but I also keep an eye on the ones that when I'm like done with it, but I want to keep it, you know it goes into the folder which those five categories Plus. I have a category for the bio strategist, I have a category for clients and all that stuff. Also, I've got my Chrome browser right here and I've got on the top of the bar bookmarks, bookmarks. And guess what they're labeled? Dan Cashflow, tools, technique, marketing, health. 21:14 - Anne (Host) I love it. That makes sense. 21:15 - Tom (Co-host) So all of my social media sites are in marketing All the. Ai stuff is under tools. All of my like pronunciation guide websites are under technique, so on and so forth, and I've got one for my comic book, I've got one for video strategist, I've got one for, like, my hobbies and personal stuff. So I know that, like any time, I'm thinking about any part of my business physical cashflow binder, email cashflow folder browser cashflow bookmark folder, exactly bookmark. 21:41 - Anne (Host) Yep, talk about that muscle memory Email absolutely. 21:44 - Tom (Co-host) It's like creating sort of a digital muscle memory for me, so I don't have to reinvent the wheel. 21:49 - Anne (Host) Yes, and automated for your email as well. I have lots of rules and filters. So if it comes into a particular email address that goes into a particular folder. So, there's lots of ways that you can become more productive with your digital tools Absolutely. Now let's talk about focus, because focus, I think, is a huge stopper of productivity, especially social media. 22:13 - Tom (Co-host) Yes, well, first, everybody just grow up. You know what I mean. Put your big pants on your big pants, people, and you're doing grown-up stuff. Nobody's watching you, so you know. So that's my short, obnoxious answer. 22:25 There's obviously an element of truth in that, but a little more realistically, I know that I have certain things that I need to do and I have a certain amount of time to do them, and cool like the auditions obviously are deadline-driven. You know what I mean. You need to balance your checkbooks, you need to do your gigs and all of that stuff and everything else is kind of like up in the air. So I use Stephen Covey's four quadrants Quadrant one, focusing on that which is important and urgent. Quadrant two, that which is important but not urgent. Quadrant three, that which is urgent but not important. And then my favorite quadrant four, doing things that are neither urgent nor important. I don't think about it anymore. It just kind of happens now because I've developed this mental muscle memory. 23:09 - Anne (Host) Did you used to have to write that? I used to. Okay, okay, gotcha. 23:13 - Tom (Co-host) I used to have to do that. But understanding that what's the most important one, which is quadrant two, that which is important but not urgent, which is all of the long-term investment stuff in relationships in general, and part of that involves marketing. Marketing is always a long-term, non-urgent thing that you need to do and that's a thing that people spend way too much time on in the wrong way wrong, whatever that means, because that's a very individual thing. But understanding that playing around with my accounting software or endlessly organizing my contacts on my CRM are not urgent, they're not important, but I do them, or I used to do them, because it would make me feel productive and feel professional and that's just an abject waste of your time. 24:02 So understanding what's a waste of your time and what isn't a waste of your time, what needs to be done now, what needs to be done later and what never needs to be done at all. 24:10 - Anne (Host) Absolutely. I'm going to say one of the biggest time sucks is social media. 24:15 And I literally will just not open up any Facebook window or any Instagram. My phone is not. I'm not looking at my phone. For that reason, I only have windows open in my browser that I need to have open and I have a dedicated time for social media. 24:32 It don't always stick to it, but I have to be fairly rigid with my social media because I just have too many things in the day to do and I know that before, when it wasn't just such chaos, it used to be a thing that I could oh, let me check my email now. Or let me check my Facebook posts here, or let me check my Instagram here. It used to be something that I could just free form. But I can no longer do that with my schedule and remain effective and remain efficient in my business. So it may seem like I'm not as interactive as I used to be in social media, but I weigh the pros and the cons of that right, like how much is being on social media, engaging in social media? That is a thing that I must do. That is a specific time. Just browsing social media that's something I do after work, in my free time, and typically that happens now while the television is on and I find that I'm looking at my phone more than the television. 25:30 - Tom (Co-host) Yeah, I find myself doing that too. Sometimes I find myself with the television and my phones here, and then I've got my tablet over here on a little tripod stand and. I'm playing a game. It's like, oh geez, I've got three screens in front of me and I'm not paying proper attention to any of them. 25:44 - Anne (Host) To any of them. Yeah, exactly, and then I just fall asleep, because then I'm usually just exhausted. 25:50 - Tom (Co-host) Yeah there are apps where you can limit your social media use. So if you are early in your voiceover journey, you're home for the first time and you just find yourself doom scrolling on Instagram and stuff. You can set it up. So either it'll set a time limit or it won't let you look at it at all at certain times of day and that may be something you need to do. It's sort of the put the padlock on the refrigerator if you're on a diet kind of thing, Like sometimes you need to do that sort of stuff, Set yourself up so you can't do it. 26:21 Yeah yeah, absolutely. 26:23 - Anne (Host) So what is the biggest complaint from your students that say working from home sucks? I mean, has anybody actually come to you and said working home sucks? I guess I just need, I don't know how to manage my time. Or is that a common thing, or is it just? Oh, it's so common, so common. 26:39 - Tom (Co-host) I say it's funny because I have all of these videos that I sell and I have all these speaking engagements, conferences and courses and whatever, and anytime I say the two we're time management someone invariably goes oh my God, I suck at that. I need so much help with that. Please, please, please, help me with that. That is a epidemic in the voiceover community because, most of the time, because they came from a rigid nine to five structured environment. So, yeah, time management is something that people are often sorely lacking. Coming in and I think we just covered a huge amount of tips and tricks and strategies but also understanding mentally the what and the why about it, not just the how. I mean Google Calendar and blocking your social media apps are one thing, but that's only good. As the. I'll put it to you this way Ann Greg Iles, great author. He wrote maturity equals impulse control. 27:33 - Anne (Host) Interesting. 27:35 - Tom (Co-host) So what it really comes down to is how much impulse control you have, and if you lack an impulse control, that means you are, by definition, immature. So if you want to be an effective voice actor, you need to be a mature voice actor, and to be a mature voice actor is to have effective time management and workflow skills. 27:53 - Anne (Host) Well, I have been schooled, dear, I have been schooled. I love that. I love that. You know, tommy, you bring this kind of old school mentality, but I think it's something that we need to really be effective and grow our businesses. Because how many times you're right, I have no control, I'm on social media, I'm not focused, I'm not getting any work. Why? Why? I think really getting yourself disciplined in some fashion, at least during your work day, as you would if you were sitting at a company, is imperative, I think, to really running a successful business at home and making your work at home life suck less. Ha ha, ha ha. 28:30 - Tom (Co-host) Way to bring it home. There you go there you go, good job. 28:34 - Anne (Host) Wonderful conversation. I'll tell you what bosses do you have? A local nonprofit that is close to your heart? If you do, you can visit 100voiceshootcareorg to learn how. And IPDTL. They are our sponsor we love. Ipdtl helps us connect and network like bosses and become efficient work from home, sucking less employees of our own businesses. So find out more at IPDTLcom. You guys have an amazing week and amazing productive, efficient, wonderful work from Home Week and we will see you next week. Bye. 29:09 - Intro (Announcement) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, ann Gangusa, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at vobosscom and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution with permission and Coast to Coast connectivity via IPDTL.

Intimidated by the daunting world of finances, specifically in the voiceover industry? Tag along with the BOSSES as we demystify the intricacies of money management. Our banter-filled conversation is set to shine a light on the critical role of financial discipline, understanding taxes, and the art of investment categorization for your business growth. We provide crucial insights on all things expenses - from domain names and web hosting to the nitty-gritty of audio editing software. We also tackle home studio costs and the relevance of physical inventory for product sellers. And for those lean times, we've got you covered with our practical strategies that ensure you stay on top of your game. 00:01 - Intro (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss, a VEO boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza. 00:20 - Anne (Host) Hey everyone, welcome to the VEO Boss Podcast and the Boss Superpower series. I'm here with my superpower boss co-host, Lau Lapides. Hey hey. 00:30 Lau. How are you? Hey, I'm fab. How are you? I need to activate my accounting financial superpowers because it is a new year and I've got a business that I want to grow and I need to make some investments and I need to really, I think, get my finances in order. So I think we should talk. I know people hate talking or even thinking about finances. However, I think we need to discuss what could be on the agenda for your business this year and how can you financially prepare. 01:09 - Lau (Co-host) I love that, and if we don't understand our status with our money and we don't have a good relationship with it and we don't have trust with money and we don't know how to treat it, then we will not have financial discipline and therefore not have the cash for the investments we need to make throughout our year. And I speak about that at every level. I mean, if you're making millions, even more so because I know colleagues of mine that are millionaires that are busted by the end of the year because they don't know how to save, they don't know how to spend, they don't know how to invest. 01:43 They're used to being managed by other people, and I think management is wonderful when you're at a certain level, but it can also be a curse and take a lot of that micro management over you and then you're left with like, wow, how do I live life? How do I earn money? What do I do with it? 02:01 - Anne (Host) Absolutely. 02:02 I've always tried to be so independent, just in my life and financially independent as well, and so it really behooves us as business entrepreneurs to understand even if we do let's say, I always talk about my accountant and the best thing I ever did was outsource my accounting but you also need to have an underlying understanding and concept of financials so that you can direct your accountant or also understand where's your money going, because maybe sometimes your accountant I don't know maybe they're taking it or maybe they're putting it in place is that you're not familiar with. So not that I want to infer that there's anything shady going on, but hey, we want to be educated. 02:43 - Lau (Co-host) Yes, I also want people to think let's talk taxes, baby. Oh yes, I am not an accountant, my husband is. 02:50 I do not get into that, but I will say running businesses, as you know, Annie, everything at the end of the day, whether it's quarterly, whether it's annual, you have to put you know one of the first things we say and we're fairly conservative fiscally my husband and I we joke. We say, oh, we just got a ton of money and that's awesome, what are we going to do with it? Put it away. I'm going to say I'm going to put 50% of that away from taxes for the next quarter and I'll say good move. 03:16 - Anne (Host) And I'm so glad that you brought that up. As a matter of fact, for the next three months I have a certain amount of money that is coming out because it might escort. I need to pay myself, and so I need to pay myself. I need to prep. So by the end of the year I'm not going to be paying tons and tons of money and taxes. 03:32 - Lau (Co-host) And has that ever happened to you? Because that happened to us a couple of times. It's devastating. 03:37 - Anne (Host) Gosh, when I first started off in voiceover and I started making money and I wasn't prepared, right At the end of the year I was just like, yeah, I'll do the taxes at the end of the year, put it off, put it off, put it off. And then, ultimately, at the end of the year I was like, oh, my God, I owe. And then it was like, oh, I don't just owe a little, I owed a lot. And then I was audited one year. I'll be very frank in telling you that? 03:58 Not because I mean, I wasn't doing any funny business, but literally sometimes you're a small business, right, and a lot of times if you are making claims, they want to substantiate those claims and make sure that you're doing your taxes properly. 04:12 So it was a random audit. Actually, I was audited twice. I passed both audits with flying colors. As a matter of fact, the last audit they owed me. So it really goes to show that I was prepared, and thank God I was prepared. 04:24 Again, like I said, I don't wait until the very last minute and I don't know if I was intending for this episode to be talking about taxes the whole time, but it all comes down to the end of the year, right when you got to pay your taxes. And so you have to understand, like, where is your money going, where is your investments going, what costs do you have? And I think that's super important, what are your costs and what is your income coming in? And you should be looking at your profit, your PNL statement. What is a PNL statement? I have people like I'm not even sure what a PNL. It's a profit and loss statement. So that is something that you should be familiar with, and if you're not, we're here to kind of talk to you about the basics at least. I'm not a financial advisor. However, I can share my experiences and I can tell you how important it is to be educated and to understand that there will be investments and you need to categorize those investments and you need to categorize your profits. 05:19 - Lau (Co-host) Yes, and at the end of the day, even though we don't want to talk about taxes the entire time, we're not on a barter system. If IRS comes, they're not going to take a cow right. They want money, they want cash. So, just being honest, having integrity about your business, just doing everything by the book, being very careful, having a bookkeeper, having an accounting team having the people you need on your side couldn't be more worth. 05:43 It just couldn't be. But let's talk about money in terms of, like, fixed costs. Putting together your understanding what are my fixed costs versus my movable, shakeable, flexible, variable costs, which do vary month to month? How do you set it up, Annie? When you set that up? 06:01 - Anne (Host) Well, I don't remember which episode it was, but I did touch upon this at one point. In terms of fixed costs, like for running your business, there is the cost of I'm an S corp, so I have to pay a certain amount of money every year right to maintain that license, and so I also have to make sure that things that it costs for me to run my business so not only the cost of the business itself, which I pay to the state or I pay to the federal government I also am paying things that would be like my website, my web hosting right. That is something I pay on a monthly basis. That happens each and every time. So those recurring costs I found to be well managed, number one by my accountant and it's categorized in my system. 06:46 But also I downloaded an app. I pay for this app on a monthly basis called Rocket Money, and Rocket Money will go out and grab all your subscriptions, cause a lot of times you can be subscribed to things that you forget about. This is the new way of doing businesses those subscription models which I pay monthly for my domain names, for my web hosting, which is the place where I host my websites, kind of think what else, my subscriptions to my audio editing software, twisted Wave or Adobe Audition. I also pay Adobe because I have Adobe Acrobat, the Adobe Suite that I pay for. Goodness gracious, this is so much, and I pay for a lot of things too, like my Riverside subscription. Right, this is what we record our podcast on. I pay for my Zoom connection. I pay for gosh, all these backblades, which is my backup system Right. 07:40 - Lau (Co-host) So here's the key, though, annie, is like we're lumping them all together because that's everything that you do every month and in your mind because you've been doing so long. Those are fixed costs, right To a new person coming in for the first couple of years. Some of those may be more variable in cost because, let's say, let's say hypothetically, you're ready to do a blasting service like Constant Contact or MailChimp or VO Boss or VO Boss, but we're blasting things out to your hundreds or thousands of leads, right, and you're gonna pay for that monthly. Now, we consider that kind of fixed because we've been doing that collectively so long. But someone coming in who's fairly new and say, well, can I spend that $40, $50 a month or $90 a month to do that? That's more of a variable cost, because they may or may not feel like I'm at a point where that's gonna be beneficial. I may not have enough leads to do that too. I'll do that in a year and see where I am in a year, but I can't do that with my rent or my mortgage. 08:39 - Intro (Announcement) I have to do that every month. 08:41 - Lau (Co-host) That's a fixed cost right. So that's really interesting for us to just reevaluate every year or every quarter, like what are our variables that we're thinking of as fixed, Like if I think of Google or I think of like storage on? 08:57 - Anne (Host) Zoom, or I think of this. My mind it's fixed. My iPhone, my phone bill for myself, I'm paying on a monthly basis that to me. I consider that a fixed cost. But you're right, I mean, it all comes down to what is it that is necessary to run your business? But, interestingly enough, because most of us are home-based businesses, now, brick and mortar, brick and mortar. Are you paying Brick and mortar as well as I mean, we gotta consider our offices, our home studios, right? Yes, as part of it. So for me it translates into I've gotta pay the mortgage because if I don't have a house or I don't have my home studio, I don't have my studio in my house. 09:33 - Intro (Announcement) You gotta pay. 09:33 - Anne (Host) Your insurance, gotta pay the water bill, gotta pay the internet, oh my gosh internet. 09:37 - Intro (Announcement) Utilities yes, Gotta pay electricity. 09:39 - Anne (Host) Otherwise I'm not gonna have all of that to be able to run my business at home. And you law have a brick and mortar as well, so there's all of that which is considered fixed for you as well. 09:50 - Lau (Co-host) Yes, it is, and that's not to say it can't shift and change. So if I decide to move to a different place, then the costs would shift and change, but they're always there. In other words, they don't really leave, unless the caveat is I'm 22, I'm trying to save money. I move in with my parents. They're gonna pay a lot of those bills for me for a year. I don't have to worry about that. They're gonna let me save money. Okay, that's your caveat. But other than that, when you're in the world, those are now part of our business, because if we don't take care of those, we literally can't run the business. 