Share VO BOSS
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
By Anne Ganguzza
4.8
7676 ratings
The podcast currently has 522 episodes available.
Grow your voiceover business with actionable insights and expert advice from THE BOSSES! We dive into pivotal resources and strategic investments necessary for your success. The BOSSES share transformative coaching strategies that can shift your whole perspective on script interpretation and character understanding. By aligning your unique strengths with market demands, you can stay relevant. We emphasize the lifelong commitment to ongoing training and professional coaching, along with the need for top-notch demos and a polished website. Your website serves as your professional storefront, boosting your visibility and credibility with potential clients. Practical advice on budgeting, wise investments, and cutting unnecessary expenses will help you navigate financial challenges and maximize your resources to grow your voice acting career.
00:02 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey, bosses want to be that well-rounded talent that's always in demand. I offer coaching in a variety of genres, including commercials that grab attention, medical narrations that educate, corporate scripts that inspire and e-learning modules that engage. Find out more at anganguzacom.
00:22 - Testimonial (Ad) As I was getting more and more into the voice acting industry, I started realizing that it'd probably be really good to start specializing in certain sectors. I started talking with Anne and we realized that corporate might be really good for me, both in the way that I thought about things and in the aspect of the industries around me, what would be good for me to market with. So we decided to go with corporate, and it only took a handful of sessions with Anne for me to realize that with. So we decided to go with corporate, and it only took a handful of sessions with ann for me to realize that I was looking at sentences differently because of the way that she was teaching me, um, the way that I had to think about my character in the mint in the middle of like a paragraph or in the middle of even just the sentence itself. She really drove home the fact that you have to think about these things. There might not be a place given to you whenever you get the copy. There might not be a person there whenever you get the copy, however, that has to be there. There has to be some sort of connection in order for you to really understand that character in your corporate narration.
01:18 Moving past that and into other sides of different industries, I started doing more video game work and realized that the way that she taught me about sentences, the way that she taught me about my character and realizing that there is another person there even if it's not in the copy, there is another person there it was almost revolutionary. I absolutely love the way that I look at sentences now and the way that I go about my work, and she really changed all of that. I have to give her as much credit as I can. I know I know it sounds weird saying that the fundamentals were revolutionary, but the way that she teaches it, the way that she makes you think about it, it was revolutionary to me and it definitely has helped me a lot in my journey.
01:55 - Intro (Announcement) even now, 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 Ganguza.
02:17 - Anne Ganguzza (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 special guest, co -host Lau Lapides. Hey Anne, hi Lau, how are you Fabulous? How are you? I am awesome. Thank you so much. Ah, Law, I've had a busy week, a busy week with students, and I've made an observation that I might have mentioned to you before, but the observation to me is that lately, especially with the economy not being the best, I've had a lot of students who spend time talking to me about how they're very frustrated that they've not been able to move ahead, and that they know that they need coaching, or they know that they need more coaching, or they need a new demo, or they need a website, but yet they can't afford it, and so I wanted to like maybe talk to the bosses about resources and how maybe we can wisely utilize resources in order to grow our businesses, because I just have been hearing it so so much lately, Lau.
03:20 - Lau Lapides (Co-host) Me too. I mean, when we work with students and have clients, it's a constant state of conversation. And it really is true, it's a bad economy and we understand inflation.
03:30 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) We're the starving artists, we know what's going on.
03:32 - Lau Lapides (Co-host) Yeah, exactly yes we understand how much milk and eggs cost, like everyone does. We can't shove that under the rug. It's real. It affects everyone. There's an impact. We totally get that. But I'm of the belief system and the training and background that we have to make money. Yeah, so we have to make money before we make money, right. What I mean by that is we have to create it like an alchemist out of nothing. We have to make it happen so that we have those resources to go out and do what we need to do.
04:02 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Right, I like that, yeah, we need to have money so that we can invest money, so that we can grow our business, and if we don't have that money, there's got to be ways that we can create that money. As you said and I like to manifest it right Come from abundance right, and not necessarily have my dark cloud over my head saying it's not possible, I can't do this. I really think that the mental state has a lot to do with it, as well as being resourceful. So I know that for some of my students, when they talk about what are they doing to invest in their business and Lau, what are the absolute essentials that people need in order to run a successful voiceover business in terms of things that money that they have to invest? What are the things that are the absolute essentials?
04:49 - Lau Lapides (Co-host) Right. I think we all can agree those of us who are in the industry that training, coaching, classwork, is just a basic. It's just the most rudimentary that we have to have, and it's something that is a lifelong learning. It's not just five weeks, six weeks, one day's something that is a lifelong learning. It's not just five weeks, six weeks, one day. It really is a lifelong learning, and so we have to be careful how we invest in that, because we know it's for the long run. It's not just a quick hit, overnight success and go. It really is going to be throughout your career that you're going to need retraining, you're going to need to upscale your training, and so we have to be careful how we plan for that and how we utilize our resources. But I would say training leading to your production work of your demos is baseline.
05:34 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, yes, I am a coach and a demo producer and so, of course, I'm going to agree with that. But I agree that I mean honestly not just because that's part of that's my livelihood, but honestly, bosses, your product is your voice, right, and you need to showcase that product to your potential clients. And so the best way to do that is to make your voice the very best that it can be. And I mean, how else do you do that outside of getting training and coaching and practice and classes and workshops and that sort of thing? And then you need to have the medium in which to showcase that range of talent and that range of acting skills that you have, and that is, more often than not, your demo, and it has to be able to be available for people to listen to, right, so it needs to get in front of people's eyes, it needs to be distributed so that you can then sell it as a product.
06:25 And so the very essentials I'm right there with you are the training to get your voice to be the product that it needs to be, to be competitive right in this industry and to be competitive so that you can make money with that voice, and you need to have the demos so that you can showcase that. And a lot of people will say to me well, do I really need the demos? I do auditions right. So my answer to that is yes, you need to also audition and do the custom auditions that your potential clients want. But also you need to have that medium that sits in your online storefront or somewhere on a roster, like on a pay-to-play, on a roster, in all the places that it can sit while you're sleeping, so that other people can listen to it and make their decisions and say, oh, I need that voice.
07:13 - Lau Lapides (Co-host) Yeah, case in point and we had a big job, big client come through about a week ago and we did the call and it was right on the script, the audition was right on the script. Sure enough, they came up with two of our people that they wanted to shortlist and they said we need to hear their demos, yeah, yeah. Now if we came back as agents and said sorry, they don't have demos, can they just record something for you? Already your credibility goes down the drain Because they're thinking of course you have demos, you've selected them for your agency roster, so they're sitting there ready to go right, which they are With these particular people. They are, and we sent it, we expedited that right out. It wasn't a question, it wasn't a problem. And so the least amount of problem that you can cause, the least amount of friction that you can cause in terms of having the best practices ready to go, well, you have to pay for that. That's one of those resources you just have to pay for. You have to have it.
08:11 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, you have to have the training, you have to have the demo, and that showcases your product.
08:16 Then, once you have your product right, you have to have a storefront right or a way to distribute that product, and there's lots of different mechanisms to do that.
08:24 The first and foremost that I can see is, if you're a business today, you have to have a website, and so investment into a website. So it means the hosting of the website, it means the creation of a website that deems you as a professional right, so that it looks as if you are a professional voice actor and that's what you do for a living. And so I did not go to school for website creation right, and even though I did try to do it myself I mean, I managed a website a long time ago but I'm not a graphic artist so I do believe that you can invest some of your money into having somebody help you make a beautiful place to showcase your product, because for me, it makes a difference. The packaging makes a difference. I don't know human nature, right, I love pretty packaging and a website that is done well and done professionally and is efficient so that you can sell that product, is absolutely worth the investment.
09:15 So that would be my next thing I would say that is so important is your online storefront, and so that includes somebody who's going to host it, and that's typically going to be like a monthly or a yearly cost. You have to buy that domain name too, which is yet another like yearly cost or monthly cost, and then you have to have somebody that designs that website and maybe maintains it or keeps it up to date, and if that's something that you can do, then that's fine, but I would say, if it's not something that is your specialty, I say that there's another worthy investment, right.
09:47 - Lau Lapides (Co-host) And of course it goes without saying, but we have to say it and that's having some sort of home studio set up. Oh gosh, yes. So for all of the new folks who are listening in right now, I know it's so obvious to us, but a lot of new people are coming into the industry and saying how do I set that up? What do I need at home? How much money do I spend? Well, I'll tell you. You have to have the basics for your home studio setup, and that does include SourceConnect.
10:11 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So now, when we sign a talent under a contract, they have to have SourceConnect, it has to be available to them. Now I have so many people that say that they have SourceConnect but they're like, look, I'm going to wait until I get the job and then I'm going to get SourceConnect Right, just having SourceConnect myself. I mean, unless they've changed things considerably, it's not an easy thing to do within a short amount of time. I mean, I know that there needs to be ports opened up in your router in order to allow the stream and not be firewalled out, and so for me, the setup I mean required some time, and I would hesitate to say wait until you get that job before you invest in it. I mean, I invested in the one-time fee and there's also a monthly option so that I'm at the ready whenever I'm needed, and so it sits there waiting for my client, and so I would say don't skimp on that. And so, yeah, I can't believe I like. That just eluded me. I just assuming everybody has that studio.
11:09 - Lau Lapides (Co-host) I know right, and yet a lot of new people coming into the industry don't know yet. They really don't know. And I would say okay, if you want to wait, you wait. But I'm telling you this it's a psychological decision you're making, because what you're saying is I could wait on an excellent mic. I could wait on a good computer. I could wait on almost everything. I, a good computer, I could wait on almost everything. I could wait until I'm working. But which came first, the chicken or the egg? You have to have good stuff. You have to invest in yourself before others are going to invest in you.
11:39 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, and these days you have to have great sound.
11:42 I mean you have to be able to—and, like you know, with our audition demolitions. When we are judging and giving feedback and criteria, the first thing that will make me throw out pretty much unless if somebody's completely botched up the name of the file, because there is a specific way to name the file that most casting directors prefer, and so if you can't follow directions, that's number one. But number two is if the first thing I hear is that you have a poor studio sound, I'm throwing that audition out the window, because that's something that I need right to be pristine. Hear is that you have a poor studio sound, I'm throwing that audition out the window, because that's something that I need right to be pristine.
12:16 - Lau Lapides (Co-host) Yes, absolutely, absolutely. I also would say you need to invest in some sort of SEO in terms of your marketing. I know that's the big buzzword now. Everyone marketing, direct marketing. Half the people don't know what that means or know what that is. And I say listen, don't think of it as marketing, Think of it as building relationships, Like you're connecting with people, you're connecting with prospects, you're connecting the dots so that you can work. That's really what you're trying to do. Well, that's expensive and time consuming. After a while, Just think about this how much do you pay for Wi-Fi? How much do you pay for your computer access? That's all stuff you pay for. You can't do it without paying for those things. Right? Those are your investments.
13:00 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I've got to piggyback on that and say technologically right, pay for an internet connection that is stable and allows you to communicate efficiently with your clients and potential clients. So don't go cheap on your internet connection because, especially with SourceConnect, you need it to be a good ethernet connection to your router, and it has to be an ethernet connection, by the way. So that's another thing I would say. Now your studio needs SourceConnect. You're going to have to make an investment to make sure that you can get to that router using an Ethernet connection versus a Wi-Fi connection, because that is unstable. A lot of times Wi-Fi will cut in and cut out and the last thing you want is to be doing the best take of your life ever while you're connected to another studio using SourceConnect and just have the connection cut out and that doesn't look good for you as a professional and it doesn't look good for any of us and have business speed.
13:55 - Lau Lapides (Co-host) Yeah, you know what I mean have your best plan that you can have Get fiber if you can I have gig fiber?
13:59 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Get boosted.
14:00 - Lau Lapides (Co-host) Yeah, get boosted, get a boost.
14:06 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) If you need a boost, like do whatever, you need't connect or why you're dropping out, or why the transmission is bad, right, sometimes you can't help it, but most of the time you can, yeah, and I'm going to say that have students that are in all stages of coming into this industry and some of them aren't quite sure if it's going to work for them right, so they're hesitant to spend the money.
14:26 But if you come to someone in your initial steps of trying to get into this industry and you're training and you already don't have enough money to train properly, then that tells you something.
14:38 That tells you that you need to get that money together in any way that you can right in order to advance and move forward.
14:46 And so, really, if you're coming into the industry for training and then you just want to get that demo right away, I think you need to change your mindset, because it's not going to be obviously, as we've said a billion times before, it's not that you can do this in a couple of sessions and then get a demo and go out and start making money. I mean, this is a process that if you look at things wisely and you use your resources wisely, you can steadily grow and move forward. And so that means that when you are starting and you are investing the money into training and then you're finding out if this is something that I find joy from and I have passion about continue to invest that money, but maybe not spend trillions of dollars right away on something that you need to continually invest in and then not have that money. I mean, I had a couple of part-time jobs that kept things flowing in the household while I was transitioning to full-time.
15:39 - Lau Lapides (Co-host) Listen, you and I are old school in the sense that we had more demands. We'd just get another job. We'd get another side hustle, we'd make it work, we'd go under the seat cushion and save our pennies, like there was never an excuse in our backgrounds as to why we couldn't do something. I'm not suggesting you should get into major debt Like I don't love debt, don't get into debt but there are times where you do need to acquire some debt in the investment of your career. Like a lot of college people are going into college and spending $75,000 a year. Well, they're making an investment in their career, right?
16:13 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) How interesting is that? Like you bring that up, I think things have probably changed in terms of are people spending $75,000 a year to go to a school now for college education? I mean, things are changing. I mean people do, but back in the day it was a thing it wasn't even thought about twice. You paid that money because it was expected that you paid that money for training, got the education and then you went out and got that job and that investment was going to pay off in a nice job.
16:38 Now things have changed a little bit, I would say in terms of like, is it necessary to have that college degree? I mean, I think it's necessary to have education in some form. It doesn't necessarily have to be a college degree, but education in the career path that you plan on pursuing. And so if voice acting happens to be that one, then you're going to have to have some money to pursue it. It's not that quick money grab. We're going to make a lot of money and not invest a lot of money. So you have to step through, I think, carefully and wisely, and so maybe give up that Starbucks on a given day. That can really help you. I mean a couple of pennies here and there can really help you to save up for the training that you need or that demo that you need.
17:20 - Lau Lapides (Co-host) I would agree. Yeah, I would look out for your expenses. Make sure you're budgeting so that you know exactly what you're spending monthly. Look at all the surplus stuff that you're getting that you really don't need, whether it's a membership you don't need. Whether it's a latte you don't need. Whether it's taking excessive trips that you don't need to do, whether it's I mean. I could go on and on, and I'm not a financial advisor. This is not professional advice. I'm just telling you from my experience how I come up with a lot of money at the drop of a hat by sacrificing. Well, we can be frugal.
17:54 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) We can be frugal right.
17:55 Of course, yes, we could. It's one of the reasons like so now I'm going old school but one of the reasons why, when I was a child, my parents took us camping, right, they couldn't afford big, expensive trips, so we went camping and so, you know, we went to the parks where we could get in for like five dollars a night and that kind of a thing, and so that's how we were able to live a comfortable life, I think, and really also have fun. So I think you mentioned the trips and gosh, I love taking trips, but there are times when I can't afford the trips that I want to take, like every other day.
18:28 - Lau Lapides (Co-host) Yeah, I know, here's another obvious one for you a great computer.
18:34 - Intro (Announcement) I need a great, relatively updated.
18:37 - Lau Lapides (Co-host) It doesn't have to be spanking new, but I work with so many people, annie and I know you do that say oh, my computer's like 10 years old. I don't know if it can hold the audio. I'm like well, upgrade it. Go, update it, because it shouldn't be 10 or 15 years old.
18:51 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, that's a wise investment, Absolutely. I mean, you're talking to a girl, a tech girl, here. I'm like at this point, actually my computer at home needs to be upgraded. I just know that because now it's starting to do weird things. You know, when your computer starts to do weird things, like it reboots on its own and it's like some unknown error.
19:07 - Lau Lapides (Co-host) Yeah, launching 12 programs without you being there.
19:10 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I mean, there's a time when it becomes a necessary investment, and I just know that I'm reaching that time to get a new computer and I know that I'm reevaluating my monthly subscriptions right now as well. Case in point here that my email service provider has now doubled their price to me, and this is the email service provider where I send out the boss blasts. And so now I have to go back and actually crunch the numbers and make sure because I'm charging a certain amount for a boss blast and a certain amount for a monthly boss blast, and now that they've raised the price on my email service provider, I have to make sure that I'm still generating a profit, at least enough to pay for it right and to reinvest for another year of it. So periodically you've got to just take a look at those numbers to make sure that you are still okay with making a profit and moving forward in your business, because you don't really want to.
20:04 I mean the first few years though of your business is probably going to be in the red. A lot of new businesses show in the red for the first few years, but you can't do that for too long, otherwise the IRS will be like, hmm, that sounds familiar. There's something going on there, then we might get audited. And I actually have been audited twice already, not because I was suspicious or it showed any suspicion, just because I mean it is our own business.
20:29 And I've been in business long enough, you're in business long enough, you're going to get audited.
20:32 - Lau Lapides (Co-host) And so yeah, you want to make sure that if you get audited you're ready. Yeah, you're ready for it.
20:37 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And that's your next investment is an accountant, oh my gosh Accountant.
20:43 - Lau Lapides (Co-host) I'm married to one. Everyone needs one. I'm telling you Accountant, someone who really can deal with your books, who really understands that you run a business, you're an entrepreneur, deals with your receipts in an appropriate way, what are your tax write-offs, getting you money back at the end of the year? You need someone who's clever, creative and wonderful and works cleanly and in an organized way. If you don't have someone, hire someone and a lawyer and an attorney, someone who can go over contracts with you.
21:12 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yes, yes because none of us are attorneys. A lawyer is lovely. I just engaged my lawyer the other day, so, yes, it's wonderful to have one that you can go to if you should need to.
21:23 - Lau Lapides (Co-host) And then, of course, another obvious one that I have to say you need a smartphone. It's really important, and those of you who are actors, you have to have a smartphone because all your self-taping is going to be on your iPhone. But you really have to have it because oftentimes people would describe it including myself, as your walking office. Like a lot of us don't have home phones any longer. We put all the investment into the cell phone, into the mobile, and we're on the road. Annie, are you not in a car day and night, working from your car? Well, I mean hands-free, of course. Well, you're in California, so, of course, hands-free. But the point is, I was in my car half the day today. I was working. The whole time I was working, yeah, absolutely, because I don't have to be back at an office.
22:05 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) You need to be able to respond to your client inquiries right all the time. So that is important and that is something again like that can be expensed that smartphone.
22:15 And so those are the things I mean. Gosh, I can come up with a lot of things, and it's funny because a lot of people will say, oh well, I didn't realize that was involved. I mean, when you talk about marketing right, that effort of marketing I mean half of the episodes in VO, boss, more than half are about how to build your business, and marketing is such a huge part of building your business because I always say that you can have the best voice in the world, but it doesn't do you any good if nobody knows about it, and so marketing is key. And then that includes marketing is like your time, right, your time in finding leads and generating leads and nurturing relationships, and so that's something you have to invest in and you may want to invest in some help in doing that.
23:00 You may want to have a boss blast. I'm just going to say that.
23:03 - Lau Lapides (Co-host) Well, you took the words right out of my mouth because I was going to say when you're at the tipping point, and you'll know when you're at the tipping point, meaning you just can't handle more than you're doing, you need to hire a VA. It's really important to get that one assistant in that can take the load off, that has expertise that maybe you don't have, that can really take on some of your projects and push the needle of your business forward Absolutely.
23:27 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Absolutely, and so what you need to do, get yourself a business mentor too. I mean gosh. I just want to say that I do a once a month special, the once a month special with Tom Deere, the VO strategist, and he's wonderful. I love Tom, yeah, he's amazing, and so I highly recommend Tom in terms of helping you to, like, get your business together. Do you need to register your business? How do you do it? Do you have a plan? Do you have a strategy? I mean, that can really be a wise investment. And again, maybe not that Starbucks, maybe not that of course, I say that because I've been buying clothes all the time but maybe not that extra pair of shoes, or maybe not. It's one of those things. Where are the priorities?
24:07 - Intro (Announcement) And I don't want to be like a mom.
24:18 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I'm not, but honestly, it becomes where I hear this so often and it's exhausting. I'm just going to say it's exhausting because I think to myself gosh, I mean, I, when I first started, I had quit my full-time job and I was like, oh, I'm going to go into voiceover full-time, and so now, what do I do? Right, you become resourceful. Right, you have to become resourceful, you have to really do what it takes if you want to make a go of this and you want to be successful. And there's a lot of people who have support, people who will be like hey, so what's going on? Are you making money? What's happening? And so I mean we've got enough of that as it is. We need to really question our own selves to make sure that we are making the wise choices that we can make in order to move forward.
24:56 - Lau Lapides (Co-host) I love that I mean, we could go on and on with this, but I don't want to scare everyone to think you need everything at once. You can layer as you go.
25:04 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yes, and it can be something that you wisely invest. You make a plan and it happens little by little. I mean, gosh, our overnight success Lau. Mine took a long time.
25:16 - Lau Lapides (Co-host) I laugh. My 30-year overnight success? Yes, exactly.
25:21 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Exactly, it was a lot of blood, sweat and work, and work.
25:24 Tears, a lot of work and a lot of work doing stuff that maybe I didn't want to do, right, that I was like damn, I wish I could have taken that trip. Or I really want that pair of shoes. But right now, right, I want to grow my business, and so what do I need to do? I've got a payment coming up right for my internet. Or I'm going to upgrade my internet, or I need to upgrade my computer, or I need to improve my studio sound, which the one thing I'll say about studio sound, I mean, once you get it set, it's a no-brainer, it kind of just stays, it's great. I set, it's a no-brainer, it kind of just stays, it's great. I mean equipment doesn't really die. I mean I've had my microphone for years, this studio here, it's not falling apart, that's for sure. So I've made the investment and I'm done For the most part.
26:07 - Intro (Announcement) I've got everything for a good long while.
26:09 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So that's okay, I got my backup right. I got my backup mic, I got my backup computer. I have things in case things break. I've got the backups, and so that took time and you know what.
26:20 - Lau Lapides (Co-host) Get help in determining. Yeah, it takes a long time. Yeah, get help in determining what you want versus what you need. Yeah, I like that. Like, really keep that journal in front of you Want and need. Do you have like wants and needs Right? We think it's so strong. When we want something, we want to get it, but we don't oftentimes need it. We need what we need and really determining what do we need first, and then later we can reward ourselves when we're making extra money.
26:45 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I think it's all sequencing it is, it's choreography, and we did touch upon and I'm going to say, just because I know that training we talked about that was like one of the first essentials. But sometimes there are professional students who train and train and train and train and train and yet it's almost like they're scared to start and so you've got to be careful with that too, and I would highly recommend that you go back and listen to that episode.
27:06 Bosses, We'll put a link in the show notes, but yeah, you've got to start at some point.
27:11 - Testimonial (Ad) You've got to start no-transcript.
27:27 - Lau Lapides (Co-host) And with that, don't go down rabbit holes you don't need to go down. Don't go into major technical fixes, don't go into major learning curves during your workday unless you have to, and don't overload on the training throughout your day. That will procrastinate from what you need to get. To Make sure you get your work time in first, then do your professional development and education time if possible, because you don't want to take up a whole day or a whole weekend or whatever, unless you really need it, unless you plan for it. Absolutely, I think you just need to plan for it,
27:59 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I know it's tough out there, bosses, but we have the faith that you can do it. I mean, if you become resourceful and you invest wisely. I really fully believe, if you've got the passion and the desire and you blast as always. Yes, it was. I'm going to give a great big shout out to one of the things that I've invested in, that's IPDTL. You, too, can invest wisely and be a boss. Find out more at IPDTLcom. You guys have an amazing week and we will see you next week. Bye, see you next week.
28:36 - Intro (Announcement) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, anne Ganguza, 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.
In this episode, Anne Ganguzza and Tom Dheere dissect the key components of building a robust online presence. From identifying customer pain points to harnessing the power of color psychology in your website design, The BOSSES explore what it takes to convey competence and reliability. We also delve into the subtle yet vital aspects of maintaining an easy-to-navigate, professional website that establishes credibility and trust. Learn how consistent visual cues and coherent storytelling can make or break your brand's effectiveness in today's competitive market. Finally, The BOSSES tackle the nuances of maintaining a consistent brand across social media platforms. We underscore the importance of professionalism and how off-brand or controversial content can jeopardize client relationships.
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 Ganguzza (Host) Hey, hey everyone, welcome to the VO Boss Podcast and the Real Boss Series. I'm here with my special guest co-host Tom Dheere. Hey, Tom Dheere, how are you?
00:30 - Tom Dheere (Host) Hey Anne, I'm good. How are you? I'm awesome.
00:33 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Thank you very much.
00:34 - Tom Dheere (Host) You look fabulous today.
00:35 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Why thank you? So do you. I love your coloring.
00:39 - Tom Dheere (Host) Thank you, it's one of my Hawaii shirts because my wife's from Hawaii, so we go to Hawaii all the time.
00:43 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) There you go. It's very boss.
00:45 - Tom Dheere (Host) Thank you. I love your blue because it kind of matches the coloring in the background. You look very branded today.
00:51 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Why, thank you. You know I have multiple brands and multiple colors for my brands, and so it's interesting because red is typically my boss brand. But I thought, you know, let's work a little A&G and Guza brand in here as well, which is my blue, my signature blue. So I'm kind of combining them right now. And, yeah, I've been branded for a while yet, but I don't know, tom, what are your thoughts? I think we should talk about branding, because it is a big discussion among voice actors and it's like everybody makes a big deal like oh my God, I have to like figure out my brand, and they and it's like everybody makes a big deal Like, oh my God, I have to like figure out my brand and they stress out over it. And so let's talk about brands. I mean, how important is it for voice actors to brand these days?
01:33 - Tom Dheere (Host) Well, my thoughts have evolved on this quite a bit over the past 15, 20 years or so. I used to be of the mind that every voice actor absolutely must brand themselves. They should design a logo, they should pick a font, they should pick a color scheme and then their demos, their business cards, their website, their social media content, all of their outbound marketing content newsletters and things like that should be 100% branded. It should be 100% aligned.
02:04 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well then, I fit the bill there for you. You're perfect. Okay, you're perfect.
02:08 - Tom Dheere (Host) But over the years when I had that perspective, I was focusing primarily on direct and indirect marketing strategies to get the bulk of my voiceover revenue.
02:20 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I agree, myself included.
02:21 - Tom Dheere (Host) I have representation. I'm on casting sites, but for me, direct and indirect marketing was the place and it's like the old mentality. It's like Anne, why aren't you wearing my glasses? Because they help me see better. So obviously they should help you see better. But gotten a little older, hopefully gotten a little wiser, and just looking at myself and looking at all the students I've had over the years and watching what other successful voice actors do, I don't know if everybody needs to brand themselves.
02:50 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, gosh Tom, for many years there was no branding, right, there was no internet. Well, I shouldn't say there was no branding, but it wasn't as visible. And so how did voice actors in the 80s stand out?
03:02 - Tom Dheere (Host) They didn't, they just auditioned and booked.
03:05 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) They were managed by their agents, right or managers. And so they didn't have to necessarily brand their businesses. They became known for their voice and their agents were out there kind of branding for them, right.
03:20 - Tom Dheere (Host) Yeah, their reputation was built solely on the quality of their auditions and the quality of the experience when they were in the recording studio working with the clients. And that was it. The value promise was the audition Sure, the value delivery was the recording session. Yeah, platforms on top of that. Most voice actors feel obligated in a way that they have to brand themselves because they have to be on all of these social media platforms and they have to be spewing out content all the time in the hopes that they will catch somebody's attention to stay top of mind to get them into and through the sales funnel and all of that stuff.
04:01 But to your point, if representation was the only casting portal in the industry, no, we wouldn't need to brand. There are online casting sites too pay-to-play sites, voice123, voicescom, vidalgo, what have you? You don't need to brand yourself on there either, because all it's about is the value promise of the audition and the value delivery of the recording session or delivering the files properly formatted, with the proper amount of takes, and you took the direction on the casting notice or whatever. You know what I mean.
04:28 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) What about Fiverr? Just out of curiosity. I know we've had this, I know that's a bad F word but I think it depends on how the platform is marketing you right, or how are people finding out about you right On the platform?
04:38 - Tom Dheere (Host) Yeah, and it's interesting because Fiverr and Upwork, which are technically online casting sites, they weren't designed as voiceover casting sites like Voice123 and Voicescom, but they seem to be conducive for voiceover casting. There's very little auditioning happening on Fiverr and Upwork.
04:54 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) People come and look and listen.
04:55 - Tom Dheere (Host) It's direct bookings. So, with that in mind, yeah, your branding actually is very important.
05:01 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Your headshot's very important, I agree.
05:05 - Tom Dheere (Host) Your tagline, the verbiage, how you package and present yourself. Yeah, branding is important.
05:07 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So then, if you're direct marketing, right, I feel that a brand is very, very important. If you're direct marketing and if people are finding you online, let's say at your website, like for me, tom, and we have different businesses, right, you and I I have multiple brands. I don't have a ton of time to audition, except for my agents, right, which that's a whole different way that I obtain my job, and I don't have any time literally these days to audition on pay-to-plays. However, I do exist on pay-to-plays because I want to make sure that I know the platform so that I can recommend to my students. So for me, my branding is still relevant, I would say, because that's how I get a lot of people that say, oh, the Ann Ganguza brand or Ann, I see you everywhere, and that's good, because that's kind of my purpose.
05:53 - Tom Dheere (Host) Yeah, I have two brands. I have the Tom Dheere the H is silent, but I'm not voice actor brand and then I have the VO strategist brand, and both of them serve different needs. Well, obviously, one for me as a voice actor and then one for me as a voiceover business and marketing consultant and coach and mentor. What's interesting, and tell me, if you have this experience, is that your branding as Ann Gangu's a voice actor greatly informs your reputation and branding as Ann Gangu's a voiceover coach. Because, with a very precious few exceptions, like a Maurice Tobias or a Mary Lynn Wisner, you need to be a boots on the ground, successful, consistently working actor to be taken seriously as a voiceover coach. Absolutely, absolutely.