10:22 - Anne (Host) And, believe it or not, on a very small scale. Right, I have physical inventory because I sell a vocal throat care line and a vocal spray along with my vocal essentials, right? So there's inventory. I need to purchase inventory so that I can create those sprays, also to run that business. 10:41 - Lau (Co-host) And we would have merchandise Exactly that we may wanna take to a conference or we may wanna do a swag bag giveaway at a networking meeting or whatever. That's the inventory you speak of. That is really variable, it's not really fixed, it's still a variable cost. But for us it's important that we continue to do that to promote the business. 10:59 - Anne (Host) Absolutely absolutely. 11:00 - Lau (Co-host) Right, I love this conversation. This is so good. So what happens? I get in trouble. I find that I'm not doing as much voiceover work this month as I see happen Quite often times. People come in, they start crying, they're upset, they're like I might have to get another job. I might have to pull back on my spending. Where do we go first to pull back on that spending? We go to the variables. 11:24 - Anne (Host) Yep, great question. Yeah, absolutely, the variables. I mean, what can I do to save money, number one, or cut down on costs? And again, as your business evolves and as things evolve, everything, that's really important that we take a look at that, gosh, at least I mean I look at that every month, if not more than that. And I know that, especially when things are lean right, you've got more time right. If you've got more time, you've got more time to. Let's take a look at our marketing. Let's take a look at our investments. What are we spending right and what can we cut back on? 11:59 And I know, for me, some of mine was subscriptions that were no longer serving me, right, I was like, okay, well, I guess I don't need that. And then I've got things like I have a Peloton subscription. Am I using it? Because that's a certain amount of money? Am I watching the Discovery channel? Can I cut back on that? Those subscriptions? And in reality, by the way, my cable, and well, I guess, do you call it cable, my streaming, my streaming subscriptions are part of my business because I am researching the market, right, and I'm listening to commercials, I'm seeing what's out there, I'm educating myself on trending sound, trending voices, educating myself as a coach for my students right. So that is considered a business expense. 12:45 - Lau (Co-host) I would add a personalized list to this. So you have your fixed cost, you have your variable, but then you have your very personal expenses. That could be one or the other but if I'm hurting for money and I gotta go skinny one month, I'm gonna go to that personalized list. 13:01 So a very simple example of that is I'll always ask a client. I'll say listen, what are you doing this weekend? What did you do last weekend? Oh, I went to the movies cool. What did you spend on that? Oh, that was 15 bucks great. Did you get any food or drink there? I did. I think that was about 30 bucks great. Did you go out to dinner Super. I think I spent 25 bucks on fast food great. Did you spend on gasoline? Yeah, I think I spent five or six bucks. Add that up. That is the money that can go into your investment piece when you really need the coaching session. 13:32 - Anne (Host) You really need that event. You really need that. Can I skip the Starbucks? I remember that's the biggest thing. Can I skip the Starbucks? I'm gonna skip the Starbucks. 13:38 - Lau (Co-host) And I have to say, annie, I'm not a financial advisor, so I'm not advising you financially. I'm advising you from a logical perspective of saying be careful of saying to yourself, lying to yourself and saying I don't have the money, when really you should be saying let me find the money or create the money Absolutely. 13:59 We used to go under the cushions to find the change and put it in a big jar. Now we can go to what we're spending, what we're actually spending, and find the change in that jar. A Starbucks which we love five, six bucks. A cup of that that I may need to put into my coaching session. 14:17 - Anne (Host) Absolutely Hands down. One of the smartest things I ever did was create that business savings account. And then where are you going to put that business savings account? I literally just moved my business savings account from my bank to a higher yield interest bank and I'll tell you what it made the difference between oh gosh, I might have made gosh my bank was paying me nothing. I was like 0.001. And I think I was making like maybe $5 a year. 14:42 Well, guess what? I'm 5% APY 5%. And when you invest that now, I've made thousands of dollars for this year and then that can be reinvested in my business. So that savings account also is what saved me from when things get lean, when the jobs aren't coming in, when things slow down and then all of a sudden, oh my goodness, what am I gonna do. And it saves you from that panic where you probably do yourself more harm than good with that guttural like oh my God, I am gonna have to like get a job or I'm gonna have to quit. 15:17 Voiceover it's just not working. It's in that panic that I have a lot of people they come to me. I just I can't. I can't invest in a demo, I can't invest in coaching, because I'm just not making it back. And again, that is something that you really do need to understand that there are investments to be made. If you have the money put aside to make those investments right, that makes you feel a whole lot more comfortable and a lot less panicky, whether you're like oh, I said I gotta get out, I can't do this anymore, or you become discouraged, and then it really becomes a whole mental game. And that, I think, is the toughest part about voice acting right Voice acting the acting we can always practice. 15:55 We can hone our skills, we can become better at what we do. But that business sense that when the business is slow, when all of a sudden it's like, oh my God, this isn't working or how do I survive, you go into that like fight or flight kind of mode and really having that nest egg, having that savings account that can be earning interest, having that passive income, all that good stuff, that can be that little pocket of confidence that's what I say that little pile of financial confidence is huge in, I think, growing and pursuing your voice of our business successfully. 16:32 - Lau (Co-host) Yeah, and we all know those of us who have been in business for a number of years it's never what you make. It is never what you make. It is not about gross, it's about net. So it's about what you take home. That is, showing us how you are spending and investing your money, your gross income. And so having that level of sacrifice, of humility and of modesty to understand that just because I want something does not mean I need it or should have it. So if you're willing to sacrifice and give up something, you probably have more shot of building an actual business, because the business has the needs. You don't have the needs as much as the business has the needs. 17:14 And I wanted to say too what you're talking about, which is so important and we're doing that as well as diversification of your money. So not only if it's not making interest, if it's not building wealth for you, then you move it. But here's the thing there's a couple of really important reasons to move the money. Not only does if your bank goes bust. You don't have everything in one pot. 17:34 - Anne (Host) Exactly. 17:35 - Lau (Co-host) You're only insured, too, for a certain amount, right, but also you're literally setting up accounts for yourself that you hopefully will forget about. So you're not spending it, you're not touching it. It's growing, it's working for you, right? So that you don't have this. Don't think of it as like one clump, one lump of something. It's really different pieces that you're diversifying into the world. You may want to invest, you may want to go into the stocks, you may want to do that kind of thing, right? So the point is is like okay, I've got my business, it's great, it's moving in the direction I wanted to move in, but what am I sacrificing? What am I doing to make money and make it grow for me, and how am I treating it? Like? How do I think of money? I hear a lot of people, especially women, talk about money, talk about negotiation, talk about contracts in a really negative light, like in a very heavy way. They are either fearing it, they don't want to talk about money. 18:30 - Anne (Host) I think most of it is fear absolutely Based in fear, and most of it is fear right. 18:34 It's kind of like I don't want to go there, I don't want to talk about it, I want to kind of just go back to something we were talking about in terms of investing and kind of making sure that you have the money to invest in that next piece of equipment, or do I need that new microphone? Do I need? I'm going to give you an analogy and I'm going to be very frank. I have in my clothes closet. I have these little cubby holes for my shoes. 18:59 Now I bought them gosh a long time ago and I think I I don't know if I got them in IKEA, but they're great. They're little cubby holes and you can fit a pair of shoes in each cubby hole, and so I bought a series of them to put around. We have a walk-in closet to put on the floor and my husband has one of the boxes which holds 12, right, and I literally have probably eight. I have 70 cubby holes Okay, 70. Now I made a deal with myself that I would never buy more shoes than could fit in that cubby hole, and so if I wanted to purchase a new pair of shoes, I had to give up another pair of shoes or donate it or sell it on Poshmark or what. 19:34 - Lau (Co-host) Wait a second, annie, I just did some math. Are you saying you have 98 pairs? If you have 12 and you have eight of those right, or 90,? What is that? 96? All right, so I say 70. Should I call? 19:49 - Anne (Host) you a melda now. 19:50 - Lau (Co-host) Should I really name you a melda? 19:51 - Anne (Host) I'm going to say it's 70. I don't know how many boxes there are, so, whatever right, 70. I have 70 holes. I have 70 cubbies. 19:57 - Lau (Co-host) You just have to stay in that denial, stay at 70. Stay at 70. 20:01 - Anne (Host) Now I can't purchase a new pair of shoes until I decide that I'm going to let another pair of shoes go. And if I can't, I'm going to try to sell those shoes. But if I can't, I'm going to donate them right so that they go to someplace. I'm that kind of person where I have to love my shoes right, do you wear? 20:17 - Lau (Co-host) all those shoes? Be honest, do you wear all? 20:19 - Intro (Announcement) Not anymore. 20:19 - Anne (Host) I don't no but I used to right and so, literally, as I've aged a little bit, I mean the heels got to come down a little bit. 20:27 - Intro (Announcement) I can't quite fit in those. 20:28 - Anne (Host) Well, I can't walk in those higher ones anymore, but I still love to look at them. But that is like I feel like your business needs to operate in that way, right, you cannot make an investment more than you have. Like, you should not spend more than you have. I should not have more shoes than cubby holes, right? Because then it starts to look cluttered, it starts to look like a big mess, and so, therefore, I have put myself on a plan, right, where this helps me to. This helps me to manage my shoes, like I would say, manage your finances in the same way, right, you don't want to make investments with money you don't have, right, and you want to make sure that, if you have, how many microphones do you have? Like, you should not have more microphones than places to put those microphones right, okay, all right, I have a term for that. 21:14 - Lau (Co-host) This is from my husband, jeremy, who is actually a controller CFO type accountant his whole life. 21:19 He says listen, and I always hated this, it always made me cringe, it was cringe worthy, but he's so right. And that is don't live above your means. Absolutely Don't live above your means. And he's not only talking about financially, he's also talking about emotionally and spiritually as well. So I have taught myself. My father, who's an entrepreneur, taught me this too. He said buy something, get rid of something. Yes, oh my God, buy something, yes, yes, and not just kick it to the curve, but give it to the right place. 21:47 Give it to the right place, give it to the right place and boy, did that save my day learning how to do that and really learning to let go and learning to move around it. That's really good. 21:57 - Anne (Host) That's really good, for I mean being frugal and being wise financially and also like mentally, like I feel like you can't have too much clutter, because physical clutter turns to be clutter in your head. And I actually took a feng shui course many, many years ago. It was like a six month course. I mean, it was intense. 22:15 - Intro (Announcement) I love it, I love it, you should never put things under your bed. 22:19 - Anne (Host) Don't store things under your bed. Don't store things because it's kind of like clutter anywhere, really like clear out your corners. 22:26 - Lau (Co-host) Clutter anywhere physically means clutter in your head, right so when it comes to your money, you need to compartmentalize it Absolutely. How do you call that when you label it like we would give away key? 22:38 - Anne (Host) Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. What do you call that? We label it. We're Maria Condoing, right Condoing, but that's what it is. 22:44 - Lau (Co-host) It's like knowing what you want to do with each piece of your life financially. Yeah, it's very freeing. There's a very openness to it, there's a breath in there, you know. Yeah, absolutely I love that. I love clearing the financial space. 22:58 - Anne (Host) That's what I like. 22:59 - Intro (Announcement) Clear the financial space. 23:01 - Anne (Host) Especially in the beginning of the year. It's always a great time to do that, to really sit back, and it may be hard. Right To sit back and take a look at where is the money going. How much are you spending? Are you spending more than you're bringing in? But again, like no more shoes than you have cubby holds. 23:18 - Lau (Co-host) And also test yourself, like once you give it away, like let a month go by and test yourself, say what did I give away? Do I even remember what? 23:26 - Intro (Announcement) it was, and I never remember. 23:28 - Lau (Co-host) I never remember the clothes or whatever. 23:31 - Anne (Host) If I haven't thought about it or used it in a year, it's good to go right. 23:35 - Intro (Announcement) It's good to go right. As much as I love it, that's most things. 23:37 - Anne (Host) I'll kiss it and I'll give it away and I'll say this deserves to go to someone. I'll donate it. This deserves to go to someone who will love it as much as I did. Really. 23:46 - Lau (Co-host) And then you're very Native American about it. It reminds me like, take the shoes to the river and just write a note and let them float away. Absolutely you know To someone else's feet. But that's what we need to do, because it makes us open to what is coming, like if you're so cluttered in your financial portfolio you can't invite anything in and allow the money to flow to you like a river right? 24:10 - Intro (Announcement) Oh, I love that you don't want your river to stagnate. 24:12 - Anne (Host) You don't want to block your river Again. No more shoes than cubby holes. Don't block your river with twigs, Just say allow the river of money to flow, I mean we're out of all here. Let's just imagine that financial flow coming to you and manifesting that. 24:28 - Lau (Co-host) Hallelujah and manifesting that Amen. I feel like doing a song right now, but I mean it's like language. If you're scripting, be careful the language you use to describe your money and your financial status. Don't be cheap, don't be dumb, don't be unknowing. 24:46 - Anne (Host) You're not greedy. If you appreciate money and you invited it, you are not greedy. That's like an old one. People say, oh, you're greedy. Although rich people are greedy, they just want more. Honestly, people who are wealthy are some of the most philanthropic people that give. 25:00 - Intro (Announcement) And we've had that discussion before. 25:01 - Anne (Host) But I mean really being rich isn't rich right Money rich, financially rich and spiritually rich. 25:09 - Lau (Co-host) It's all about you allowing the flow and not blocking it right with clutter and paying attention to details, Don't ignore it and don't act like you don't know how to deal with it. It's like treat it as if it's a person and you have a relationship with it. Would you say some of the things you say about money, about the person like, oh, I don't know how to deal with that, I just ignore it and I just let someone else deal with it? I don't think that relationship would go very far. You know what I mean. It's like treat it like a person, in the sense that there's a lot of potential movement and liberation that can come with that and what it represents. It's just symbolic of the kind of life and lifestyle and mindset that you want to have. 25:52 - Anne (Host) Absolutely. 25:53 - Lau (Co-host) And I always say too, you know, someone says to me Law, why do you want to make a lot of money? I've had the executive coaches ask me that and I said the first thing that comes to my mind is because I want to have more money to pay my team members. Yeah, oh, I love that. Yeah, I think in terms of investment, I always think in terms of what can I do with this money? That empowers even more, versus, oh, I'll buy another thing or I'll have another, whatever, I don't really need it. I would rather see it move in directions that can make a lot of people happy and things going on and that can only help your business, because, honestly, I feel like you're in toys. 26:30 - Anne (Host) I think about myself in the corporate world. What does it makes us miserable in the corporate world? Oh God, we don't like our colleagues, we don't like our boss. We're boss. It's a toxic environment. I don't make enough money. Exactly Like, if you think about it, if you're treated well in your environment, if you have employees that you're paying and you treat them well and you appreciate them, they're only going to work that much harder for you and you have to incentivize them to want to work for your business, and that is one way to do that. 26:58 So I love this conversation. Again, it's probably something we could have. 20 episodes on Law, I think we will somehow. I think we will. But speaking of allowing yourself to allow that money to flow, if you have a local nonprofit that's close to your heart and you would like to keep the cycle and keep paying it forward, if you've ever wished you could do more to help them, you can visit 100voiceswhocareorg to learn how and big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl you too can connect and network like bosses, just like law and I. So you guys have an amazing week and let's keep that river flowing. All right, bye, have a great week, bye. 27:40 - Intro (Announcement) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, ann Gangusa, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at vobosscom and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via IPDTL yeah. 28:07 - Anne (Host) Hey, hey everyone. I don't know why I wasn't ready for that. Take two, Take two, hey everyone. Welcome to the VO Boss podcast and the Boss Superpower series. I am here with my super power. 28:26 - Lau (Co-host) Take three. 28:27 - Anne (Host) Hey everyone, welcome to the VO Boss. Hey everyone, welcome. God, take five, yeah, take 105.

Get set to embark on a riveting journey into the world of visual branding, specifically tailored for voice actors. In this enlightening discussion, the BOSSES will empower you with a comprehensive understanding of the critical role visuals play in effectively communicating your brand. We unravel the nuances of building a robust visual presence, which extends beyond just your attire and accessories and dives right into the realm of headshots and text titles for demos. Throughout the episode, we impart our own experiences and valuable insights, showing you how to leverage visuals to connect more deeply with your clientele. 00:01 - Introduction (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss a VO Boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza. 00:20 - Anne (Host) Hey everyone, welcome to the VO Boss podcast. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and I'm here with my lovely boss co-host, Lau Lapides. Oh, hey, Annie. 00:31 So good to see you, how are you Fabulous, how are you? I'm great, I have to tell you. All right. So I apologize for being late to our little recording this morning because I was trying to coordinate the outfit law. Now that we are a visual kind of a brand and we've got video, I'm like all right, so now am I going to wear silver jewelry? Which glasses shall I wear? I'm trying to get that visual brand out there and I've got a set of headshots coming up, oh gosh, in a couple of days. And so I have been literally making a list and coordinating outfits because it is such a big part of my brand and I thought, wow, we should really talk about this for voice actors out there. How important are visuals, how important is that branding and those visuals to your brand and your business? 01:19 - Lau (Co-host) I love that topic and I'm so glad we're going to talk about that today, but I have to bring up the fact that you're on the West Coast. I'm in the East Coast, 3,000 miles away, and yet the mental telepathy of like what you chose to wear today and the fact that it's kind of color coordinated with what I chose to wear is like same way. 01:39 They go great, same wave. Like I'm all over the visuals, I do do do think it's important these days, and you and I do remember the days when the voiceover would hide ourselves, we would not be seen we would never have a photo of us out there ever, because we would be worried about a potential client looking at us and saying, wow, they look like this, but they sound like this. 02:02 - Anne (Host) I'm not going to cast them, right, right it was a thing I mean I remember distinctly when I got into voice herers like you know what I don't want to be in a career that's based on what I look like, okay, and I want to be able to be creative, I want to be able to act, but I don't want it to be dependent on me being young looking or beautiful or anything like that or how I look, and so I was very much into the voice acting. 02:25 However, as I've evolved my business throughout the years, I've really kind of settled into the fact that, as people, we need to connect with other people, and so the visual I've changed my mindset so that I don't have to feel like I look perfect or a particular way. However, for my business and for my brand, I take a lot of care and I take a lot of pride in that, and so I actually strategize. I mean gosh if I tell you I literally been making a list, a list of the outfits, the colors, the props that I'm going to use for my headshots, because I'm envisioning my website right, representing me, who I am, knowing that my clients want to connect with the person. Yes, and I want to stress that it's not about necessarily what you look like. It's about conveying who you are as a person, who you are as a brand, who you are as a business Right. 03:20 - Lau (Co-host) Listen, we can't get out of the fact that we live in a world. A lot of it is visual, it's what we see. Most people are visual learners, so when they pick you up, they're picking you up in 10 seconds less than that visually. So when we're meeting a client, when we're meeting a talent, when we're meeting a prospect, they're going to look at you. If they see you, sure, if they visually see you, okay, what's the first thing we see? It may be a website, it may be a social media post. It may be something that is not physically you. So thinking about what that visual brand is from the start, I think is wise and necessary and important in a visual society. 03:57 - Anne (Host) And when you do have those photos right that are showcasing you in action in your studio and again mine aren't just gonna be your typical headshot, like I mean I will have those, but typical, like from here up they're gonna be like lifestyle shots, they're gonna be shots of me, literally law. I am bringing a desktop boom arm with my microphone, with the headphones, with the laptops and the cables by the way, and the cables. 04:23 And I am dragging that all to the studio where I'm going to get my headshots, because I want those shots to represent who I am in my business and how I interact right with clients in my business and showcasing that so that ultimately people get a sense, a visual sense, because if they do come to my website first, right before they connect with me either on the phone or on a video call or even just hear me, they're seeing me in action and they're seeing my business in action and I think it's so very important for voice talent to really understand that. And again, it's not all about like that typical, like headshot, which it can be, but I really want that to show more about who you are. How is that headshot going to reveal your personality, your business? Because, again, our voices are product right, but our visual brand can also showcase that product. 05:17 I always talk to people about their websites and make sure your demos are above the fold. But, like, when you're placing your demos above the fold, put a text title by the spots that you have in that demo, because otherwise they don't know what's in that demo, they can't see it right, they just see that. Oh, there's an audio file that I can click on and listen to, but three quarters of the way into that audio file I don't know that. You have a Toyota spot right, and so if you're listing those spots out visually right, really it's just text that also helps with your SEO, but that can really, at a glance, somebody seeing oh, she's done work for Toyota right, that can make an impression. 05:54 - Lau (Co-host) Now here's my question of the day. I'm seeing a lot more demos that are video-based demos, so I know the people that that's their real jobs. They have a right to show it. That's their actual jobs and they're utilizing that because it's been aired. Others are creating these visual elements to their demo. I wanted to run that by you and see how are you feeling about that these days. Do you like that trend that's happening? Is it fun and exciting, or do you feel like it's a little edgy showing those visuals that they haven't really been a part of? How? 06:27 - Anne (Host) do you look at that? I'm a big fan. I mean, I've read in the forums. Some people are like, well, are they really giving you a return on your investment? I'm here to say, look, our demo is a marketing product, right? And it's kind of the same question Do we put produced spots or do we put sound effects and music behind an e-learning spot? Because typically there isn't. I'm like, well, this is a showcase, this is a marketing piece, this is a demonstration. Yes, there are times that you'll have music behind your e-learning. You may or may not know that. You don't know what the client is doing with it, necessarily afterwards, and so they're very well-could be, and I've actually seen a lot of e-learning modules where it could be character-based, it could be storytelling, video-based, it can be a lot of different ways to get the interactivity or the engagement with the listener. So, yeah, why not? I mean, it is a marketing piece, and so I feel like a video demo is yet another way to showcase your product. It's not the only way, I feel the same way. 07:26 - Lau (Co-host) Yeah, I feel the same way. I think we're living in a day right now where your visuals mean a lot. I oftentimes say to talent listen your voice actors. So don't be surprised if you have people at a showcase that are a producer or an agent type or even just some corporate prospect, say hey, are you an on-camera actor? I would like to use you in a print ad along with your voice. I would like to use you in this and that, and be prepared for that answer whether you welcome doing on-camera commercial work on-camera TV, film work, print work. 07:58 I think that throws a lot of talent off who only identify as a voice over talent. And don't get me wrong, that's fine, you can just do voiceover and specialize that and don't do anything else. But there's a whole bunch of people that are really open to that idea of doing more. Like, if I get signed by an agency and they want to sign me across the board and they say, hey, we're going to submit you for everything theater, tv, film, voice over, whatever I say, why not if you're interested in pursuing that, yeah, I agree, I agree. 08:30 - Anne (Host) Now let me ask you what sort of tips would you give to people who are really trying to figure out their visual brand? Do you have any tips? 08:40 - Lau (Co-host) I love that and I'm so glad we're talking about that today. I just got out of a coaching session looking at a Vio Talent's first headshot shoot and we were talking about what happens in the face, what happens in the eyes, what people are reading very, very quickly out of that. 08:58 So I think that it's very important to talk to people that are specialists in particular areas. So, for instance, a stylist that's really good may wanna provide for you a look book before you go and take your photos of some fashion looks, some professional looks, some business looks, some whatever looks, so that you can start to mimic those looks that would be right for your styling and your branding. It's hard to come up with that yourself. 09:28 - Anne (Host) I don't think I could even come up with it myself. It's so funny that you mentioned that because literally I just spent a weekend with my very good friend. She's always been a style icon. I've always considered her a style icon. In the last year she's gone into the business and I'm gonna give her a plug. Styled by Gianni yes, gianni, g-i-a-n-a-i yes, styled by Gianni. She's amazing. She's got all different types of packages, but she's sustainably conscious. I mean, she's located in LA. She can work with you remotely. She can work with you in any capacity. She's got all sorts of cool things. If you're just open to a consult, she can chat with you and then discuss colors. If nothing else, right, what colors, what color palettes? What's your body type? She'll take your measurements into consideration. I love it. What type of clothing would be best suited for you? And again, it doesn't necessarily just have to be about you and your clothing and your look, but it can also be about colors, colors that reflect who you are. 10:23 Colors that reflect who you want to be or what you want your business to be. And again, I've got multiple colors. We all know that red and black is the color for VO Boss. However, ink and guza is blue, and I've got a different color for VO Peeps, which is a teal blue, and I love those colors and it's one way that the brand is separated. So think of me. Now I'm gonna go to my photographer, my head shot artist. I'm gonna call her and I'm gonna go over there with I've got three different brands to represent. Literally, if I could ever come to my house, you could just like take photos in my closet, because I've got all these options of clothing and all these options of colors. 10:59 And some of the colors may or may not even have to go with my brand, but they go with my personality, right, I also think too, people are not thinking about the fit of things, so your stylist needs to help you with. 11:11 - Lau (Co-host) I might love this color, but how does it fit my body? Is it showing my body off? I know women, especially younger women, have a tough time with this and oftentimes we'll have things that are too big and baggy or have things that are too tight or showing a mid drift or whatever. Whatever the case may be, that may not be appropriate for your particular branding. So you need someone who understands style but also understands the brand that you want in terms of your fit, your color. Are you trending? Are you moving forward? Do you want to do retro? 11:41 A lot of VO's are very retro. They like doing fifties, forties, voguing stuff. Absolutely, I would say you know what, annie, and this is something you do really well. I would have fun. So many people. It's such a drudgery to go through this kind of thing and I'd say wait a second, especially the talent who are animation artists who are having fun. They're being outrageous a little bit. What if you had one shot on your website under your cartoons where you have little bunny ears or you're doing cosplay, anything, right, right? Who am I thinking of? 12:14 - Anne (Host) Jessica Rabbit. 12:15 - Lau (Co-host) No, no, no, the famous singer piano man. He started out wearing costumes Elton John, Elton John. 12:22 - Anne (Host) Elton. 12:23 - Lau (Co-host) John. Who could be more prolific and serious now? Yeah, really serious about everything. Started out wearing bunny suits, oh my gosh. 12:31 - Anne (Host) And now, if you're going to talk about that, you can talk about Lady Gaga and all of her outfits, cher. 12:37 - Introduction (Announcement) It's endless. And all of her I just saw Cher who looks amazing. 12:40 - Anne (Host) By the way, Awesome she does not age, she does not age, she doesn't age at all, barry. Manilow. I just watched the. 12:45 - Lau (Co-host) Holiday Special of the Dream Lighting. 12:48 - Anne (Host) Yeah, all the icons. 12:50 - Lau (Co-host) I'm getting the clem to it that one, barry Manilow, but I was just thinking about, like an Elvis Costello. If anyone knows Elvis Costello, he was very forward thinking by retching back oh, david Bowie, in his cool black and white suits. You know, david Bowie. So the point is, you don't have to be a pop star, you just have to be authentic to you, your personality, the kind of work you do Absolutely, absolutely, and they work that into their brand. 13:15 - Anne (Host) I mean the way they dress, the way they style. I mean even rock bands, if you remember back in I'm showing them age, but you know, like Kiss, right Makeup and platforms, that kind of thing Anyhow, aren't they doing? 13:26 - Lau (Co-host) I just saw them on TV. They're doing their last. What is it? Madison Square Garden, their last concert? Yeah, their last tour and retiring. It's just pretty amazing. But the point yeah, they were in mask for how many years you never saw their real faces. So the point is is like get yourself to start out, wean yourself into it. Get a good headshot. Just start with a good headshot so that for your PR, if someone says hey, mike, susan, jay, I need you to send me a good photo, you have something and you're not going, let me go through my photo camera roll let's see if I have anything Like have something, and I also would have. You and I were talking about props earlier too. I love that idea. It could be your pet it could be your mic, absolutely. 14:07 - Anne (Host) What is it you're passionate about? Whatever, if, I could bring my cats. If I could put them in a car and drive them, I would bring my cats because yeah, Obviously, yeah. 14:16 - Lau (Co-host) So things that define you in your work day, but also in your personal life, that you love, you care about. Remember one of our favorites, betty White, who I love so much. She was known for the animals. Every time you thought of Betty White, you thought of the animals she was. I remember the PSA she did, annie, where she was surrounded by all the animals because she was helping save the animals. That was something she always had in her PR. Where she could was an animal, absolutely, absolutely. 14:43 - Anne (Host) So these are all visuals for you to be thinking about and not only can they go on your website but they can go in your social media campaigns and promotions. Youtube channel, I mean, again, if you are out there creating something visual, like if you are out there doing a podcast, right, I think today if you're doing a podcast and you don't have a video element to it and I'm not saying maybe the whole podcast has to be video, but honestly I mean everybody's kind of going that way, even though I also have an audio version, you and I have an audio version, but we have a YouTube channel right where we have videos, we do shorts, and so if you want to promote your business and you're doing any type of video or YouTube shorts, obviously you're on camera and there is branding to think about. I mean, if you've gone to all the trouble to create a logo, right, and figure out well what colors, what font, why not just extend it to your personal body, your personal self? 15:37 Because, again, our product is so very personal and I'm going to give a tip that gosh I got a long, long time ago when I worked with my business mentor, who was helping to brand me at the time, was that we created a private Pinterest board and she said to me I want you to just create a board and I want you to put everything on that board that's your favorite thing, like favorite places, favorite colors, favorite things, hobbies, activities, and when you put that board together, when you have your favorite since, she said, I'll include your favorite fonts, right? Well, that was a big mistake. 16:12 - Introduction (Announcement) Cause I have like a thousand favorite fonts. 16:14 - Anne (Host) But anyway, I put that board together and shared it with her and it was a great visual representation of who I am and from there she was able to create a website she was able to help me with branding and help me with marketing campaigns and that really came up with my Angangusa brand, because when I was doing it myself, it's so hard to brand yourself. I think we've had episodes where we've talked about branding. It is hard to brand yourself. 