06:39 So a part of my branding as a VO strategist is go check me out at tomdeercom, listen to my demos, look at my YouTube channel, see all the work that I've done, because the fact that I've done a bunch of e-learning modules is one thing, but the fact that I was the voice of Inspector Gadget in the Inspector Gadget video game last year gives you a lot of street cred. So that attracts certain types of voice actors who want to do that sort of business. And even if they don't. They grew up on Inspector Gadget, so I'm writing the coattails of the brand of Inspector Gadget when I brand myself as Tom Dheere voice actor, because I was Inspector Gadget, which also then feeds into well, if he's able to book work like that, he's competent as a voiceover business and marketing coach. So they all feed into each other.
07:23 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I love that. You said that you branded on the coattails of another brand and I think that's definitely a strategy. I mean he used to talk about that all the time is that to get credibility? If you are the voice of a brand that is out there and that is heard and seen, then that is your brand right, gaining credibility from another brand, and so it's kind of a strategic partnership. However, I think you can get that strategic partnership. It doesn't necessarily mean like oh, I'm Ann Ganguzza, I have to have blue. That's only a visual part of my brand, that is one part of the encompassing brand when people come to my website. But people if they don't see anything right. So there's a visual part of your brand, there's an audio part of your brand and then there is, I would say, an in-person, physical part of your brand as well that all contributes to who you are and if people decide if they want to work with you or not.
08:20 Right, there's that personality, part of your brand that says I'm reliable, I'm fast, I am accurate. I have the voice that can work with your brand and make it come alive. So there's so many aspects to branding besides, let's say, a website, which is what I think most people think. When they talk about branding, they think, oh, I've got to have that tagline Gosh. I gave up my tagline years ago because it just wasn't pertinent for my particular brand. It just wasn't, and I was out there showing my photograph a long time ago because for me it worked. I felt like people wanted to connect with a person and not necessarily an image of a microphone.
08:59 - Tom Dheere (Host) Sure, it's funny that you say that, because I've been teaching branding for well over 10 years and I've always told my students that branding is telling a story what is the story of you? But also there's usually two ways that you can tell your story as a voice actor from a branding perspective. You can brand your sound or you can brand your personality. So the more distinctive your sound is or the genres that you can do, the easier it is to brand in that direction. If you've got a particularly young voice or particularly deep voice, or if you do movie trailers primarily, or if you do military fiction, audio books exclusively or almost exclusively, it's a lot easier to brand. But the branding of your personality is what is the experience of working with you? So for years I used you as one of my examples of, yes, branding your personality using your tagline are you ready for awesome?
09:54 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That's true. Are you ready for awesome? I like that. I did use that and I haven't used that in a while, so let's talk about that. Tom, tell me, what was it that attracted you to that particular aspect of my brand?
10:06 - Tom Dheere (Host) What attracted me to that is that you were setting expectations of what the experience of working with you was is like. So there's the value promise. Like I said, value promise and value delivery. This is about the value delivery. If you work with me, you're going to have a great experience. You're going to be working with a professional, intelligent, excited, ethical, prepared voice actor. That's what are you ready for. Awesome means to me.
10:33 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Geez, maybe I'll bring that back, Tom.
10:36 - Tom Dheere (Host) I mean, why not?
10:36 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I love that, I like that it meant something to you and yeah, absolutely, and it's not that I actually got rid of it, tom. Before that one, I had Dream Out Loud. That was my tagline, and I thought Dream Out Loud didn't do anything for me, necessarily because Dream Out Loud was kind of more focused on me rather than my client. Right, in terms of like, are they dreaming out loud? No, they need somebody that's not dreaming, they need somebody that can speak. Their brand, right, and so therefore, are you Ready for Awesome, kind of helps out their predicament in a much better way. So, yeah, actually I think that that's a great brand. I'll have to talk to my web person.
11:15 Your webmaster, business coach my webmaster to maybe bring that back. And it doesn't have to be all over my page, right it can be in certain parts of my page or in, let's say, in my signature file. It could be in a lot of different places, but I like that. You're right. It basically tells people this is what you're going to be working with.
11:32 - Tom Dheere (Host) Right, and one of the key aspects of any successful brand, regardless of whatever sector that you're in healthcare, automotive, beverages or whatever is that an effective company is able to identify the pain points of the customer. What do you need, what are you struggling with? And then your branding helps you tell the story of how you can solve their problems, how you can address those pain points, how you can cure what ails them, so to speak. Are you ready for awesome is a great way of letting them know that if you work with me, everything's going to be okay, Everything's going to be taken care of, you're going to have an awesome experience and you're going to get what you need, which are quality audio files delivered on time, properly formatted and that help you tell the story of your company's brand most of the time right.
12:21 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Now I do believe that people visually see that text, they read it, they comprehend it. There's also something to be said for your website in general, and we can have a whole other podcast on websites. But I do believe that, like when I go to purchase something from a website, I have to see that website and feel that I trust it and that the people behind that website have a valuable product and I can purchase that without fear that I'm not going to get that product delivered in a timely and quality manner. And so I assess a lot visually the product by looking at a website. If the website is not constructed in a professional manner, of what standards are today, I hesitate to click and buy. And so I do feel that if you are a voice actor that has a website out there and people happen upon your website, at least have it functionally and visually professional enough so that it instills trust in your potential client, so that they can say oh, okay, this looks safe, right For me.
13:31 I mean, gosh, it's like oh, I buy online all the time. I mean this is like the 21st century, right? We buy online all the time. So again, that place where I buy needs to instill trust in me. And now a quick word from our sponsor, which could be me. Hey bosses, are you looking for even more voiceover resources? Head on over to vopeepscom and take a look at our special Vopeeps VIP VIPs membership. You get access to over 350 hours of on-demand video workshops in addition to free live monthly workouts. Plus, you'll get 15% off each monthly VO Peeps workshop in the future. Sign up now at vopeepscom.
14:12 - Speaker 4 (Host) Hi, this is Debra Elaine Fowler sending a huge shout out to Anne for her VO Boss podcast. I've been listening now since the very first episode six years ago, and I always learn something new. The guests are interesting and Anne brings up topics that maybe I haven't thought about. I find myself researching new topics almost every week. Anne, keep it up, I love what you're doing. And now back to the show.
14:38 - Tom Dheere (Host) The website tells the story of you and of the experience they're going to have as a result of working with you, Because they're immediately. Obviously the first thing that happens as they go to the website is they see the website. Yeah, you know what are the colors that?
14:50 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) come out?
14:51 - Tom Dheere (Host) What are the fonts Right? How is it organized or laid out? What are the colors? What are the fonts? Is it easy to find your demos?
14:58 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Can I contact this person that's like so important to me?
15:01 - Tom Dheere (Host) Can I contact this person in the way that I want to contact them? Do I want to pick up the phone? Do I want to email them? Do I want to message them on Instagram, or do I want to use their contact form or any of a number of ways? So this tells the story of your competency as a voice actor, and it needs to be consistent. That's why you should be looking up the psychology of color when it comes to establishing a brand. It's like what is the type of voiceover work that you do? How does that reconcile with your personality? How does that reconcile with the needs of the customers that you want to attract? A lot of this stuff is very subconscious or unconscious on the part of voice seekers when they go to your website, but what's there and what isn't there speaks to your brand.
15:43 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Absolutely. And there's something to be said, like there's something almost intangible. When I go to a website and I say oh, oh, I like that, Like it's like pretty packaging, right, I mean.
15:52 I like that package, and so that makes me interested to want to find out more, and if the verbiage on the website helps me to find out more and gets me to where I need to be quickly. Because, again, I don't know. I mean, how many people go around just looking at websites to say, oh, that's a pretty website or, oh, I don't like that website. I mean, really there's a purpose, right, people are shopping around going to a website either finding information.
16:18 Maybe you somehow attracted them to get to your website to find out more about you and your brand and your voice. And if they can get that information easily and it seems to speak to you as being a credible, professional, trustworthy business, product right that they can purchase, then I think that really all has a handle on. It's like a part of the sales funnel, right? I feel like your brand is part of the sales funnel.
16:41 - Tom Dheere (Host) It absolutely is, and that also extends onto your social media platforms and the content that you're creating on the social media platform. If you're trying to brand yourself effectively and consistently, the branding on your social media platforms should line up perfectly with what's going on on your website the font, the logo, the color schemes, the banners, the verbiage and the content that comes out. All of this needs to be consistent Verbiage.
17:07 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Tom verbiage, and that means if you're on a social media platform and verbiage is coming out of your mouth that isn't necessarily conducive to promoting your brand in a positive way. You might want to think about that. That means if you're going to be controversial or you're going to be spewing verbiage in your social platforms that may be off brand. You might want to consider maybe not doing that or having a completely different brand. I feel like personal brands and voice actor brands are very close.
17:40 It used to be, where, okay, I have a business brand and I'm going to only talk about business on that and I have a personal brand, but I feel like those two brands have really melded together over the years, tom.
17:51 - Tom Dheere (Host) Oh, yes, no, they've completely blurred for a number of reasons. I mean, one reason right now is that if, through your marketing strategies, you've been able to get a voice seeker to go to your social media platforms or to your website, one thing they're trying to determine is are you human?
18:04 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah or are you an AI? That is slowly becoming more of a consideration for voice seekers, and if you're human, are you a good human.
18:12 - Tom Dheere (Host) And are you a good human there?
18:13 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) can be human actions that are controversial that would potentially harm their brand if they were to align right Strategically. We talked about strategic alignment with brands If they were to align with your brand right, it could hurt their brand.
18:27 - Tom Dheere (Host) Right. That leads me to a great point, Anne, is when it comes to your branding. To be perfectly honest, the vast majority of voice seekers aren't paying any attention to anything we're doing on social media, and they're not paying attention to much that's going on on our website. However, they will vet you. They will check out your brand for the aforementioned AI reason and for exactly what you said because nobody wants to work with a voice actor who is an NDA violator.
18:52 Sure sure, absolutely. And starts talking about auditions that they did for projects that haven't been cast yet.
18:57 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Or negatively about companies that they've worked with.
19:00 - Tom Dheere (Host) Or client questions, whether it's warranted or not.
19:02 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh my gosh, whether it's warranted or not, guys, just don't do that.
19:05 - Tom Dheere (Host) I see, specifically audiobook narrators regularly complaining about the publishers because, oh, I didn't get enough of a pronunciation guide or there were too many spelling errors on this manuscript, and I'm just as they're doing it. I'm like, what are you?
19:16 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) doing yeah yeah, why Because?
19:18 - Tom Dheere (Host) audiobook publishers are the ones that are the most likely to pay attention to your branding and pay attention to your website and pay attention to your social media platform and if you're kvetching about your client like that's a great way to lose a client.
19:32 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That's like anybody complaining about their employer. Right, hr is continually going out online to see if you're making complaints and then that's the first line of fire to get fired if you're speaking negatively. And so even if you think it's private, like in a Facebook group, and it's marked a private group, it's not. Screenshot is like literally a couple of keystrokes away, and even if it says it's private, it's not. We all know things are not private.
20:00 I mean yesterday I happened to be on a family outing at Disney and everything I talked about came up on my Facebook feed just saying so nothing is private. And so really just for your brand's sake, and so I do want to. I know now we've got into the whole what's good for your brand, but let's go back to Tom. If someone is just doing jobs through their agent, is it required that they have a website now and a brand specifically, or maybe not?
20:28 - Tom Dheere (Host) Website yes, brand maybe.
20:30 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Okay. Maybe, what's on the website then?
20:33 - Tom Dheere (Host) Okay, well, from a branding perspective logo consistency of font on the logo itself and the tagline and with the verbiage on the website the color scheme that you have established on this logo needs to align with the color scheme that is on the homepage and all the other pages, unless there's a possibility you've branded yourself based on genre or subgenre.
20:55 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Is this for voice actors who are managed or who have talent, agents only, or is this?
21:00 - Tom Dheere (Host) It's a great question. I can't speak to what voice seekers that work through managers and agents are doing. How much are they vetting the voice actors that are represented by the agents and managers that they're working with? Most of the time they're probably not. It's usually just send me these auditions. We'll pick the person that we think is the best who vocally represents this company brand message.
21:19 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Unless you're well-known, I would say right as a video game, character or an animation, character and then I think, your brand is important online. Right your actions in your social media. I'm thinking Daniel Ross, who recently, you know, is now the voice of Donald Duck. Bob Bergen has the voice of Porky. Pig, I mean and Christina Milizia, who I just interviewed as well on this podcast, and Christina Milizia who?
21:41 I just interviewed as well on this podcast the characters that they represent. She has to be careful. They have to be careful what they do online and also their actions, because a lot of them might go to cons and do autograph signing, and so that's an in-person branding as well, so they have to be very careful about their brand.
21:58 - Tom Dheere (Host) Okay, there are two groups of voice actors. There's public figures and private figures. Public figures in voiceover are those who do cartoons, video games and audiobooks. Okay, because if you're an audiobook narrator, you're being followed by authors, rights holders and listeners of the audiobooks. Okay, and it's a very public thing because these are very front-facing products audiobooks, cartoon and video game voice actors are also public figures, also just because of the fan base. The fan base really wants to know and loves to adore and follow the voice actors who are the voices of their favorite cartoon and video game characters. Everybody else is kind of clumped into the private voice actors. With the exception of, for me, inspector Gadget, red Dead Redemption and a handful of other things. I'm primarily a private voice actor. So me talking about my e-learning and her explainer experience online, nobody cares, nobody cares that?
22:59 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Tom Dheere. I'll tell you what his e-learning module.
23:03 - Tom Dheere (Host) That HR video he narrated oh for God's sakes. Like nobody does that. Nobody does that, nobody cares, nobody cares about that. And yes, that, nobody does that, nobody cares, nobody cares about that. And yes, your branding should be influenced by that Absolutely. So you want to be careful. So if you're a private voice actor, yeah, don't be an NDA violator. Don't be a client basher. Don't be some religious political whack job.
23:24 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That's all you have to worry about. And even if you're a public figure in a way that you don't think like because I know there are people who are out there that troll. I've been trolled. If you're out there as a coach, as a demo producer, I guess you can say if you've been trolled, you've made it.
23:39 - Tom Dheere (Host) Right, because then, so you actually matter. I matter in a way, but yes, I've been trolled and that's very upsetting, but Tom, I'm sure you've been trolled too, Maybe.
23:46 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I don't know if Inspector Gadget has, but I mean Inspector Gadget.
23:51 - Tom Dheere (Host) I only got trolled in that. I'll just put it to you this way. There was one person who hated my performance so much that they took the trailer for the Inspector Gadget video game and replaced my voice with Don Adams, who was the original Inspector Gadget. So You've made it Tom, congratulations actually I'll take that as a proper trolling. There you go.
24:11 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So I guess then, in essence, tom, I know you've evolved over the years with your views on branding. You don't know if it's as necessary, or maybe just branding in general has evolved. I still feel like, in this sea of voice actors, if somebody is going to see you online, then brand is important.
24:29 If you're not necessarily online, if maybe you're part-time and hey, there's a lot of amazing talent that we hear every single day on national spots that don't have websites that I don't even know. We don't even know who they are, right, Because they don't need to have that brand. So I tend to agree with you and I think that we have to continually be educated about what's important for your business when it comes to being recognized. Now, what about voice actors that are new to the industry? Is it important that they have a branded website, that they have a tagline? Is it important that they have a headshot?
25:07 - Tom Dheere (Host) Okay, I think at first it's a terrible idea. I think it's a terrible, terrible idea because what drew them to the voiceover industry may not necessarily be what keeps them in the voiceover industry. In other words, they may not be any good at what they want to do and they may turn out to be really good at something that they don't want to do. So from a branding perspective-.
25:27 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) They don't know their brand yet.
25:28 - Tom Dheere (Host) They don't know their branding because they don't know what they can book. So if you're early in your voiceover journey, us bosses are taking a little pressure off. You Don't worry about branding yet Book gigs.
25:38 See what the voiceover industry tells you are the types of genres and subgenres in the markets that you can book Then you can build a brand around that because if that's something that's bankable, if people are willing to give you money to say this kind of voiceover work, then you can build a reputation on that because, like we said, branding, storytelling, reputation all of these things are intertwined. So just to have a basic, nondescript website with your contact information, basic information about you and downloadable demos which is the most important thing to have on a website- yes, absolutely.
26:12 Then let the branding come about you and downloadable demos, which is the most important thing to have on a website. Yes, absolutely. Then let the branding come to you and then you can and you're talking visual branding. Visual branding.
26:17 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yes, I'm going to say vocal branding. I'm very much into vocal branding, depending on what genre you study with me, right. So vocally branding, that's something that you can have a good coach help you with, because they're going to help and you will discover that vocal branding in the beginning.
26:34 For whatever genre you're studying Now, that doesn't mean that you won't evolve over time right To have more vocal brands. I think you can have multiple brands that are related, but you cannot, like, if you're a young person and you sound young right, for the entirety of the time that you are younger, for a few years at least, you're going to be more of that youthful sound, probably if that's how you've been vocally branded. So I think if you're new it helps to have a good coach to help vocally brand you. But visual branding and you're right, tom, as you go you'll find out. What do you get hired for? Right, I never thought about medical and all of a sudden I started getting hired for medical and now, oh well, that makes sense now because I used to work in the medical field. So you know something I didn't know before.
27:21 - Tom Dheere (Host) Yeah, what a great coach like you can help people with is what celebrities do you sound like? What sectors of the voiceover industry can you get work in? You know there's commercials in general, but then there's automotive in particular, or home and family products, or alcohol, or boots you know what I mean or cowboy boots or whatever that sort of thing. Anne can definitely help you with that. And then when you are positioning yourself, and then when Anne helps you make your demo, it can help with that vocal positional branding. So the spots that you would do on a demo with Anne would align with the celebrities that you can sound like. Not imitations, but just like reminiscent of.
27:58 You know what I mean. I'll give you an example For me right now. For the past year or so it's been Ryan Reynolds. I've been booking spots because I have a Ryan Reynolds sound.
28:07 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, you do.
28:08 - Tom Dheere (Host) A voice actor just connected with me on LinkedIn and said do you know that you sound like Ryan Reynolds and I don't have that branding anywhere on my website. I'm seriously considering doing it because these casting notices that tend to have the Ryan Reynolds celebrity reference I'm booking. So that may be something I would need to consider. But again, that's the industry. At this point in my journey, that's the industry telling me, because Ryan Reynolds wasn't a factor when I started in the 90s. But if I was starting now and working with Anne, she's got a good enough ear to know that like, yeah, you got kind of a Ryan Reynolds sound. Maybe we should get kind of these kind of quirky, fun, cute little spots on your demo to showcase that particular sound.
28:50 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Absolutely Well. That was a very involved branding conversation but I love it, I love it. I feel like we still could go on, and, on, and on. But, thank you, tom. So much for that. Guys, I'm going to give a big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl. You too, can network and connect like bosses like Tom and myself. Find out more at IPdtlcom. Have an amazing week, guys, and we will see you next week. Thanks so much.
29:20 - Intro (Announcement) Bye. Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, anne Ganguza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at vobosscom and receive exclusive content, industry-rev, revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution, with permission. Coast-to-coast connectivity via IPDTL.
Anne welcomes Heidi Rew, commercial voice actor and co-founder of Atlanta VoiceOver Studio. Heidi shares her journey from radio to voiceover and offers insights on booking jobs and finding success in the industry. The BOSSES emphasize the importance of perseverance and training, highlighting their own experience of steady climbs in the industry. They also discuss the qualities of a good coach and the value of personalized instruction. They advise newcomers to discover their unique voice and niche through training and collecting feedback. The BOSSES share their thoughts on overcoming self-doubt and the importance of perseverance in the voice acting industry. They emphasize the need to uncover personal insecurities and fears in order to succeed in business The BOSSES also discuss the importance of demos, online presence, and easy accessibility for potential clients. Anne (00:01.142) Hey everyone, welcome to the V.O. Boss podcast. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and today I am so excited to have very special guest, Heidi Rew, joining us to the show. Hey Heidi, yay! Oh, awesome. So a little bit of information about Heidi for the bosses who are not familiar with her. She started her career on air in radio, but was introduced to voiceover by her coworker who eventually turned into her husband.
Heidi Rew (00:12.922) Hey, Anne! So glad to be here.
Anne (00:29.922) She is mainly a commercial voice actor and has voiced national TV commercials for Jiffy Lube, Secrets Resorts, Redfin, Kohl's, Danimals, and Baker's Chocolate, excuse me, and probably many, many more. And about eight years ago, she and her husband started the Atlanta VoiceOver Studio, a training and recording studio. Heidi, thank you so much for being with us today. It's so exciting.
Heidi Rew (00:54.092) Oh, I am so excited to be here, Ann. And we already talked, Ann already talked, she was our guest on the Atlanta VoiceOver Studio podcast. And it was so good, we had to do a part two, which is the first time that's ever happened. So yes, I'm so excited to be here, Ann.
Anne (01:09.166) Well, thank you so much. And I'm actually going to just turn around and ask you some of the same questions that you asked me. For those bosses who are not familiar with Atlanta VoiceOver Studio and Heidi, why don't you start off by talking a little bit about yourself and what that journey was like going from radio to VO?
Heidi Rew (01:15.77) Okay.
Heidi Rew (01:25.654) Yeah. Yep. I always wanted to go into radio. That was kind of my career goal. And this handsome coworker came in my studio one day and was like, hey, do you do voiceover? Because I could listen to your voice all day. And I know. He always says that's like his one and only line. But it worked. And he told me all about the voiceover industry, kind of got me going.
Anne (01:44.754) What a line. I love it.
I love it.
Heidi Rew (01:55.554) And I really did think, oh, this will just be something that I do on the side. And then five, six years after that, things were changing at the radio station. And at that time, then Mike and I were married. And so to find on-air jobs in another city for both of you is really, really almost impossible. And so.
Anne (02:13.527) Mm-hmm.
Heidi Rew (02:20.19) things had just changed and Mike was like, why don't you just quit and just do voiceover and on camera stuff full time? And so that's what I did. And there we go.
Anne (02:28.658) And there you go. Now, when we were talking before, we were discussing about agents, and it took you four years to book a job with your first Atlanta agent. Let's talk about that journey, because I'll tell you, for me, when I started, I'm gonna date myself, I literally, I was working for four years before I even thought.
Heidi Rew (02:36.059) Mm-hmm.
Heidi Rew (02:39.622) Yep. Mm-hmm.
Anne (02:53.406) about an agent because back then we didn't really have like Facebook groups or there was there wasn't a lot of ways to communicate with other people in the industry, which I believe is one of the reasons why you might have started your studio as well to like see people face to face and
Heidi Rew (02:57.088) Mm-hmm.
Heidi Rew (03:07.075) Yeah.
Heidi Rew (03:10.734) Yes, totally, and have that community. Yeah, I had a great agent here in Atlanta. And I would get auditions and everything, and just wouldn't book. And I thought, I really suck at this, obviously. And I would ask my agent, I said, you know, gosh, why?
Anne (03:12.939) Yeah.
Anne (03:18.091) Mm-hmm.
Anne (03:22.903) Mm-hmm.
Heidi Rew (03:30.026) Richard, it was Richard Hutchison management who's, he's retired at this point, but I said Richard, why haven't you dropped me at this point? You know, and he said Heidi, because you're doing good auditions. It just sometimes takes time. Just keep going, keep going. And I did. And then year five was when I started booking a lot. It's when I booked a national spot that ran three years, gave a sag health insurance for three years.
Anne (03:32.215) Mm-hmm.
Anne (03:41.91) Mmm. Mm-hmm.
Anne (03:54.754) Mm-hmm.
Heidi Rew (03:56.162) So it was just one of those things where it just took some time. And I had some other clients on the sides from self-marketing and a smaller agency that I was with in Florida. But yeah.
Anne (04:03.817) Mm-hmm.
Anne (04:07.862) Now do you think that it had, I mean, was there, was it possible that maybe you were needing feedback? I'm assuming four years your performance, you know, was improved, you know, and that is, takes a lot of resilience sometimes. I mean, I remember my early career as well too, and it was difficult. I mean, when you didn't get feedback or you didn't book, it was kind of like, oh my gosh, now.
Heidi Rew (04:16.995) Oh yeah.
Heidi Rew (04:21.658) Yeah.
Heidi Rew (04:24.986) Mm-hmm.
Anne (04:36.734) Now what do I do? I mean, do I even belong in this industry? I mean, did you ever run into any of those feelings? Yeah.
Heidi Rew (04:39.154) Mm-hmm.
Heidi Rew (04:42.794) Oh gosh, yeah. I mean, I would tell Mike, like, you liar. No, I'm just kidding. Like, what in the world? I don't have a good voice, obviously. But he really was always, he's always been an encourager of mine. But a big part of it was, you know, I was doing radio full time, full time. And also, you know, I was on air, so I was doing like events on the weekend. I mean, it was busy. And so I really.
Anne (04:47.524) Hahaha! Mm-hmm.
Anne (05:02.187) Mm-hmm.
Heidi Rew (05:09.322) voiceover was a side thing. I didn't do the kind of training that I needed to do to get to that level. I was very lucky to even get on with Richard at the very beginning because, I mean, you know, all I had kind of was Mike's training and tutelage. And that is why I say to so many people, too, that, you know, one, you never know how long it's going to take to book, so keep going. But also, right, but also,
Anne (05:11.106) Mm-hmm.
Anne (05:16.514) Mm.
Anne (05:24.76) Mm-hmm.
Anne (05:32.142) Right? For that overnight success. Mm-hmm.
Heidi Rew (05:36.982) you do need to train and I, you know, if I had trained more, who knows that four years could have been shortened to a much shorter time frame.
Anne (05:41.559) Mm-hmm.
Anne (05:45.91) Well, you know, it's so interesting because, you know, I just was looking at your website again, and your studio offers, gosh, everything. And you have a team of coaches that basically covers every genre. You know, I think anything that anybody ever would want to do in voiceover, you guys cover at your studio. So let's talk about coaching because we had a discussion about it on your podcast. What is it that you feel
Heidi Rew (05:56.08) Yeah.
Anne (06:17.387) key qualities or qualifications of a good coach and what you look for your own team and for yourself.
Heidi Rew (06:19.407) Yeah.
Heidi Rew (06:23.83) Yeah, well, you know, first of all, one of the things that we really look for is for people that have a heart to teach and that aren't just in there to make extra money or to be known that they really care about the students that they're trying to reach. And then a big part of that is we
Anne (06:33.996) Mm.
Heidi Rew (06:48.898) With Atlanta Voice over Studio, we have three values that we run our decisions through and really have just kind of been the compass for our business. And one of those values is grace. And Mike and I define that as meeting people where they're at. And so we always talk about that with the instructors of like, you have no idea where somebody is gonna come in, whether they walk through the door or they appear on the screen.
Anne (07:03.691) I love that.
Anne (07:12.106) Yeah.
Heidi Rew (07:14.458) You know, you have no idea where they're at. And so our goal is to find out where they're at and how do we get them at least one step closer to their goal, if not two steps. But that's the goal. It's like really meeting people where they're at, which was huge during COVID. Like that, oh my gosh, that was so helpful to remember. So those are some of the biggest things and just being able to really personalize the...
Anne (07:23.086) Mm-hmm.
Anne (07:30.878) Oh my goodness, yes.
Heidi Rew (07:43.01) the instruction to each person, which kind of goes with that meeting people where they're at. It's just not everybody responds to the same type of technique or you know what I mean? Like you really have to find what works for that person, you know?
Anne (07:45.205) Mm. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Anne (07:48.938) Sure. Yeah.
Anne (07:54.414) True. Very true.
Anne (08:00.702) Yeah, and it's very much a personal journey, I think. Because it is a creative journey, and I do feel that that.
Heidi Rew (08:04.868) Yes.
Anne (08:10.934) Gosh, everybody reacts to it differently. Everybody learns in a different way. And I know that just from my years of teaching in front of the class, that you do have all different types of students. And I think it's even more important to meet them where they are when you're talking about something as a creative endeavor that is so deeply personal to them. Because any, you know, any...
Heidi Rew (08:20.804) Mm-hmm.
Heidi Rew (08:28.098) Yes. Yeah.
Anne (08:34.218) any frustration or any kind of like, you know, roadblock can be really devastating. And that can, you know, that can affect performance like this. And so I think it's so important that you have teachers who care that I love that, that you have, I mean, that's where I always talk about.
Heidi Rew (08:41.064) Mm-hmm.
Heidi Rew (08:45.57) Oh my gosh, yeah. Yes.
Anne (08:54.238) My students with eLearning, you've got to be that teacher that has a heart that cares. And that's important when you're... It's a journey you're taking these students on. And it's a delicate journey. Yeah.
Heidi Rew (08:58.364) Mm-hmm, yeah.
Heidi Rew (09:03.962) Yeah. Yes. Because your voice, that is really important. And there have been some people that come in that have been told certain things about their voice or believed certain things about their voice that are not right or not correct. And to be able to show them, like, hey, you actually have power in your voice. And you thought that maybe you didn't, or you thought that it was.
Anne (09:15.547) Mm-hmm.
Anne (09:24.438) Mm.
Anne (09:31.303) Yeah, yeah.
Heidi Rew (09:33.65) You know, some of the biggest ones that we've had come through the studio is like I always Was kind of told that I was weak because of the way that I sounded Man that does that does something? Yeah That is hard. So to be able to help them discover that and how do you? How do you find that empowerment through your own voice? You know, that's That's really crucial
Anne (09:42.374) Mmm. That's a hard, that's hard to take. Yeah, gosh.
Mm-hmm.
Anne (09:56.844) Mm-hmm.
Yeah, absolutely. So then let's talk a little bit about then as they're on their journey discovering, like where, you know, thinking about where do they feel the most passion or joy or where does their voice fit in the industry? What advice can you give, let's say people just entering in this industry in order to find their niche? And I don't know if like, I think niches can be ever evolving, I don't know about you, but you know.
Heidi Rew (10:15.182) Mm-hmm.
Heidi Rew (10:23.458) Yeah.
Heidi Rew (10:27.939) Oh, 100%. Yeah.
Anne (10:28.994) How do they discover that? What's your best advice for that?
Heidi Rew (10:32.894) So one of the things that we do that's really important, but you can do this whether you're working with a private coach or whatever, but we have one of our foundational training is called the Beginner VoiceOver Intensive, and it's a three month thing. It has like this curriculum that goes with it. So one of the weeks that we do, you go into the booth to record and you do just a bunch of different spots that are in different types of tones and specs and everything.
Anne (10:57.719) Mm-hmm.