16:39 And even now I have ideas because I help people so much with it. But it's always nice to get that second set of eyes, that second set of ears. That is saying you know what I see you in this light, where you think maybe here's what I'm projecting out. But I need to know how do you see me, how do you see my business and what demographic am I speaking to and what does my look? Or what are the colors? What do the images on my website have to do? What feelings? I think you got to go so far as to what feelings are evoked when somebody looks at your website. 17:13 - Lau (Co-host) That's great Very pathos, very visceral. You got to revisit it too. I think that a lot of talent it evolves. 17:20 I don't know why they think, oh, I've done this, I made a demo, I'm done. I said you made a demo. Honey, you're starting, you're not done, you're going to make another thousand demos over your lifetime. Like, this is just the process. So if you choose a logo that may change in a year or two or three, if you've evolved, all companies rebrand. Yeah, I was just going to say I like to think of it. You've got an interior designer for your home, potentially. 17:44 - Anne (Host) Well, this is an exterior designer for the world and VO Boss has already rebranded once and it is a thing I mean. Rebranding is a thing you need to evolve. I know that my husband's company is going through a large rebranding right now and they're a well established company. So you need to evolve your brand. And we've all seen it with products that we buy, like Coca-Cola rebrand you know it's just people rebrand. When it's time to refresh, rebrand, yes, it's time for you to always revisit these things and I always say come at it from a perspective of where's your heart, where are your passions for where your company is going. And I'm evolving. My Anganguza brand will be evolving and broadening out to a larger audience. And even this podcast. 18:28 I've been always wanting to evolve this podcast to a larger audience so that it's not just voiceover artists. However, it's been voiceover for a good seven years. Now I've got a thought do I start a new podcast if I want to venture out of not that I'm venturing out of voice acting, but if I want to also explore right other avenues, like just podcasting in general, entrepreneurship? Like, do I keep this podcast and then add a new one, or do I rebrand this podcast and evolve? It's not something you do by tomorrow. It's something that takes some thought and sometimes the idea just has to sit with you for a while. 19:05 I remember a few years back, law, I went to rebrand and I was trying to consolidate VioPeeps and VioBoss and I had new designs. I actually had my VioPeeps bird and I made him edgy. So I changed the colors from the VioPeeps bird, from the blue, and I put him in black and red and he's like edgy. I had like a leather jacket, he had like some sunglasses and he was very cool and I got some really cool graphics out of that for a complete consolidation of a brand. 19:34 - Introduction (Announcement) And I decided not to do it after that, but it was something like I said. 19:38 - Anne (Host) It doesn't always have to happen. I mean, I decided against it only because my little bird was just too cute to give up and I loved him, and you know what I said. That's it. I'm going to keep a separate brand, but I think it's something that every year, and especially since we're in the beginning of the year now, right, it's something that people can think about. Right, what are you doing for this next year? What are you doing? Are you evolving? Are you growing? How are you doing that and how are you changing things up? I mean, gosh knows that if you change up your website, it can actually put your SEO into high gear, right? Especially? 20:12 - Introduction (Announcement) if you update content. 20:13 - Anne (Host) If you update pages, update looks, maybe update capabilities. 20:17 - Lau (Co-host) Yeah, and there's a functuary in that it's such a refreshment in doing that. 20:21 You know just when you think you know your favorite company's tagline or slogan. Just look it up. You're going to see sometimes hundreds of slogans that they've used over the years because they're reaching out to different demographics of people and they need to have different visuals right that appeal to those demographics. So I love that. I think you should stay really you know you don't want to change things every two seconds because then people get confused as to who you are but keep it fresh and trendy so that you give yourself flexibility and fluidity to say, um, that color scheme isn't me anymore, or it doesn't really represent the people I work with anymore, or the thing itself, the website itself or whatever, just doesn't look like me anymore. Here's one of the things that I discovered, annie, I know you already know this, but I discovered it only about a year ago and that is why was I in the box of thinking I just needed one website. 21:11 Oh yeah, right so people are having the discussion should I get a website? I'm having the discussion how many websites should I have? So now, for every event I have, I want to do? I'm driving my web people crazy because I'm like it's so inexpensive to get it. People don't have to fight through your website to find the thing you're looking for right. 21:33 To me, that's been my personal playground of visual branding and also ease of navigation for the client to say, oh, it's this particular project, it's a big one, I want to represent it visually aside from everything else we're doing. So when you talk about your different brands, in case people don't understand what that means, it could be something as simple yet sophisticated as having separate websites, absolutely, absolutely. 21:58 - Anne (Host) I mean, for years I've had medicalnarrationcom, I've had phonevoicecom and I've had, for each genre that I specialize in, of course, vopeaps and VOBOSS. I mean, I think at one point I owned like 13 domains and I still have domains. I have domains right now because I have ideas. How many sites do you have now? Though I probably have, I've got VOPEAPS, voboss in Gangusa, automotive, annie medical-narration phone-voicecom, e-learning-voicecom. Gosh, I've got a bunch. 22:31 - Lau (Co-host) And those are all actual websites right. Those are landing page websites that you can get to see what it is. 22:38 - Anne (Host) Yeah, I'm going to revisit and see what my SEO value is for those right now. But if you definitely are pointing people towards your website for promotions or for purchasing, it definitely can help to have it just go to a website. And of course I always, always, always recommend people say, and Gangusa or yournamecom, because you are a personal brand and that's the first and foremost domain I think anybody should get. But it's not expensive to purchase domains these days, unless of course you have a very common name or you want, like voiceactingcom, which that's already taken, but your first and lastnamecom. If not, then your first lastname, voicecom or voice acting or voice actor, those things all are viable. 23:22 - Lau (Co-host) I love it, I love it. And one more thing, Annie, I want to bring up. That's what my dad always called ATD attention to detail, which really makes a difference. 23:31 Now maybe more viable in a time where we were meeting people in person more than we are now, but I'm going to say it anyway because I personally like to get out and go to physical events. If you go anywhere to meet someone outside of your office, in your studio, not only worry about the way you look, but be concerned about if you drive watch your car. That's something that we always said oh, do I want to do the deal with this person? Their car is filthy. I just got inside of it. It's a mess, right? 24:02 Real estate agents used to talk about that a lot because they'd get inside other people's car to go look at properties or they'd get in the real estate agents car. So I know it may or may not like pertain to some of the listeners right now, but some that are going out physically to meetings, to networking, to this, to that like how you show up physically to the parking lot, come into the room, whatever, just it all kind of matters, it all matters. Don't think, oh, I'm offstage right now, no one sees me, no one cares. Until I enter the room, they do care, they look at you and they say is this the kind of person that I want to know Is it the person that I want to work with? 24:40 - Anne (Host) potentially, it's just never thought about that. Never thought about that. 24:44 - Lau (Co-host) Right, If you're meeting for a Zoom coffee or a real coffee, you're going to Starbucks or whatever. Like, just think about. Right, Bring your notebook, take notes. That's a visual right, good advice. Wow. 24:57 - Anne (Host) Well, this was a fun topic. I love it. Fun. We could go on and on, we could Bosses. As individuals, it can seem difficult to make a huge impact, but as a group, together we can contribute to the growth of our communities in ways that we never before thought possible. Visit 100voiceswhocareorg to learn how Big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl. We love IPDTL because I love talking to law and I love connecting with other bosses. You can find out more at IPDTLcom. You guys have an amazing week and we'll see you next week. Awesome Bye. 25:34 - Lau (Co-host) See you next time. Bye. 25:37 - Introduction (Announcement) Yay. Join us next week for another edition of Vo Boss with your host and Gangusa, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at vobosscom and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via IPDTL. 26:08 - Anne (Host) Law you just had, like a series of fireworks. 26:15 - Lau (Co-host) I know what happened there. I should keep that in there. I don't know, I have no idea. Oh my goodness, I thought it might be something on your end. I don't know, I've never, but you and I, we are making fireworks together. 26:28 - Anne (Host) There you go, we are making fireworks.

Prepare yourself to delve into the beautiful dance of giving and receiving - a balance, when maintained, that can have profound impacts on both your work and personal life. We'll explore the joy of giving and the ripple effects it carries for both the giver and recipient, as well as the importance of receiving recognition in the business world. As we navigate this conversation, we'll also challenge the constant need for validation and discuss how rewarding achievements can foster healthier self-esteem. Join us as we explore the complexities of acknowledging one's worth and the importance of fair compensation. Essential listening for anyone who struggles with receiving, this episode promises to enlighten and inspire. 00:01 - Intro (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss, a VEO boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza. 00:19 - Anne (Host) Hey everyone, welcome to the VEO Boss podcast and the Boss Superpower series. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, along with my amazing, awesome, most wonderful boss, co -host Lau Lapides. Hey, Lau, hi, hi, Annie. Happy Saturday, yes, happy Saturday, Lau. You know, Lau, it's a new year and I am full of promise and full of motivation and inspiration and we've just come off the season of. I like to call it the season of giving, because I love to give gifts and I love to donate to my favorite charities. And you know what? I also like to receive gifts, but we don't always talk about that. We talk about giving, but what about receiving? And sometimes Lau those gifts, they're not in a box. So let's talk about the gift of receiving, shall we? 01:14 - Lau (Host) It's so interesting to me. I love this topic and because there's so many cultural differences of how we receive. There's gender differences, there's age and generational differences and I don't hear anyone really talking about how do we get something, receive something, take something, and how do we behaviorally deal with that. Yeah, like something is simple. I'll tell you what's in my brain right now. When someone comes into my home or my studio, the first thing I do and this was in my training was to offer them something. I offer them a hot drink. 01:51 - Anne (Host) I offer them a warm beverage. 01:52 - Lau (Host) I offer them a warm beverage of their choice, right, and that is definitely generational, but it's also cultural because that's the background Eastern European background. We are gift givers. We give a lot to others, right, and there's different schools of thought business-wise as to how you receive that, and how I train my clients is take it, take it. You don't have to drink it, you don't have to want it, but take it because it's giving a message to the person who's giving it to you that you are cordially receiving something that they're offering to you. 02:29 That's part of their protocol and they're etiquette right. 02:32 - Anne (Host) Well, I'll tell you one thing that's always been hard for me to receive and I think a lot of maybe women, maybe a lot of people share. This is a compliment I'm just saying that is so difficult for me, without downplaying it, and honestly, the best thing you can do to receive that compliment is to receive it with gratitude even if you don't feel it right. 02:55 I mean, how many times do people send a compliment your way and you're like, oh no, it was nothing. Or, and especially, though, when it comes to our businesses too though, isn't it funny. When it comes to our businesses, I am more than happy to take a compliment from a client. Do you know what I mean? If a client's like, oh my God, great job, right, I'm very happy about that. Inside, I'm bursting with pride and joy and hopefully that's every boss out there when they get a compliment or good feedback from their client, and I think that you must receive that. And if you receive that, that really speaks volumes to professionalism, right and courtesy, and understanding what it means to the other person when they're giving you something such as a compliment doesn't have to have monetary value, of course. 03:37 Well, like to have gifts of gold but in addition to that, gift of a kind word is really something I think that is truly like giving of the other person, and if you reject it, then that's a little insulting and hurtful. 03:53 - Lau (Host) I think you hit the nail on the head too when you said, especially with women, how we're not always in the mood to receive that or expecting that or even deserving of that. In our mindset, it's a little bit of that imposter syndrome that comes in when someone gives you that compliment and that moment of like oh, how do I take that? Do I deserve that? Oftentimes we'll say, oh no, I just got this dumb outfit. 04:19 - Anne (Host) You know it was on sale. Anyway, you look terrific, you look great and I throw it. 04:22 - Lau (Host) This old thing, yeah, this old thing, it's been hanging in my closet Doesn't mean but you look terrific, you look amazing. We'll throw it right back at the other person, which they don't realize oftentimes. That is a passive aggressive non accepting value, because it's not just a compliment, it's showcasing your value. 04:43 - Anne (Host) It's almost like when you throw it back and it's not that you don't mean it, but sometimes when you throw it back immediately, it's almost like you don't accept what they're giving to you and you're like, oh no, you look great. And so then it becomes that kind of a battle of maybe, well, who's giving here and who's the gracious receiver right? 05:00 - Intro (Announcement) There's gracious giving and there's gracious receiving. 05:03 - Anne (Host) And I truly believe that it needs to be within our boss superpowers to be able to receive and something that's we're talking a little more on maybe a loftier level in terms of nothing that has monetary value, but definitely has value like a compliment right, an act of kindness, that sort of thing. What about money Lau? I mean, how hard is it sometimes for us to accept for a job Well done, I'm happy to accept money, but thinking about, am I worth the money, am I asking for enough money? And what if I get more money? And is that hard for me to receive? Because, again, we have some of these mental issues sometimes with accepting money and that really kind of, I think, goes back to our value or our feelings of self worth. 05:47 - Lau (Host) Yes, yes, yes, yes. And you know what that money may be in money form and it may go towards an actual gift right. And I recently received. One of the gifts in the mail I literally just got within a week ago was from a client of mine who sent me one of those beautiful boxes for a holiday for. Thanksgiving that was chock full of coffee, beans and caramel and just everything under the sun. 06:09 - Anne (Host) And. 06:09 - Lau (Host) I was so surprised when I opened it up. I was so amazed that someone was thinking of me in that way, but how I reacted to it now, on retrospect, when I look at that, what did I do immediately? I thanked her, I loved it, and then I immediately started to give it away. I immediately started to offering to my clients coming through that. 06:29 - Anne (Host) I see to my family. 06:30 - Lau (Host) Oh, here, let me share, let me, here, let me give this to you. Let me share this to you. And I oftentimes wonder is a gift really meant for you when it's given to you, or is it meant for you to do what you see fit with that gift? So, if you get the monetary cash and you want to give it to charity, how would that person, how would the giver actually feel about that if they really wanted to give it to you? That's an interesting question. 06:56 - Anne (Host) Yeah, that is an interesting question. Well, you know what I think? That if a gift is given, it is because or at least for me, the person that is giving it wants to extend a gift for the other person to experience joy, I would think, and appreciation, and I feel like for me, whatever they choose to do with it, I mean, unless I feel like they secretly hate it and they gave it away and they're like, oh gosh, this is like what is it called? 07:21 - Intro (Announcement) An elephant gift. An elephant gift yes exactly. 07:24 - Anne (Host) And so then I would be a little hurt if I knew. But I think my intentions are to provide a token of appreciation, a token of here's how I feel about you. And if the other person doesn't accept it for themselves graciously at first, and then I realize, oh, maybe they've immediately given it away or something, then I would be hurt. I would be hurt by that Feeling like they've rejected my gift. 07:45 - Lau (Host) But, annie, let's be honest, we've all done that. Haven't we all gotten that scarf? Or those gloves that are just the ugliest thing in the world, do you think? Oh, they're itchy, they don't really fit me. Well, let me, elephant, gift that to someone who will appreciate it. And if not, you notice people are starting to say if you don't want it, it's okay, pass it on. I'm like a donate. 08:05 - Anne (Host) The other thing would be like here's one things that people have made for me. Now, this could be homemade food. This could be homemade gifts. This could be my grandmother knitting me a sweater, or my mother knitted me. 08:18 I'm gonna get me all teary, but my mother, she knitted me afghans and blankets, and my aunt used to so close for me, and it reminds me of the bunny suit on a Christmas story with Ralphie, and so you accept that and you're grateful for it, because there was thought and love put into the gift and so receiving that means that you're receiving that love. You're receiving that gift. 08:41 - Lau (Host) You're receiving it, you're suck it up. You do you do. You're totally, because it's not the color of your bedroom and it just is not the feel that you wanna put on your body, but you love it. You put it on display somewhere. You just have to appreciate that, right. What about this one? What about from a philosophical point of view? As we live our lives every day around the holiday season, how are we viewing gifts that are given by others or by the universe? Are we recognizing any gifts, gifts? 09:09 - Anne (Host) from the universe Locke. Let's delve deeper into that. So what gifts from the universe? What would be some examples? I like that. 09:16 - Lau (Host) Well, I'm a New Englander, so on the New England track. I think all of us can relate that come from cold weather climates and when I have more, temperate weather or. I have a winter where we're not like snowed in and killing ourselves with the slush. To me, I recognize that as an immense gift. 09:35 - Anne (Host) Nice and Californians are very grateful for rain. 09:38 - Lau (Host) Yes, oh yes, yes, yes, yes. How about the gift of looking in the mirror and seeing yourself for what you actually see, not for what you want to see? So that is, as you age, seeing the wrinkles, seeing the imperfections, seeing the scars, but then feeling like, wow, there's a gift in there for me of understanding. 10:02 - Anne (Host) That represents my life, my heart. Here I have to tell you because my own personal experience. I have lost a little bit of weight and so I look at my body, which is now kind of a wrinkly because I got some skin, and I look at that and I'm like, ok, that could be considered by some to not be attractive, but for me it's almost like it's a battle scar. It's like you know what I'm proud of? 10:23 my body I am proud, I am grateful. I am actually so grateful for my body, for being resilient and for the things that my body has been through, and I think that we can apply this to our businesses as well right, our journey as our businesses. But, like my body has been through a journey, my mentality, my entrepreneurship has been through a journey, and I'm grateful for all of it because I've survived it and I've been able to come out the other side more joyful and educated and more motivated to do even more. And so I really try to take a look at that and be grateful for that gift from the universe right that I have received. And I love that we kind of brought the gifts from the universe into this discussion, because I think we have them every day and we don't always recognize them for what they are and we aren't always receiving them or acknowledging them with the amount of gratitude or thought that I think we should. 11:23 - Lau (Host) Right, or even just mindfulness, conscientiousness of seeing it and observing. We talk about it from an actor's point of view, but from a human point of view, are you really seeing what is in front of you? What are you uncovering? And since we're diving deep, I'll go one deeper, because you're not only surviving and you're thriving in the gratefulness and recognition, in the gift of that, and that's what makes you so beautiful, both aesthetically but also inside. There's a beauty and a light that happens in you. To me that's very recognizable and I'm going to dive even deeper. I'm going to say I have someone very close to my family suffering from a very deadly illness and eating it and I watch it every day go into remission and I watch it turn around and I watch it Now, from the outside, this person is somewhat suffering and all of that. From the inside, I see that little soul, that little spirit winning and I'm like a gift a gift, a gift, a gift every day. 12:28 - Anne (Host) It's so true. 12:29 - Lau (Host) If I lose the job, if I don't look good one day, whatever, this is the gift that I'm going to keep coming back to, of course, and I totally identify with that. 12:38 - Anne (Host) I mean it is, and we've talked about this before. 12:41 I mean, yeah, when someone that you love or someone you're close to is going through a challenge mental challenge, health challenge, whatever that might be I mean, in reality, it really points us towards knowing and understanding what those gifts are. And I've said it before, when I was going through my own health challenge, I mean, once I got back in the studio, I was like gosh, what was I ever worried about? You know, here I was thinking, oh, my voice doesn't sound in a particular way or I'd worry about those things, and I'm like my gosh, I have just been given this immense gift and I'm here to be able to experience and here to be able to just do what I love in this booth and just be, just be and be grateful. And well, I'll tell you what that comes through in our voices, doesn't it? It emanates from us and, as performers, I think that it behooves us to be good receivers, right Of the gifts that are being given to us, because it just absorbs into our energy and just radiates out from our performances. 13:39 - Lau (Host) It so does, and I mean the gift of knowledge of how to give as well, so like, for instance, when it comes to philanthropy and charity. I love that. I'm big in that. I'll give a quick plug to our 100 voices who care. 13:54 - Intro (Announcement) We love. 13:54 - Lau (Host) Claire and the gang we love so much. I'm a member and to me it's such a relief, it's such a relief gift to me to figure out how to give in a very safe and impactful and thought away. And as long as I make money, I'm going to give forever because I don't have to think about it. It's one less thing I have to think about because I know it's vetted, I know it's legit and I know the people come from their heart and soul. Wow, to me that's a gift. 14:23 - Anne (Host) Exactly, and you know, the cool thing about 100 Voices who Care is, honestly, it does not take a lot of money, and that's really what the big thing is, and it's literally $100, four times a year, and that's it. And ultimately that, combined with the community, the togetherness that is also in kind, donating that, that is $10,000 that can be given to people in need or organizations in need, and I think that that's absolutely wonderful and I think, really, whatever giving charity that you want, again giving that and then expecting that the people who are in need are receiving that and they're grateful for it right, that's what makes the world go round and that's what I think really giving is so easy to talk about, because I love to give myself and I mean I consider the VoBoss we're giving of ourselves joyfully, because it's something that we both love to do, we love to share, we love to be a resource, we love to help if we can, and that's what we're here for. 15:19 But I really really also want bosses out there to understand the importance of being able to see and acknowledge and receive in kind and be okay, it is for you, it doesn't have to be for anybody else, you don't have to feel compelled to turn around and give it somewhere else. 15:36 I fully believe that if a gift is meant for you and you love it and you keep it for yourself, you give in other ways, right? I mean it doesn't have to be that you have to turn around and feel like, oh, I either need to give that gift or give a portion of that gift, or you can keep it. I mean it's okay, it was meant for you and love, and that is something that I think is really wonderful. And, of course, I mean let's make it more from a business perspective, right, being able to ask for the money that you deserve for a job that has been well done is, first of all, when you do that yes, do that but when you get that actual money and you receive that money, then you'll notice that I feel like the cycle or the circle has been completed. 16:18 - Lau (Host) Yes, absolutely. And here's another one that is amazing but can be tricky in how it's received. You and I, I know I'm grateful and fortunate that we're nominated. 16:27 You and I and our companies for SOVA's nominations, which I'm thrilled I'm over the moon. So when I learned that now you've been nominated for years now that was my first time around being nominated when I learned that it challenged me a little I'll be honest with you. It challenged me. I had to sit there and go, well, okay, do I deserve that? Is that okay, do I deserve that? Was there anyone that deserves it more than me? Or, like it challenged me in a way, I was over the moon, thrilled. I love to be a part of it, the community be recognized. But at the end of the day, you have to sit alone with yourself and say I did this, we did this, I did this and I accept the good things coming my way, along with the challenging things as well. 17:14 It's like you have to have a little conversation with yourself about that and I'm very careful, like I don't want my head to be big. I don't want to be gloaty about it, I don't want to hold it over anyone else. I want to be very humane about the recognition that I slash we as the company get because I feel so grateful for it. I don't feel like, oh, of course I deserved it, I'm the best. I feel like that's going in a direction of morality that is not of high integrity. The highest integrity people are people who are humble and they're modest and they have humility about themselves and their work. Those are the people that I always have admiration for yeah, absolutely, I love that. 17:54 - Anne (Host) And receiving acknowledgement right Receiving acknowledgement is absolutely another important, very important, I think, factor in really having fulfilling and successful entrepreneurial journeys and businesses right. 18:08 I think a lot of times what happens? We get a lot of people coming into this industry that are so unhappy and there are jobs, because I always tell people in the corporate world all we really want is love. All we want is love and acknowledgement right Like validation. It helps to make money right so you can pay the bills. Absolutely, I mean that's first and foremost. 18:26 But I think a lot of times when people are dissatisfied with their work, it's because they've really put their heart and soul into it and nobody's acknowledged that and nobody has really recognized that or given them a compliment or credited them for that, and so that, I think, is one source of people really wanting to come into business for themselves. And so now when we're entrepreneurs feedback that we get and it's rare that we get feedback from clients right, unless we go out and ask for it, which I'm the biggest fan of, going out and getting testimonials right Get yourself that acknowledgement. But also, when it comes unexpectedly, it's something that I think we need to be prepared to just receive it and be grateful for it and really know that you're worth it, because there's something to be said about people who are constantly degrading or downplaying or shunning those compliments or acknowledgments or awards, and we did a podcast on awards. There's just there's lots of different opinions about awards. Do people need an award to do their business? Not necessarily. 19:26 But I'll tell you sometimes that recognition very similar to being in a corporate job or whatever it might be getting a little bit of recognition can really help emotionally. Mental I mean. I feel like everything in life it all stems mentally and then it kind of I'm going to say, pushes out physically, right. Like I feel like everything is in our head, like that's what is controlling the earth, right? Our thoughts, right, I feel it's our thoughts and how we feel about ourselves and how we feel about others and how we treat it. It just directly affects the physical everything and I think that it's so important. 19:59 - Lau (Host) I just rambled off on this kind of tangent, but I think it's all related, right, it's all related because if think of any relationship we have, like I love acknowledging, I love validating, I love giving compliments, I love that it doesn't only make me feel good, it's necessary, it's like, okay, we're going to be tough on someone, we're going to give honest feedback, we're going to say no to someone, we're going to be harsh at times, but it's really important to have those moments where you go you know what, I'm really proud of you. Or hey, you did it, Nicely done. I'm so excited for you. 20:34 Because otherwise I find people in general get really down on themselves very fast and then lose steam, lose energy, lose motivation, because they ultimately start to want to please or be liked by the casting, producer, coach, whatever, and it becomes personalized in that way. So it's like a fine line. I of course, want to have that no-like and trust factor. Of course I want to have that in the business world. But there's a fine line Like we don't want to be motivated to only be liked and only be validated, right. 21:11 Otherwise you're seeking to receive things all the time which are not earned they're not always well earned. They're just that little honor, that little star, for no reason. I want to live in a meritocracy. Still, I want to be rewarded when I'm earned. 21:27 - Anne (Host) Yeah, I love that you brought that up because you're right, Seeking to receive all the time is not good either. Being able to receive is one thing, but seeking to always have likes or stuff like that is also not healthy and doesn't create for a healthy business either. Right, when you're constantly seeking approval and I think that really kind of stems from other issues, like when you're seeking approval all the time, and that could be a whole other podcast Lau. 21:51 - Lau (Host) That is a whole other podcast approval. Yeah, how do we respond to all of the things that happen in our world that are not what we want or not what we're expecting to come back to us? How do we respond to those things Like not being nominated, not getting the award, not getting? How do we respond to that? 22:13 - Anne (Host) That always is a little pain, oh, always a pain, even when you know better, like myself, and we know we've been on both sides right when we want that acknowledgement, we want that award, we want that feedback, and sometimes it just doesn't come back to us the way that we want. And so how do we deal with that right? Again, that's not necessarily a rejection right of something that you're receiving, it's that you haven't received it. And so now, what? Now, what do you do with that longing, that desire, that hope? How do you get yourself back in balance? 22:44 - Lau (Host) That's right. That's right. Balance is really the key because the more balanced we are, the more we can easily give and offer and receive and take. And not do it from an ego point of view, not do it from this heavy ego centric, really do it from a place that's very balanced and very open and very like. It's like a give and take of Feng Shui. You know what I mean. Like you're cleansing Every time you give something away. I find when I Feng Shui my office or my studio and I give things away, if it's received well, I feel cleansed right, and if I'm receiving something, well, I feel cleansed. 23:19 There's like a cathartic thing that happens, a purification that happens if it's not coming from pure ego which. I love. I think it's fabulous. 23:27 - Anne (Host) I can talk Clear the clutter, clear the clutter, clear the clutter, physically clear the clutter in your brain. I mean it can really do a lot to propel you and your business forward. Absolutely, absolutely. What a really cool conversation Lau. I love it, I love it Beautiful I love it, guys. 23:43 And, as we spoke about before, 100 Voices who Care, simple Mission, big Impact 100 Voices, 1 hour, $10,000,. Guys, you can really make an impact. Visit 100voiceswhocareorg to find out more and big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl. Gosh, I love IPDTL, I just love IPDTL. They give us the opportunity to give and receive Lau at UNI back and forth for this podcast, and I absolutely love the fact that we can connect and do so. Find out more at IPDTLcom. You guys have an amazing week and we'll see you next week. Bye. 24:19 - Lau (Host) See you next time. 24:21 - Intro (Announcement) Join us next week for another edition of VoBoss with your host, Ann Gangusa, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at vobosscom and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution, with permission. Coast-to-coast connectivity via IPDTL.