Heidi Rew (11:00.022) And then your class and the instructor will write down what they feel like is your natural three top reads. Just you as yourself and that you can just, as you're speaking, it just comes so naturally. You don't have to push it or force it or anything. And then they also write down descriptions about your voice. So maybe it's like, you know,
Anne (11:09.158) Mm. Mm-hmm.
Anne (11:17.614) Sure.
Heidi Rew (11:27.314) grandfather that always has a funny joke. You know what I mean? Like it's like that warmth caring but also he can be funny and you know what I mean witty. So they write down all that stuff so then that person that comes out of the booth they have all this vocabulary of some of their strengths with their voice right which is kind of just the step one of figuring out like where do I fit you know what is that uniqueness that I can bring to the table.
Anne (11:30.955) Mm-hmm.
Anne (11:43.571) Yeah.
Anne (11:50.812) Mm-hmm.
Heidi Rew (11:55.334) So you can do that even with like a private coach. They can help you discover that. But another thing that's really important, I think, is just be a collector of data, you know, yourself. And because it's, we forget so quickly when people give us like specific encouragement or things of like, oh, I really love, you know.
Anne (12:08.289) Yeah.
Anne (12:18.698) Mm.
Heidi Rew (12:22.294) the way that you've got that texture in your voice. It kind of feels like a warm blanket or whatever. Anytime somebody says something about your voice, write it down. Collect that data because then you're going to have this whole data set of stuff that you're like, oh, this is me. This is who I am. This is what I can bring to the table. And then when you do that, then you can kind of figure out, okay, what is, what are the specific genres that maybe
Anne (12:25.08) Mm-hmm.
Anne (12:32.911) Mmm, great idea.
Anne (12:42.19) Mm-hmm.
Anne (12:50.379) Mm-hmm.
Heidi Rew (12:51.627) that I would fit in the best. So, yeah.
Anne (12:53.214) Yeah, that would cater to those qualities. Yeah, it's so hard to assess. It's kind of like, I think that's why self-direction is so difficult, right? I mean, you have to assess where you're at by yourself. And I think that I love the fact that you have a whole class where you have other ears involved in the process and other people helping, saying, well, this is what I hear. And it can really help you to help define where your space can be and where your niche can be.
Heidi Rew (13:05.437) Mm-hmm.
Heidi Rew (13:16.315) Mm-hmm.
Anne (13:22.826) and also where you might want to grow. Because I think there are a lot of times somebody will say something about your voice that you didn't expect. Like somebody will say, oh my God, that's a great character. And I'm like, but me? I've never thought about doing character work or animation work or that kind of a thing. So I think that the process with a great coach or another set of ears that can help you.
Heidi Rew (13:22.894) Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Heidi Rew (13:33.818) Mmm.
Heidi Rew (13:44.409) Mm-hmm.
Anne (13:46.382) to establish that can really help you to grow and then can help you to develop your ear. I think there's a whole science to developing an ear, which is it doesn't, that doesn't happen overnight.
Heidi Rew (13:49.134) Yes.
Heidi Rew (13:52.63) Yes. Yeah.
Heidi Rew (13:58.006) No, I still feel like I'm fine tuning my ear. And as things change, you know what I mean? Like I've grown up learning that polished sound and that polished sound in commercial is just like, so many people don't want the polished sound. And it is so hard to like make sure that I'm hearing the right things, yeah. Cause I wanna default to that, so.
Anne (14:01.01) Yeah. Oh, right. Yeah.
Anne (14:06.951) Mm-hmm.
Anne (14:13.866) Yeah, yeah. Not be perfect. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's so interesting. So outside of performance, right, what would you say are key factors for any boss out there in order to grow their business? What sorts of things outside of, of course, keeping their performance, you know, and I say coaching and training all the time, but what else is important for a successful business?
Heidi Rew (14:44.71) Yeah.
So personally for me, I am all about relationships. That has been one of the things that has helped me create a sustainable full-time voiceover career. It really is. Not only do I seek out relationships and I don't seek them out for like, oh, what can you give me? But I have the mentality of like, give more than you can, more than you get.
Anne (14:51.531) Mmm.
Anne (15:06.164) Mm-hmm.
Anne (15:14.375) Mm-hmm.
Heidi Rew (15:14.682) But I just think that the more relationships that I have and the more people that I know, the more potential opportunity is gonna come my way, because of people that they work with, people that they know, they like and they trust. And so I am really a big proponent on creating those relationships and maintaining those relationships as best as possible over the longterm. And that has been...
Anne (15:24.502) Mm. Mm-hmm.
Anne (15:28.415) Mm-hmm.
Anne (15:38.168) Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Heidi Rew (15:41.654) That has been one of the biggest things that during times where things aren't, I'm not booking as many commercials or whatever, that those clients come back. It's just like, it feels like magic. Yes.
Anne (15:53.098) right, in those lulls. Because I think the biggest difference, right, in our businesses is that, you know, as opposed to it, because I worked in the corporate world, you know, I expected that paycheck and got that paycheck every other week. And now all of a sudden, we've got, you know, our own business, which, ooh, now we got to hustle. We got to go get that business. We have to nurture those relationships. And we have to sustain, which I think you said the word sustainability, which I really love, because over the years, I mean, my gosh.
Our overnight success, which for me has been how many years? Like 10, something like that. I mean, it's been sticking with it. Talk to me a little bit because you've been in the industry for a long time. What is it that you say, what would you say is key to success in terms of having a career that can continually, I guess, evolve along with the times and be sustained for a long time?
Heidi Rew (16:26.769) Right.
Heidi Rew (16:30.811) Yeah.
Heidi Rew (16:46.61) Mm-hmm. Yeah. So I want to share really quick this, I don't know if you've ever read James Clear's Atomic Habits book. It's so good. But he gives an example of bamboo. And bamboo, if you've ever seen, there's a bamboo forest here in Atlanta that's on this beautiful hike. And it's just so gorgeous. It's so tall and everything. Well, bamboo, when they first are planted, you don't see hardly anything for five years.
Anne (16:55.398) I have not.
Anne (17:04.96) Mm-hmm.
Anne (17:15.467) Mmm.
Heidi Rew (17:15.598) and then all of a sudden within six weeks, they shoot up like, I don't know how, I'm gonna say 90 feet, that's not true. You can fact check me on that if we have fact check. Anyways, it's something along those lines, very, very tall, in about six weeks. And the reason why is because they develop such a strong root system.
Anne (17:23.607) That's tall. That's tall.
Anne (17:34.461) Mmm
Heidi Rew (17:35.314) that that's what they're doing in that five years. So you don't even see you're like, what's going on? Nothing's going on. And actually a lot is going on so that way they can stay strong for years and years. So that's part of it is, I think, you know, creating a good foundation. But I think the other part and I think this is really true and I don't I can't give anybody a certain like applicable thing to do to discover this. But the problem about.
Anne (17:42.122) Wow, yeah, I love that.
Heidi Rew (18:04.558) becoming a voice talent, especially if you're in another, you know, job or whatever, is that it's all on you to do every, you are the business, right? And sometimes the biggest hindrance to growth is ourselves and things that we find ourselves doing, you know. For me, I, one, I want people to like me. I want to do a really good job. Like I don't ever want to not do a good job, obviously.
Anne (18:14.058) Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Anne (18:21.07) Mm-hmm.
Anne (18:32.973) Mm-hmm.
Heidi Rew (18:34.886) And I can get really caught up on my performance and it just makes me want to go I'm done. This is too much I want to quit well that has nothing to do with my business. It has nothing to do with numbers It has nothing to do with data. It's all on me my own Insecurities my own you know fears about things so I think that The more that I'm able to uncover things about myself like little hiccups that I put my own way
Anne (18:45.27) Mmm.
Heidi Rew (19:01.99) actually the better my business is, you know, and it's just it's easier to not have to face those. I think when you are in another business where there's a lot of other people coming to your aid, you know, and being able to do things and, you know, make up for your weaknesses and everything.
Anne (19:12.147) Oh yeah, absolutely.
Anne (19:20.01) You know, it's such a thing when we talk about, you know, having moments of doubt and wanting to give up and wanting to quit. I mean, you know, self-sabotage. I mean, we talk about that quite a bit. I mean, what can you, what's your best advice? What can you say to those bosses out there that are just, they're like frustrated. I, you know, I'm not booking any work. I can't continue to, you know, fund.
Heidi Rew (19:32.486) Yeah.
Anne (19:47.334) this career if I'm not making any money at it. Because that just happens quite a bit. I hear that a lot from talent.
Heidi Rew (19:54.83) Yeah, of course, of course. I heard there's a wonderful psychologist, Angela Duckworth. She's written books and everything. And she said something that I will never forget. And this one thing will help so much. She said, don't quit on a bad day. If you're having a bad day and you want to quit, do not quit on that day. Now, if you have a great day and you just booked a great thing and you still want to quit, OK.
Anne (20:11.906) Mmm.
Heidi Rew (20:24.39) Then quit, because you know that it is, it's not the challenges that are coming your way, but it's just the actual job itself. But if it's those challenges and those hard days, push through, because I mean, there are, I still have days like that, and I'm how long into my career? Like, it's crazy. And you think, and I think.
Anne (20:41.578) Right? Isn't that true? Like, and we've been in this forever, right? And we still have days.
Heidi Rew (20:49.314) If people looked at it, you're like, but you're making a great full-time income from this job. And there are still days that I want to quit. And I just think, OK, you know what? I don't quit on a bad day. And then also, sometimes I do quit just for the day. You know, I'm like,
Anne (20:54.442) Mm-hmm.
Anne (21:02.879) I like that.
Don't quit on a bad day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, I like that. I'm quitting for the day.
Heidi Rew (21:10.046) I am, I'm either burnt out or I've got just too much. I need to quit for today. I need to go on a walk. I need to do something else for my mental health. And then tomorrow, jump back in.
Anne (21:12.607) Mm-hmm.
Anne (21:23.102) Yeah, I like that. So what are some important tools that you would recommend for voice actors in order to further their career?
Heidi Rew (21:34.822) So I will say that I have had a CRM since I started, but let me tell you, this CRM is, I mean, it's Google Sheets. Like that was my CRM for years. And I honestly, and yeah, and same, I'm literally right before we got on here, I've been trying.
Anne (21:42.145) Mmm.
Anne (21:49.334) Yeah, yeah, yeah. My name is Google, too. That was my CRM. It actually still is. OK. Ha, ha.
Heidi Rew (22:01.382) to migrate all of my clients over to Voice Over View. Because listen, my system works for me. I get it. The only problem is a search function. I don't like that because I love to be able to go, I don't have a great memory. And so I mean, I just had a session where I booked a job. And the guy was like, hey, Heidi, we worked together years ago on this. And I'm like, ugh.
Anne (22:05.011) Uh huh, uh huh.
Anne (22:08.992) Yes.
Mm-hmm.
Heidi Rew (22:28.654) So I'm typing in word war, you know what I mean? Like who did I, what was this? And I found it, it was fine, and I have all my notes there, but I really do need to be able to quickly search things. Because two, if you've been in this business, you probably are the same way for a long time. The people that are at one company that you worked with years ago, they may be at a completely different company. And so you need to be able to reference things and search things.
Anne (22:29.559) Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh gosh, yeah.
Anne (22:40.162) quickly get to it. Mm-hmm.
Anne (22:50.122) Yeah, yeah, mm-hmm.
Heidi Rew (22:56.618) So that CRM says no matter what you do, have a way to track your clients. Have a way to track your clients. And don't get frustrated if it's not perfect or whatever, but just start doing it. Start putting those notes in there. Because again, relationships, that's so big. And if you get to the point where you're booking a ton, it's really hard to keep track. I know it sounds so weird, but it's just like, I can't.
Anne (23:03.263) Yeah, that's yeah.
Anne (23:22.592) Yeah.
Heidi Rew (23:23.138) Remember this the guy that I was talking to about his kids softball game that weekend that I would love to mention to him You know in the follow-up email And so you really so that's that would be my first tool for sure and then the second tool to be honest with you and I would say maybe you can't do this at the very beginning of your career, but a bookkeeper
Anne (23:29.558) Mm-hmm.
Anne (23:49.338) Oh gosh, I'm right there with you. Right there with you. I say over and over again, my accountant is the best investment I ever made in my business. Yep. Mm-hmm.
Heidi Rew (23:53.422) I mean, and I-
Heidi Rew (23:59.126) 100% I agree. I agree. I mean, I, when I was learning QuickBooks, I mean, I remember crying at the table in front of my CPA and accountant, like I was like, I just, I didn't make, make it make sense, you know. It was so, so hard. And so it is, oh my gosh.
Anne (24:08.862) Oh god, I know.
Anne (24:19.486) And it's tedious too. It's not, if it doesn't bring you joy, outsource it. That's what I say. Ha ha.
Heidi Rew (24:25.63) And do you like reconciling? Because I hate it. I hate it and it is the easiest thing. It's like, come on.
Anne (24:28.174) No, I hate it. I hate it with a passion, but my accountant loves it. I mean, that's why they're an accountant for a career. They love numbers, for the most part. Yeah, I can't stand it. Yeah.
Heidi Rew (24:35.522) Exactly. Oh my gosh. I hate it. I would just dread it. I would put it off and then all of a sudden at the end of the year I have to reconcile like months and I'm like okay.
Anne (24:45.218) And I've had my accountant, I want to say, for a good eight years or so. She knows me so well. She knows my business so well, which is really wonderful. And she's not anywhere near me. So we use QuickBooks online. And literally, the two of us can meet once a week or every other week.
Heidi Rew (24:49.654) Mm-hmm.
Heidi Rew (24:57.922) Yeah.
Anne (25:02.13) to kind of go over things and she can generate numbers for me. She does my taxes. I mean my taxes I don't even have to prep anything. That's the cool thing is that you know before it was like Oh my god tax season was just you know the end of the year would come and I'd be like Oh god, I've got to get everything together And I've got to somehow figure out how to do and QuickBooks keeps updating and you know It's like trying to make things simpler, but I don't like it and so it's just like I don't want to spend time Yes
Heidi Rew (25:09.186) Right.
Heidi Rew (25:17.529) Yeah.
Heidi Rew (25:25.654) Yeah. So what we're saying is don't quit on a bad day or on tax day because it can get better.
Anne (25:32.062) Yes, or on tax day. I can't tell you though how wonderful it was to have taxes done, you know, so.
Quickly, I mean, literally, I just said, hey, it's April. Are we all set? She goes, yeah, I'll have your numbers tomorrow. Literally, it was like, oh, god, I didn't have to really organize anything. Every time I would get something in the mail, my forms, I would just forward them to her. She had it, and it was just, boom, she was able to do it. And it was wonderful. So those are some good business tools, a CRM and an accountant. Anything else? What about, let's talk about,
Heidi Rew (25:40.728) Yeah.
Heidi Rew (25:51.492) Yeah.
Heidi Rew (26:02.906) Yes. Yeah.
Anne (26:10.364) What about demos? I mean, I consider a demo a portfolio of your product, and your product is your voice. Let's talk about demos. How important are they these days? There's been some discussion out there about how important really is the demo. I mean, isn't the audition more important? What do you think?
Heidi Rew (26:11.252) Yeah.
Heidi Rew (26:16.182) Yes. Yeah. Let's talk about.
Heidi Rew (26:22.734) Mm-hmm.
Yeah. I mean, I think that the demo is still important for a lot of different reasons. I mean, one, if you do want to get on with an agent, you need a good demo. And it needs to be really, really good.
Anne (26:38.518) Yeah, kinda need a demo.
Because you can't audition at every second of the day. And your demo is kind of there as the representative voice of you when you're not available to audition at the very second that a client might want to hear your voice.
Heidi Rew (26:45.187) right.
Heidi Rew (26:50.342) Right. Yeah. Plus, I think that being able to be ready for a demo, and I'm speaking more, I will say I'm not an expert on a lot of the demos, but commercial demo, you know, we do at Atlanta VoiceOver Studio. We let everybody else do all the other stuff. But also, that's kind of your way of going, I'm ready to do this. Like, as a talent, I feel like when
Anne (27:06.647) Mm-hmm.
Anne (27:16.63) Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Heidi Rew (27:21.426) to do a commercial demo, then it also shows to you, like you need to be able to, it's kind of like just showing your work, like I'm ready, look, and here's what I can do, yeah. You know, we, so we actually, we used to have like a long wait list for our demos, and now we hardly, we don't have a wait list, and part of it is because we put all these like barriers for people.
Anne (27:29.598) Yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm. Here's my work, yeah.
Anne (27:40.279) Mm-hmm.
Heidi Rew (27:46.394) before they did their demo. So I think people are scared. They're like, oh gosh, there's a lot of work to get to that. But we're like, well, you know what? That's fine. We're not out to be a demo factory.
Anne (27:48.125) Mmm.
Anne (27:55.606) Well, I kind of really respect that because, you know what I mean? It's one of those things where nobody will ever come and say, well, you guys are just a demo mill. And that there are prerequisites. I mean, I always put a big, huge disclaimer saying, I'm not gonna produce a demo if you're not ready because you need to be able to replicate that sound. I mean, and so I do feel demos are an important tool.
Heidi Rew (28:04.974) No.
Heidi Rew (28:09.185) Mm-hmm.
Heidi Rew (28:14.455) Right.
Heidi Rew (28:19.042) Yeah, 100%. Yeah. Yep.
Heidi Rew (28:25.488) Yes.
Anne (28:25.99) for a business. What else? What about, I mean, I feel like every voice actor needs to have an online presence. Website slash social media slash...
Heidi Rew (28:32.994) I 100% agree with that. Yes, you need to have a website. So with Atlanta Voice Over Studio, we have these industry pro workouts where we'll bring in agents or creative directors or casting directors or whatever. I've had several people that have been our industry pro that have said, you know what? We wanted to book somebody.
Anne (28:45.329) Mm-hmm.
Heidi Rew (28:55.586) We couldn't find them. Or they're like, I love this voice, and then we couldn't find them. They had no website. We couldn't search for them. You need to be searchable these days. You need to be searchable.
Anne (28:57.402) Ah, interesting. Mm-hmm, yeah. Mm-hmm. That's a wonderful, yeah, I love that you brought that up because I mean, I host workouts as well with agents and casting directors and yeah, an online presence, a website, and a way to get to your demo or a sample that can be downloaded and passed around.
Heidi Rew (29:20.23) Yes. Yeah.
Anne (29:23.73) I think I can't tell you the amount of times I've gone to a website and you can't download their demo or there's not an easy way to get in touch with them. Like where's the contact information or there's a form somebody has to fill out. And I'm like I just really give me an email address or a phone number or you know so that I can I can get in touch quickly because you don't want to make it too hard for somebody to get in touch with you and everything. But I'm afraid to maybe post my phone number to for spam. I'm like really? Like I mean you're a business. You're a business.
Heidi Rew (29:32.203) Yes.
Heidi Rew (29:38.312) I know, yeah.
Heidi Rew (29:44.343) Right.
Heidi Rew (29:50.706) I have my number, phone number up there, I know. I agree, I agree. Yeah.
Anne (29:54.826) a phone number or some way to get in touch with you. I mean, I will say that I literally, this is on a personal note, there have been some vendors, some very large vendors that have foregone phone support and gone completely digital where they'll have like a chat bot on their website, which I think is fine. But when you've got those problems or those questions, or you need to contact them for, you know, something that isn't covered by their chat bot,
Heidi Rew (30:09.873) Hmm.
Heidi Rew (30:17.967) Mm-hmm.
Heidi Rew (30:23.247) Yeah.
Anne (30:24.31) Being able to contact somebody either in a Zoom, a video meeting or a phone call is really, really helpful. And a lot of companies I know to save money have foregone that tech support or that phone support. And I will say right now, I don't know if that's gonna last very long because there are always those conditions where people need to get in touch with you, like quickly.
Heidi Rew (30:31.776) Yeah.
Heidi Rew (30:39.067) Hmm.
Heidi Rew (30:49.154) Yeah. And this is for vendors. No voice talent have done it, right? Or.
Anne (30:52.96) Yeah.
Well, I always, I mean, I make sure that people can get in touch with me in any which way. I'm like, here's my email, here's a phone number, here's a Zoom link, here's a Source Connect link, here's an IPDTL link. Go ahead, get in touch with me. And I deal with spam. Yeah, I deal with spam, you know, and it's just, it's just it. I mean, there's lots of spam protection filters in place. So for me, I would rather have somebody be able to get in touch with me because gosh, they might want to hire me. But.
Heidi Rew (30:58.926) Right. Yeah. I agree.
Heidi Rew (31:08.546) I know. I even put it on my social accounts too.
Heidi Rew (31:14.358) Yep. Mm-hmm. Yep.
Heidi Rew (31:20.218) Yeah, of course. Do you think that it matters what type of genre you're into? Because I know commercials, I mean, they move so fast. I lost a job just the other weekend because I couldn't do it. I literally had Lasik surgery, so I couldn't get it done. But they needed it right then and there. And I couldn't do it. But I couldn't do it.
Anne (31:30.391) They do.
Oh, all the time, because you can't respond in time. Mm-hmm.
Anne (31:40.698) Yeah, yeah.
Anne (31:45.854) Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Well, I know if I can't contact somebody, if they don't get back to me right away, I'm like, well, fine, I guess you don't want the work. I mean, sure, you don't want my business, that's fine. I'll just go find somebody that does. So, gosh, so what's next for you and the Atlanta VoiceOver Studio? What's in your future?
Heidi Rew (31:47.822) So that's another reason why I'm like my phone numbers everywhere and
Heidi Rew (32:01.102) Yeah. Yep.
Heidi Rew (32:07.954) Gosh, honestly, some potentially big changes. But not, yeah, I don't even know if it's, so the place that we rent, the lease is up in October. And our original plan was to buy something. There's just not a lot available in Atlanta right now that's the size that we need. And
Anne (32:15.905) Ooh, sounds exciting.
Anne (32:24.322) Mm-hmm.
Anne (32:34.064) Mm-hmm.
Heidi Rew (32:36.534) and stuff so we'll probably move spaces. So that's a big thing, that'll be a move in October. And yeah, so I don't know, we're gonna have to change some things. To be honest with you, the studio has been wonderful, it's grown so much. I mean, we're about to celebrate eight years this summer, which is crazy.
Anne (32:42.117) Ooh, that's a big thing.
Anne (32:56.622) Mm-hmm. Wow, that's fantastic.
Heidi Rew (33:02.198) But it's been a lot on Mike and I. So it may even be changes of like we fine tune things or we shrink some of the things that we offer, to be honest with you, because it's a lot of work on our part. And we try and take the weekends off, but you know, we don't take a paycheck either from the studio. And so that's been like, ugh. Yeah, I know you do. I know.
Anne (33:04.579) Mm-hmm.
Anne (33:09.403) Mm-hmm.
Anne (33:14.034) Yeah. Do you have a day off?
Anne (33:19.314) Okay, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I'll tell you what is funny. I don't have a studio and I work six and a half days a week. So, and I really try not to because you're right. I think for my own creative mindset and health, it's important to have that refresh time. So.
Heidi Rew (33:32.964) Yeah.
I know. Well, and let me ask you this too, because this is something that I think we've experienced is like we, Mike and I love to give to people. And that's been the thing with Atlanta VoiceOver Studio, but if you keep giving and giving and giving, it's really easy to get burned out. And you're just like, I...
Anne (33:43.8) Mm-hmm.
Anne (33:54.95) Yeah, it is. It is.
Heidi Rew (33:57.03) wasn't able to fill up and we recognize that too with like it like COVID was really hard going through all of that and then coming out of it and yeah I you know it yeah.
Anne (34:05.281) Yeah.
It is hard, it is hard. And I know I did that with Vio Peeps for a long, long time. I mean, you give, you give, you give. Vio Boss, this podcast is one of those, I wanted to give back. And if you're not careful, it will burn you out. It is one of those things. And I thought, well, maybe I'll give up the Vio Peeps and it'll just be Vio Boss. And I couldn't do that, because I don't know, I liked my bird, I liked my little Peeps bird. And I love my Vio Boss. And I, so.
Heidi Rew (34:17.722) Hmm.
Heidi Rew (34:22.331) Yeah.
Heidi Rew (34:30.307) I know.
Well, and we like to give. Yeah, it's not, yeah, it's not gonna stop, but it is a tricky thing to try and find that balance of like, how do I fill back up myself so I can give to other people, so.
Anne (34:39.322) Yeah, it is. It's yes to navigate. Yes.
Well, absolutely. Well, you guys have just been amazing and you're just an icon in Atlanta there. And it was so wonderful to actually get the opportunity to have you on the show because you guys are bosses and you are a boss. So, yeah, thank you so much. And we really appreciate you sharing your nuggets of wisdom.
Heidi Rew (34:51.402) Uh...
Heidi Rew (34:59.05) I know. Oh.
Anne (35:17.406) when you have self doubts. Because that really means a lot to people out there that think, gosh, she must have it all, because she's been doing it forever. And it really helps to know that we're not alone out there. And so I appreciate your transparency. So, yes.
Heidi Rew (35:19.026) Mm-hmm.
Heidi Rew (35:25.188) Mm-mm. No.
Heidi Rew (35:29.476) Yeah.
Heidi Rew (35:33.146) Yeah, thank you so much for having me on, and thank you, VO Bosses, for letting me be with you in this moment.
Anne (35:39.314) Yay, yay, awesome. All right guys, a big shout out to our sponsor, IPDTL. You too can connect and network like Heidi and I. Find out more at ipdtl.com. You guys have an amazing week and we'll see you next week.
The BOSSES talk about practice this week! Through personal anecdotes and expert advice, they reveal that practice isn't just about refining technique—it's a journey to discover new habits that can benefit your career. The BOSSES talk about why many voiceover students skip practice sessions and how accountability partners and workout groups can be game-changers in your pursuit of vocal excellence. The BOSSES discuss the risks of practicing without professional oversight, and how it can lead to bad habits that are tough to break. They shine a spotlight on the undeniable advantages of participating in structured groups like Audition Demolition and VO Peeps, which offer both expert feedback and the kind of networking opportunities that can kickstart a career. We equate voice acting to mastering a musical instrument, asserting that progress requires commitment to practice beyond the four walls of coaching sessions.
00:02 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey bosses. Anne Ganguzza, you know your journey and voiceover is not just about landing gigs. It's about growing both personally and professionally. At Anne Ganguzza voice productions, I focus on coaching and demo production that nurtures your voice and your confidence. Let's grow together. Visit Anne Ganguzza.com to find out more.
00:33 - 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, Ann Ganguza.
00:46 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey bosses, welcome to the VO Boss Podcast and the Boss Superpower Series. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, along with my special guest co-host Lau Lapides. Hey, Lau, hey.
00:58 - Lau Lapides (Host) Annie, it's great to see you, as always. How are you Wonderful, ready to talk and chat it up?
01:05 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Awesome, awesome.
01:06 - Lau Lapides (Host) So, Lau.
01:07 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) As you know, I am a coach, and as well as you, and it seems like every week I have a few students that they always want to do live reads with me during our sessions, which I think is wonderful. But, as a coach and a former educator, I always assign homework, because I want people to get the most out of their sessions.
01:25 So I feel like it's very important that they have different scripts that they can read, they can record, they can practice getting used to different styles, and I want to make sure that in between sessions they are doing that on some sort of a daily basis. I think that's super important for their growth and development. It amazes me Lau how many times I will have students say well, I got really busy and I get it. Like life happens, there's families, there's things that happen and you can't always practice, but sometimes there are students who just never seem to take the time to really work in between sessions. I thought we should have a discussion about that.
02:03 - Lau Lapides (Host) Yeah, it's a good point. It's a good point. I used to think, and my team used to think and oftentimes mistake, when that happened, and it happened quite frequently with us as well that they didn't care, they weren't engaged, they weren't serious, they were lazy, all of those things. Sometimes, it is true I don't know if that's it or they procrastinate, procrastination was very, very big.
02:25 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That's a whole other episode.
02:27 - Lau Lapides (Host) It's a whole other episode, but I mean, I have found that the learning process of how you cement technique and how you utilize your tools and how you really discover organically who you are as a performer is through the practice session and there's different methodologies that you've got to look at to make it successful for yourself. And, of course, one which is very hot today the accountability of having at least one other person, one partner, out there that's going to meet you, that's going to be with you, live real time and work you through. It has typically been very successful for people that their schedules match. Sure, they're well matched together, they enjoy being together, it becomes a professional friendship for them and it can work.
03:15 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, now you're talking about accountability like an accountability group, right, that can just say all right. So what did you do this week to further your business? So I want to make sure that we're talking not just accountability in terms of hey, what did you do this week to secure more leads, to get more?
03:32 - Intro (Announcement) work.
03:32 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) We're talking accountability for, let's say, if you want to get better at the craft and I think there's lots of things that you can do to help yourself get better at the craft- and now it's hard to have an ear when you haven't developed an ear yet, and so sometimes I'll give homework and people will get very upset if they're like, yeah, but I did the homework, but now that you've told me these things, you shouldn't listen to that homework anymore. But, honestly, the homework that I gave or the scripts that I give, no matter what performance level you're at, right, there's so many good reasons to do the homework.
04:09 - Lau Lapides (Host) Oh, no question about it.
04:11 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Because even if you don't have an ear yet, there's many advantages of you experiencing and attempting to record by yourself and get things submitted on time. Gosh, there's just so many things right, it's like auditioning techniques.
04:28 There's editing techniques you're getting better at, you're experiencing different styles.
04:32 I mean you could be within a genre and have multiple different style scripts come your way that you have to analyze and figure out.
04:40 And so, for me, if you don't have a discipline of doing something voiceover every single day performance-wise right, I think you're kind of missing the boat. And I'm not going to say that you're lazy if you don't do it, but I am going to say that having something that you do every single day is important because it helps you learn, as you said, who you are. As you said who you are, it helps you learn like, oh, if I record a script in the morning, I realize, oh, I have a lower voice in the morning, or I have more energy in the morning, or versus recording after a long day at work, right, oh, I sounded a little bit strained in that performance. So it helps to know who you are as a performer by having those practice, having the exercises, having the homework, whatever you want to call it. And also, yeah, I think having an accountability buddy is very helpful. And also, la, let's talk about workout groups.
05:33 - Lau Lapides (Host) Oh, absolutely. And I'll tell you, you know, before this idea of accountability, buddies came in, which really came from other industries, completely like the gym. Working out at a gym, you'd have an accountability partner at a gym. You know, way before I knew about it for voiceover, I always learned it as an actor In conservatory level. You would always be in rehearsal. We didn't call it practice sessions, we called it rehearsal. You were always rehearsing your roles, always. And could you rehearse alone, rehearsing your roles always. And could you rehearse alone? Of course, and you have to rehearse alone at times, but when you can be with another person, that level of energy and stimulation and fun factor I think helps to cement a discipline of saying I got to come to it every day. It's like I have a class that I'm going to yes.