Are you ready to become the architect of your own success? This episode is a catalyst for inspiring business transformations. Anne and Lau uncover exciting possibilities that come with starting something new, and guide you on how to kindle creativity for innovative ideas. Discover how the power of writing can become a game-changer for your creativity and personal development. Delve into how expressing your thoughts and ideas on paper encourages new, innovative ideas. Learn why feedback is crucial, and the profound impacts a business mentor can have on your business. The BOSSES emphasize patience, persistence, and maintaining an abundant mindset when investing in yourself and your business. From successful direct marketing strategies to the creation of tangible proofs of concept, we've got you covered. Let's level up your business together! Transcript 00:01 - Intro (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss, a VO boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza. 00:20 - Anne (Host) Hey everyone, welcome to the VEO Boss Podcast and the Boss Superpower Series. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, along with my amazing special guest co-host Lau Laupides. 00:33 - Lau (Host) And how are you? Welcome to be back. I'm fabulous. How are you? 00:37 - Anne (Host) It's a brand new day. Lau, it's a brand new day. It's a new year. I am excited, Speaking of new. I think it's time for us to maybe talk about setting goals, starting something new. I always get a great thrill, a great anticipation and excitement when I start something new, and I think it's something that can really help bosses to grow their businesses, to be continually moving forward and progressing, and I think it's wonderful to challenge ourselves. What about you? I? 01:06 - Lau (Host) love it. I would love to do some tips on how we can start something new, because it's that feng shui of your soul, your spirit, your closet, your studio, your whatever, your car, your relationship. It's like how do I not only cleanse and clean things out, but how do I make the fire happen, how do I create it? And do it on a reguLaur basis as a soloprenor, as an entrepreneur? That's what our job is. It's really to constantly create things. Create, that's why we're creatives. That's why we're creatives. 01:37 - Anne (Host) Yes, and we really need to embrace. Embrace the creativeness, even if you feel that you're not creative, right, and you feel, and it's scary, I'll tell you a lot it's scary to start new things, because what if we fail? Right. 01:49 - Intro (Announcement) What if it doesn't work? 01:51 - Anne (Host) What are we going to do? And so I think that there's a lot of anguish that happens before we start something new, or goodness gracious knows that I can procrastinate along with the best of them right, but once I get a focus right. 02:04 I'm focused, but I'll tell you what. Getting started and starting something new A lot of times I know that bosses will be like I don't even know where to start. So what are some tips on? How can we generate new ideas right? I mean, some of them can come from within ourselves, but I'll tell you what. There's technology out there that can help us to maybe spur some new ideas for how to grow our business right. 02:26 - Lau (Host) I would have a little something, a little trinket, a mechanism, a toy or whatever. That is your reset button, that's your little thing that you go to. I used to have staples button. 02:35 - Anne (Host) When I worked with staples. Yes, that was easy. 02:37 - Lau (Host) I literally hit it on my desk and go boom, that was easy, so you need something physical in your environment whether it's a stuffed 02:46 animal, whether it's a little bell, a little bell or something. It sounds ridiculous, but I'm telling you your brain takes recording really well. Ironically, we're in the business of recording everything. We do, everything we say, every move we make. We're being recorded. So every time you do that little Pavlovian dog behavioral thing, your brain goes something good is coming, something new is happening. I'm going to accept it into the reality that I want safety, I want comfort and I want to know exactly what's coming up. So it's going to reset that for you, so that you've got a mindset focus reset before you do anything. I think that's really important. 03:26 - Anne (Host) I feel like we could do a search on Amazon or something and something like a reset button or a new button or something that will help us. So if you're looking for that physical thing, that button to push, or there's always the staple, that's easy button, which I love. 03:39 - Intro (Announcement) I had a bell and that kind of thing. 03:40 - Anne (Host) But, yeah, I like that. That's a good start now. So what? What are we going to do? That's new. How are we going to come up with ideas? I think a lot of us have ideas on what we'd like to do to move our business forward. Oh, build a new studio. Maybe there's roadblocks, right, but these roadblocks can actually, I think, motivate us to get started on something new, because we can then work towards achieving our goal, and I don't want this to necessarily turn into the goal achieving episode but it's very simiLaur. 04:07 Because what if? Okay, I want to start something new, I want to go into a different genre of voiceover, or I want to build a new studio, or I want to rearrange my office space right so it's more conducive to working more efficiently? Whatever it might be, I think it starts with the idea and it starts with that little thing. Here we go Right now. What are the steps that it's going to take to get there right, To start this, to actually accomplish this? 04:35 - Lau (Host) By the way, you could go very Eastern philosophy. You could do either a gong or you could do some chimes. I love the chimes. The chimes is really cool to my ear. I have tincture bells. 04:44 - Anne (Host) I don't know if those of you out there. 04:45 - Intro (Announcement) I love tincture bells. 04:47 - Anne (Host) Tincture bells are, I think, very good vibrations and good energy, and tincture bells are just a beautiful sounding bell. 04:53 - Lau (Host) All right, I have a really cool exercise, annie, that I use for a number of the soloprenore cLausses that I teach, that I myself love doing, and that is we put on some really cool music. My favorite is bonobo. We put on some fabulous music and we do like a timed brain dump, and the timed brain dump usually for me is six minutes, but it could be whatever you choose, and it's a time where we put on that music. We focus our pen or pencil on the paper. Now we are not allowed to pick the pen or pencil up for six minutes, meaning I don't allow critiquing, I don't allow editing, I don't allow review. It's not grammatically correct. It is a creative writing exercise for you to dump out everything in your brain, refocus. But, most importantly, Wait. 05:41 - Anne (Host) You don't pick up the pen until six minutes, and then, after six minutes, you pick up the pen. 05:46 - Lau (Host) No, it doesn't matter what you're writing. You're allowing your subconscious to drain itself. So that you and your intellect have nothing to do with it. It's really about so you're not writing. You're dumping, You're writing. You're actually writing what you're dumping. 06:00 - Anne (Host) Oh, I thought you said you don't pick up the pen. 06:02 - Lau (Host) Well meaning, you don't pick up the pen to stop writing, you keep your pen to the paper. 06:06 Oh, I see, I see, I see and you write and it can be tiring, it can be physically demanding for people who are not used to writing, but it's important because we get in the way so much of the ideas Like we got to get ideas out there before we can dissect them or critique them and sometimes nothing comes of it. But oftentimes there are things lodged in our brain that are either exciting us, bothering us, sticking, coming back, that we need to awaken and pay attention to, for that new idea. 06:37 - Anne (Host) Now, during this exercise, you're writing everything that's coming into your brain Everything, Even if it's not a new idea right, even if it's like oh my gosh. What are we going to have for dinner tonight? Or I'm hungry. Or okay, even that. 06:48 - Lau (Host) Okay, it's a total stream of consciousness. They used to use this in psychotherapy, where you would speak it out loud, but I like the privacy of being able to write it because you're not necessarily sharing it with anyone, absolutely Unless you choose to. It's really for your own purpose of writing everything out, so it might look like oh, I'm hot right now and I need a banana and that coffee hurts me. And he sucked. And why did he break? 07:12 - Anne (Host) up with me and I don't have money for a microphone. I need a banana. I need a banana right now. 07:18 - Lau (Host) Right, but see, notice that banana jumped out at you. That may be my next creative idea about the banana, about the banana. 07:26 - Anne (Host) I love it. No, I love that. Okay, and so after six minutes, then what happens? We've got a bunch of writings on our paper. 07:32 - Lau (Host) Well, that's up to us how we want to facilitate that. We can either leave it alone, put it in our corner where we put our writing and just feel like we've been drained a little bit, we've been fungshuated a little bit, or we can look at that in my coaching. I'll look at that a lot, circle and have people pick out yes. Emphasize the words, the ideas that resonate to them in that moment. 07:54 - Anne (Host) I love that. 07:55 - Lau (Host) And usually there's a couple in there. I love that. Usually there's like hate my mother oh, that's interesting. Hate your mother Okay. So let's look at that right. And then that can go in many, many directions. It could be anything. It could be comedy, sure. It could be absurd. It could be not even a reality in your mind. It could be a podcast on your mother Right. It could be something. It could be the evolution of a podcast on your mother. 08:17 - Anne (Host) It could be a film. 08:18 - Lau (Host) I saw that was called Hate my Mother, and I can't get it out of my head because I love how they shot something or I love the sound of the film. 08:26 - Anne (Host) See, as you go deeper into that, right, did you love about it? It sparked something creative, like you could do this. Yes, or we should do something like this, or, you know, it would be cool if this were developed. I have so many good ideas. How many times bosses out there have you had an idea and you're like, oh man, or you'll see a new thing that comes out, a new gadget, and you'd be like man, I had that idea, that was my idea, like years ago, right, and we never really kind of took action on it. And a lot of times it's because it is something new. 08:56 There's not a lot of things out there to reference it. We don't know quite how to wrap our heads around it. We don't know how to get started, we don't know how to maybe put it into action. And I'll tell you what. I think that those circled words or whatever those things that are in your brain. You can then start to say, all right, how can I make this happen? 09:15 And if this is going to be something, hopefully it's something that will move you ahead in your business. And I'm a big believer that if you're moving ahead in your personal development, you're also moving ahead in your business Because, again, our business is so much connected to who we are and ourselves and so really that can be motivational to really moving forward. So, yeah, you've got those ideas. Now what is it going to take to put those ideas in motion? What is it going to take? And a lot of times people might say, well, money, okay, all right, money might be what you consider to be your barrier, right, but we can figure out what are ways to overcome that barrier of money. How can we make more money? How can we put some money aside every month to be able to continually add to the budget to make this happen? 10:01 - Lau (Host) Mm-hmm. I also find, annie, that when you write something down, it becomes more real when you pull it out of your head. I agree it's not real in your head. I mean just because this is what neurosurgeon had famous talks. Just because you're thinking it doesn't mean it's real. It doesn't mean it's true right, like I need to hear that from a neurosurgeon. But it's true because when I think it, I think that it's actually true. 10:24 But when I put it on paper, all of a sudden I can clean that shop, I can decipher it differently, like what I want to be tackling, what I don't want to be tackling, right. So when I tackle it, when I say I'm gonna emphasize that I'm gonna tackle that I and this is just my process I like to start sharing that with confidence. I like to start coming together and colLauborating and brainstorming before I even get to money and budgets and all that stuff. I like to come with someone and say am I crazy? Am I sane? Is this worth time? What do you think? And if I hear this common response of ooh, that's interesting, yeah, that's cool. 11:00 - Anne (Host) It inspires me, or would you buy this, or would this be something that you would like, or that kind of thing? 11:06 - Lau (Host) Absolutely, absolutely cuz it's not real yet in my mind it's not even real if I believe in it yet. I want to see what our community response is. I don't share it with a million people, but I share with a few confidants to see what their gauges. I'm gonna tell you. 11:19 - Anne (Host) For years now for oh gosh, probably 15 years I have had a business mentor, somebody that I meet with, and I used to meet with her a whole lot more when I was first Initially starting in the business. But we could brainstorm together right, how can I grow my business, what do I see for myself in the future and what does it gonna take to get there? And we still do that to this day. It was, again, outside of my account and I always love my account, but one of the best investments I ever made in my business was hiring her to be that and she's not necessarily in the business, right, so somebody that can help me to figure out. Okay, what's new? Right, and we actively talk about things at the end of the year or at the beginning of the year like what's new. But I think, more importantly, it's not just end of year, beginning of year, it is every month. Right, I have a standing appointment with her every month and we talk about okay, what are we gonna do now? What are we heading towards? What are we evolving towards? And we talk about having a pLaun B for your business or a parallel paths of passive income. I love that parallel path of passive income. We've got a lot of peas in there, and good thing I'm not too close to my mic, but those things are always Evolved and developed during those monthly meetings. 12:29 Now I think it's something that you can absolutely start every month yourself or put yourself on. 12:34 I think every month is good to be able to come up with new ideas, come up with new things to try. It doesn't have to be an entirely new idea, but it can be a new offshoot Based upon, let's say, a long-term goal you have of oh, I want to be able to do animation, and so that may be a long term goal. So then, what's a new goal for next month? Well, let's decide on a coach, right, let's start working with a coach. Let's call a series of coaches and let's see who I click with, right, and then let's do one session with each coach and then really find out who I jive, who I meld with, and then we can then start training. So it can be something new every single month, and I think that really helps you to gosh. Stagnation for me is the worst. That is when I think nothing moves forward. Their businesses don't move forward, and then people end up maybe not being in business anymore, or quitting or being discouraged. 13:27 - Lau (Host) Exactly that's when you start getting down on yourself and you become a saboteur and you sabotage things. So yes, I'm all for that, and I'll even say to piggyback onto that find groups or find specific moments of events that you can sit in on or be a part of that. You can conjure ideas up as you listen to the group. Be careful of not spending your whole time, your whole week, in groups, because then that can confuse you because you're going to hear a lot of ideas and a lot of different thoughts. 13:55 A lot of opinions, but pick and choose yeah, pick and choose your group really, really well and wisely, so that what you hear, you know, is coming from a very high level and that will help inspire ideas. That, oh, I never thought of that. I never thought that they would view me in that way. I never thought of that kind of project that can be an inspirational force as well. 14:14 - Anne (Host) Now there can be times when I feel like you can have so many ideas that it's overwhelming right, and then it's like no ideas at all get developed right. 14:22 So you want to be careful of overwhelming yourself with new ideas, and I'm going to say that goals are wonderful. 14:28 I'm thinking ideas, they evolve into goals. 14:30 But I think ideas are wonderful because it's just a great like inspirational spot to start from and then I think it can turn into a goal based upon the market, based upon realism, based upon okay, I've got an idea for an extension of my business, but then maybe when you talk it over with some people, you find that maybe there isn't a ton of demand out there for it, because it can be a cool idea, but in order to turn a profit, it has to appeal to other people too. So there's got to be time spent in researching those ideas to make sure. Are you going to spend the time and effort in developing them further? And so try not to overwhelm. I love that you said be careful with being part of too many accountability groups or too many groups, because, yes, you can get too many opinions, you can get too many ideas. Here you should do it this way. Here you should work with this coach, here you should get this demo and then you're confused and then you're like, oh God, I just don't even know what to do. 15:26 I think, honestly, if we sit down, I love the brain dump on the paper. I think that is really amazing because that is starting with you. It's starting with your desires, your passions, whatever you're feeling, and I feel like, rather than somebody telling you this is what you should do, here's what you have a gut feeling about. I'm a big believer in your gut right. This is what I'm passionate about, and if you're passionate about it, you're going to have the motivation to go and get it. 15:52 - Lau (Host) Yes, and here's a role pLauy for you. I do this with myself all the time and it makes me feel so good, something neutralizing about it. I'll refer to myself as a creative agency or the idea person of an advertising agency. Those are the people who would sit around drinking soda, hitting hoops in their offices and just shooting the Dick Van Dyke ideas all night long. 16:17 - Intro (Announcement) Absolutely. 16:18 - Lau (Host) Being unafraid to do that, but I would structure it. I would say, okay, we can do this day and night. I know I can do a day and night structure. Say, listen, one week out of the month or three days out of the month are my idea days. Those are days that I'm brain dumping. I'm talking to people, I'm sitting in on groups and I'm coming up with my top three prioritized ideas so that it doesn't become but I have 50. What do I do with the 50? 16:43 No, let me see if I can come up with three and then choose the one that I actually might want to take action on so that I'm structuring my time and I'm structuring through priority as well, and then I'm also giving a deadline too and saying if this doesn't materialize in three months in some real way, I'm going to shelf it until Lauter. 