06:23 I have to get to that. I have to do that. I'm being held to that. So then, when you go to your workout classes, you have a lot to bring to the table because guess what, you're not just relying on the workout class to give you everything You've already been working out on your own right. And then you're bringing that in for your director or your coach or your facilitator and saying here are things I've been working on, here are things I've been coaching and practicing and rehearsing every day. Now let me work through it with a live group in the room.
06:55 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Absolutely, and I think that that gives you yet another level of practice that can really help you develop auditioning skills, and it can, again, it makes you accountable.
07:06 You're like, well, I don't want to be a complete fool, I should probably right, I should probably work on my technique or my performance, so that when I get in front of the group, right, I'm not going to necessarily seem like I don't know what I'm doing. And so I do want to say one word of caution when working out with peer groups right, peer groups without necessarily someone that can really guide along the peer group that maybe have more experience might be just floundering, shall I say, or misguiding. If that's the case, if you have a bunch of new people in a workout group and you're all directing one another, sometimes you can get direction that may not be helpful because everybody is new. So at least if you're working out with a group of people, if you can try to have a leader of that group that can oversee or that has some experience, some casting experience, some coaching experience that can help guide, if there is feedback that may or may not be helpful to you for your performance.
08:03 - Lau Lapides (Host) I couldn't say that any better, annie. I'm not a fan of pair workout groups and the reason is because it's not that you can't have professional friends and you can't help one another, you can. But I get concerned about and I'll bring it back to the gym again, because it's an easy analogy that if I meet up with two or three or four people and we're all lifting the 50-pound weight or whatever and I'm just not doing it properly and they're not aware of that, they're not catching that, they might even be saying great job, lau. Oh my God, look at your biceps. And meanwhile I'm straining my back, I'm hurting my lower back. I'm hoping that the facilitator or the coach or the trainer has that knowledge base to say hey, hey, hey, no, no, no, no, we don't do it that way.
08:49 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Here's your proper technique, here's your proper form.
08:51 - Lau Lapides (Host) That's my biggest concern. And the other concern I have about a peer workout group as well is be careful, like, have your gossip antennas up. We shouldn't be going into a practice rehearsal, performance group to talk about the business or gossip about other people or whatever. And oftentimes it can go down that road of like oh, who did you audition for today? Oh, I got that script. Oh, what do you think of her? How come she sent that out? And then all of a sudden all sorts of things are said in that room which are not appropriate, makes people feel really uncomfortable and is completely off topic from what you came in to do in the first place, which was practice.
09:33 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, yeah, and we're talking again bosses. We're talking performance and techniques, not necessarily business meetings, right, we're business accountability and in that place I think you can talk about the business, the industry as it exists. And I agree with you. I think gossip we have to be very careful about gossip, just because I don't think gossip serves any useful purpose really, and it is one of those things that gets to think of let's gossip around the water cooler. It happens.
10:00 I mean, we do it, we do it, but I think that business accountability groups or performance groups should probably steer clear of that, if it's possible. I don't think it's really constructive in a lot of ways. And in regards to workout groups, I mean I can't sit here on the VO Boss podcast and not say we have an audition, demolition, which is a really wonderful group where you can work out, and we have a simulated audition and you can get feedback from coaches, lau and myself and also work up your live performance skills as well. As I have the VO Peeps, which has a workout group that happens once a month. That is part of the group and you've got TIC right.
10:39 - Lau Lapides (Host) Then you have workouts that happen for your group, lau, yeah, we got weekly workouts happening and I wanted to say about Audition Demolition, when we came up with that, Annie, like I don't even think we realized really the impact that that kind of a live directed session has. And I'll be honest, I mean you can edit this out later. It's educational, it's developmental, it's social. But let me be honest, I have pulled a few of those people for my roster that were amazing people that came in that I said, oh my goodness, they need an agent or they need representation, like ASAP. So whenever you go into a professional work experience like this, you're in a room, you're auditioning, You're actually auditioning. It's the real deal. It's not a mock audition, it's not a mimic audition, it's a real Well, even though we say it is, but it is real.
11:31 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It's not a mock audition, it's not a mimic audition, it's a real. Well, even though we say it is, but it is real, it's real.
11:35 - Lau Lapides (Host) Annie could be casting something or have a friend that's producing something and she may be thinking about you because she just saw you in the room. So I'm just saying come in and really experience the live directed session and observe Also observe what's happening with others with your colleagues. It absolutely. And observe also observe what's happening with others with your colleagues. It's fabulous.
11:54 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And with your weekly workouts as well as mine. I have guest directors that come in on a regular basis and I cannot tell you the amount of times where I've had a casting director come in or a talent agent and I can never promise right. As a matter of fact, I even have to have a disclaimer saying that this does not guarantee you representation at all. However, there have been a number of peeps that have come into my workout groups and performed well and they have been signed with an agent or they have struck up a relationship with a casting director and then gotten hired. So I think that these are the things that I think are very beneficial for bosses out there in really growing in the performance aspect of your career, and it's so, so important because I am a business owner, I am a coach. If you say to me, I want to do live reads every time we meet, of course I can do live reads, but I also want you to be working on them in between sessions, because otherwise it's going to take you a really long time to get to the point where you're going to be ready to, let's say, record a demo or ready to really get out there and do work. It's kind of like I used to take piano lessons back in the day and if I didn't practice in between my lessons, boy did my teacher know it, because she would give me music to practice during the week. And so when I would meet with her the following week, if I didn't practice, it guess what? It was very painfully obvious, and she could take my money week after week. And if I didn't practice, well, my mom would be angry, because you know she's like why am I spending all that money on these sessions? And if you think about it, really, bosses, you're spending money and you should be getting the most out of your sessions that you can. So, in addition to the I would say, workout groups that are led with coaches or people that are experienced, that can really help move you forward, also yourself in the studio, working on these scripts and even fumbling, which is fine. That's what they're there for. I mean, that's why I give homework.
13:57 And then struggling through the editing, and people always say, well, do you really need me to edit it? And I said I want you to edit it, like it's an audition for me, right? So then I'm going to play it back for you and then we're going to talk about it and I'm going to redirect you. And the reason I do that is not because I want to just give you busy work. It's not busy work, it is giving you so much more.
14:18 Like this is what's going to happen when you get a job right You're going to have to record in your studio, you're going to have to self-direct, you're going to have to edit that audio and you're going to have to present it. Or, if you're doing an audition right and you're going to have to put it in a form that someone can actually listen to, you're going to have to understand your editing skills. You're going to have to in certain cases in e-learning and corporate, you have to remove breaths or you have to really de-amplify your breaths and you have to do all those things. And I'm like, look, the point of me giving you something on a day-to-day basis to do is not to stress you out.
14:51 It is to help you get the most out of our sessions together, and I think that it's important that you have a discipline. If you can spend 20 minutes a day, if you can spend an hour a day, if you can spend more than that, that's wonderful. But take time set aside and make a discipline and sometimes I say mix up the times, like if you can do it in the morning before you, if you have another job that you go to do it in the morning before you go to the job, and then maybe, if you can do it during the lunch hour, maybe try it when you come home. And then you get to know yourself, know your performance level, know, oh, I sound good in the morning, I have a lot of energy, or I sound horrible after a day's work, when it's been horrible.
15:31 - Lau Lapides (Host) Well said. Couldn't have said it any better. I mean, that's really what it is, and when you show up to, whatever you show up to, don't underestimate it. What I mean by that is whether it's a partner of yours, whether it's a workout group, whether it's in front of a casting director, whether it's audition demolition. Put yourself together as if you are a professional in a professional environment, and I don't care if people are showing up in pajamas and they're coming from bed. Don't do it.
15:58 Don't make the mistake to do that, because not only will your psychology not be up to par with the level at which you need to be sustaining and working at, but you could literally lose connections, you could lose jobs, you could lose potential opportunities, because I don't know about you, annie, but I see the weirdest things and tick Like all of a sudden I see a bed and I'm like why am I looking at an unmade bed and I have to take out the video. Like I have to literally watch out and take out the video. I see the weirdest things and I'm like why would you show up in bed? Why would you show up just coming out of the shower? Why would you show up in these ways? These are meetings, professional meetings, and I think that the casualness of being at home has trained people into thinking well, I'm on Zoom, it's just I'm here. No, you're still in a professional meeting environment where people are thinking about the work you're doing. They're observing you.
16:56 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, it is about more than just your voice. I mean, it is about the professionalism and professional demeanor and how you act, what you look like. It's all part of the package. And that's that whole discussion. Like, do we even need demos anymore? Of course we do. Do we need performance coaching? Of course we do. I mean, in reality, I mean this is what makes us who we are. It helps us develop and move forward in our businesses.
17:18 And again, I cannot stress enough that if you're not dedicating a certain amount of time on a day-to-day basis to get better at this craft, then I'm not quite sure what you're doing. And that's fine if maybe it's just a hobby for you, Maybe it's just something you're trying out to see, if you enjoy it. And a lot of times there are people who are like oh gosh, I didn't realize it was going to be work, I thought I was just talking behind the mic and a lot of times, right again, you don't know what you don't know. And so if you think it's easier than it is, that's another reason why I give the homework that I give so that people can see that it really isn't and so that you can get the feedback, you can get the evaluation and I can say you know what it sounds like. You need to improve on your studio a little bit. I'm hearing a little bit of noise, or, hey, I'm hearing some mouth clicks, or I'm hearing whatever that is, or your performance sounds like it's not. I don't believe it, it's not authentic, and so those are the things that your practicing is going to help you.
18:16 And again, at some point, it's like you practice and you don't hear yourself. You don't hear yourself and then you get feedback and then you come back, you practice some more and then you get some more feedback, which is why I think having that coaching or having that professional that can give you feedback is so incredibly critical to improve in your career. I mean, can you do it all on your own by watching videos? I think that can be a supplement if you have a good group the VO Peeps we have videos that you can watch that were people that have worked out before with guest directors who are amazing in their field. I mean Lau, you've been on it a couple of times with guest directors who are amazing in their field. I mean Lau, you've been on it a couple of times. And Audition, Demolition gosh guys, we have the Audition Demolitions on the VO Boss YouTube channel. You can go and watch them now and learn from those. So, yeah, I think that those types of workouts, those types of group practices, are something that can be very beneficial for you.
19:10 - Lau Lapides (Host) Absolutely. I couldn't have said it any better. You're taking the words out of my head. I would say this, though, too I think you and I take for granted how much energy and stamina and willfulness we have in going from session to session, hour to hour, moment to moment, through a very, very long day, because we've been trained that way, we're used to that, we expect that to some degree, we enjoy that, we love that. Well, I have found like, when I run classes and as it goes after the first hour into 90 minutes, I start watching the group to see is their energy going, is their stamina going? By two hours, people are starting to pop up. Yes, yes, I am so shocked at that Listen.
19:56 Mama lau knows, mama lau, mama lawu knows that they're lying when they say, oh, I got an appointment, I have to go.
20:04 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) No, they're getting tired. Yeah, they leave after two hours. And you know, that's so interesting that you say that, because it used to be years ago I would have three-hour workouts and if it were like a guest director, that was like top in their field. People would stay until they left. I mean, it was just like they couldn't get enough of it. And lately, lau, I have had sessions where my guest director goes a little bit past two hours and people are like I got to go, I got to go, I'm off, right, and I find that a little bit disturbing.
20:35 - Lau Lapides (Host) Well, therein lies the background and the history of that talent, and where has their training come from? Where has their experience come from? I'll use an example, because a lot of voiceover talent are also on-camera actors as well. Many, many, many. If they're on a film set, they know they have to have patience for 7, 8, 11, 14 hours. They're not just going to be released because they get tired. They're going to have to stick that through and figure out what makes them stay with it throughout that time frame. I mean same with, like, if you do theater, many voiceover talent come from a theater background. Well, that's a big rehearsal process. You could go in for three, four, five hours at a time to rehearse a show. So those folks that come in, I find those folks that come in already have a built-in understanding of time and energy and stamina.
21:30 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, I mean stamina, stamina. I'm just going to say there is something to be said for stamina and especially because, let's say, I mean I work a lot in long-format narration, right, you need stamina to be able to be present in that script, to execute that 45-module e-learning right. And audiobook narrators, I find, have good stamina, but there's also material that may be completely interesting to them, right. Whenever it's story-driven, right, I feel like, well, at least there's some story in there, and sometimes there may not be stories within the stories, but you have to develop a vocal muscle. You really do.
22:08 And it's kind of like me when I gosh back in the day when I was teaching, and I would be teaching class after class after class after class, your voice had to get used to talking. That much. I mean I had to build up stamina. You go to the gym, right, I got to build muscle. You have to build vocal muscle and you have to build not only vocal muscle but mental muscle.
22:26 That really helps you to stick it out, to be present, to be that actor for the amount of time that you need. I mean, if there's breaks in between, right, and you're watching somebody else go in a group session, right, and all of a sudden it's like but I'm on the East Coast, right. I get people that say that I'm on the East Coast and I got to go to bed. Okay, I get that, but still, there's stamina. Right, there is a muscle that you need to build up If you really want to see yourself succeed, and we might have people that argue with us and say is it that hard? Yeah, I mean, I feel like it can be if you want to be good at this, right.
22:59 - Lau Lapides (Host) But wouldn't you say also, though, annie, that there's this whether it's an addiction factor or a dopamine kick or whatever it is, I find so many of us that come from these backgrounds and work through a long day, work through a long shift, love it. We just can't get enough of it. There's an insatiable need to keep doing it. So if you're practicing, for instance, you shouldn't keep practicing at five minutes or 10 minutes for a year, two years, three years. You should be building that time frame and that stamina and the passion for why you're staying longer with it. I just love what we do. I love what I do. I enjoy what I do. I want more of it. I want to do more of it. You know what I mean.
23:42 If I teach a live class and I teach a live class in a studio, which is more rare nowadays they're typically six to eight hours in length, and the kids that sit in the class, that are like in the 20s or in the 30s. They will start to fade about halfway through. I'll see them kind of like fade, and I'll be like you know what? You guys, I'm not used to taking as many breaks, but you tell me when you need a break. I don't want to lose you Just tell me when you need a break.
24:07 But those kinds of things in your training is so important because then when you go practice on your own, if you've done six hours of training or eight hours of training in a row, to do 15 minutes or 30 minutes is no longer a big deal for you. It's all relative right in a lot of ways.
24:24 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. So Law, what are your best tips for developing that stamina muscle that you would say voice actors can do to help their performance?
24:37 - Lau Lapides (Host) Well, perhaps this is redundant. You need to do it and you should do it a lot, and so, like, let's say you're joining a class or a group or a workout or whatever it is. You need to, like, top yourself, keep challenging yourself, keep topping yourself. One group may be one hour. That's going to help me practice. That's all I need for now. One hour is perfect. But then I want to also join a group that may go two hours in length, because I want to be able to see.
25:04 This is one of the things, annie, that graduate school taught me. I didn't realize at the time, but later I realized they taught you how to teach your craft, direct your craft, produce your craft. Why? Because you weren't always performing, you were observing all the people in the room. Yeah, you were made to give feedback to every single person in the room, until you were blue in the face and said I don't know what to say anymore. They said you better figure out what to say, because if you're teaching in a program, if you're producing a project or you're doing whatever and you have to give feedback, you have to give feedback. So that's a muscle. That's a muscle where you have to just keep exposing yourself to more and more people simultaneously and more and more time. I just want to say one more thing about actors. Actors oftentimes beginning-level actors would get very annoyed if they're in a room where they only get to work for a very small part of the time.
26:01 And then they have to watch 15 people right, and I said you better thank your lucky stars because that's going to be one day, your company, your team, your classroom, your whatever and you're going to have to have the stamina and discipline to go through every single one of those auditions, every single one of those performances student or someone that really wants to learn as much as they possibly can, will understand the value of sitting there and listening and watching other people.
26:31 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And you're right, there's a lot of people who will be quick to complain that, well, they might do a group workout, but they only get 10 minutes on mic, and so I believe that you should have individual attention, which is great for one-on-one coaching as well as the group workouts.
26:47 Yes, I do too. That together builds your muscle and really is something I advise everyone and to get experience and exposure with different directors, which is why one of the reasons why I have the VO Peeps group and it's one of the reasons why you have TIC right and you bring in guest directors, because it's very important for you to get exposure from different teachers, from different feedback from different people, because it just helps you become a more well-rounded actor. And, of course, if you can make that discipline I mean you don't want to be investing all your money into sessions and not be getting the most out of your sessions, out of your sessions and so, with that, if you are making the investment to get that coaching, then make sure that you start to exercise that muscle on a daily basis or every other day, whatever you can work in on a consistent basis. I think consistency is key.
27:42 - Lau Lapides (Host) Right, it doesn't always have to be constant, but it should be consistent. That's really important, and I would build in every time work, a new tool, something that you have observed, picked up, been coached or directed to do. Write it down. Don't just keep it in your head and forget about it, because there's a million things that coaches and directors are going to be offering to you throughout your career that you're just not going to be able to conjure up and remember. So you have to document. However, you document, document and pull one thing out, say, oh okay, annie coached me, okay, she gave me builds. This week I got to work on my build. Let me look at this script. Let me work on my build. That's going to take my focus into a very specific zone, rather than me standing in the booth going has 15 minutes gone by yet? Have I practiced enough? Right, exactly.
28:24 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Exactly, and I'm going to say when you practice, it requires your focus. So for me to be the best actor that you can be, it requires 100 plus percent focus into your scene who you are, who you're talking to, because it's so easy to just read, so easy to just read. So don't just get in there and read. Get in there and create those scenes, figure out who you're talking to be in the scenes. And that requires imagination, it requires a lot of focus and that's tiring.
28:51 - Lau Lapides (Host) And take care of yourself, like don't dehydrate, don't overheat, don't feel like I'm standing for so long I can't see straight. If your eyes are hurting you from the light, turn the light off. Be easy on your brain so that your brain can focus on the more important things, that's, your work at hand. Make your environment conducive to practice. How many times, annie, have you seen one of your clients that you meet on a coaching session on Zoom and they're in the dark? They're in the dark and I'm like where's your light? Where's your light? How do you see? Aren't you straining your eyes? They're like, oh yeah, let me set something up. How do you see, aren't you straining your eyes? You're like, oh yeah, let me set something up. You got to do what's best for you. What makes your work more palatable for you is what's going to make your practice sessions more enjoyable. Right, absolutely.
29:38 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Good stuff, Lau, great stuff. So very important bosses, practice, get your practice in, get your discipline in All right. Practice, get your practice in, get your discipline in All right. I am going to give a huge shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl, which allows Lau and I to get in our vocal practice and talk to one another like bosses. Find out more at IPDTLcom. You guys have an amazing week and we'll see you next week. Bye.
30:03 - Intro (Announcement) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, Anne Ganguza, 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.
Join Anne Ganguzza and guest co-host, Lau Lapides, as we share the personal rituals and support systems that keep us at the top of our game. From the mental clarity of Anne's Pilates routine to Lau’s cherished moments with her furry friends, the BOSSES unravel how these treasured practices not only lift spirits, but also propel BOSSES through the most demanding business battles. The BOSSES guide you through the creation of an optimal workspace designed to awaken your most productive self. They also tackle the often-overlooked aspect of sound, from the tranquility of headphones to the creative surge provided by the right playlist. Plus, discover tried-and-true methods for diffusing work stress, to improve your business performance #likeaboss 00:02 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) You know your voice has the power to move, to persuade, to inspire. Imagine taking that power to its fullest potential. With guidance and expert production, I can help elevate your voice to new heights, making every voice script resonate with your audience. Let's empower your voice together, one session at a time. Find out more at anneganguzza.com.
00:29 - 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.
00:48 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey, hey everyone. Welcome to the VO Boss Podcast. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and I am here in the Boss Superpower Series with my amazing special guest co-host, Lau Lapides. Oh hey, Annie, hi Lau.
01:01 - Lau Lapides (Host) So good to be here.
01:03 - Anne ganguzza (Host) So good to be here too. I am all set to record another amazing episode with you, and I've got my trusty cup of coffee right here, you got your cup of coffee and I got my trusty big dunks.
01:18 - Lau Lapides (Host) I think that's 32 ounces of water from dunks.
01:21 - Anne ganguzza (Host) Wow, look at that. Do you get your water from dunks?
01:25 - Lau Lapides (Host) Not always, but if I'm going to go and get coffee anyway or something there anyway, I always ask for a large water. Even if they charge you a little, I ask for a large water, my double-fisted coffee.
01:36 - Anne ganguzza (Host) And these are actually my Ultima replenishers, which are electrolytes, which I love so I make sure that I'm drinking. I'm supposed to drink close to 100 ounces a day, and these help me to do so and to make sure that I'm getting all the nutrients that I need so that I can run my business like a boss.
01:54 - Lau Lapides (Host) I love it, I love it.
01:55 - Anne ganguzza (Host) So those are just a couple of my I guess, tools that support me while I am working and keep me energized and going and running my business like a boss. Let's talk about, maybe our tools or our support mechanisms that help us to keep running our businesses like bosses today.
02:15 - Lau Lapides (Host) Oh, that's a great topic. I love that. Just thinking about that makes me all cozy and fluffy inside, because when I think about the rituals, the routines, what I consider to be necessities of the daily run, what keeps me engaged and energized, going from morning till night, what is it that does that? For each individual person, there's so many different support options.
02:43 - Anne ganguzza (Host) We just showed you one. Yeah, and I'll tell you what right now. It was so funny because I happen to be watching Saturday Night Live last night and that tells bosses that we're here on a Sunday. I'm just saying we're here on a Sunday recording some boss episodes, but I happen to be watching Saturday Night Live and there's a whole comedy skit on Pilates, because it makes me think of. I've been getting into Pilates this year and it is something that I do early in the morning before I start my day. Usually I have a 7 o'clock class that goes till 8, and I get myself in the studio by 8.30 and really start running either with students or recording stuff in my studio, doing demo production by 9 at the very latest on a day-to-day basis. So Pilates, or getting my daily exercise in, has now become one of my go-to things. That is something I need to do. I need to feel like I've been able to exercise and get my heart rate up and be invigorated. Mm-hmm.
03:37 - Lau Lapides (Host) I love that, I love that. And if you miss it, if you miss that routine or ritual, how different do you feel, how different is the start of your day? So it's like patterns, you know. We're also talking about the discipline of creating a pattern in your social comfort that you need to really perform. There's all sorts of different things I pull out depending on the season and how I feel, but one of the things you and I discuss is the importance of our fur children. Oh gosh yes.
04:07 Because we're fur mamas and I've got my two Frenchie bulldogs, you've got your beautiful cats and we both love animals so, so much.
04:16 - Anne ganguzza (Host) Oh, my goodness, yes, and that love, that passion, helps to fuel the business as well, right when I need a break, when I'm having a lunch break or something, I make sure that I go and have playtime with the cats or I'm like I need a hug from one of my kitties, and so I'll go seek them out and get a hug and it's funny because animals, I love animals.
04:37 The other thing is that the horse show season has started here by me and for those of you that have not seen my photos on social media, I love, love, love horses and back in the day, Law and I, when we were talking about what we used to do when we were in our younger years, I used to ride horses and show horses. And so for me to live literally a mile away from a showgrounds where they have amazing, top-rated shows every weekend during the season Just makes me so happy.
05:08 - Lau Lapides (Host) It's such a big deal and it really infuses your spirit in a different way that really, I would say even redirects any kind of negative energy that I'm feeling, which we all have for different reasons. You know what's going on in the world, or what's going on in your family, or what's going on in your home, or whatever. It has the power to redirect you onto something very specific, very detailed, that is positive, that is something uplifting for you and something you can take that energy and put it right into your work. And I know you feel the way I feel about the animals. After a while I literally forget they're animals and I treat them as people and I feel like the energy and spirit of people are in the room. It really feels that way.
05:55 - Anne ganguzza (Host) I just live in the house with my cats. They run it pretty much. They let me live there and anybody that has been to my house knows there is a cat condo in just about every room. I think we have five. I think we have five cat condos.
06:10 - Lau Lapides (Host) Those condos are HOAs, aren't they? They're gated communities.
06:14 - Anne ganguzza (Host) They really are, and I'll tell you what the good thing is is that our cats actually use them, so that's a good thing If they never looked at them.
06:19 I would feel really bad and they also have their boxes of toys which they dig out and get new toys. And you know it's funny because Law I don't know if this is the way with your dogs but like, literally I've collected cat toys for the past. I mean I've owned cats ever since I was little and since I moved to, I would say, new Jersey, like in my 20s, I mean I've got like 40 years worth of cat toys that they just keep getting reused by the cats that I acquire.
06:44 - Lau Lapides (Host) It's hard to get rid of them, isn't it? Oh?
06:45 - Anne ganguzza (Host) it is. It's like a favorite stuffed animal. I mean, how can you when the cat plays with it? And of course they have boxes and boxes of toys, but really it's the paper bags that they like.
06:55 - Lau Lapides (Host) And we have those plastic bags. You know those really beautifully designed. So we have one on every floor brimming with stuff and I'm literally praying at times that the dogs rip them apart so I can start throwing them away. Oh my God yeah. Because I won't throw them away unless they need to be thrown away for some reason. Like I'm hoarding dog toys, so I get you right there. I get you right there, and it's like the joy of watching them play with one of those toys while you're working is so fun.
07:23 - Anne ganguzza (Host) Well, you know, as much as I say that we're working on a Sunday, I mean, and we work hard both of us, I mean there's something to be said for just taking that time to kind of reset and refresh and re-engage and have things that we enjoy doing and that we need in order to continue moving forward in our businesses, and that is watching our animals play, watching our fur babies play, or going to a horse show, or something that really takes us out of the work day so that it can really refresh our brains, which I need. I need to have that brain power to run my business as efficiently and as effectively as possible.
08:02 - Lau Lapides (Host) There's a softening there too. There's a softening of a hardness which happens throughout the day, not necessarily becoming jaded or cynical, but becoming expectant of difficult things or expectant of challenges on a daily basis. It softens those blows I always say it keeps me more human. It keeps me more human as they're human. It keeps me more human in the keeps me more human as they're human. It keeps me more human in the situations that I'm dealing with. How about the room itself that you're in the studio, the office, the space you're in, having a support within that space that really allows you to flourish and grow? I know I love having sayings that I believe in so much so when I'm in a meeting I can stare at them and remember what they mean. Remember what they mean. Here's one of my favorite ones that's hanging on my wall in my office and I'm not always in my office, but when I am I remember it says create the things you wish existed. Oh, I like that. That's wonderful.
09:01 And that gives me a little frisson every time I see it.
09:03 - Anne ganguzza (Host) That is wonderful. Well, I think that I might have shown this to you before, but when I open the door of the studio and I don't know if you can see it, but I do have pictures of my fur babies, and over on the other side I have a picture of Jerry and I. And so that is something I can look at, and I plan on getting another one, actually, and hanging it, and so I think that being able to look at those things that just give me joy and some creative inspiration is paramount in the studio and of course I think for me I have to have windows with sunlight.
09:39 I am a big, big sunlight person. For me, and especially when it's the winter months and I get cold and you work and you know we're not moving a lot when we sit, sometimes when we're in the studio, or if I've got the headphones on and I'm doing some editing. I like to be able to get out into the sun and just soak up that vitamin D for a few minutes, when I get a break and that always, always refreshes me.
10:05 - Lau Lapides (Host) Always. I have a porch, annie, that's a screened-in porch. I also have a patio, which I love during the summer months, but the porch during the winter months, when we have some of the harsher, colder weather, has the sun pouring in so I can go out right in the middle of a winter and it's 30 degrees warmer on the porch where I can get that like you get that vitamin D, get that solar energy going to take a nap or refresh me or whatever the case may be. How about this? Sounds really weird, but the CEO of Starbucks was one of the first ones to study this over years and years and that was the shape of the desk. The shape of the table and where you sit in the table affects you socially and it affects the quality of connections you make with others.
10:56 - Anne ganguzza (Host) The shape of the table. So in regards to, I have a standing desk, which I love because if I don't feel like sitting, I can stand at it, but for me, placement-wise, I like to be right in the middle. I also like to also be in a cozy corner with a high back in terms of. If I ever go out to a restaurant, I always feel like I have to sit in a certain place. But tell me more about the shape of the table.
11:20 - Lau Lapides (Host) Oh it's really interesting.
11:22 - Anne ganguzza (Host) In terms of like, if the table is round versus rectangular versus L-shaped versus….
11:28 - Lau Lapides (Host) Yeah, I don't know these days, I don't know if they've kept to this original thinking, but they found through their studies, through Starbucks, that the round table, the circular table, is more connecting in terms of the community that you're sitting in oh that makes sense Than a square table that has edges Right of the community that you're sitting in oh, that makes sense Than a square table that has edges right. I don't always find that, though, because I sit at a lot of square and rectangular tables that I feel really good at.
11:52 - Anne ganguzza (Host) So I don't know. You know that's interesting, but I think, if maybe you're talking about community, yeah, community. It's why it's always nicer to sit at a round table, because it's easier to talk, easier to communicate. Right At a round table, I think, well, a square table because you can have people on equidistant sides, but rectangular, you might have somebody all the way over you can't see people on your side, right, that makes total sense.
12:15 Or they're far away, Right, but in terms of placement on my desk, right, I like to be right in the middle and for me as much as sunlight, right. I was talking about light. I love a lot of light and actually I love a lot of white light in my office area, Like for me, fluorescent lights make me happy and I don't know if that's just me.
12:35 There's a lot of people that don't like fluorescent lights. I like a lot when I'm living and not necessarily working. I like more of a softer yellow light, but for me, for working, I love the white lights and, as a matter of fact, I have LED lights that are white lights that I can actually change the percentage of the lumens, but I like to have very white, bright light in my work area.
12:57 - Lau Lapides (Host) That makes me happy, fascinating, and I like to have, if I can. Of course, for us in New England, weather permitting, I like to have an open door or an open window at all times. Oh, interesting, if I can. I can't always do it, but even in the winter, if it's not horrible out and I have the fireplace on, I have the heat on, I can still have the porch door open, or I can even have a window open to fresh air. There's something about air and wind that the dynamics of that re-energizes me in a certain way.
13:31 - Anne ganguzza (Host) Luckily in California I can do that quite a bit.
13:34 - Lau Lapides (Host) And I like to keep windows open for the cats.
13:36 - Anne ganguzza (Host) It's interesting because when I moved to California, there's a lot of Californians that will just leave their doors open if they're in the house.
13:43 - Lau Lapides (Host) Yeah, I grew up that way too. My neighborhood was that way too, but I don't love bugs and so if a bug happens to fly in.
13:50 - Anne ganguzza (Host) Living in the East Coast, in Mosquito, Aladdin, New Jersey, or humid places where there's a lot of bugs or moths at night. I just no, yeah, of course Cannot have an entryway for bugs to get into the house. Okay.
14:03 - Lau Lapides (Host) I got a good one for you. I got a good one for you, and maybe this is bordering on my OCD, I don't know but I need it neat and organized to a certain degree, where I do the physical cleanup right before I work, and it might be a minute, it might be five minutes, it might be whatever that activity gets me going in the dynamic of doing things.
14:29 - Anne ganguzza (Host) Interesting, so I like to, before you start, have a clean desk. Is that correct? Or one that's not cluttered?
14:36 - Lau Lapides (Host) That's me, I'm not so sure it's about the cleanliness per se. I think it's telling my brain that you're physical, you're active and you're able to accomplish something, even if it's very small and detailed. So cleaning up my papers, neatening my pens and pencils, making sure my monitors are there, making sure my coffee is ready to me, sets a dynamic in the feng shui of my energy that is easier for me to tackle my goals than if everything is all over the place.
15:06 - Anne ganguzza (Host) I have to have a clean sheet of paper because I have my little to-do pad and I still write it down and I know I have lots of lists.
15:11 - Intro (Announcement) Do you have your stickies? I don't have stickies.
15:13 - Anne ganguzza (Host) I don't have stickies but I have like a long to-do pad and that's where I write everything that I need to do, and I do that on the night, like when I'm done with work. I write things to do for the next morning and sometimes, when I sit down, if I do have things that I need to do for the day, I'm writing that down too. But I like to have a fresh, clean sheet of paper.
15:30 - Lau Lapides (Host) That's a generational thing. I do that as well. I think it's our generation. And it's tactile, it's physical. There's a physical thing there you're interacting with, you're writing, you're checking things off. I can barely write anymore.
15:43 - Anne ganguzza (Host) I mean, but you're still doing it, You're not doing it on your computer, right, I'm still doing it. Yeah, I'm still doing it. You're right, I can barely write legibly anymore and I don't even know if they're teaching like— Are they even teaching cursive writing anymore today? They're coming back to it, Annie. They're coming back to it.
16:02 - Lau Lapides (Host) There's something about handwriting.
16:03 - Anne ganguzza (Host) After my mother passed away. There's something so special about seeing her handwriting that brings back so many good memories.
16:10 - Lau Lapides (Host) Oh, I got a tear because it's so—why do we keep the cards, the letters, the notes? Because it's that handwriting for us it really is. You know, I also want to say too and this may seem a little odd, like to go into this, especially when you have other priorities, but I feel like if I can make it through X amount of emails, first thing in my morning number one I'll catch all the time priorities, and then, from the agency perspective, it's like you better catch it, Okay. But beside that, there's a click in me, there's something generated that's very open and very fresh and excited when I can make it through X amount of those and then I can get to the new thing, the next thing, the layered thing, whatever that is. If I have a lot waiting, if I have a lot in the wings that hasn't been done, my brain has a hard time getting into gear fully of what is happening throughout my day.
17:05 - Anne ganguzza (Host) Very interesting. Right, it's interesting You're talking to the girl that has all these unread emails in her mailbox. Some people have to clean their mailbox, right.
17:13 - Lau Lapides (Host) I kind of I guess I have to clean my mailbox because I have to clear my brain in that way so that I can have the appointments or go through the new things or whatever has to happen, and I feel like, even if it's just three or four or 10 or 20, I feel like that's an accomplishment. That's an accomplishment, right? Yeah, absolutely. It may not be the biggest one in our day, but it is one. It is something to celebrate in the day, whatever that means for you, whatever kind of organization that means for you. What about, like do you listen to a TV or music in your day or have that outside entertainment source coming in as you're working?
17:55 - Anne ganguzza (Host) Very rarely do I listen to anything other than my own audio or somebody else's audio during the day, because I need to be focused on it. Every once in a while, though, there is certain music that I can play, and it can only be like ambient music. Right, that can't disrupt my thinking, if I need to focus Like a white noise.
18:16 Well, no, it can be like Sirius XM chill, because chill is very, there's not a ton of dynamics to it and it can just be chill music and so I can listen to that and sometimes I like that. It's therapeutic. But it's very rare that during the day that I listen to anything other than the headphones are on my ears pretty much the whole day, because I'm either working with students or I am recording in the studio or I'm editing audio or I'm editing a demo or whatever that is. I Pretty much have these on and I could put music on, I absolutely could, but I need to make sure that I'm focused on the audio that comes through my ears, which is not always music and not always for enjoyment, but for work-related purposes.
18:59 - Lau Lapides (Host) Gotcha. I have to say I've always loved music.
19:03 - Anne ganguzza (Host) I love music too.
19:03 - Lau Lapides (Host) Well, meaning that I've always had to have music around as I'm functioning throughout the day. And it's funny, my husband is opposite. He never has music on. He almost never has to listen to music. Well, he's a numbers guy, is he not?
19:17 - Anne ganguzza (Host) He's a numbers guy he might need to concentrate on. I'm just thinking that for me it's hard to concentrate with certain types of music. Maybe, maybe.
19:25 - Lau Lapides (Host) Yeah, it just gets in the way of his thought process and his patterning For me. I was a dancer for many years in my younger years and I always had some sort of sound. There was some sort of sound happening that would transport me in a certain way. So I yearn in the day for a transportation of moments where I can daydream or I can concoct a new idea or I can think about something else. Oh, that's lovely. That's an interesting vehicle for me to do it, and I know it is for many people too.
19:55 - Anne ganguzza (Host) Well, when I'm not at my desk, then yes, and I do love music, I mean and music is so important when I'm exercising, for sure.
20:05 I mean, that is so very important that I have music that can help motivate and inspire me while I'm exercising. And it's funny because if I'm doing something like out in my gym, in the garage, which might be like on the pre-core or on the bike, and I'm not following a class and I'm just moving and doing long-term movement, that is where I need to have music. And it's funny because I have lots of playlists that my husband and I, through the years I met my husband he was my spin instructor we've created all these playlists.
20:35 We have hundreds of playlists that are pretty much essentially our favorite music and it's a whole lot of fun. So for that, yes, I do need music to inspire and motivate myself. But then it's funny because when I go to Pilates classes there are some instructors who like music kind of in the background and some of them that find it to be very distracting and really don't want the music on because they want you to concentrate and focus on the muscles of your body and not worry about the music they're playing.
21:03 - Lau Lapides (Host) Do you ever find that you need to step away in the middle of the day and do something completely different? Yes, absolutely Absolutely the day and do something completely different. Yes, absolutely, absolutely. That's a support right there, whether it's exercise or clean, something like do the dishes or make a phone call to a friend that you have to make a contact with, or whatever. Absolutely. I find that's very refreshing. That's a support that I look forward to.
21:26 - Anne ganguzza (Host) I think it's since my transition of working out in the world to working from home and working in my own studio.
21:33 Getting out is one of those things. It's kind of like going out to lunch or running an errand, and I do love the fact that we work for ourselves, that we can schedule those things. In. A lot of times on my off days, when I'm not coaching, I might have a doctor's appointment, or I might have a regular appointment where I go shopping or I pick up stuff at the grocery market and that, to me, is just a nice getting out, breathing the air, going for a walk and getting the mail. That is something that can really help Huge.
22:03 - Lau Lapides (Host) They may sound like small, insignificant tasks, but I really feel like they can not only fulfill my sense of accomplishment, but also recalibrate my whole mind and my body, to relax, to pull out of a situation recalibrate and then come back in more refreshed, more rejuvenated and more balanced right.
22:24 - Anne ganguzza (Host) What can you do? Or what do you do if something at work is frustrating you right Outside of trying to resolve it immediately? What do you do for support?
22:34 - Lau Lapides (Host) Well, of course it depends on what it is. So if I feel like I need outside support of the problem solving, I have my little inner circle that I'll call or email and say hey, I got a situation, what are your thoughts on this? I'd like to get your thoughts and I usually get really quick response of those inner circle of people. It's exhausting because you're going from one session to another, one moment to another, one audition to another, or people are misbehaving, people are misbehaving Any number of things right that you can't really help or do People are misbehaving.
23:04 - Anne ganguzza (Host) I have my circle of friends. You are in that circle a lot and I will like I'll be like texting you.
23:11 - Lau Lapides (Host) I love it. In the middle of the night we'll be like, yeah, let's just talk it out on text, let's just make it happen so that you get to a new place, you get to a new place. I still tend to physically do something because I feel like, kinesthetically, my muscles need to shift out of stress or tension mode into accomplished mode. Even if it's like do the laundry or do the dishes or something simple like that, I do find that helps me a lot. It allows my brain to rest through an activity that I need to do anyway. That's useful anyway, but something that is not taxing.
23:47 - Anne ganguzza (Host) I will say I will. Sometimes. I'll either get off of social media because that might be the source right, or I will go to social media, but it won't be within voiceover. It'll be looking at something in social media that is, other interests of mine Like cooking or something Right, I watch a lot of horse jumping. I watch a lot of cats. Does that surprise you?
24:08 - Intro (Announcement) I watch a lot of cat videos, no, so all those things, it does not. A lot of humor, it does not.
24:19 - Anne ganguzza (Host) A lot of entertainment, music, so that sort of thing. So I will either unplug or plug into the social media. That brings me joy and entertainment versus work stress.
24:25 - Lau Lapides (Host) Exactly To me. They're not only ritualistic disciplines, but they're also support. They're not only ritualistic disciplines, but they're also support. They're comfort and support that we know how to self-medicate in a really positive way. Here's the thing. I don't want to dull out my senses, I don't want to dumb myself down, I don't want to water myself down, so I don't feel it. I just want to give myself a momentary break and then be able to come back to it with a fresh eye and a fresh ear and a fresh thought. I think there's a big difference between the two of like I have to run away from this, I don't want to think about this and I don't ever want to come up against this. Right, you have to be willing to come back.
25:00 - Anne ganguzza (Host) You know it's interesting. I'm trying to think like I've never really tried to run away from things because for me, the sooner I can resolve them, I think the better.
25:10 - Lau Lapides (Host) I feel and for me.
25:12 - Anne ganguzza (Host) I really am trying not to run away from things, and I don't know if that's a personality thing or if that's something I don't know. Bosses what do you think I mean? Being bosses of our own business? Sometimes we can't run away and we have to face issues and try our best to resolve them, and these emotional support mechanisms, or support mechanisms that Law and I have been talking about, may be something that can help us to ease our minds, ease our emotional psyche, so that we can come back better, stronger and resolve them, so that we can move forward in our businesses.
25:48 - Lau Lapides (Host) I love that and it's so interesting how we do this unconsciously until we really recognize. It takes time to recognize. What am I doing, what am I actively doing to either soothe myself, help myself, whatever, and what am I doing? That's not helping, that's counterproductive, right? And really being honest about that, like being aware, having a self-awareness about that yeah, absolutely Even just like writing it down or taping yourself or having someone report back if they're seeing you doing certain activities or doing certain things, I think it's really important to document that and figure out what's working for you as a business.
26:28 - Anne ganguzza (Host) Absolutely so. Yeah, I mean it's been a fun episode. I mean talking about our little emotional support mechanisms and bosses out there, as you said, it may seem like, oh, it seems like just well, this is what we do every day, but in reality, they do a lot to help us to move ourselves forward in our businesses. And so, bosses, what do you do, Right? What do you do to help get yourself through the day? What are your rituals? What things do you need? We'd love to hear from you.
26:55 - Lau Lapides (Host) Absolutely and really claim them, really own them and really be proud of them. You want to make sure that you're able to talk about them and be proud of them and not hide them away.
27:05 - Anne ganguzza (Host) Cool episode Law. Very cool, Very cool. I'm going to give a great big shout out to our sponsor, IPDTL. You too can connect and network like bosses. Find out more at IPDTLcom. Bosses, have an amazing week and let's hear from you guys. We'll see you next week. Bye.
27:23 - Intro (Announcement) See you next time. Bye, join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, anne Ganguza, 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. Via IPDTL.
27:52 - Anne ganguzza (Host) Hey, hey everyone, welcome to the VO Boss Podcast and the boss. Did I say podcast? I didn't say podcast. Take two, take two.
One of the first places voice actors often look for auditions is on Pay to Play sites. For a fee, these sites let you audition for jobs from potential clients all over the world. But these sites can have downsides, including unethical business practices. Controversy over these sites has been highlighted at voiceover conferences and throughout social media. In this episode, the BOSSES delve into navigating online casting platforms and cultivating loyal client relationships outside of these sites. We discuss the investment of time and resources needed to be successful and the importance of evolving with the industry to avoid getting left behind. Ever-evolving AI technology challenges us to redefine our roles and strategies, and we tackle this head-on sharing insights into how we can adapt to remain indispensable.
00:00 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey VO Bosses. Ann Ganguzza here. Are you struggling to market that boss voice of yours? Well, let me tell you about the VO Boss Blast. With a custom vetted list and personalized emails, we can help you get your marketing message out to those who hire. Find out more at vobosscom and let's blast off together.
00:24 - 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.
00:43 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey, everyone welcome to the VO Boss Podcast. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza. Hey everyone, welcome to the VO Boss Podcast. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and we are here with the Real Boss series with my good friend and guest co-host, Tom Dheere. Hey, Tom Dheere.
00:55 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Hello Anne Ganguza.
00:57 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Tom Dheere, it was so awesome to see you at VO Atlanta. I have to say.
01:01 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Yes, the drive-by hug Right.
01:03 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I know and I saw you for like a split second, but still it was good for that split second to get the hug in. Absolutely, I know the two of us were insanely busy but getting back together since VO Atlanta. There was a big bomb dropped at VO Atlanta with the Drama, bomb.
01:17 Yeah, with the online casting panel, which began with an apology from the CEO of Voicescom. And so, hmm, let's talk, shall we? Let's dish, let's dish, let's, let's, let's fill some tea. So what were your initial? Were you surprised and what were your initial thoughts? And actually we should just recount for the bosses who were not there at VO Atlanta, the very first thing, on a panel of online casting with J Michael Collins, j Michael asked the acting CEO of Voicescom was he prepared to apologize to the voiceover community for the actions on behalf of Voicescom in the past few years, now that David Cicerelli has stepped down and indeed there was an apology. So, tom, were you there, present in the audience?
02:07 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Well, yes, I was there. I was asked to be there actually. Me too, me too Okay so you were part of that little group of people that were asked to make sure that we would be present at the online casting. Because then we could talk about it like this so then we could talk about it, or we could step up to the mic and ask some pointed questions.
02:23 But to give everybody a little bit of background is that Voicescom has had a pretty bad reputation for a good 10 years, Because I think the first great resignation was in 2014, which is when the interview with Graham Spicer came out and the article that somebody wrote showing how, you know, the same casting notice was posted on Voice123 and Voicescom, but the Voicescom was thousands of dollars lower. So they were caught kind of red-handed doing what many would consider some unethical practices.
02:53 Double-dipping, triple-dipping, Right so Jay O'Connor, who is the acting CEO of Voicescom, is also the son of the recently deceased Supreme Court Justice, sandra Day O'Connor, and he also works for Morgan Stanley.
03:10 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And Morgan Stanley was the company that put $17 million investment into Voicescom, not a voiceover company.
03:13 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Not a voiceover company. They invested that roughly six, seven years ago. So I'm assuming that David Cicerelli stepped down because he didn't come through on his promise to make their money back. So that's why they put one of their own people in there. So I'm assuming Jay's job is very simple make their money back. So that's just kind of the background. And JMC who I just had him on my Ask Me Anything said that one of the conditions of Jay appearing at VO Atlanta was that he apologized for the past business practices and behaviors. So it made me think about the word responsible. Jay was not CEO of Voicescom when all the interesting stuff happened. However, if you break down the word responsible, it's response able able to respond.
03:57 Oh, I like that Well yeah because, if you think about it, Jay is not guilty of the stuff that Voicescom did under their previous administration, but now he is able to respond to all of that stuff. So you know that late last year Voicescom signed the Fair Voices Pledge and altered their terms of service, the Fair AI.
04:19 Thank you Nava and Tim Freelander and Karin and all those wonderful people there. So what was extra funny is I was sitting next to Miranda Ellis, who's our buddy, who helps run VA for VO, and we were talking about it. We're wondering who's that guy up there? And then I was telling her about the whole Jay O'Connor thing and then JMC said and here is CEO of Voicescom, jay O'Connor, and we're like oh okay, there he is.
04:47 And yes, he did apologize. He gave them an F for how they handled the situation, but they said they're going to be working on moving forward and a lot of pointed questions were asked. I was surprised that he was there. I was surprised at the apology. I think he handled most of the questions from the audience pretty well, pretty professionally.
05:03 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I wasn't surprised at the apology. I mean, j Michael basically said are you prepared to apologize? And when you are a CEO of a company, I mean at some point, like I imagine, you're going to work that out politically correctly in front of an audience of thousands, knowing that we would be talking about this. What was he going to say? To be quite honest, I mean, I wasn't surprised that he apologized. I wasn't surprised that he took Jay Michael on it, because, guess what, there's business for him sitting there in the audience.
05:33 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Oh yeah, potential customers. There was a sea of potential customers in there and ones who had left the platform who now could be persuaded to return to the platform as well. I did make it a point to talk to him afterwards. I as well. I did make it a point to talk to him afterwards. I first said I'm sorry about your mother's recent passing.
05:46 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh, thank you.
05:47 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) I say thank you on behalf of I know he's a person.
05:50 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) He is a person, yeah, Like he's just a guy.
05:52 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) He probably didn't know Voicescom existed, right? So, like he doesn't know about this stuff and we have to give him the benefit of the doubt, of course of the doubt, we have to assume he's an ethical, response-able person and I said hey, if you need some insight from boots-on-the-ground people, let me know. I gave him my card. He said thank you, he was very kind. So am I optimistic about Voicescom? Cautiously pessimistic? No, yeah, cautiously optimistic. So I'll say cautiously pessimistic. But you know what? I'll tell you something, anne. I rejoined in September of 2023 because they did change their terms of service, they did sign the Fair Voices Pledge and also, as the VO strategist, I have students who want to understand what's going on and if it should be used and how it should be used Yep.
06:37 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) completely agree with that. So if nothing else.
06:39 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) I wanted to create an account to understand how the platform functions, how to feed the algorithm.
06:44 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) If we are going to be working with students I mean myself included. I mean honestly. I mean we have to know about these platforms so that we can talk about them and recommend them or not to our students. So I feel like I'm a member of Voice123. Now I will say that I was not able to stay for the full session at VO Atlanta because literally they scheduled that right in the middle of my X session, so after 20 minutes I had to leave and so I did not get a chance to speak to him myself personally. But I know a lot of people that I've talked to did, and Mark Scott also did a nice recap on his podcast about the conversation and his conversation with him as well, and myself and Law had a discussion about it as well on a podcast. So I think it's good that we're talking about it. But I'd like to go further, tom. I'd like to talk to you about pay-to-plays in general, what part they play now in the voiceover industry and where you might see them going in the future.
07:36 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) It's funny because maybe 15 years ago they were a disruptive force in the voiceover industry, not unlike AI right now, which is currently a disruptive force in the voiceover industry. And, like I've said about AI and you and I talked about this a couple of episodes ago when it comes to disruptive technologies or business models, you can fight it, you can ignore it, you can adapt to it or you can embrace it. So everybody has their own journey and their own path on how to define success as a voice actor and what they need to do. You want to do all high-end cartoons and video games. You need representation. You need to join SAG-AFTRA. You may need to move to LA or New York or Dallas and do a boots-on-the-ground thing. If you want to narrate audiobooks, that's a different track. If you want to narrate e-learning modules, that's a different track. The best way that I can illustrate this is talking about my journey on Voice123. I joined Voice123 in 2006.
08:47 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) no-transcript.
08:49 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Yeah, I joined it the first year that I went full-time as a voice actor. I learned a lot on there.
08:56 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It wasn't my first year as a voice actor, but it might've been my second or third, and it was an opportunity. It was a new opportunity to get work, and I remember at the time. How else did you get work outside of if you had an agent? I did not have an agent at the time. I was working on the online platforms like Freelancer back in the day I mean, it was Freelancer, I don't know if it was Odesk.
09:18 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Odesk Elance, Elance.
09:23 - Intro (Announcement) I was on all those too.
09:24 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I was on all of those too, and then Voice123 came out and I joined in 2006 as well, and actually it worked well for me Although you have actually created a record of how well you've done on that platform throughout the years, and so I'm eager to hear about that.
09:42 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Sure. So for those of you who are listening to this, I'll just read this to you as best I can, but I've got a little slide up here. So I joined in 2006. There was only one tier, it was $200. That first year, I made $1,100. So a great return on investment. Next year, rejoined, made $2,750. So that was great. 2008, it went up to $300. I made $2,650. 2009, made $1,. I made $2650,. 2009, made $1950,. 2010, I made $13,000.
10:08 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) What changed.
10:09 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) I got better at auditioning and I also landed a big textbook like a science textbook. So that was a big chunk of that $13,000.
10:17 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So let me ask you, in those years, in those early years, how many auditions were you doing? Were you doing 10 a day, 20 a day, as many as possible?
10:26 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) I was doing a lot less than that. I was doing a handful a day, but also my direct marketing strategies were working pretty well, so it was complementing. So I was blogging and doing social media and posting on Facebook and Twitter and stuff like that, so it was part of a balanced breakfast, absolutely. 2011, made almost $8,000. 2012, I renewed, but I only made $350. Now what happened in 2012 is that my voiceover career turned the corner. I went full-time in 2006, but late 2011, all the seeds I'd been planting for all those years started to bloom. So I found myself auditioning a lot less because I was just booking a lot more as a result of my direct marketing strategy.
11:08 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Right and then also probably repeat clients at that time were starting. I was also getting repeat clients.
11:13 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) So yeah, so that was happening too. Now, in 2013, I did not renew. I made only $300 just from a legacy client. But the main reason I didn't renew is because there was a cultural thing going on in voiceover where a lot of voice actors were saying that if you are on a pay-to-play site, you are contributing to the lowering of rates, you are a bottom feeder, you're enabling predatory practices, and I made the dumbest decision in my voiceover career, which was I stopped auditioning on Voice123. It was a huge mistake. So, 2014, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, I made virtually nothing because I didn't have a paid account.
11:50 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) But also what happened in those years. Had you gone more to direct methods of marketing? Yes, okay.
11:57 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Yes, direct marketing was my main jam. 2014 was, to be totally honest, and that was the year I made the most money as a voice actor. And then in 2015, 16, 17, 18, my income started fluctuating wildly $20,000, $30,000 rises and falls year over year. One of my top 10 clients replaced me with AI back then too.
12:17 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) In what year was that?
12:18 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) That was 2018, I think, A top 10 client. I was replaced by AI and then 2019, I made nothing. 2019 also, there was like a major downshift in my voiceover revenue because I noticed almost all of my direct marketing strategy stopped working. So did I all of a sudden become a lousy voice actor? Maybe Did industry trends change and my voice was out of fashion? Definitely not. It was becoming even more in fashion more young, energetic, friendly guy next door sound, which is still in demand. So, after contemplation and talking to friends and professionals, I rejoined for $888 in 2020. And now there was a tiered plan.
12:59 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, exactly I was going to say at this point bosses, pay-to-plays evolved. They used to be just one fee and it was usually around $200 to $300. I remember when Voicescom came on the scene it was the cheaper of the two, for $200, when Voice 123 was at $295, I believe, or something like that. And so then there was a bunch of people that joined Voicescom because they kind of undercut the competition, so to speak, which maybe we should have looked at that in the beginning and said, oh, look at that Now there's competition in the online community and online casting community because Voicescom was the second, I would say, largest platform to come out and they grew fairly quickly, I think because of that lower price point.
13:42 And they also did a bunch of good marketing, I would say, on Google. I think they did a bunch of Google ads and they had a bunch of. Seo that they were working on, and so they became really, really popular around that time.
13:58 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) So what happened in 2020 when I rejoined? So I rejoined like it was a Black Friday sale. Basically, I had one month and in one month I made $1,300. But here's what I noticed. Well, I made my money back immediately. But the other thing I noticed is that when you're on Voice123 and you can click on the client number, sometimes you can see an email address associated with that client profile and often it's the extension of productioncompanycom and I started noticing production companies that I used to work with or that on Voice123. So I was like oh, interesting. So apparently there has been a migration of ethical, well-paying production companies making quality content that had been slowly making their way to Voice123 and probably Voicescom too, because it's easier to curate a roster, it's easier to post an audition.
14:51 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh my gosh, yeah, you have hundreds and thousands of people of different voices on these platforms and it can be a little bit cheaper. I know that was the whole thing, because here you're not necessarily saying how much will it cost, right, when you have a direct contact, versus specify your budget, right? A lot of these pay-to-plays asked you to specify a budget and so if you specified a lower budget, you could still have hundreds of people responding to this, because it was like freelancer Odesk. It started to become the lowest bid, wins almost.
15:23 - Intro (Announcement) Yes.
15:24 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Like kind of thought, and especially when you're talking after the many years of online casting, it just then became a thing where, oh, I can get cheaper voiceover, and for a business, right, I can have lots of different voices I can choose from and it's probably cheaper. And so for a business, I mean really, where's that business decision, unless you've caught them right and you've become like a valued voiceover actor for them, that you've given them value over and over and over again. Now, all of a sudden, they have hundreds of thousands of people they can choose from that are credible, right, and they're cheaper. So business decision, tom?
16:00 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Yeah, here's the thing about that too is like since 2020, since I rejoined, my gigs aren't $100 or $200. They're $4, $5, $6, over $1,000.
16:08 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Because you can specify that.
16:15 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Because I can specify that and that also tells me that there are ethical, well-paying production companies on Voice123 in addition to bottom feeders. So in spring of 2021, the algorithm changed All of a sudden. The auditions there was a lot less and they were a lot lower paying, so I didn't renew.
16:27 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, they redid their platform a couple of times completely. So that caused a lot of commotion in the voiceover world.
16:35 And, interestingly enough, tom, I just want to bring this up who else was sitting on that stage at VO Atlanta but Rolf Veldman, who was always the one from Voice123 that got a lot of heat from these conferences. But I love Rolf. I think, rolf, he took it year after year after year right as a person who was not necessarily in the voiceover business either, but he would show up and he would respond and he was, I believe, transparent, which then I gave him my respect for that Because, if nothing else, he was transparent.
17:11 He finally was on the stage and probably going wow, the guy from Voicescom is getting all the heat this year.
17:18 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Oh, he was grinning from ear to ear. He was eating it with a spoon. He loved it. So 2022, I rejoined again, but this time I joined on the $2,200 tier. So this was late March 2022. In that year, I made $12,000. And then 2023, which is my first full calendar year of being under the $2,200 tier, I made almost $19,000.
17:39 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That's a definite return on investment. So.
17:42 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Yeah, and as of this year, 2022, and today, as of literally today, April, I have made $6,200.
17:50 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Now is the majority of that from new clients or clients that are coming back to you.
17:55 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Well, that's the thing, it's a combination. So there's two sets of clients, you know, there's your audition and pray clients, and then there's your legacy clients.
18:05 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Audition and pray Yep, absolutely Right.
18:06 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Commercials tend to be audition and pray. Cartoons, video games tend to be audition and pray. E-learning, corporate explainer, more of the audio book. Often those tend to be non-audition and pray because often you join an e-learning roster or you join a telephony roster and you don't audition, they just send you work. So with Voice123, there's a lot of them. One particular one comes to mind I auditioned for a corporate, short, three-minute, corporate industrial about bananas in a grocery store. If you work in the produce department, how do you handle the bananas to make sure they don't bruise, how to display them properly, quality check and all that stuff. It was a gig. Three minutes directed session, $550. So I'm like okay, that's like right in the sweet spot for that. That's like perfectly fine For three minutes directed session, great. And then they sent me nine more without auditioning.
18:59 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
19:00 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) So an audition in Prey see, that's what people think about Voice123 is that it's an audition in Prey machine. It is if you suck, and it is if you can't audition well, and it is if you can't deliver the goods once you audition and book the spot. So I do have a lot of new clients, but a lot of them, a lot of them, have come back for more.
19:18 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And with Voice123,. One of the big differences of the platforms is that you can take the client off the platform. They have never intercepted and I don't believe that they will, because I think that's Rolf's claim to fame and how they lasted right through the turmoil of people being angry at them was that you could always take the client off the platform. Now, voicescom does everything in their power to make you not take the client off the platform, and that is where they get into people labeling them as double and triple dippers.
19:50 So not only are you paying for that yearly membership fee and they also have different levels. But when you have a managed job or any job you cannot disclose, you won't know their email address, you cannot work with them off platform and people have been threatened if it's found out that they're working with them off platform. So thoughts on that business policy. Tom, what do you think about that?
20:17 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) I'm going to answer that question with a question. Do you think voice actors should pay to audition for anything?
20:22 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, you know, yeah, that's a really, really good question. I mean, I don't think so.
20:27 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) I don't think so to a point.
20:29 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I think they should pay for a platform that gives them opportunities. So that's a tough one, right? I mean should they pay to audition.
20:38 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Well, I think of it this way If you told me 20, 25 years ago that I would have to pay to watch a Yankee game on television, I would have said you're out of your mind. And now they have the yes Network, where you have to pay to have access to get the quality content that you want. That being a Yankee game and auditions are quality content and that's a subscription model of a lot of businesses today.
21:02 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Right, and even I've considered it for this podcast, right, all right, so you can get a certain amount of listens free, but there is quality content or maybe more in-depth content that you would subscribe to.
21:13 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) And you do keep it with subscriptions, like Patreon pages do, and things like that. Yes, it's a common business model. Here's another question Do you think voice actors should get paid to do auditions?
21:24 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, that's a good question. Not necessarily. It depends on if that gets used right, If their audition gets used for the job, if you're getting paid.
21:32 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Is it a demo or a scratch track?