17:03 - Anne (Host) I like that I kind of reLaute it to when people come to me and they say, well, I don't know what genre I should study voiceover, and we'll talk about okay. So what do you do now? Do you have a corporate job? Are you an actor? Do you have a side hustle? However, that is, and a lot of times it'll come down to okay, it'll be easy for you to step into this genre because you've got experience in it. Let's say I'm talking to a teacher. I'm like well, look, you already teach. You already have a concept of what it takes to be a good teacher. So stepping into the e-learning genre might work really well for you. However, you might have another loftier idea that you want to get into animation, right, Well, you can develop the one that you step into a little bit easier so that that will help you to then make some money while you're also pursuing the other goal, and I think that that usually works out really well. 17:49 And I like to equate the whole doing something new and the inspiration to my demo creation process, because for every student right, that end goal of a demo to me is a creative process. It is a creation, it's a song, it is something that is completely unique for each and every student, and for me the process is the same. To get there, there's a lot of work that is involved, but there's a lot of time where, yeah, I sit there and throw the crumpled paper into the basket because there's the creative inspiration that's happening to really just bring it all together and to make it amazing, and so I can really appreciate that part. And each and every time and each and every demo becomes like one of those new things that I'm accomplishing, and I cannot tell you how satisfying that is, because at the end, I'm like yes. 18:39 And I can see it. When I'm getting towards the end of creating the demo for the student, I'm like, oh, oh, oh, it's coming together. It's oh my God, yes, and now I'm going to do that. Oh, yes, oh, now, okay, now I'm seeing it come together and that, to me, is exhiLaurating. It's exhiLaurating. 18:53 It's kind of like the way I attribute starting something new in your business. Right, you get that idea, you're like this could be really cool and now, how am I going to get there? And then you do steps to work to get there, to get there, to get there, you sit there, you shoot a few crumpled pieces of paper and you think about it. 19:08 You sleep on it and then the next morning you get up and you go oh, let me try that Right. And then, when it starts to come together, that's the most amazing thing. 19:17 - Lau (Host) See, that's really the thing, because I find that, with creatives, one of the sticking points for most creatives, no matter how successful they are, is the execution of things. It's getting through what I call the theater days technical rehearsal. 19:31 That's the worst, dirtiest, muddiest, ugliest, disgusting. Like what have we worked on? It looks like yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, and then it just comes together, right. So you have to be able in your business, you can see it right. Yeah, you have to be able to move through that disgusting kind of uncomfortable kind of like, but I worked on this for months. Why does it look this way or feel this way? Right, I was going to give another tip too, annie. I was thinking you know, if you get together with that confidant, with that person, with that creative buddy, make use of that time by doing a structured business improv with them saying I'm going to take 20 minutes with you, 30 minutes, here's my goal. If you want to work on yours, work on yours. But I want to talk out. I want to talk out this idea I have, that I'm looking to execute, and you ask me questions and you shoot, you fire, you do things to make me think about it and give you more real response. 20:25 Cause it takes it off the paper and makes it even more real when you have to speak about it to someone. 20:31 - Anne (Host) Absolutely, absolutely. I mean it's not just on the paper and you looking at it, going okay, and then you don't look at the paper. That's kind of like when you do write things down right and you have goals. I'm a big believer in putting them somewhere where you can keep looking at them. I mean, they can't just stick in your brain. 20:46 If they stick in your brain. It's easy for them to just, oh, I lost it when to go and you can forget about it. But having those in front of you and also talking it out with somebody, like I said, when I come back to meet with my business mentor in another month, she'll be saying to me okay, so what did you do about this? Or how are we moving on? And I'm in the process of that right now. I'm making a shift to another cool part of the business that I want to open and I don't quite know what I'm doing, and it's one of those things where it's going to take me some time. But it's okay, I'm patient with myself because it's going to be kind of a cool path that I've not explored before. 21:20 - Lau (Host) So I'm patient with myself. 21:22 - Anne (Host) So I think you need to be patient with yourself. So many of us are not patient when it comes to oh my God, I want to be a voiceover actor and how come I'm not making money. All of a sudden, it becomes like well, okay. And the same thing with marketing. I'll tell you, I have people that we offer the boss. Bless. That we've talked about multiple times and and I always talked to people about direct marketing right, marketing yourself is one thing. Again, you're putting things out into the universe and again, when are you going to be able to collect on them? So I made an investment. It could be a financial investment, a time investment, whatever that is Well, all of a sudden. Well, it's been three months, why haven't I gotten anything? It's been 12 months, why haven't I gotten anything? And again, one of those things we know, I mean Lauw. We've talked about this. I did an audition two years ago and all of a sudden, I got a contact by the casting director saying hey, we think your voice would be great for this. 22:14 The same thing for your ideas, right your ideas to develop. Just don't give up and be patient. It is one of those things You're marketing. Direct marketing is huge in that convincing an actor to spend a certain amount of money or invest money on a reguLaur basis for marketing is, gosh, pretty much close to impossible, and I know you know that right. Everybody's like I don't have the money, I'm broke, I'm not getting a return on my investment. People are so quick to say that I am not getting a return on my investment. But well, they have to think about. 22:43 - Lau (Host) Are they coming from a full, rich, abundant pLauce? Are they coming from a cheap, overly frugal, not willing to invest pLauce? Because people want to invest in you if they see that you're willing to invest in yourself first. So in essence, you are the proof of concept If you're willing to invest, then you give someone else permission to invest in you, so that abundant versus a fearful, cheap pLauce is really, really important. There's one other thing I was going to say, annie too. Now, maybe this is pushing it a little too far, but I'm that kind of gal If you want to start something new, create something real. Upfront. I'll give you an idea. I used to teach in a very competitive entrepreneurial program in a business college and in the freshman year think about this, 18 years old the project was they take the whole first year, annie. They would create in teams a product that at the end of the year they pitch in a real way at the end of the year right, so it was whatever, it was a shirt a clock, this or that. 23:44 I never forgot, 18, 19 years old. I never forgot because they said we don't care if you make money or not. This is about making money. This is about you learning that when you create a process, there has to be something real and executionary about it, and something that you perform. It's performative. It's not in your head. So at the end of the year, they had to physically manufacture the product Sure absolutely. 24:06 Yeah, and then they'd have to pitch it to see if they could get money, I love that love. I think here's the thought. Here's the thought. We create something, whatever it is, it could be anything. Create something that is a sticker of it that makes it real. So, for instance, let's say you have an idea for a new service in your business, or I have an idea for a business, create a logo, pay money for that logo. It could be 50 bucks, it could be 200, whatever, but it becomes real in a different way. 24:35 - Anne (Host) Absolutely, I love that you said that because, honestly, like when I worked at the academies the Bergen academies, I mean every student had a year long project, literally where they formed a company, they created a product and they actually were all part of here's the marketing department. 24:48 Here's the engineering department and honestly, it gave them a reason to learn engineering. It gave them a reason to learn marketing. It gave them a reason to learn SAP software. It gave them a reason to learn they just had to create the prototype and then they had to, like, market it and sell it, and then they had to present it. And we're talking about ninth graders. Okay, back in the day. That's amazing. Now, if you start them at ninth grade thinking in that way, thinking in that entrepreneurial, corporate way, where they ultimately have to create something and then present it, they end up learning all of the things they need to learn in order to accomplish that goal, and that becomes a really wonderful education for the students as well, as I cannot tell you how many of those students are blossoming like amazing successes today. 25:34 - Lau (Host) Amazing. 25:35 - Anne (Host) They started off early knowing that and doing that, and so I think that's a wonderful idea for you bosses out there to go and create something, make your initial investment, something that doesn't have to take like a billion dolLaurs. No, but something that represents that and is part of your goal to getting there, and I think that that is amazing. 25:54 - Lau (Host) If someone says but Anne, I'm worried. What if I spend $100 on this and I don't like the way it looks or it doesn't come out the way I want? Here's my answer to that. You made an investment in your education, absolutely so. It's not the logo that you created, it's the educational process to know what do you want at the end of the day to represent your company. You don't know until it's actually happening. It can't sit in your head and come to perfection. It's got to be that like, done, done, done every moment in your process. Done. It's not about perfection, it's about done. Now move on. What did I learn? 26:30 - Anne (Host) Right, I'm going to tie that to the logo to even. You know, go further website, start a website. And so many people are like, yeah, but I shouldn't start it yet until I know what my brand is. Okay, yeah, here's a little piece of advice. Your brand evolves right. It's not like your website can't be changed. 26:42 It's not like your logo can't be changed or evolve along with you. As a matter of fact, I just went to the Way Back archive and I saw my very first website where I was Anne Speak. By the way, you guys can look at that, Anne Speak. 26:52 - Intro (Announcement) A&E Speak. 26:54 - Anne (Host) And you'll see that my logo was a microphone, right, with little flourishing things coming out of it, because I love flourishes right. And the thing is is that I've evolved, I mean, and our business has evolved, and so it's okay. Make that investment, the education you're going to get by hiring somebody to create a logo, forcing yourself to think about who am I, what does my logo represent? Or what does my website represent, what are my colors, what is my brand that education is going to be invaluable. Yes, love, what a wonderful conversation Yet again. 27:21 I say this at the end of every podcast. It doesn't seem like. 27:24 - Intro (Announcement) Anne is like a broken record but honestly we have such great conversations. 27:29 - Anne (Host) And you know what I just love, love, love having you as my co-host, and bosses love you too, and we love the bosses. And so, with that in mind, bosses, I want you to take a moment and imagine a world full of passionate and powered, diverse individuals, like we are, but we're giving collectively and intentionally to create the world that we want to see. You can make a difference. Visit 100voiceshoocareorg to learn more, and big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl. You, too, can connect and network like bosses. Find out more at IPDTLcom. Have an amazing week, guys, and go start something new. We'll see you next week. See you next week. Bye. 28:09 - Intro (Announcement) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, Anne Gangusa, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at vobosscom and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via IPDTL. 28:31 - Anne (Host) Hey everyone, welcome to the VO Boss podcast and the Boss Superpower series. I'm your host, anne Gangusa, along with my very awesome, amazing lost co-host, Lauw Laupita. Hello, happy Saturday. Uh oh. 28:57 - Lau (Host) Uh oh, Lauw, where'd you go? Lauw, you're frozen. I know you were frozen. So we lost transmission for a second Transmission lost. It might have been lost Alright. 29:06 - Anne (Host) Yes, it might have been lost. Alright, let's try that one more time. I'm going to stop it and pause for a bit.

Get ready to redefine your understanding of the voiceover industry as host Anne Ganguzza and special guest co-host Tom Deere, pull back the curtain on the reality of the business and its inherent struggles. We dive deep into the pivotal SAG-AFTRA strike and how it's much more than just a Hollywood issue. It isn't about the glitz and glamour - it's about the hard truth of what it means to be a part of this industry, as a union or non-union voice actor. We'll tackle the misconception that all actors are high earners and shine a spotlight on the majority who are fighting for fair pay and intellectual property protection, especially with the advent of AI technology. 00:01 - Intro (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss a VO boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza. 00:20 - Anne (Host) Hey, hey everyone. Welcome to the VO Boss Podcast and the Real Bosses series. I'm your host, Ann Gangusa, here with special guest co-host Mr Tom DHeere. Hello, Tom. 00:31 - Tom (Co-host) Hello Ann, so great to see you. 00:33 - Anne (Host) Yes, wonderful to be chatting with you again and you know, at the time of this recording we just had kind of a major industry event happen the SAG After Strike ended and I thought it would be a good time to talk about external factors that affect our industry and how we can prepare ourselves as bosses to really handle events that happen like that, that are sometimes not even within our control, and what do we do to sustain our businesses. 01:04 - Tom (Co-host) Yes, absolutely Off the top of my head. Keeping up with industry trends is extremely important, which is why, being subscribed to Hollywood Reporter, variety, backstage Magazine publications like that, our friend John Florian's VO Extra, which is sort of an online magazine just being aware of what's going on in the industry, because seeing the highlights on the nightly news can only get you so far, absolutely. Because just a little B-roll and a little this, that and the other thing is see Fran Drescher for five seconds blah and then like going on to the next subject. 01:36 - Anne (Host) Well, yeah, and we should know that Fran Drescher what her role. 01:39 - Tom (Co-host) Yes, as president of SAG After. 01:42 - Anne (Host) Yeah, know who the people are, know how it's impacting the industry and even if you are not a member, that was the whole thing. Even if you were not a member of SAG After and you felt that it didn't affect you, in reality it affected our entire industry as they were vying for fair pay and rights for creatives and actors and voice actors in regards to synthetic voices and AI out there Absolutely and streaming. 02:09 - Tom (Co-host) And streaming. Yeah, everything that SAG After does, all of their collectively bargained agreements and the rate structures and the minimums and all of that stuff, all of that has obviously a major impact on all the SAG After members. But it also has a huge effect on the non-union members, because non-union voice actors most tend to use SAG After CBAs collectively bargained agreements, if not a baseline, a guideline as to, in generally, how genres of voiceover charge, both in the structure of it and then the actual dollars and cents of it, and it will trickle down into the non-union world directly and indirectly. So, yeah, absolutely Everything affects everything in our industry. 02:48 - Anne (Host) And it's something to consider again I say this over and over again that it absolutely affects even though, as you mentioned, if you're not even a member, it affects the industry. It affects the perception of creatives and their value and their worth, and one of the reasons why we are in this as a business is to make money. In order to sustain our businesses and to do what we love for a living, we need to make money and we need to be able to pay the bills. We need to be able to have essential things like healthcare and, even if you're not a member of the union the perception of the market who has services or purchases our voice or hires us and pays us money. It's very important that that perception is one of value and one of worth, so that we can have this as a career, and have it as a sustainable career, so that we can survive. 03:44 - Tom (Co-host) It's interesting because most of the time when you watch the news or you're talking to people in other industries and there's a strike of some kind, it's usually we just want more money and then very things here and there. What was interesting about the SAG After Strike is that it was obviously nationally. Everybody was watching what was going on, because everybody who watches movies and television shows and streaming are impacted by this. This fall lineup and then in the spring we're really going to be feeling it because it's going to be rerun city. But what was interesting about this is that, yes, they wanted like a 7% increase and they wanted certain things, but the fact that they were talking about protection of our livelihood. 04:26 Ai has the potential to take away our intellectual property, our IP, for on camera actors for their image, voice actors for their voice and then in other industries, musicians for their music, artists for their art, writers for their writing those five image, voice, music, art and writing. Ai is causing a lot of disruption, some of it in a good way, but most of it in a not good way, because of lack of understanding of it, lack of regulation and oversight on a federal level, and which was a big part of the SAG After Strike is that AI wasn't really taken into consideration in any of the collectively bargained agreements, so all of that needs to get back in there to protect actors from their IP being stolen. I think a lot of people didn't understand that if you're an extra and you get scanned and you get paid one fee and then they use you your likeness forever in a movie you just destroyed your extra career and so on and so on and so forth. 05:26 So what was going on with AI in many ways is an existential threat to voice actors, so that's a big part of what this wasn't just about. Oh, those actors, they just want more money to be, to be movie stars. No, this was. If we don't do something about this, we won't be able to act anymore. 