21:34 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think so. But now, okay, let's just say you pay for the option or you pay for the opportunity to get auditions. Should then there be an escrow fee? Right, and that's what a lot of people have the problem with an escrow fee. And should there be a managed services fee? And should there be a managed services fee? Now, anybody that manages a job, right that project, manages the job. A manager takes a percentage, an agent takes a percentage, but then on top of an annual fee right to audition, plus an escrow fee. Now, if you remember, tom, in the beginning Voicescom's escrow fee was an option and I believe is it still an option. If you want to do, because escrow was an option back in the early days, you could choose to have them hold the money or say I'm going to get my money guaranteed if I put it in escrow, and then you paid a fee for that.
22:27 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) I think it's mandatory now.
22:29 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, yeah, so that's triple dipping to a lot of people right, Get rid of one of those fees, I mean do you feel that's right.
22:40 - Intro (Announcement) I mean, I think it's fair that it's either you pay to be on the site and there's no additional fees or being on the website is free and then they're taking a percentage of it, not both.
22:48 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Now, you weren't there for the Q&A. Our friend, miranda Ellis, who I was sitting next to in the audience, got up and she said I have a problem with the fact that one of the casting spec options is broadcast in perpetuity. And she said that's a big problem for a lot of voice actors because that can create permanent conflicts. She asked are you going to get rid of that? And he said no, because we would lose a lot of business that way. That's not a good answer. That's the only thing I was truly unhappy about with his answers, but he owned it.
23:17 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, honestly, I think that it's a responsible action for an online platform like that to like lead the way. Right, because here's the deal. Right, you're talking about consumer mentality. I mean in voiceover jobs, I mean if people are not used to. If you're a small company, you're not used to hiring a voice artist and you're not sure, like, how does that work? Right, I mean in perpetuity. I mean if you work for a company, right, and they hire you, you sign a contract, you're working full-time, everything you do for that company is property of the company, and that just became that same mentality. Right for the freelancers Okay, I'm going to pay you.
23:53 Work for hire yeah work for hire and I pay you and that's it, and that's where the mentality stayed for a lot of companies. I think if you are a large service provider to a voiceover, you should take the lead and do what's right and do what's ethical, and that to me would be like start it and say no in perpetuity. There's not an option for in perpetuity.
24:14 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Right.
24:14 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And that would be a nice thing. Otherwise we sit here and we fight, and we fight, and we fight like we've always fought right To get rid of in perpetuity. Do you think in perpetuity will ever go away, tom?
24:24 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) I think it will always exist in some form yeah, I agree.
24:30 The thing that concerns me the most about it is that, like, if there's a casting notice and it says erotic, there is explicit sexual content. Everybody knows what that means. They know what they're getting into. If it's a casting notice for a political ad Democrat, republican or whatever you look at the script and you go oh okay, do I feel comfortable with this? You know what you're getting into. You can make a value decision. If it's these text-to-speech things, some of these casting notices, or if it's an online perpetuity, a lot of the voice actors don't know what that means. They don't know what they're getting into, and that's where SAG-AFTRA, nava and other organizations that's where the onus is on them to educate, to make sure that people are aware of what these things mean. That should not be the case. Voicescom should not have that option or the ability to modify the option.
25:16 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Exactly. You know what I mean Exactly.
25:17 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Because there's genres and sub-genres. You know like, if you want a public service announcement forever to technically broadcast and have that be in perpetuity, you can make a case for that.
25:26 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) You know what I mean.
25:27 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) But it's too broad and it isn't explained. There should be like a little button or a little like question mark or a little thing next to it. You click on that and it's like this is what this means.
25:37 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And voice actors should have been educated many, many, many years ago, right? And what does it mean when you deliver an audio file, right? This is where, okay, we're creatives, we're good at what we do, but we also this is where the business sense comes in. Right, here, have my audio.
25:53 And usually what happens is something bad has to happen for us to like say, oh shoot, I probably should have a terms of service or a statement of work or a contract for all our non-broadcast stuff. So all our non-broadcast people are like, yeah, sure, give me a hundred dollars or give me $500, give me a thousand, that's perfect. And then all of a sudden, they find that their voice is out there on TikTok, you know, I mean, I'm not saying that that was Bev, but things like that happen, right. Or it even happens today with agents that are looking after our best interests, where sometimes you'll find a commercial that was supposed to only be regional which is now in a different place. And how do we know about it? Not until somebody tells us about it. And so we should. Now, with the technology, there should be a way to voice print and tag our audio so that we know if it's not where it should be, and it's being used.
26:41 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) And they're working on that? Yeah, exactly, they are working on that, exactly.
26:44 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Wow, I really feel as though we should have a part two and a part three and a part four with this conversation. But wow, tom, good stuff. Thank you so much for sharing. I love that you shared the real numbers. I mean, anybody that knows me knows how much I love talking numbers because it really brings a level of realism to the bosses and I think that we all need to really see those numbers and it really helps to educate us on making good decisions for our businesses. So, thank you, tom, it was wonderful talking to you again and I look forward to the next podcast. Bosses, I'm going to give a great big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl. You, too, can connect and network like bosses real bosses like Tom and myself. Find out more at IPDTLcom. All right, have an amazing week, guys, and we'll see you next week. Bye.
27:33 - Intro (Announcement) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, Anne Ganguza, 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.
When Danielle Famble traded the bright lights of musical theater for the voiceover booth, she didn't just change careers—she embodied the essence of a true entrepreneur. Grab your headphones and join the BOSS, Anne Ganguzza, as we navigate through Danielle's remarkable journey, discussing how her roots in musical theater have equipped her with a unique resilience and CEO mindset for her flourishing voiceover career. From emotional trials to asserting her worth in the industry, her story is a masterclass in transforming her performing arts discipline into a voiceover triumph. We discuss the intricacies of a successful business mindset, emphasizing the need for mentorship, community, and the wisdom of collective experience. We uncover the secrets behind tracking progress, efficiency, and how a transparent approach to finances can empower artists, especially women and women of color, helping them to assert their worth and command the rates they deserve.
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.
00:19 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey, hey everyone, welcome to the VO Boss Podcast. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and today I am really excited to bring on a very special guest and Boss Danielle Famble. Danielle is a full-time voice actor with a performing background in musical theater and on TV, and transitioned from the stage to the booth in 2019. And since that time, she has voiced for amazing brands like Google, pepsi, etsy, prudential Hertz, the US Army and more, and she recently presented this almost viral breakout presentation at VO Atlanta, which I heard nothing but amazing things about, about how to build your business like a CEO With a CEO mindset. It was very, very well received and I am so excited to talk to her today about that CEO mindset. Danielle, thanks so much for joining us.
01:12 - Danielle Famble (Host) Hey, thanks for having me, anne, this is fun.
01:14 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah. So let's talk a little bit first about your career, because I feel like anybody that transitions into the career voiceover has to have an entrepreneurial mindset to begin with. Transitions into the career of voiceover has to have an entrepreneurial mindset to begin with, and so that really works well with being a boss. So tell us a little bit about your career and how you went from musical theater and are you still singing, I hope into voiceover.
01:37 - Danielle Famble (Host) Well, I grew up actually, I'm from Texas originally and my family, my parents, my grandparents they were entrepreneurial. My mom and dad had a water store. They sold water in the 90s Crazy.
01:50 Everybody needs it, right, everybody needs it. So they were good and my grandparents had like an afterschool snack truck. So I grew up around businesses and seeing my family, my parents, running businesses, and I'm also a middle child, so I love attention, I guess is the polite way to say it. So I always grew up, you know, singing in church or performing in school. So it was sort of a natural progression for me to go to school for musical theater, majoring in classical music and minoring in theater, and I knew, based on a trip coming to New York City in high school, that I wanted to do musical theater and move here.
02:31 So for me, I just I don't know I had this entrepreneurial background with my parents and my family and loving to perform, and realizing it took a while, but realizing, especially moving to New York, that this is a business and you have to market yourself and learn and do all the things that you need to do to run a business.
02:51 So my transition really was from doing musical theater, I performed on cruise ships and performed, you know, all over the country at theme parks and regional theaters, and then in 2020, the pandemic happened and I had this background of acting and performing, but I really wanted to figure out how I could make that background work with voiceover. So that's when I transitioned from like 2019 up to 2020, made that transition to voiceover and realized that my entrepreneurial background really helped because, unlike being on the stage for me anyway, I was able to look at what I could do with and without the help of agents and managers and realize that I could carve my own way myself with the help of reps, agents, managers, things like that. So it kind of just all dawned on me that my past and my upbringing really was helpful in creating this CEO mindset.
03:54 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Now, do you do anything outside of voiceover? Are you still in music or in theater as well? Or is it just something that you just fell in love with? Voiceover and that's it? You're just full force.
04:06 - Danielle Famble (Host) I kind of fell in love with voiceover and I'm full force. I will say I miss singing, I miss being on stage, I miss people. And so to fill my soul, I think what I'm now doing is I live in the New York City area, so going to the symphony or going to a Broadway show, I'm going to go tomorrow night to see my friend who's made his Broadway debut. So filling my soul in that way and maybe even getting back into singing lessons.
04:33 This is a new development. Yeah, that's, I think, what I'm going to be doing. But there was a lot of, I guess, trauma from growing up and it can be a hard business on your emotional state, and that part of it I don't really miss, and so I think it was a good voiceover Well, yes, that's true, that's true. I think I've learned how to navigate it better.
04:52 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, I think maybe that prepared you Probably Right, because I think that well, maybe people who are not familiar with stage and music and that is hardcore, facing like rejection or that type of thing, and so you have to really develop a thick skin and I think by the time you get to voiceover, maybe that helped prepare you in some way for that. But also, I think your experience from growing up with your parents and your grandparents who are entrepreneurs I mean I love that that was a great showcase. It was a great example for you as a young child to see that you could do anything. My parents were kind of the same way and I really attribute it to my entrepreneurial mindset, where there was a belief that if I wanted to pursue that and it was something that brought me great joy I could do that for a living and I could pursue that and be able to pay the bills by doing that.
05:45 So let me ask you, what would you say would be the biggest challenge that you faced in that transition, in creating a business for voiceover, because it sounds to me like you had a good idea of okay, I know that it's more than just performing right, I think a lot of people want to just go into their studios and do voiceover all day, but I think there's so much more to it, because you could be the best voice artist, the best singer, the best actor in the world, but if nobody knows about it, you can't get hired Right, and that's where I think your entrepreneurial business mindset has to come into play. So what was your biggest challenge when you transitioned from one career into the next?
06:24 - Danielle Famble (Host) I would say my biggest challenge was honestly recognizing that it was a business, because I wanted to jump in. The actor and the performer in me just wanted to get really good at how to perform in front of the mic and do the perfect read and the perfect conversational read, or at that time it was the we're all in this together read right.
06:44 So that was a hard transition for me to realize that there was more to this job than just talking into a microphone. Once I realized that I think it was mostly just needing to send out invoices and collecting the payment on time and answering questions that I just didn't know the answer to, and there were a lot of I don't knows and then learning as I went. That I think, was the hardest part, because at that time you don't know what you don't know, and part of running a business is realizing all the things that you don't know and having to figure out the answer to it or at least come up with this next answer, and then iterate as you get better?
07:22 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Sure, yeah, absolutely. So then what would you say was your most successful path into really making this more of a business mindset? Did you read a great book? Did you do a lot of research? Did you talk to your parents? What was it that helped you to really create that CEO mindset?
07:40 - Danielle Famble (Host) I would say getting help and finding a mentor. I coached with a lot of different people. I coached Facebook group Voice Actors of NYC to be invaluable because there are so many people who will offer help or resources or ideas. But not going it alone, I think, would be the best resources. Find your tribe, find a mentor, find someone who can help you, because it's so much faster for you to progress when you have other people to bounce those ideas off of.
08:28 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, absolutely. Now you talked a little bit about the importance of being able to scale your business and to be able to track your progress in terms of how to mark your success and how to move forward in your business. Can you talk a little bit about that?
08:44 - Danielle Famble (Host) Yeah, I noticed and I learned and I knew this from even my parents and grandparents the data is the most important thing that you can have to know where you are and where you want to go. So tracking my numbers was incredibly important to me, and I don't just mean income. I wanted to get better at how quickly I could do auditions, and so I was tracking how many auditions I was doing a day and I could tell by looking at the numbers if I was getting faster or more efficient. I care a lot about money and numbers and love to talk about money actually.
09:18 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Wait, can you repeat that? Because I love a woman who can— oh, I care a lot about numbers and money.
09:23 - Danielle Famble (Host) It is not a bad word.
09:24 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It is not a bad word. Thank you, Danielle.
09:26 I didn't mean to interrupt you, but I was so excited that you could say that I was maybe I was the only other person that said look, I love to make money and I love the challenge in how can I make more money? And so I think having a healthy mindset with money is very important. Let's talk a little bit more about that, danielle. I think a lot of it stems too from different mindset or different ideals that you have as you grow up Like. Is money a bad word or is money a good thing? And especially being female, can a female make a lot of money and is that a good thing? Let's talk about that.
09:58 - Danielle Famble (Host) Yeah, absolutely. I think there needs to be a healthy conversation about money with women, specifically For me I preach it women of color because sometimes, as women, we feel uncomfortable asking for what it is that we want, yeah, and what you're worth and what you're worth, and being able to say it with confidence and say this is my rate or can we negotiate on a rate? Can you do better with the rate that you've proposed? Having these conversations is important because me, as a business, I'm running a business and having business conversations with other businesses when they're asking me to license the use of my voice for their project. So I don't feel weird talking about business with a business.
10:43 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Sure, because that's what I'm doing, and money is the language of business.
10:48 - Danielle Famble (Host) So finding that level of comfort and being able to feel comfortable in talking about money, sure, and knowing that you are worth the amount that you've stated, or more, it's baseline, I think.
11:03 From there, that's when you can grow and feel more comfortable.
11:07 Another thing for me was getting over that starving artist mentality.
11:12 I feel like it's kind of glorified, especially when I was coming from a musical theater background.
11:17 I mean, I remember standing in line for hours on end waiting to sing my 16 bar cut so that I could maybe book a job that was going to pay me $300 a week at some regional theater and I was grateful and while that is fine and it happened and I needed it at the time, it's not where I'm at anymore. I couldn't do that anymore and that's one of the reasons why it was important to me to sort of figure out what else I could do outside of theater, because it was no longer aligning with how I wanted to live my life, because my life cost a certain amount of money and I needed to find other ways to live the life that I wanted and be able to pay for it. And that's not a bad thing knowing that it's going to cost you money, and I'm okay with asking for what I want and also saying no if it doesn't work out. No is a full sentence and if a number doesn't work for you.
12:13 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That's great. No is a full sentence. I love that. It's a full sentence.
12:15 - Danielle Famble (Host) And if it doesn't work for you, be okay with saying no and holding by your no.
12:20 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, let's talk a little bit more about that, because I and holding by your no. Well, let's talk a little bit more about that, because I think that for a lot of people starting out in the industry, they're just afraid to ask for what they're worth, or they're afraid to negotiate. And so if a potential client comes to you and they don't have a budget to pay you what you feel you're worth, like what does it take? Like in terms of how do you get up the confidence to say no? And for me it's always been well, you only have to do it once, because once it works out in your favor, then it gives you all the confidence in the world. But tell me about your experience. Did you have an experience where you were scared to say no? Or you thought, oh my gosh, maybe I should do this job for this low pay?
12:57 - Danielle Famble (Host) Let's talk about that no-transcript, still want to do it, even at a lower rate? And if the answer is no, can I tell them no and have that uncomfortable conversation like you're saying just once, saying something like unfortunately, this number does not work for me or align with what I would normally quote. I wish you all the best, finding the right voice talent for this project. And then that's it. And I've noticed that when I do that, I've left my day open, my time open. Another job could come my way that pays me the rate that I'm looking for and that I need, or I can do something else, and maybe that something else is getting out of the booth, getting out of the house, going and seeing some friends or doing something that enriches my life, and there's no monetary value that I can put on that.
14:19 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, I think when you can enrich your life, it enriches your product, it enriches your business, because I think it all feeds.
14:28 It's just a wonderful, wonderful cycle and I love that you mentioned that you're going to go see your friend on Broadway and I feel like for me it's like I need to watch a great movie, because it really stirs up the creative juices and it really helps me to be even better at my job, at my business, and to be more creative, because that's what really we do for a living is we need to have that creativity, we need to bring that to life, and I feel like anything that you can do externally, even outside of voiceover, to enhance that is absolutely a good thing for your business. So, yeah, go out and enjoy life, because that's going to help your business. I like to think of that. Let's talk about your business and growing your business, because I think there's a lot of people that they get to a certain level where they're happy and then sometimes they don't advance or progress or they stagnate and then they're like but I don't know how to get more work. Or talk to me about growing your business.
15:26 - Danielle Famble (Host) Often looked at growing my business from a financial perspective. Again, I have no problem talking about money, and so for me growth looks like a monetary jump or incremental growth even. So I'm tracking how many jobs I've done in a month or per year. I'm tracking how much revenue I brought in. I need to know how much I need to pay in taxes, so I'm staying on top of that.
15:51 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Speaking of which, it's like almost April.
15:56 - Danielle Famble (Host) Can we talk about it?
15:58 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) This happened quickly, my goodness, yeah, yeah, now are you working? Just thinking of numbers, because you don't have a problem talking numbers. Are you doing your own accounting? Oh no I am not.
16:07 - Danielle Famble (Host) Oh, that's another thing, I think, outsourcing, outsource what you are either not good at or not passionate about. I agree, those are the things that I have outsourced, and one of the things I talked in my talk about was finding your different departments in your team. So I have a financial team and I have a bookkeeper. I have a CPA.
16:25 I have a financial advisor. It's an S-corp, my company and so there are so many different moving parts that I don't know and I need help with people who know better so that they can help educate me and I can make the right decisions, because we are working together and they are working with me so that we can move my agenda forward for where I want to be with my business and my life. So I'm not just doing as they're telling me to do. I want to know and I want to learn and I want to be with my business and my life. So I'm not just doing as they're telling me to do. I want to know and I want to learn and I want to understand. So finding people who have the heart of a teacher to be able to help me understand why I need to pay this much money in taxes or whatever has been really very helpful.
17:06 But in terms of growing my business, I look at it from a place of numbers and the finances, but I also have certain goals when it comes to I want to maybe have the non-broadcast side of my business be a certain amount of money, so that can be a specific goal, but typically I just look at the end of the year, going to the next year and see where I was and create goals typically financial goals in my business, and that's how I mark growth. Lately, though, it's been for me wanting to be a better business owner and entrepreneur and pushing myself personally. You talked about me speaking at VO Atlanta. That was my very first time speaking at a conference at all, and while I absolutely love talking about business and everything with my friends, I've never really said it in a room full of people, so I think that is a way that I'm hoping to grow as a person and as a business owner to feel more confident, sharing what I know and what I'm passionate about, and letting people know that that can be part of the growth as well.
18:08 It may not be something monetary, but it's something that I can mark as my own personal growth and that will help me be a better voice actor.
18:15 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, you know, what's so interesting is that because you have no problem talking about money, I think inadvertently, without you maybe even realizing it. What I love is that because you kept really accurate, probably track right of finances in and out and you goals and you actually wrote them down with numbers. I'm a big believer in writing things down and writing goals down and that helps you to manifest. I mean, yes, of course there's hard cold numbers, right, but also, I think, writing down goals and writing down an actual number, because so many people are afraid of the numbers I mean I'll talk about before I owned my own business. It would be maybe my spending right, you've got that credit card right, and I might be like here, have my credit card, and I wouldn't really look at the money that was going out. And the more you kind of are in denial of it right, the more right you're unaware, and I think that you need to be aware of the numbers, probably more so than most people. You seem to be really comfortable with numbers and I think that's something to aspire to for a lot of voice actors, because a lot of voice actors are not necessarily an accountant or like numbers or like doing the finances.
19:21 I don't like doing the finances either, but I also outsource. I have an accountant that I have on retainer and I am forced to look at those numbers consistently, in and out, and it helps me to set goals and it helps me to make those goals too. I think that's so important and I love that. That just seemed to be second nature for you, and now I think what you're doing is you're pushing yourself to let's do more, maybe more ethereal goals, personal goals, growth goals, like I want to speak at a conference, and that's a really lovely way for all of us to like, push ourselves to think outside the box in something that maybe doesn't come comfortably to us. And now, what else can we do? Because if we grow personally, we're also going to grow in our business.
20:03 - Danielle Famble (Host) Absolutely, and I really like your point about how your personal finances correlate to how your finances are going in your business, because that was, for me, as well, the same thing. I had to get good with my personal finances and once I was able to look at the numbers, look at my bank account every day.
20:24 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Look at the hard cold facts.
20:25 - Danielle Famble (Host) The hard cold facts of it and deal with that. Then that practice went into how I run the numbers for my business, because if I was a hot mess with my personal finances, how could I expect to be running a business that pays their taxes on time and doesn't have debt, and all that?
20:46 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) stuff, and just because you hire right or you outsource for your finances doesn't mean that you are not educated about it. Right, you have to be educated in order to manage anybody that you're outsourcing right, you need to be able to manage people, and you need to be educated so that you can manage it properly and make educated decisions, and so I love that. While I don't love to do financial I don't like to balance the checkbook on a day-to-day basis I certainly don't have a problem outsourcing to my accountant, and then we meet once a week, once a month, and we talk about, okay, inflows and outflows, and where did I spend my money? Where can I save my money? Where should I invest my money next? And I think that that is really.
21:23 I think taking the cold hard look at numbers financially is what is missing, with a lot of voice actors that just start out that especially think that, well, it's just talking behind the mic and so therefore, I don't need to invest. Let's talk for a moment about investment in your business, right, and outsourcing is one part of it. How important do you think investing is in order to have, maintain a successful business and grow your business?
21:48 - Danielle Famble (Host) It is vital to invest in your business and ways that you can invest in your business, be it the equipment, so your booth, or your microphone or anything like that the hard products and it doesn't need to be that you are investing a ton of money. I really, truly believe in grow as you go. So if you can afford a certain amount of money for a microphone or an interface or what have, you get that because you can always upgrade as time goes on. For me, it's very important to not have a lot of debt with my business, so I will buy what I can afford at the time and then I will upgrade. So that's very important.
22:26 And then also investing in yourself, because you are the product, so investing in classes or going to conferences or coaching or reading business books, taking business classes, getting outside of the world of voiceover for your education Not saying that there's anything wrong with the education in the voiceover community but we are also running businesses. So what kind of business education are you getting? Do you need to take a course on how to use QuickBooks or something like that? There are so many different ways to invest in the hard product and the soft skills that you need to run a business. Also, we said it already, but investing in help, because the help can be the education. So my CPA is helping inform me about certain things. I have a virtual assistant who I'm outsourcing some of the day-to-day work in my business and she's helping me and we're coming up with systems and processes to be a little bit more efficient every single day. So those kind of investments, when you're pouring into yourself and you're pouring into your business, that's how you can start to see your business grow quickly.
23:33 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Absolutely. I think investment is also something that scares a lot of people when they first get into this industry, and it is something that I think is absolutely essential. It's essential to be prepared to invest in your business and in yourself, and so that means, because I'm a coach and I work with students, and I have been doing it for quite some time I will encounter new students that will be like yeah, but can I just get my demo because I need to start making money in the industry, but yet they haven't really fully prepared themselves for investments that they might make, and that includes investing in themselves, investing in the possibility of outsourcing. I've had so many people say but I can't afford that right now. First of all, I always say don't quit your day job before you get into voiceover full time. Now let me ask you a question. I know that you are in musical theater, but do you also have an additional job at some point to help support your business or to be able to have money to invest in your business?
24:27 - Danielle Famble (Host) I was working at. So picture this I was working at, so picture this 2020. Yes, right, I was working a day job at the Apple Store, okay, and I was waiting tables at night at a comedy club, wow. So I was working two jobs and then auditioning and wanting to sort of move into voiceover around my two jobs. And the good thing was working at the Apple store. I had access to Logic Pro and I had access to buying certain equipment with a discount, so that job was very, very helpful for me to start acquiring what I needed the computers that I'm using, like all of those things. It was really helpful and I did not want to quit my job until I knew for a fact that I could be self-sustaining.
25:18 And even then I was 16 years old, with two jobs in high school. Like I have always worked a lot, so I do think that making sure that your job is not a hindrance your job can be one of the best assets that you have while you're growing your business, and even while you're in your business. Your job is an asset, so make sure that you treat it as such and you think about it as such Changing that mindset will be so helpful really.
25:45 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Absolutely. I think there's a lot of people who they're either they feel like they're stuck in a corporate job or they feel like that they can't do a job in another sector if they want to call themselves a voice actor. I'm always like, look, side hustles are what helped me to be able to invest and to grow my business, and it was a wonderful way to be able to have the money to invest in, let's say, outsourcing or invest in coaching or invest in a new demo, so that I could grow my business. And I did multiple jobs and I still like to think of my business like I'm not just full time voice actor. Anybody that knows me knows I have this podcast, I have the VO Peeps group, I love coaching and so I'm a voice actor. So I have multiple divisions of my business, just like anybody else would have in their business. So I feel like that there's no shame in having multiple passions and multiple divisions of your business if it can help you to grow.
26:43 - Danielle Famble (Host) Yeah, and it helps you stay well-rounded as well, like that job can be the thing that keeps you afloat so that you can say no, and that's bolstering you to maintain your standards and your rates that you need I love that it's an asset that can help you say no I'm just going to reiterate that to the bosses.
27:02 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That was so important, right, because when you're out there, desperate because maybe you just gave up everything so that you could do voiceover full timetime and then you're possibly like desperate for a job and you'll accept low pay I love what you just said that your job is an asset and it can help you to say no when it's necessary. Right, so that you can have that money and you're not dependent on it to pay the bills or anything, so yeah, Fantastic.
27:26 What would be your top tip or the best advice you could give somebody just starting out in the industry to be the best CEO, the best boss that they can be?
27:37 - Danielle Famble (Host) I would tell people to make sure that you are educating yourself Education, I think, would be the biggest tip yourself by finding a mentor or a coach or someone who you can work with. That will help you where you feel that you need help or support Educating yourself on how to be a voice actor and do the type of genres that you're wanting to do. Educating you on how to run your business, if that's what you need help with. But I would say the first thing I always will tell people if they ask me like, hey, I want to be a voice actor, get in a class, take a class. Maybe it's a performance class, maybe it is a business coaching something, but take a class, because being an entrepreneur is just learning every day as you know, You've got to learn something new every day and be open to the fact that maybe you don't know and you need to learn.
28:30 So keeping your brain moldable and learning. Being in a class is the best way and it's low-hanging fruit because you're learning. You're not quite doing it every day all the time, quite yet. It is vital to find out what you don't know and then write that down, write down your process and then iterate on that process. Love it.
28:50 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh my gosh, Danielle, I could talk to you all day and I really, really appreciate you sharing these little nuggets of wisdom, and I feel like we could maybe do five podcasts at least. So thank you so, so much for joining us. How can bosses get in touch with you, danielle, if they want to follow you or be the boss like?
29:10 - Danielle Famble (Host) you, danielle, if they want to follow you or be the boss like you. Yeah, you can follow me. I'm on at DanielleFambul on all socials, and then you can go to my website, daniellefambulcom.
29:18 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Awesome. Well, it was definitely a pleasure. Bosses out there, I'm going to give a big shout out to my sponsor, ipdtl. You too can network and connect like bosses like Danielle and myself. Find out more at IPDTLcom. Bosses have an amazing week. We'll see you next week and thanks so much, danielle. Bye, thanks, anne, bye.
29:38 - Intro (Announcement) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, Anne Ganguzza, 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.
Arm yourself against voiceover scams with insights from Anne Ganguzza and Lau Lapides. The BOSSES shine a light on the potential dangers of casting scams, providing you with the necessary tools and instincts to recognize when something simply doesn't look right. From notorious overpayment traps to false urgency ploys, we dissect the mechanics of these schemes, emphasizing the importance of due diligence and healthy skepticism. Navigating potential job offers can be intimidating, but this episode will help you confidently sidestep the dangers. The BOSSES unpack the nuances of vetting opportunities, the significance of physical company locations, and the red flags that warrant a second look.
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 Ganguzza (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 the lovely Lau Lapides. Yay, Nice to be back, Hi Law, as always. Hi Annie, Lau, you know I'm wearing my red today.
00:37 - Lau Lapides (Host) You're looking all red and crimson-y and like ready to rock and roll Like a red flag.
00:44 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh, I'm so punny sometimes. So now what are we going to talk about today? Let's talk about, maybe, red flags and or scams. I know that they are a popular topic, but I think it's something that we need to watch out for in the industry these scams that go around and ask us to submit our voices and then gosh only knows what happens after that. Typically, it has something to do with money, but, yeah, law. What are your thoughts about scams and how we can avoid them as bosses?
01:15 - Lau Lapides (Host) Well, totally prevalent. We get it. It's in every industry. And I have to tell you and I know you've been experiencing this too in the last few years tell you and I know you've been experiencing this too in the last few years there have been an onslaught of hackers and slackers and scammers and bammers and everything you call them. They're around and they are literally coming at you. So, as a business owner, you have to be ready for it. They're literally trying to get through your firewalls, whether it's your website, your software. I have, unfortunately, a resident new stalker who leaves me voicemails. You got to be ready for that. You got to take the personalization and emotion out of it and protect yourself, protect yourself and protect your business Absolutely.
02:02 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So I know that there's some great first of all resources online that you can find out. I mean, the number one thing is is if you, let's say, get an email or a phone call and it's asking you to submit something personal, like your voice file or an audio file or give money, the first thing that I think you can do is to take action is to Google. Google is your friend and again Google here. Google is your friend and again Google here. Google is your friend because a lot of times, especially even if you get like a phone call right, you can put in the phone number and you can see if it's a phone scam, or you can put in the subject of the email and see if you can find anything out there that talks about it.
02:39 There might be discussions in Reddit. There might be discussions on Facebook that say, yes, this is a scam, don't believe it. But the thing of it is is to make sure. If something doesn't feel right or something is off, then definitely take the first step and research it, go to Google. That's what I would say would be your first step, and then there are lots of other tips and tricks that we have for you. Bosses out there Law. What would you say is your first and foremost line of defense if you feel you've been taken advantage of or are being scammed Right.