05:40 - Anne (Host) Well, yeah, and it brought awareness, I think, to the general public about our careers and the perception that, oh, they're just celebrities and more money and they're greedy. In reality, what was the percentage of people that make enough money, that are the high earners? There are only like 1% of actors in the union, and so the rest of them, the rest of us, the struggling actors, the starving artists, so to speak this is something that I think really was a good thing, so that we could have artists still pursuing this career feeling like, oh, I can possibly make it, I can possibly sustain this as a career, and so I think that's a good thing. Otherwise, you just end up with maybe just the high paid, high earning actors. 06:27 And what happens to the creative process? What happens to movies, what happens to voice, what happens to music, what happens to the writing, when you just don't have the wide I would say broad spectrum of people vying to do this because they're passionate and they love it and they're good at it, but yet they need to be able to make a living at it. So, I think, bringing public awareness to the craft, public awareness of just how much that creatives are dependent upon, especially I go back to the pandemic. When? What do we do during the pandemic? 07:02 We watch streaming, we watched movies, we listen to music and all of that was so important to help keep our I guess I want to say our- spirit and our sanity and our mental health that really was something that was crucial, I think, and of course, it goes back to support the arts, support the arts and our educational institutions, and really I think that this was just another wonderful example of bringing public awareness to what it is that we do and appreciation to it, yeah, I have a story with that in mind. 07:34 - Tom (Co-host) Just a week or two ago I live here in Midtown Manhattan. I went around the corner to the grocery store and I see some SAG Afterhab members striking and I noticed that the strike captain was an old friend of mine I've been friends with her for 30 years and actors hey, how are you doing? And we were talking and she explained to me that the reason why she's been able to keep her SAG After Health and pension benefits for the past few years is because of extra work. Not because starring or a supporting role or some Netflix thing, it was just being a New York working actor and just doing extra work. And she also does theater and other things. But like I don't think a lot of people realize that, just that relatively innocuous, almost unseen extra work pays her medical bills and goes towards her retirement. Because that's what the strike was about. It wasn't about the big movie stars. They're fine. 08:23 I mean protecting their intellectual property from predatory AI practices is obviously a very big deal, and we're seeing deep fakes and all that stuff all the time and video game actors getting their voices harvested. But yeah, this is a blue collar strike if that makes sense Not unlike the auto worker strike that has been recently. I think it's mostly over now, but yeah, it's not unlike that. It wasn't about the movie stars, yeah. 08:44 - Anne (Host) And during the strike, because it was a it was a fairly lengthy strike I know that there was lots of speculation. You know Hollywood is dead, that kind of stuff or is that going to happen? And in reality, I mean understanding the people that hire us and pay us for our services and understanding like what it is that we deserve as a contributing asset to their products, to large streaming companies. Of course, without movies and actors and actresses, the streaming companies won't have anything to stream. And so I think also it brought to life a little more of an understanding of corporate mentality and how it can be, and it was kind of a wake up call, I think, to a lot of voice actors understanding that there is a beast out there that ultimately, when you are contributing to a product with your voice or with your likeness or with your music or whatever that is, that there is a fair way to be compensated for that and that it should be compensated. And I think that that was a major win for the union and for us as an industry. 09:50 - Tom (Co-host) Absolutely. Sometimes it's hard to understand, to reconcile the fact that we're trying to be expressive artists but at the same time, we have volunteered to be commoditized. You know what I mean. You're commoditized for how you look, you're commoditized for how you sound, and so there's a literal contract and a social contract which is okay, based on how you sound, we will give you this money. We understand that. 10:11 Your training, your experience, your talent, all of those things the aggregate of that is you being able to do this Metro PCS commercial or be in this video game or narrate this audio book. So it's hard to sometimes separate the art from the commerce part of it. I like talking for money, but I'm an artist too and my AI voice is part of the commoditization. Commerce part over here. And then I go over here and I'm narrating this audio book or I'm being Inspector Gadget or I'm doing that sort of thing. It's complicated. It's very, very complicated. I think that the SAG After Strike brought to the surface exactly how complicated our industry is, and it's not just a matter of pretty face movie money or pretty voice radio spot money. 10:56 There's just a lot more to it, and our IP is what we are. 11:01 - Anne (Host) Exactly, that is who we are. 11:02 - Tom (Co-host) I mean, that is who we are and what we are. 11:04 - Anne (Host) Yeah, our product is our voice and who we are, and that really is different from a product. Here's my physical product and so protecting our personal product, I think, becomes paramount. In doing that Now, when the strike was happening, there was, I would say, a definite impact to the market, to the voice over market in certain genres, specifically broadcast, and I think there was a lot of people who originally purchased likeness, voice music that were really like, ooh, we're going to step back to see what happens, to see how this plays out. So, tom, what are your recommendations for, let's say, anybody in the creative industry when these things happen? Because I'm not going to say that every strike is different, but there are things that happen in industries that we really don't have a lot of control over, for example, the synthetic voice. Right, we don't have control over technology that's coming. 12:00 So, what do you suggest to voice actors and creatives when something impacts the industry, like this how to survive and how to maintain? What sort of tips or tricks do you have to encourage their business to continue growing? Or smart strategies to maybe pick alternate paths? 12:19 - Tom (Co-host) Well, in addition to my suggestion that I said earlier about reading the trades and understanding what's going on and I was witnessing this directly throughout the strike on social media there was a lot of hysteria, there was a lot of fear, there was a lot of judgment on various sizes, and you could see who didn't really understand what was going on, both union and non-union voice actors. 12:41 Why it was happening and then they were just putting everybody in a bucket and labeling that bucket, so it definitely had a cultural and psychics not the right word but a psychological impact. So one of my biggest tips is yes, the AI and other things and what the AMPTP were doing and their offers was posing, in various ways, existential threats to our industry. However, you need to keep your eyes open, you need to remain objective, you need to collect facts and you need to make thoughtful, informed decisions about what to do to move your business forward. 13:20 - Anne (Host) Yes, amen, amen. That was just wonderful advice. Yes, absolutely Education. Education is so, so important. I say it Gosh. I feel like I say it almost every podcast Like what do we do? How do we handle things? Educate yourself, educate yourself. 13:35 - Tom (Co-host) And be objective whilst educating yourself. Don't prejudge the information that you're getting. Don't bias yourself while you're doing your research by listening to the loudest jerk in the Facebook group you know, or listening to your own FOMO imposter syndrome whatever's going on in your head that could get in your way. 13:54 - Anne (Host) It's always sensible to have a plan B. We've spoken about this briefly before, but, like having multiple income paths, and passive income paths too. I think I'm a big fan of passive income. 14:06 I love having passive income and something that can help sustain you while maybe things are slow in your business and the market is reacting Again. We are slaves to the market in reality. If people don't value our product, they are not going to purchase our products. So therefore, we need to keep our eyes on the market and find out how we can provide a valuable product. 14:28 - Tom (Co-host) Yeah, developing voiceover adjacent skills, I think, is a really good way to do it. A lot of people develop their audio engineering skills because to be an effective voice actor, especially in the 21st century, you need to be competent when it comes to recording, editing and delivering audio files. Then there's other things that people do virtual assistants, proofreaders, translators if you're a bilingual voice talent virtual assistants, social media managers. 14:56 So I mean what I just named five or six or seven things. So like, if you're early in your voiceover journey and you want to do this for the long run but you still need to sustain yourself and you maybe don't want to or can't, for whatever reason, have that full-time job, developing skills that will ultimately help you and complement and enhance your voiceover career and make money at at the same time can be a really great way to go. 15:18 - Anne (Host) And I always recommend that. I think we all bring our real world experience to the voiceover career. Like, I mean, I had a previous experience in teaching and in engineering and so those things and working in the healthcare industry, so those things I could bring to my voiceover career. But I could also consult, I could also continue to do those things, and I don't think there's anything shameful in pursuing multiple paths for generating income, especially when this is such an entrepreneurial endeavor. I mean, it is one of the things that most people, if they come from the corporate world, they're just used to I'm going to work and I'm going to get paid. Well, this is a completely different flip the switch kind of thing where, oh gosh, where's my next job coming from? That's where, I think, a lot of people who are not necessarily prepared or have never experienced being an entrepreneur before or being a business owner before this is new to them. 16:14 So you need to really prepare yourself as much as you possibly can for fluctuations in the market. 16:20 - Tom (Co-host) One thing I teach my students is that your last gig isn't necessarily your lowest paying gig and your next gig isn't necessarily your highest paying gig, because people think it's this like vertical, incrementally thing that next big gig will be bigger, bigger, more money, bigger, bigger, more money, and that is not remotely true. 16:39 - Anne (Host) And I will ultimately make six figures. You know that I feel like they have climbed. I've made six figures. Now I'm going to make six figures for the rest of my career. That doesn't always happen. That does not always happen Again. Fluctuations in the market. There's a lot of factors in play. What are you investing in? What money is going out versus what money is coming in? 16:56 - Tom (Co-host) Also, is your voice trending, yeah? 16:58 - Anne (Host) Yeah, absolutely. 16:59 - Tom (Co-host) Oh gosh, yeah, I would like to think you're getting better and better at your craft, but if your voice becomes less and less demand I mean all the guys that sound like this when, 25 years ago, when I decided I wanted to be a voice actor and I was like hi, I want to be a voice actor. You know what I mean and you know all these basic bearded guys with Hawaiian shirts and you know what I mean. 17:19 And now I mean is there still a demand for that kind of voice actor? Yes, exponentially less of a demand for that type of voice actor. But if you didn't develop your abilities as a storyteller? And develop your genre awareness and the ability to do different things than just this one announcer read, then your income will go down. 17:38 - Anne (Host) I talked about this with Law in a previous episode about casting. When it comes down to demographics, right the company's product that they want to reach a particular demographic. So it may not be that you didn't perform or you didn't nail that audition. It just might be that you're in the wrong demographic for the effective sale. I mean, if they're targeting a younger audience and you have a more mature voice, that may not make sense and vice versa. So again, it really it has to do with understanding the market and understanding where your product fits in that market. I cannot stress that enough. I mean that just to me is like you must think of that. 18:17 - Tom (Co-host) And your product will change. 18:18 - Anne (Host) Yes, exactly. And so if you have, let's say, a mature voice right, understand where you can fit in the industry so that you can get in front of people who are going to purchase that sound, that more mature voice, versus, let's say, I have a really young, millennial voice, or I have maybe a voice that is very trending with, let's say, non-binary and other types of genres that people are looking to fill in those voids. So, and don't be put off or set back or feel like, oh my goodness, I don't know if I'm going to be successful in this industry. You just have to find your niche. 18:55 - Tom (Co-host) Yes, let the industry tell you. Listen to the industry. People come in oh, I want to do this, I want to sound like that. Sometimes that works, but usually it's watch your auditions. If you're on pay to plays, who's liking your auditions? Why are they liking your auditions? What are the keywords in those casting notices that you keep seeing over and over again? I did that exercise not too long ago and, for example, I found that my number one online casting site buzzword for me was upbeat. 19:21 I'm like oh because I kept getting booking and getting liking those it's like, oh okay, well then that's something I can put over here. But then I've also found out recently Ryan Reynolds is a keyword. 19:30 - Anne (Host) Oh yeah, I totally can hear that. 19:32 - Tom (Co-host) Yeah, that I've been getting. I literally just booked a commercial just last week because they wanted a Ryan Reynolds sound? 19:39 - Anne (Host) Absolutely, yeah, it's always good to know who your doppelganger is and who your sound of like is, and putting that as part of your marketing campaign can really help. Absolutely, seo keyword. Any other tips on what you can do when, let's say, the market is not necessarily looking for your particular product outside? Of education what else? 20:00 - Tom (Co-host) I was gonna say the easy one is get coaching. Talk to you, fabulous voiceover coach, but also talk to casting directors, talk to a Mary Lynn Wissner or someone else and say, okay, my sound seems to be out. Can you help me find a voice within my range and demographics that I can do and invest in some education, some training to kind of adapt, because your money voice isn't always gonna be your money voice? I know mine's definitely changed over the past few years. My Tom Plus has now gotten into more of this Ryan Reynolds, more sassy conversational kind of thing, and once I stopped fighting against that I started booking a lot more. Especially, I've been booking more commercial work. 20:42 Yes because I'm bringing a lot more just plain old Tom to it. 20:45 - Anne (Host) Well, isn't that funny Because? 20:47 as we progress and as my career advanced as well, becoming more of myself and understanding who I am and understanding my product and how I can bring more of who I am to the read always has gotten me more work. I mean it just progressively has gotten more work. So and again I say this on a lot of podcasts but it is so important more than ever now to be that actor, to bring your own unique point of view to the read, because that's what's gonna get you noticed and that's what's gonna get you hired. 21:16 - Tom (Co-host) As a demo producer, how many times have you worked with a student and you're talking before the demo record and they're just da-da-da, da-da-da-da, and you're like, okay, take one, and they go blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah like how many times does that happen? 21:28 - Anne (Host) Oh, yeah, a lot of times, a lot of times, and it doesn't take much to put you out of the moment, in the acting moment, and go into a read. It really doesn't, and sometimes it just takes a note or a loss of focus for like one second and it brings you right out of the read. So if you are not consistently in that scene, acting, reacting, doing that, you can just lose the read, which is why in long format, like narration stuff that I specialize in, a lot of corporate and e-learning to just lose your focus for even just a second can take you right out of that, and that's noticeable to the ear, it's noticeable to casting directors, but it's also noticeable to the people that are listening and the intended audience, which is something that you just don't want. So if the market is slow or you're wondering, what can I do? 22:14 Yeah, education and coaching. I think, and again, I say that as an educator, I say that as a coach, but not just because I'm a coach. I mean, really, what else is there when you want to refine and upgrade and everybody's always trying to improve their products, right? Any company is trying to create a better product and that is not just a one step one and done process. I mean, that is something that if you're a company that wants to remain competitive and have competitive products, then you will continually evolve and improve that product. 22:44 - Tom (Co-host) Yes, marketing is also the thing to do when things are slow, always, always, always. The more you can demonstrate your humanity when it's slow, just to let people know that you're still here, you're still working in the voiceover realms and, even though you may not have a big gig to talk about, always be demonstrating your value and your progress. 23:05 - Anne (Host) I attended this conference. 23:07 - Tom (Co-host) I just got out of a session with this coach. I had such a wonderful time. I learned so much. Those are the things that are part of your longterm investment in your social media strategy, your online presence, your search engine optimization, and for people to know that, no matter what's going on, you are consistently there, you are consistently positive, you are consistently learning and you are consistently growing, and that helps keep you top of mind. 23:29 - Anne (Host) Absolutely top of mind is important. Well, what a great discussion, Tom. I feel like we could talk about this all day. 23:35 - Tom (Co-host) We could. 23:35 - Anne (Host) But I want to keep this top of mind because I think it's important. Bosses, here is your chance to use your voice, not only to get hired, but to make an immediate difference in our world and give back to the communities that give to you. You can visit 100voiceshoocareorg to commit and big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl. I love IPDTL. Ipdtl gives me connections with wonderful bosses like Tom Deere here and many, many other clients. You can find out more at ipdtocom. Bosses, have an amazing week and we'll see you next week. Bye. 24:10 - Intro (Announcement) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, ann Gangusa, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at vobosscom and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via IPDTL.