03:09 - Lau Lapides (Host) There's a bunch of stuff we can do and, by the way, I would take what Annie said even a step further and I would make sure you're talking to your inner circle of your coaches, your uppers in the industry, people who are in the know, Because I have found, Annie, that if I go to Google, or a lot of you may be now using DuckDuckGo only because Google has a lot of online drones that go after you now. So if you use DuckDuckGo and you're on there, you're going to find they do have websites oftentimes and they do look legitimate and they lift that information. It's very easy to make a landing page. So you have to really talk to people in the industry that really would know to really cross-check. I always say go with your gut instinct. Your gut instinct is telling you something. Listen to it. One of the big scams, Annie, that is out there is the overpayment scam. This is big in our industry. That's where the client sends you, right.
04:02 Well, let's describe what it is for people who don't know what it is. It's a client sends you money, right, and they say that they're expecting to ask you to send the overpayment to someone else. It's like this. We used to call them chain scams. Right, don't do anything of the sort. Never accept money, never send money.
04:21 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, never send money to somebody who claims to be your client number one. I mean Never, never.
04:26 - Lau Lapides (Host) I mean that's a red flag right there. Right, that's your red flag, right there.
04:30 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So basically they've sent you money, but it's typically it's a check that is not legit. Yes, exactly. So when they ask you to, send money back, then you basically are just giving them money, the overpayment. You are giving them money for nothing because they've given you a fraudulent check.
04:47 - Lau Lapides (Host) Hello, and what about the urgency one? This plays on your emotions. This is the sense of urgency making you feel like you're under pressure. Right, the client pressures you to like, handle the payment processing really fast, because there's a reason to handle it really fast. And they want to scramble your brain, they want to get you confused and discombobulated. So you're not thinking straight and you're just acting because you may feel like, oh, I want that job, it sounds great. Or you're a little desperate, you haven't worked in a while, sounds like a great job, you don't want to miss out on it. So they'll put that urgency on it for you. So be very, very careful of that.
05:26 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And that urgency can be to submit voice files of which they will not pay you for. That goes back to law. This is like a business practice For me for many, many years. When I negotiate a job with a client, I especially a new client that I'm not familiar with I will always ask for payment upfront. It is not a big thing to ask, as a matter of fact, the way that I'm not familiar with.
05:47 I will always ask for payment up front. It is not a big thing to ask as a matter of fact, the way that I word it in my email is payment is appreciated and preferred up front. Otherwise, other options are available upon request, and so for a new client, I will request that they pay me up front before I even send them an audio file, and I'll tell you what. 99.9% of the time, unless it's a large client that has to go through a process to pay, like through purchase orders or something like that I will get payment and I will request payment electronically, because that way I can guarantee that the money lands in my account first. Then I will send them files, and so, therefore, when it's requested up front after you've negotiated and then it's a statement that is right on my email that says payment in full appreciated made to my Venmo or my PayPal and then basically other options available upon request and I get it.
06:42 Guys, I get it. I've been doing this for years. It's amazing how people are like well, charge 50%. I'm like, no, just ask for the full thing up front. Now, if somebody doesn't want to give you the full thing up front, then get on the phone with them. Make sure there's a human being at the other end of the line. This is not all done through email. These are some tips that I've learned over the years. Right is make sure you've got a human at the other end of the line and check out the business Again. There is a way to research those things online. Is there a business? Is there a phone number At the end of the email? Is there a signature file that has a company name, a way to contact them via email, via phone? I don't care how old school I sound, bosses, I get on the phone and I call yeah, you need to contact them.
07:26 - Lau Lapides (Host) I make sure there's a real person at the other end of the line. What about you? Because here's the other thing too. There's a double reason why you should contact them, especially by phone. If they're going to give you a phone number and that is, if it's a scam they need to know about it. So they need to know their identity has been stolen, and then they can put a post out online that people are coming at you using our name and our identity and it's not us. Yes, yes, absolutely, and they will really appreciate it. So there's the double reason to protect yourself, but also to protect that company, because sometimes they're just not going to know about it right.
07:59 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Sometimes they're stealing the identity of the company. Absolutely Right Filling the identity of the company.
08:02 - Lau Lapides (Host) Absolutely. One of my clients fell into this one, unfortunately, and that was she was already knee-deep into a job and she had submitted a bunch like 10 pages, 15 pages on a long form, and there were no edits. That's a red flag right there. So, unfortunately, she had already submitted something and she already saw oh, there are no edits. There's something wrong with that job, there's something strange. Also, if you see in your breakdown you're going to get, say, a form letter online asking you to be a VO for AI or for this or for that it could be for anything, right, and the numbers they use are weird. Look at weird numbers. Like we're going to use this from three and a half to 11 and a half months. You know the numbers look strange, they look off.
08:50 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh, that's interesting. I would not have thought about that.
08:52 - Lau Lapides (Host) Yeah, strange numbers, like strange configurations of numbers. We used to look for grammar and lowercase, but now we can't do it anymore because they're going through chat, gpt, so everything is formatted fairly well. How about this one, you guys? How about this one? They're deeply, deeply focused and over-focused on the payment versus the job.
09:13 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, I agree.
09:15 - Lau Lapides (Host) Yeah, payment, it's all about getting the money quick right.
09:18 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So they can get in and get out right, Because they really don't care about your audio files or they care about the audio files, and then they just ghost you and won't pay you. And that's a different type of a scam. Typically, that kind of falls within. What kind of clients are you working with? And again, I always say educate yourself on the client that is contacting you as soon as you get an email. That's typically how we get inquiries right. We'll get an email or we'll get a direct message from somebody. Make sure that they have a legitimate domain on the end of their contact information.
09:51 - Lau Lapides (Host) And what if they have a whole bunch of domains that lead you in circles?
09:58 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Different emails, different domains that confuse you, or a domain that doesn't exist for a company. It could just be somebody at gmailcom or somebody at hotmailcom. I would always look at those people twice because if they're a legitimate company they should have a company domain. It should be yada yada yadacom, and if they don't have that then I would be very suspect. If they do not include a phone number, I would be suspect. If they don't have a real signature file, I would be very suspect.
10:23 - Intro (Host) And as the law said back in the day.
10:25 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) We used to look for grammatical errors, and now that's less common. Now you've got to look at more people that are stealing identities, and or maybe people who just don't put a valid domain at their email address or there's no way to contact them, even if they have a website. I can't stand when I go to a website and I can't find a phone number to contact someone. That to me— Well, that's unfortunately more common too.
10:49 - Lau Lapides (Host) That, to me, is a red flag. Yeah, and here's the problem with technology is it's getting so good that certain elements are cut out of our industry that used to be there. Like a lot of the bigger companies we work with do not provide you even customer service numbers anymore because they don't have staff to answer phones, so everything is a bot now. So you could be contacted by a bot. You don't know they're a bot. The bot is scheduled to get information, so never give your information out online. No account numbers, no bank numbers, no social security nothing.
11:22 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I'm going to say that any legitimate company will have a phone number, or at least any legitimate company will provide that they're harder to find, Annie, and I'll give you an example.
11:32 - Lau Lapides (Host) I'll give you a direct example. We're on the Calendly link. Whether you're using Acuity or Calendly, I dare you to find a phone number for them. And they are a legit global service, their calendars that we use all the time. You use them, we use them all the time.
11:49 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) But I'm going to say that's dedicated to maybe software, right? I'm just going to say if you've got a company with people that maybe you're doing a corporate or an e-learning right, yeah, go after it. Yeah, you should absolutely be able to find a way to contact them. I mean, even like I buy a lot of clothing online just saying, Is that a surprise and I have a customer service issue. I want to be able to talk to a human being, right and you're right.
12:14 It is getting more and more difficult to find. However, I'm going to say that your chances are better if you do have a phone number that you can contact a human being at the other end of the line.
12:24 - Lau Lapides (Host) Of course, of course. But remember, I still caution people because I ran into this myself. For the banking fraudsters, because identity theft is number one in the US. So for the banking, they'll send you something that looks exactly like Bank of America exactly like. Paypal and they'll say you owe us $500.
12:43 - Speaker 4 (Host) Here's our invoice yeah, click here to resolve.
12:46 - Lau Lapides (Host) Click here, don't click on anything. Never click on anything. And if you call them, just know you may be calling someone that they hired within their fraud service. So I suggest, if at all possible, go to a location. Go to the location. If it's a bank or financial or whatever, you should be able to find a location where you can talk to someone live, like Annie's talking about, to try to get some sort of vetting on it, because you don't know, they look exactly real, they totally look real. And how about the big game show host? Oh gosh, yes, the game show host. The assignment for the game show host right, everyone's getting excited about that because you've been assigned to be a game show host? Yep, absolutely no, you haven't. No, you haven't, no, you haven't. The next step is going to be asking you for account information. Yes, exactly.
13:35 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And that's been going on for years and years. And so what they do is they appeal to our emotions, they appeal to our oh my. God, you've got a great job. You've been selected. I even at one point got contacted by Disney, who said that they researched me online and wanted me to audition and I'm like, I'm not so sure about this.
13:54 - Lau Lapides (Host) I don't think so. I mean as good as you all are and, I'm sure, even if you have excellent SEO.
14:01 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, that's an even bigger target. You're an even bigger target, that's a bigger target.
14:05 - Lau Lapides (Host) That's a bigger target Don't fall into. We found you online. I want you to audition. Well, go through my agent. Go through my agent.
14:15 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) But I will say that I am very much an online business and I do have a lot of people that contact me for legit jobs through my website and through my social media channels and through referrals, and again, those are the ones that I trust. If they're coming through referrals, right, Because then I basically, oh sure, I have the job, but I always have the ability to contact someone or speak to them.
14:35 - Lau Lapides (Host) Oh, that's totally different. I mean, very rarely do I and I think I have pretty good visibility online. Very rarely do I have I found you online. That would be specifically through, like Google Ads purchased SEO. They'll get information, they'll be like a wannabe client of a coaching service or something like that, and you can feel that out very, very quickly. But when it comes to giving you a job as a talent, beware, keep those flags up. How about the interview, annie? Have you seen the online?
15:05 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) interviews, the online interviews.
15:06 - Lau Lapides (Host) Yeah, I've heard of them vaguely they invite you on to like Signal or Telegram, zoom, skype, whatsapp. Be careful of WhatsApp, you guys. Now, I love WhatsApp because it's free. It's an international community that can get on there for free. Who cannot text you? So I love it. We have it for our Talent Inner Circle members. That being said, do not jump on WhatsApp for interviews with anyone until you have vetted them, because that's a very common scam platform. It's just known to be that, so just be careful. Be aware of that. The language you have to be careful of too. Like does it look weird, even if it's gone through chat GPT. Like does it look strange? The sentence Does it sound strange?
15:46 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It's not formed well, right? Yes, If English is not the first language, right formed well, right. Yes, If English is not the first language, right. So be careful of that. Well, first of all, I'm just going to say that clients that are international and I have a lot of international clients Typically the international clients that I work with are very well-spoken, well-versed in English, because they've worked with clients in the United States before. So if they are not as well-versed, I'll investigate them more. Because number one I want to make sure I get paid. There are certain clients that are known to not pay a whole lot for voiceover and they will give you lots and lots of promises for lots of work.
16:20 A lot of e-learning companies and I'm going to mention a lot of e-learning companies that are not based in the United States that want to hire you for as little money as possible per word. I'm a big person on e-learning that I don't quote per word, but I know a lot of people do, and here's my philosophy is that if somebody's asking you for a particular number per word, then probably right, they're hiring you. Right, You're a company, a curriculum developers or an e-learning company that's hiring the voice talent, so you're not the first line of paying. I'm just going to say because they're hiring you and so they want to negotiate the cheapest price because they don't want to pay a lot.
17:00 When I deal with e-learning clients, I deal with companies directly and I'm able to negotiate a much higher rate. So I don't typically quote on per word. But if somebody starts asking me for my price per word, I will get a little more rigorous about my investigation, because I want to make sure that I'm not going to be haggling over five cents or a penny or a word. And then also I'm going to make sure that I have a point of contact that I am able to contact either via email and that they get back to me right away, or that I can text them and even text if it's a new client. I'm going to try to see if I can call them or have a Zoom call Sure, absolutely.
17:38 - Lau Lapides (Host) Or have a Zoom call Absolutely absolutely. I would also be careful of wiring. Oh yeah, wiring. Wiring is tough nowadays. My partner won't do it anymore. They won't do it anymore, they just won't. They won't do it anymore, they just won't. They don't trust it. So they don't want to do that anymore. They'll do PayPal, they'll do Venmo.
17:53 - Intro (Host) They'll do it any other way.
17:54 - Lau Lapides (Host) But they won't do that. And I mean, needless to say, don't ever send money out for any reason. Ever Don't send it out unless you're sending your commission cut to your particular agent.
18:13 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That's different. Well, that is legit. If a company needs to pay you and wants to pay you ACH, and wants to pay you right into your bank account, you will need to supply your bank account information and, for what it's worth when I investigated it, god, many years ago there's nothing dangerous about providing your account number. The bank itself has security in place so you can provide a full account number to somebody if they request it, and a routing number.
18:39 - Lau Lapides (Host) So all right. So I have a question about that. So let's say you haven't worked with a company. They've reached out to you. You want to work with them. What kinds of practices, Annie, do you use to vet them? Do you ask them for references? Do you ask them for clients? I know most legitimate companies that I know of and have worked with have actually put their client lists out. They're on their website, so I could really reach out to them and say, hey, do you know of this company? Have you worked with them? Whether I reached the right person or not is another thing, but the point is what do you do to vet a company?
19:13 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, that's a great question. So the first thing I do is I research them online. I do I research them online. I go to their website. I make sure that they have contact information on their website. If they don't, I'll ask the person that emailed me or reached out to me for their contact information. And then I'll say but I can't find a website, or I can't find any contact information. Do you have a point of contact in case I have questions about the project?
19:39 Right, and it becomes very much about you know, I'm interested because I want to be able to get a hold of someone in case I have questions, so that I can service them better, right? So it doesn't appear that I'm paranoid or not trusting, but I am asking in order to serve them better. So I make sure they have a website. And if they don't have a website, then I'm suspicious, because who doesn't have a website these days? If they don't have a website, maybe they're very small, and if they're very small, they might have budget issues. And then I want to make sure that they're going to pay me in full prior to my job start, like I request, and that they will pay me electronically. There will be no checks, or if there is a check, I won't start or deliver the job until I've cashed the check, and that's very rarely the case. I don't know when's the last time you wrote a check.
20:21 Almost never, very rarely, people who can't pay via any sort of electronic method these days or through a credit card, you know that kind of a thing then you're protected by all of that. And so, yeah, definitely research, definitely point of contact. And my last point is like literally talking to someone, and there's a lot to be said for a company's brand and a company's longevity, right. So how long have they been in business? Am I familiar with them? As you mentioned? What other companies have they dealt with? Have they dealt with other people?
20:51 I don't necessarily ask for references right away, because if it's a corporate entity, I might ask around the groups to see if anybody's worked with the company before. And yes, there's an actual group before Nava became very involved called the Red Flags Group. It's a Facebook group started by Dave Kavosier and is still around, where when we all had questions or we're all like hey, have you heard of this? We would post in that group. It's a wonderful group. It's still there. And there are some other groups like, I think, Veopreneur, Mark Scott. Actually, people will ask in that group if there's been contact or if people have worked with that company. And again, it's something you can talk to your accountability buddies or colleagues in the industry to see if they yeah, and I would add on, too your coaches.
21:35 - Lau Lapides (Host) So if you have a coach or a coaching team or have coach, your coaches really should know about this stuff. If they don't know about this stuff, they should be willing to reach out and find out about it. If they're not, that would be a red flag on the coach. Yeah, absolutely, because the coach should really be in the know. Even if you haven't worked with them for a while, they should be in the know.
22:02 I'll give you an example this student that I had in class not too long ago. She wrote to me and she said hey, I want to go FICOR and here are my reasons and I need help. How do I do it? Well, if I said I don't know, I have no idea what it is and I don't know, go figure it out. I would have a red flag about her looking at me saying that and saying well, let me just find out for you, let me figure it out, because I need to know myself. I actually know exactly how to do it, but my point is is that that would take me aback, like who am I working?
22:26 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) with who's my teacher?
22:28 - Lau Lapides (Host) You know what I mean, because this is a very huge issue right now in the union, so it's very relevant and current.
22:34 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Right, and that's another great aspect to a scammer, right, how do you know you're working with a legitimate coach and or demo producer? And I'm going to say, any coach worth their weight is going to offer a consult, a free consult so that you can kind of get a feel. And again, that's something where you're meeting with them on Zoom or you're meeting with them on the phone or you can kind of have a back and forth with that coach so that you can get an idea of their style. You're open to ask any questions and also, again, I think that word of mouth is really valid there I think a coach should have previous student references and or work and or testimonials on there and you can get a lot of knowledge from that. So don't just spend thousands of dollars before you do your own investigation and research and talk to a potential coach and or demo producer.
23:23 - Lau Lapides (Host) And be reasonable about weighing it out. If you're asking your coach who's been in your coach base out of New York, well, what do you know about Mary Jane's out in fiscal Wisconsin? It's not reasonable that they're going to know the answer to that. But what do you know about joining the union these days? They should really know some of those answers to resource you.
23:44 So, anything that's of a national or international. Now, everything's international but national base. They should be in the know, even on the most basic level, or at least be able to resource you to the places you can go.
23:57 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, they're not just voiceover, they should be business. They should also understand the business and the marketplace and the industry enough to be able to guide you. Yeah, right, right, right.
24:07 - Lau Lapides (Host) I always come back to your survival instinct. You have a gut instinct for a reason Like listen to your gut. What's the worst that happens? You lose a job, you miss out on a job, so what? Yeah, that's the worst that happens. You may have saved yourself from a lot of heartache and a lot of hell by jumping into it because you really wanted it or were desperate for it when you knew it was going against your gut instinct. So always go with your gut instinct.
24:33 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And I get a lot of people who are like okay, so I did a job and I didn't get paid. I can tell you, I've been in this industry over 17 years. I have never not gotten paid, Never, never.
24:42 - Lau Lapides (Host) Wow, never not gotten paid.
24:43 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That's lucky, wow, is it lucky or is it me vetting my clients Could be. I'm going to say yes, I vetted my clients. If I found somebody that I thought was a little bit, I don't know if I want to work with them. If I was hesitant, I chose not to work with them and I'm very fortunate. Again it comes down to I requested that money up front.
25:07 I'm going to say that I feel like that saved me in many, many ways is having that, just that simple statement on my quote that says payment in full is greatly appreciated and available via my PayPal account to annanganguzacom and basically that is it. I never have anybody really contest it and if they do contest it it's because they're a large company that I'm very familiar with and I'm able to get in contact with the people in purchasing who can give me a PO and who can give me the net terms of payment, which sometimes can be 90 days Now have you ever had a company sign that and say, yeah, we're going to give you whatever 50% upfront or 100% upfront and not come through and still do the job?
25:45 No, no, I've always gotten either paid upfront or I've gotten my payment. I've never, ever had that happen. Yes, I'm fortunate, but I also think it has a lot to do with me being savvy and not necessarily picking up clients that are questionable. Right, gotcha and I do have clients where I signed contracts. They went out of business you know what I mean After so many years but ultimately, because I had been working with them for so long, either transferred me to the new owners, right, and then I might've had issues with the new owners.
26:12 But again, I've never where I didn't get the job or I didn't get the offer. I'd say I worked with a company for a very long time and then my point of contact changed, right, that happens quite a bit when you work with clients over a period of many years, your point of contact changes and then maybe you don't have that job anymore because they've brought in somebody new and maybe they want somebody cheaper and it's time to change voices Either way. So that's happened to me, which I think has happened to anybody, but thankfully, I've always gotten paid and knock on wood.
26:42 I'm grateful. And again, just keep my eyes and ears peeled. Now, if you are working with an agent, right, that's what your agent does, right, your agent negotiates those contracts for you. Now, have you ever had at a point where one of your clients didn't come through and pay and then you weren't able to pay? The talent.
27:01 - Lau Lapides (Host) No, I've never witnessed that or seen that happen, not within our agency, but I've had it happen in my coaching business. I've had it happen under Lollapeda Studios a number of times through the years.
27:11 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Where you've had a student that didn't pay you.
27:13 - Lau Lapides (Host) Yeah, or whatever. Or someone came for a first time, they looked super legit, they took an hour this was in the days in person, right and then they just cut out, they just never paid for it, and then I learned okay, so I have to get it up front, that's okay.
27:27 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I mean for coaching services, learning lessons.
27:29 - Lau Lapides (Host) I call it learning money. I tried not to get angry and hold on to that because I said that's the nature of some people, so you have to just know your audience.
27:38 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I did have where, let's say offering services through VO Peeps, where I used to run events, and people will come to events and say I will pay you later, right, can I come? Is there a spot available? Can I come? And yes, being young in the business, sure you can come and then ghost and then not pay. That has happened not often, because after that I got very smart and it's gotten to the point where I host events that are non-refundable at this point.
28:06 - Lau Lapides (Host) Well, that's important actually because everyone would pull out. Everyone would pull out for some reason, even for sickness right.
28:13 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I try to be very like with coaching if somebody gets sick, I will be very understanding and lenient about that. But now with events, when I run events and I have to sell spots, even if somebody gets sick, I'm sorry. I have a no refund policy and that has developed over 15 years of doing events.
28:29 - Lau Lapides (Host) I do find, though, Annie, honestly, because I've been an event organizer for a long time, most, most, most people take no issue with that. Yeah, exactly, they know most most people take no issue with that. Yeah, exactly, they know. Hey, listen, I punked out, I didn't make it Well yeah, absolutely.
28:40 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It's all right.
28:42 - Lau Lapides (Host) And they just forget about it. Very rarely do I have people fighting, because that would be like they would think that they're in the right.
28:48 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I have people that want credit.
28:49 - Lau Lapides (Host) They get sick and then they want credit and sometimes I'll do that Some big events do that, but I don't think it's a good policy because I think it gives people an out.
28:58 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yes, agreed, Guys, be educated, be smart and be savvy and try to avoid those being taken for granted and being scammed. Great episode, Law, Great episode.
29:09 - Lau Lapides (Host) Good stuff, great episode.
29:10 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) All right, I'm going to give a great big shout-out to somebody I have been with for years and years and years and that is IPDTL. I love IPDTL. Still continue to actually do all of my coaching sessions via IPDTL. So many advantages to that. It's a great quality, fantastic audio quality. My students can record their sessions. It's amazing. I have playback. It's super easy. Guys, you can find out more at IPDTLcom. Connect and network like bosses Law. Thank you so much. It's been amazing. Bosses, have a great week.
29:41 My pleasure We'll see you next week. Bye, see you next week.
29:46 - Intro (Host) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, Ann Ganguzza, 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.
30:06 - Speaker 4 (Host) Coast-to-coast connectivity via IPDTL and corporate narration, and even just working with her on my e-learning reads has made me a better voice actor when it comes to the corporate narration work that I get in, and I can hear the difference from the first day I coached with her up until today when we had our session, and I'm really excited to see how much more I'm going to keep growing and keep outsmarting all the AI bots, because she'll give you tips on that as well of how not to sound like you're just reading or how not to sound like an AI voice but actually sound like a human.
30:51 I love that Anne cares about her students and their success, because she's such a good teacher and she's a teacher at heart, and so you know when you're gonna work with her, you're going to do your best and it might really push you sometimes, but when you can look back on your growth and see just how far you've come, you know all the tears, the blood, sweat and tears is gonna be worth it. So thank you, anne, for taking your time with me and helping me get past those moments of frustration to finally understand and grow as an actor. I really appreciate it.
We've all been there—faced with the decision to work with a business whose practices don't quite sit right. It's a crossroads that can define not just your career, but your character. The BOSSES tackle this head-on, discussing what it really means when corporations say "I'm sorry" and whether change follows their apologies. They also peel back the curtain on the pricing battles both in voiceover work and in the consumer world, questioning why we shouldn't always accept the status quo and, instead, fight for what's fair. This episode isn't just about the voiceover industry—it's a broader look at how we, as professionals and consumers, navigate the moral maze of modern business.
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 Ganguzza (Host) Hey, hey, everyone, welcome to the VO Boss Podcast and the Boss Superpower Series. Hey, hey, everyone, welcome to the VO Boss Podcast and the Boss Superpower Series. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and I am back in the booth with the lovely, illustrious Lau Lapides.
00:31 - Lau Lapides (Host) Oh, hey Lau hey girl Nice to see you Love being back.
00:36 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I know I feel like it's been an age. I feel like we just haven't seen each other in a while, but yet we did just see each other at VO Atlanta and it was not enough time. The two of us were so insanely busy that I feel like I didn't get enough quality time with you or quality time with anybody oh goodness.
00:53 - Lau Lapides (Host) And that's really funny when you think about it, because when you go to a conference, especially those of us who are going in and we're speaking and we're facilitating, part of the reason why we go is not just to educate but also to meet people and talk and have conversations. And I'm telling you, between the sound, the noise factor, the lights, the running around, the coffee I don't know about you, but I'm taking many naps the coffee, I love it, I love it. The coffee, it's a lot, it's a lot on you at once in a very short amount of time.
01:27 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Right, but we did learn a lot, didn't we?
01:29 We did, we definitely did.
01:31 One of the panels that was brought up and I don't know if this discussion should be entirely about this that most of us are familiar with that in the very beginning of this voiceover industry emerged as a top player in the pay-to-play space who had some questionable business practices and ethics, and I think that that is a really wonderful topic to talk about your clients and business ethics and how you choose to work with your clients or not work with your clients depending on, let's say, their business practices or even your own.
02:07 Have you taken a look at your own business practices? Are they ethical? Where do you stand on that? And I think that here's the elephant in the room. So the CEO of Voicescom was present on a panel at VO Atlanta and the very first thing that Jay Michael asked him to do was to apologize to the community on behalf of his company on the way that he treated the community in terms of maybe double, triple dipping into the funds that voice talent pay to be on that platform, and I thought I'd ask what your thoughts are and what your knowledge is of Voicescom and their past business practices.
02:46 - Lau Lapides (Host) Right. Well, I think you know we're all in the know about that it's a large industry but it's a small industry. If you stay in this industry probably like many others, for your lifetime and you're in it, you really learn a lot and you know a lot and you know a lot of people. It's very in a facetious way. It's very incestuous in that it's a family-driven business where our friends are like our family and we treat our clients like our family and we really get to know one another quite closely. And one of the issues that we're talking about now, especially with Voicescom, is really just taking care of one another and being aware of best business practices that you want to have as your guiding light for your business. Right, and Voicescom really for a long time, has really gone down the path, the dark path, right.
03:33 The dark web or whatever they call that, a dark path, the deep path of nefarious business practices that have caught on very early and now I think most people know about it, unless they're just coming into the business. And you and I feel the same way. We're just not for it. We're not for working hard and working ethically and working with integrity and working for clients, but not doing it under fair practices.
04:01 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, you know, back in the day, voicescom, when they emerged actually, I believe the very first platform to emerge was well outside of freelancer and those types of platforms was Voice123. And I remember I was an early adopter of Voice123. And then Voicescom came along not too long after that and the owner of that company, the Cicerellis, david and Stephanie, I believe it's- yeah.
04:22 C Cicerelli, were well-known in the community and used to show up to VO Atlanta and the conferences, and they really made a stake in the pay-to-play and became a popular pay-to-play in the industry. And along the way, somewhere I can't even say exactly when it happened, but along the way there became like a fee that was known as the pay-to-plays developed. You would pay a fee to belong to it and so that would give you the opportunities to audition. And then there was this thing that they introduced called escrow, and escrow was if you wanted to make sure that you got paid, then Voicescom would hold that payment for you and then when the job was completed, they would then release that payment, and so as a fee for that holding right the escrow, they would receive a fee.
05:05 And so I remember at that time people were kind of like I think after a year or so of that, people started to question that Isn't that double dipping? It's like you're charging the talent twice, they've already paid to belong to the platform and now you're charging an escrow fee on top of that in order to hold the money. But it was a guarantee that you would get paid. So consider them like a bank right. So first of all, let me ask you your opinion of that. Do you think that that is a fair and ethical practice for a business? Oh, okay. And do you think that is considered double?
05:36 - Lau Lapides (Host) dipping. I do, I do, I absolutely do. You know it's funny. This was me in my early naive mind. I always thought of those platforms as online agencies in a certain way, because what they're doing is they're matchmaking. They're presenting clients to you that you're not going to get on your own, most likely You're not going to meet on your own, and they're presenting it in a way where they do not want you to go private with those clients. In other words, they don't want you to acquire those clients offline. They want you to stay within the platform and use them as the agents. So I'll call them an agency. They don't call themselves an agency, but that's the same premise, right? But a legitimate agency does not charge you anything to be with them. They're going to take their commission off your booking. So it's a totally different business model and therefore they're not an agency.
06:28 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So interesting. So I'm going to play devil's advocate here and I'm going to say not coming from the agency world, right, but coming from the business world, right, the escrow was an option. At that point, you did not have to decide to put money in escrow. But if you decided to put your faith in them and use the escrow model, they would then take a fee on top of that. So let's say it wasn't an agency, let's say it was a bank fee, right? Would you agree?
06:53 Then, if you thought of it that way and you weren't thinking of them as an agency, in order for you to belong to the platform, they provided you, maybe not matchmaking, but they provided opportunities for you. I mean, they were matchmaking through the algorithm, so to speak, but as a business, as strictly as a business, not thinking of it as an agency. As a business, they were providing you with opportunities. So you paid for that on a yearly basis or whatever, a monthly basis. And then if you wanted them to guarantee the money and hold on to the money because if the client didn't pay them, well, they still had to pay you then you would pay a fee no-transcript.
08:01 - Lau Lapides (Host) I don't want that service. I'm willing to take the incurred risk.
08:04 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And they allowed that Right. They allowed that in the beginning. I do remember that.
08:07 - Lau Lapides (Host) That is okay. I'll go down that road with them because I'm paying for a service, I'm paying for a platform service and those are valued leads. I get that, it's legitimate, it's valued leads, I'm getting bookings, perfect. But still the control is in my hands when they took that away, when they take that option away, then the nature of it changes in the mind of the consumer. So to me it's not an easy yes or no. It's more like how much control do I have when I'm working with that partner? Sure, sure. What do you think, annie?
08:37 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, I think, because I remember seeing it evolve right and it evolved slowly over time. So I think in a lot of instances they thought that the evolution of those policies and practices would not be noticed by the community. Now, I believe once they decided to not allow people to take customers off the platform, right, that became more of how were they going to enforce it right?
09:01 So, in order to, enforce it, escrow became like non-negotiable. It was a thing that they did, and so they took control of that. Now, a few years down the road, right then, it turned out to be managed projects. Now, on top of that, right as a service, they would manage the entire project, in case it was a larger project and you needed to cast, let's say, multiple roles or it ended up being a long-term project.
09:27 They would manage the project and then there was a fee on top of that. It was no straightforward fee. At this point it was okay. It was a separate negotiation between Voicescom and the client for a particular amount of money which they did not then disclose to the member or the voice talent that got the job right. Then they became the company that managed the job and paid the voice talent and paid their own employees to manage that job, which there is a certain overhead in managing a job like that. I've been a project manager yeah, they're casting.
10:01 - Lau Lapides (Host) They're casting, they're doing project management. They're taking care of the money. They're doing reach out for the leads. Exactly, they're getting the leads in right.
10:08 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So there's an additional fee. So now to some people in the industry not even thinking about that, it's triple dipping and your thoughts on that.
10:15 - Lau Lapides (Host) I agree.
10:16 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yes, yes, at that point, because there's no control left for the voice. Talent, right, yes, correct, I'm on that side At this point. When you don't offer the talent an option to opt out of escrow, now, theoretically you don't have to accept a managed job, right, you do?
10:31 - Lau Lapides (Host) not have to accept a managed job.
10:32 - Intro (Host) So, see how they played the edge.
10:35 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) They played the edge of, I would say, good business ethics and good business practices, but not unlike a lot of big companies out there who maybe you're not so privy. It's just because they're managing income that you are generating. Think about it right they took your choices away. That's what they did. Well, they really didn't take your choice away on a managed job. They did not.
11:00 - Lau Lapides (Host) Okay, but let me ask you this question I don't know how many tiers they have. I have a client that recently showed me something like six or seven tiers or eight tiers of options of different levels. Well, why aren't you doing that? On the other end, just give us the option of the tiers of involvement that we want to have you as a partner. So if I'm early, I don't know what I'm doing. I need all the help in the world. I might go for a higher tier because I'm going to want you to manage everything. I'm going to want you to bank the money. I'm going to want you to take care of me and hold my hand. But if I'm into it five or ten years, I don't need that because I know the practice, I understand how to take care of myself and take the calculated risk. But the option could easily be there. They're offering all these tiers for the membership itself.
11:46 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So I think, when it comes down to it again, I'm playing devil's advocate, right? I don't want people to say, oh my God, shelovesvoicescom advocate, right? I don't want people to say, oh my God, she loves Voicescom. But honestly, from a business standpoint, right, I do believe if you've not given the talent an opportunity to opt out of things, then you are triple dipping. However, they kept it right on the edge there where at one point and I'm not exactly sure, forgive me for not knowing this I'm not exactly sure about the escrow anymore. I don't know if that's an option or not anymore, if it's just it grow anymore.
12:15 - Lau Lapides (Host) I don't know if that's an option or not anymore, if it's just it's now like standard that they will pay you. I don't know if that was that ever an option, oh it was.
12:19 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It absolutely was an option.
12:20 - Lau Lapides (Host) That was a long time ago. It was a long time ago, that was early.
12:24 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Because I remember joining Voice123 back in 2004,. Maybe even earlier than that, I can't remember In the early 2000s, but it was an option. You did not have to choose escrow, and so I believe that if that's not an option anymore, they're definitely double dipping. And I think with the managed yeah, I mean absolutely with the managed. So there are people who say they should give up the yearly fee right for providing opportunities, or the membership fee, or they should give up the escrow or they should give up the managed fee.
12:56 - Intro (Host) Right Any one of those, and so.
12:58 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I do not know exactly what the new CEO at Voicescom said in the panel, because I had to go teach my own ex-session at the time, but he did indeed apologize on behalf of the company. So here's my question, laha what do you feel about an apology made? And of course, he was not CEO of the company back then? Here's my question, laha what do you feel about an apology made? And, of course, he was not CEO of the company back then? He had no prior knowledge of what was happening. He doesn't even come from a voiceover background. What is your thought about the apology?
13:24 - Lau Lapides (Host) Well, I treat it the same as any business and certainly as politics as well. I think he's a front man, I think he's probably a diplomat in certain ways, as a leader and someone who knows it is the right and ethical thing to do and what is expected of a community that he does not want to lose the partnership with. So is it honest? I don't know. Is it meant to be followed through? Who knows? And is there going to be a policy change? We will only know once we see it. It could be completely empty. It could be completely to satisfy the emotional feelings of talent which, quite frankly, at the end of the day doesn't mean very much if there's no policy change. So I say, wait and see. Does anything change after that? I think it was a good first move on his part.
14:13 It was a smart chess move. It was no skin off his nose. He probably doesn't even know what voiceover does for the most part.
14:20 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And everybody's like, well, he took a beating. And I'm like, well, I mean gosh. Remember Rolf a few years back from Voice 123. Every time he came on stage he took a beating. And I remember seeing Rolf this year and saying well, rolf, at least you won't get the brunt of it this year. And he laughed.
14:36 - Lau Lapides (Host) Exactly, and you know what, annie, I have to say. He said that's what a CEO does. Let me tell you, these Wall Street-type cats could care less. In fact, they plan those for their Saturday morning. They have a ball at Target practice. No one knows, no one understands, understands like what a boardroom is like unless they lived in a boardroom or lived in corporate America or lived in executive C fights. Like no one gets that. I remember my husband, who's now a CFO controller type. He said boy, when I was coming up the reins and I was already a controller at that I was dealing with ownership of a company and they would literally get up and throw a vase of flowers at me and it would hit the wall and crash. Literally, they would throw things at each other.
15:20 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So I really think— it's dog-eat-dog kind of. You know what I mean. Yeah, I think that.
15:24 - Lau Lapides (Host) that's like we want to feel as talented, satisfied that we got some comeuppance in the deal.
15:30 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, I'm sorry oh my God, I just rolled my eyes.
15:35 I mean, guys, I love the voiceover community Do not get me wrong but sometimes the drama, okay, I'm just saying we've got to remember guys, we are dealing with businesses, when we deal with these platforms and when we deal with our clients, they are businesses and in reality, in our own little bubble, we may think you know what I mean that, oh my God, yes, and I want. We may think you know what I mean that, oh my god, yes, and I want to say, you know, I'd love for everybody to be human and say, yes, they need to be good people and good humans and ethical. But gosh, it's not that way in a lot of places it's not that way, you have to open your eyes and be savvy and be smart.
16:08 yes, when you are dealing with businesses, that now for me and I would say a lot you too, I mean, do I want to deal with a business that I feel has questionable ethics and practices? No, I don't. I am fortunate that in my business I'm not dependent on that money, so I can choose who I work with, and I think that's the really wonderful thing about us in our industry that you can choose who you work with. Right and for me, that's always been where I felt like I won the corporate game If I was working for a particular company. And I work with a lot of students who they work in the corporate world and at some point they all want to get out of it because they don't feel appreciated or loved or they do a lot and they're working for someone else, and now that we have the option to work for ourselves first of all, I think we're the hardest CEOs, but also we have choices as to who our clients are.
17:03 So we can absolutely choose not to work with somebody who we feel that their business practices are questionable. That gives you more time to look for people who are right and get that business to somebody else.
17:14 - Lau Lapides (Host) Exactly. And to piggyback right onto that, I was talking to a client this week who is also in my agency as well and who said, listen, I have a friend and he's on Fiverr and he came to me and we're actually accountability buddies and I told him everything I thought about this and he said but Lala, I don't know, Did I do the right thing? What do you think about that? What do you think about that? What do you think about what?
17:34 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) he's doing To be a friend. Is somebody on Fiverr? Well, no what he's saying is.
17:38 - Lau Lapides (Host) He came to this person and he said what do you think of me being on Fiverr? I know that it has some dark imagery in the business and people are dissuaded away. What do you think? So I said and I had to be a diplomat as well, because I'm not here to wreck businesses and give businesses a bad reputation but here's what I said and I honestly believe this. I said listen, whether your friend goes on Fiverr or not, or a million other platforms or not, you're the accountability buddy, which is terrific. Keep them checks and balance and remember this. That exactly what you're saying, annie.
18:16 Your business is your business, it's yours, it belongs to you. It's private to some degree. It puts food on your table, it makes you happy and sleep at night. You're an artist, you're a business person, but you're an artist and I don't want to sit in judgment and jury of other artists. I don't want to censor their moves. I say you do what works for your business.
18:38 Now, if you want to go into areas that are illegal, criminal, whatever, I'm not going to go there. That's just not where I'm going to go. It's not what I do and what I'm about or what my personhood or brand is about. But I still. I don't want to judge anyone, I don't want to be in judgment of anyone, because I feel like they're the ones, at the end of the day, who have to get up in the morning and go through a whole day supporting their business, and I don't know what their lives are like. Right, they might be poor, they might have no money in the bank. They might say law, I can't even afford a simple ad in like you know whatever.
19:15 And I said, well, listen, you do what works for you and that's going to bring you to the next thing. I mean, that's just the way I roll. You know what I mean? It's the same discussion we've had about FICOR, about financial core. We get a lot of people. I just got an email this morning from someone who is in my class who said I went SAG and law. I need your help now. I need your help. I want to go FICOR. I'm a little conflicted. I don't know what to do, how to do it. I know the union doesn't want to talk to me about it, of course, right. And I say listen, you know there's pros and cons to every choice you make, but as a coach because I'm still a coach. I'm going to talk to you and educate you about what your choices are Sure absolutely.
19:56 And then you go and make your choices and I'll support you in the choices you make. It doesn't mean I agree with them.
20:02 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It means I support you Sure, absolutely, absolutely.
20:04 - Lau Lapides (Host) Right, and isn't that at the end of the day?
20:06 Annie where we want to go is like we're not always going to agree with. This has been a big ethical. For a week I had another from my roster. He emailed me about an AI company that reached out to him and wanted to work with him. He said number one is this legitimate? Is it a scam? And number two I don't like it. I don't like their rates, I don't like the usage. I don't like it. I don't like their rates, I don't like the usage. And I said, well, go with your gut. Yeah, absolutely Go with what you feel, Otherwise you won't be happy. Absolutely, Absolutely.
20:35 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Right and I'm going to say that I do believe that when a company is not acting in an ethical manner, I do believe it's important that people speak up and speak their mind about it, because that is the only way that change will become enforced, or change can happen, if there are enough voices that are raised up about it. So I do believe organizations like NAVA, even the Facebook groups and again, like I said, I say there's so much drama, but I mean we are creatives, I mean there is drama in our world, but I also want bosses out there to, yes, embrace your creative and embrace your drama, but also embrace the business aspect of things and try to understand that it's not an affront against you personally.
21:20 I mean Voicescom did they insult you personally by charging a fee?
21:26 I mean it can infuriate you absolutely, but it wasn't a personal attack.
21:30 However, it is up to you to educate yourself on the practices of any given business and then decide whether that is something you want to support or not.
21:38 And if you feel that you're being taken advantage of, absolutely, I say raise your voice. But I don't say raise your voice and stomp off like a spoiled little child. That's not getting your way, but raise your voice in an educated and smart way that can help to promote change, I would say, or promote awareness in the industry, which is what VL Boss I set out to do was to provide a resource for the community so that we could talk about things like this and it could be open and we could discuss and I will be the first to say there's many of you who know the VL Boss podcast from the very beginning and there was a question, there was a question of certain people that I had on my podcast whether they were ethical. Now, I was not educated at the time and that could be something that people may or may not believe is true. However, at the time, I was not educated about business practices no-transcript.
22:57 - Lau Lapides (Host) You're buying items, retail items from big box stores. Right? Let's say you're going to Target, walmart or a Macy's or Nordstrom's, whatever, and you walk in. I'm going to guarantee you you are paying 50% to 100% over retail in terms of the profit margins that they are charging you, but somehow, somehow, many of us go.
23:19 Well, you know, you know. And are you going to go to the manager and you're going to complain about that? The manager will say hey, with all due respect, ma'am, I don't make decisions. You got to go up. Are you going to spend all day? I'm asking a real question to the audience Are you going to spend all day, every day, fighting that good fight, even though you're right, you're right fighting that good fight to get to corporate, to get to the CEO, to make sure the prices come down, to make sure they're affordable? Probably not.
23:49 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I love that you brought that up. Law, probably. But one more thing.
23:53 - Lau Lapides (Host) I want to say and I'm not talking about boycotting, that's up to you. I'm not suggesting that in any way. I'm just saying we make ethical decisions every day of our lives, all day long. Where am I going to go to the gas station? Am I going to pay that for gasoline? Am I going to go to the gas station? Am I going to pay that for gasoline? Am I going to whatever? So everything you could be fighting, I think there is a level of toleration we have to find in our lives to stay happy and healthy, knowing we're being taken for a ride.
24:23 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, absolutely. I love that you made that comparison. That is so, so important, because I think we're in such a bubble and we think that everything's in front to us personally.
24:32 And it's not. It is business business in this country, I mean. So we ourselves are free to set our prices, right, we are free to set our prices. And so what if the tables were turned and somebody said, well, that's not ethical, I mean, in a very weird sense, right? If you think about AI and you think about synthetic voices and people's value of, okay, what is a voice worth?
24:58 Now, my human voice and my acting and my personal brand is worth a lot. That's where I will make that bold statement to say this is what I charge, this is what I'm worth, will make that bold statement to say this is what I charge, this is what I'm worth. However, there will be people who need a voice that may not see the value right for their project, for a human voice. They don't have a need for it, right, and they make that choice not to work with us. And so, again, we are in the free societies where we can make our price, in the free societies where we can make our price, and the rebellion against us, right, or the speaking up against us is hey, we don't have that budget or we don't feel the value is there to pay that amount of money for a voice. I mean, I hate to sound so cold, but that's just the reality of business. That's the reality of it.
25:48 - Lau Lapides (Host) When you deal with people and you deal with budgets, you're going to run up against the same thing. I had a client of mine in my roster that said law, I need your thought because I have a long, long, long time client and she's just not going to pay me what I'm asking. She's not going to pay me what I'm worth. She's not going to. What should I do? Should I walk away from it at this point, or should I stay with it, or whatever? We talked that through. But the point is, that's your world, that's our world, that's business.
26:14 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That's what we do every day.
26:15 - Lau Lapides (Host) That's not going to go away. I mean, whether you call that unethical or not, I'm not sure, but thousands of years ago I'm sure, we were being overpriced for fish and beef and meat on the open market. You had to haggle, you had to negotiate, you had to figure out what you're willing to pay for that item, and there's also supply and demand. So when you have a tremendous supply, tremendous supply, you don't always have the demand to meet that, and so therein lies the ethics, exactly exactly.
26:46 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And supply and demand has a lot to do with paying me what I'm worth. I mean honestly like if there is more demand for our voices.
26:55 - Lau Lapides (Host) We can afford to pay Go higher, go higher.
26:58 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yes, if there is less demand, then you know what We've got to kind of compete in the marketplace.
27:04 - Lau Lapides (Host) Right, and let me qualify it by saying we're in no way suggesting for the listeners that you need to sell out or you need to do things you don't want to do or you're not comfortable doing. We're saying you live in a world, you live in a world and no one said that world is going to be fair.
27:20 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh yeah.
27:20 - Lau Lapides (Host) So fair practices, best practices, are ones that you set and your clients set, and you have what they call a meeting of the minds. And if you don't and you want to fight for it and it's worth fighting for, then fight for it. But just know you got to pick your battles wisely.
27:40 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Absolutely, because you could be fighting all day long, every day, yeah, and it can be exhausting. And in the meantime, if you're spending all of your time fighting those battles, then you're not making money in your business, right? So and again. I always bring it back to this right. I find value in this. For me, my Chanel lipstick is worth the money that I pay, right, and I always like to bring it back to my Chanel lipstick.
28:00 But in reality now I found that the quality of the Chanel lipstick has gone a little bit downhill, and so now I'm on the hunt for something new, right, that can give me the quality that I am willing to pay the price for. So, bosses, keep in mind, you will have clients out there that will go out there and hunt for that voice, right, that is the quality that they desire for their project. So you can be that voice and you can, at that point, charge, right. You can charge, as we were mentioning before. It is your option, it is your option and so, ethically, I think it is up to you guys out there to educate yourself right on business practices and then take a deep look at yourself, take a deep look at what it's costing you in your business Not necessarily, like, as Law was saying before, fighting every single day and taking up a lot of your time and energy in fighting that so that you have no time to have a business.
28:57 - Lau Lapides (Host) Yes, you want to choose your battles wisely and I always like to say I don't mind losing some battles and you will throughout your life but I want to win the war.
29:06 - Intro (Host) And what that means is I want to win my business.
29:09 - Lau Lapides (Host) I want to win overall my business practice and my goals. But that doesn't mean every day is going to be fair and every day is going to come out the way I want it to come out. And you know it's like I love Dunkin' Donuts and when I go through, if I get a donut, that donut is two or three bucks, is half the size now, and you'll say but Law, with all due respect, you shouldn't be eating donuts. Well, that's beside the point. The point is I have a choice. I'm not talking about health, I'm just talking for fun. Now I don't have to buy that donut.
29:39 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) You don't have to pay the money for that donut, but am I going to?
29:41 - Lau Lapides (Host) go fight the CEO over the size of it and the cost of it? Probably not, because it's not a battle that I really want to take up Wise words Law.
29:48 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Wow, what a great discussion. I really really enjoyed it so good.
29:52 - Intro (Host) Yeah, bosses.
29:53 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So remember, educate yourself and look deep within and pick your battles. So, all right, I'd like to give a great big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl. You too can connect and network like bosses, like Law and myself. Find out more at IPDdtlcom. You guys have an amazing week and we'll see you next week. Bye, see you next week, bye.
30:15 - Intro (Host) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, Anne Ganguzza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at voboss dot com and receive exclusive content, industry-rev, revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution, with permission. Coast-to-coast connectivity via IPDTL.
30:44 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey bosses, we are so excited to announce our audition demolition, our third audition demolition coming up September 20th. That is our live event F***.
31:00 - Lau Lapides (Host) Oh no, f***, oh no, you got to submit this for bloopers.
31:06 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah For OVC, yeah right, all right, stop Record.
Wondering how to convert your cluttered space into a voiceover success story? Let Anne Ganguzza and the ever-resourceful Tom Dheere, be your personal guides in the transformative journey of setting up a home studio that screams professionalism but whispers in costs. Starting with the bare bones of our make-do booths fashioned from closets and basements, we'll share how to shield your sound from the noisy world outside, using everyday materials to master the art of sound absorption. Our candid conversation is a treasure trove of relatable anecdotes and practical wisdom, perfect for any voice actor eager to refine their recording environment and captivate their audience with crystal-clear audio. 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 Ganguzza (Host) Hey everyone, welcome to the V-O Boss podcast in the Real Bosses series. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and I am so excited to be back again with Real Boss guest co-host Tom Dheere. Hey, tom.
00:33 - Tom Dheere (Host) Hey Anne, I'm feeling very bossy today, but not in a mean to tell people what to do today. I'm just feeling bossy, but in a good way.
00:38 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) You got good boss colors on.
00:40 - Tom Dheere (Host) Yeah, and I got some good boss vibes going today too. Yeah, and you sound good, Tom. I do sound good today. It's funny, so do you, as always Well thank you.
00:49 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I'm going to be speaking next week at a conference to podcasters who are interested in becoming voice of artists. Part of my conversation is going to include the equipment they need, the skills they need and, of course, what's so important to us as voice actors our environment, our studios.
01:08 And you know it's so funny because we are on opposite coasts and I feel like we also have opposite type studios, but yet they both work amazingly well for our businesses. So I wanted to talk to you about your studio and our differences so that this could be a good reference for those bosses. Just starting out that you don't necessarily need a $20,000 recording studio, because when I first started I certainly didn't have one, and I know that Tom has the same story. As a matter of fact, when I first started, I was in my basement in New Jersey, because basements are a good place where you don't have to deal with, let's say, external noises as much because you're half underground.
01:50 It was a closet for me that I started off with, and, tom, I mean talk to me about when you first started. What was your first studio like?
01:58 - Tom Dheere (Host) Okay, my first studio was also in New Jersey, parcipany, new Jersey. I'm sorry, where were you in New Jersey?
02:04 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I don't remember Northern Jersey. I was in North Haldon, oh, right, by Wayne. Okay, I know exactly where that is.
02:10 - Tom Dheere (Host) I was in the 20, 25 minute drive west of North Haldon, so I lived in a garden apartment. For those of you who don't know New Jersey, garden apartments are these sets of apartment buildings.
02:21 They're almost always red brick, they could be white or other colors, and there's usually there's anywhere from like three to 50 of them. And I lived on a second floor and my first home recording studio was the front closet which was over the steps that would lean to the door that would let you go outside. So what I did was I went to Home Depot and I got carpet remnants on the cheap. I had a quilt that I think my mother-in-laws aunt made. It's a lovely quilt but like oh, this is a good use for it, I wove it into, you know, like the bar that you'd hang your coats on. Sure.
02:56 I would weave it through there.
02:57 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So it's like a little tent.
02:59 - Tom Dheere (Host) Yeah, actually it was even better than a tent, because the shelf that was above the bar rested on wooden blocks in this apartment so you could lift it up. So I actually threaded it through, threaded it back and folded it under so it completely encapsulated the shelf that was above the bar and that was that. So the quilt was around there. The carpet remnants from Home Depot were on the ground and in front of me and behind me and I made a point to, since the closet was a square box instead of having be an angle, I wouldn't push the corner of the carpet remnant all the way into it, so it would be curved.
03:32 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So all of the corners, so it would be like square, sharp corners Right.
03:36 - Tom Dheere (Host) So I would put it in with penny nails. And then I had, you know, those football blankets, the kind that you roll up to take a football game. I had one of those and I nailed that into the closet door and that was it. And then I had a little snack tray with a desktop mic stand and my mic was there. And then I got a monitor which I drilled into the well, no, that back then I didn't drill it into the wall, it was on a stand which was on the snack tray. And then I got a splitter, so the monitor that I would sit at at my desk would show the same exact stuff that it would show inside the booth. And then I would bring my air mouse into the booth and sit down and I would just, and then it's.
04:14 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, you were actually advanced because you had a monitor in your booth and you had an air mouse.
04:20 So, for me. I'm gonna tell you, my first experience was when I moved from one place in New Jersey to the next and I had my second studio in the basement. Was really cool, because you don't know what you don't know. And so for those bosses just starting out and I've done multiple audio episodes, just a real quick recap you need to really have a good environment before, I think, you even make a decision on your microphone and within that environment you have to make sure that you're not having any kind of echo or noise. So there's internal noise of your studio and there's external noise that might be trying to come into the studio and you certainly don't want any of the noise that you're making, right as you're voicing, to be echoing off of walls or hard surfaces. So it's important to kind of have yourself surrounded with some sort of material that can absorb that sound rather than have it be reflected back into the microphone. So when Tom talks about having his blankets and his carpet remnants up above him, to the left, to the right, keep in mind you wanna have some form of absorbing material that's in front of you, to the left, to the right, behind and above you and that will help curb any type of reflective sounds that might come back into the microphone. And then, of course, there's always sounds that come in from outside of the studio that we can't always control. I mean, studios have a recording sign for a reason. So even in a real studio, right where this is what they do for a living, you can't run down the hall screaming at the top of your lungs while people are recording, because not everything is completely soundproof.
05:53 However, getting yourself in an environment where you're not gonna get that much reflective sound and sound that might come in is best, and so one thing that that proves, tom, is that for both of us, when we started, we didn't really have to invest a lot of money into our studios to get good quality sound.
06:12 You just have to be a little bit educated about where you're gonna place those materials, and I think it takes a lot of experimentation. I do know when I first started, I didn't know what kind of sound I was supposed to have, and so really helpful to me was getting an engineer on the line and kind of assessing my sound and assessing my studio. However, in the beginning I didn't know anybody, and so I basically it was trial and error, trial and error, and sometimes you can place a blanket and it doesn't do any good. And sometimes you can put another blanket and it still doesn't do any good, and at that point it's helpful to maybe have somebody come and assess your studio sound. And with that I've got multiple places that I recommend. I know, george, the Tech is one of the best.
06:57 That's the first one came to my mind and I think both of us recommend him and bosses will put that link in the show notes for you. But it really can help to have a trained ear, assess what your studio sounds like but also know that you don't have to spend thousands and thousands of dollars. Now I remember back when I moved right from New Jersey to California. Then I had a town home and I was up on the second floor and then I had an office. Well, I had a second bedroom which was right outside of the kitchen and I had a closet and I said, oh great, I've got a closet, I'll make a studio out of that.
07:31 Well, that closet had no clothing in it, right? And that became a whole different set of circumstances where I thought, oh, it'll be easy, I'll just hang carpet, or I've got some old carpet, I'll hang some blankets. Well, it was actually more difficult to create a good sound with an empty closet than it was to actually build. My father actually built me a structure, so it was a little four by four by eight foot room in a room which actually works better than my closet which had nothing in it, like no clothes. So I feel like a clothing closet with clothes in it is really something that can help and can be better in a lot of cases than a clean closet.
08:10 - Tom Dheere (Host) Right, I think I don't remember who was it said it, but sound functions like water and you have to understand where the sound flows and it always has to go somewhere. It's gonna go down, it's gonna go towards you or behind you, it's gonna get bounced around and moved around. So, under a standing, how and where the sound goes will help you figure it out Whether that involves getting bass traps or whether you gotta get Aurelix.
08:35 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Now people are going what? Or some people buy pool noodles. What are bass traps?
08:39 - Tom Dheere (Host) Aurelix is a form of acoustic foam. I don't even know if I can properly define bass traps are. They're usually in the corners of the room, corners of the room, padding the corners there.
08:47 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I think what you're trying to do is not have any. The other thing, if you can, because of reflection, right, Sound bouncing If you have walls that are perpendicular to one another or parallel.
08:59 - Tom Dheere (Host) Right, you don't want angles, you want curves.
09:01 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Curves or angles, or if you do and I'm gonna get to our studios in just a moment if you do, you wanna make sure that you've got adequate coverage for sound absorption in there.
09:11 - Tom Dheere (Host) Right, but at the same time you don't want a dead space either. Too much acoustical treatment can be a bad thing, because your space has to have some kind of texture too. Not like a signature texture that is like oh, I could tell I listened to that commercial. I know Ann did it in her booth. It's not like that, but just something that doesn't sound like you're talking in a safe. You know what I mean.
09:29 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Absolutely, absolutely so. Ultimately, tom, it wasn't until I moved and this is after 14 years of actually being a full time doing voiceover and making money and so I had to have a booth that created good audio that people didn't reject. And, trust me, I did have a time when people rejected my audio, and that was when I didn't have an ear for what I needed to know, and that was very distressing.
09:53 By the way, all I can say is that once you figure out how to get your sound where it needs to be, it is a big load off your shoulders. But once I decided to move, I actually was able to kind of plan and really think because, okay, I'm 13, 14 years into my full time business, I wanna actually have a space that is created just for recording. And so I was fortunate and I researched, I researched a lot of different things. I thought, well, I can't bring the booth. My father had constructed a booth for me at my town home in Irvine and I couldn't really deconstruct it and reconstruct it again to have the same properties and everybody. I love that booth, by the way, and it was really wonderful and I had had that assessed and blessed by George the Tech, by the way, at the time. But now that I had an opportunity to actually have some time to sit down and think about it, I decided and I looked into researching, I looked into buying a Studio Bricks and it was gonna be really expensive at the time and at the time they were shipping it from Spain, I believe. There was no timeframe as to when I would get it and I thought, oh God, I can't move to a new home and not have a place to record, and so I said, well, let me look into something different. I spoke to George the Tech, who said you know, you might consider having this built for you a custom booth built for you and I started looking into that and fortunately I was able to find someone and, of course, everybody that's ever followed me or I definitely have a podcast on this with Tim Tippetts who designed and built my booth a custom built booth for me and I'm going to tell you that it was a luxury, but it was also something that it was great, because everything was custom tailored just for me and I'm sitting in it now. So if you're watching this podcast on YouTube, you can see my studio.
11:36 I've got sound panels in here. I actually have something that's not quite 90 degrees to one another, but you wouldn't know it by looking at it. It's just very slightly angled, but I do have ceiling acoustic tiles. I have acoustic tiles on my left, to my right, behind me, and I've got a double door, and so that cost me some dollars. I'm gonna say my first studios were a few hundred. Once I upgraded the studio that my father built for me, I would say that cost me about $1,000 with all the treatment and improvements to that, and this one was in the thousands of dollars.
12:09 But it's kind of set it and forget it and done, and so, comparatively, I live in a very quiet area to you, tom, and we'll make that comparison Cause, right, I'm West Coast. I live in a home, I'm in a studio that is dedicated and built custom for me, with double walls, green glue, acoustic panels. I live in it over 55 retirement community, on a cul-de-sac. There's not people racing around here. Well, if there are, that's some other issue. And so I have all the blessings of being able to sit in here and very rarely have to stop recording because there's something noisy happening outside. But, tom, tell me about yours because, again, mine cost thousands of dollars and I'm not saying it was super expensive, because I think for a custom built booth I got a really great deal. But, tom, talk about your studio because, again, you have an amazing studio that you've been working out of for years and just producing broadcast quality like beautiful stuff, one after the other.
13:05 - Tom Dheere (Host) Well, it's funny because I lived in that apartment in New Jersey for 12 years, so I was recording from that space for 12 years and it was regularly a pain in the butt because there was landscaping going on, there was a lot of cars driving by, there was Snow shoveling, there was kids going to school, coming home from school because the high school was right across the street, so there were a lot of problems with that one. Now I live in Midtown Manhattan. For those of you who don't know, there are certain cross streets in New York City 9th Street, 14th Street, 23rd Street, 34th Street and then higher. I live on 34th Street, which means it's one of the two-way streets. Also the Lincoln Tunnel entrances just stones throw away. So I am literally living in the second floor of an apartment building over one of the most heavily trafficked Streets in Manhattan, if not the country.
14:01 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Wow, not the world.
14:02 - Tom Dheere (Host) Wow. So what's crazy is that when I moved in here about five and a half years ago, there was a front closet, just like I had in New Jersey, and I'm like, well, let's not try to reinvent the wheel, let's just do what I did there and do it here and see what happens. It turns out that it's even better. The sound is even better than the one in New Jersey, and here's why is that. I'm sitting here at my desk and the front door to my apartment is like literally right here. I can't quite touch it, but it's pretty close and then there's a closet front closets right here, so I sit in it. When I'm sitting, my back is to the hallway and behind me this wall separating the hallway from the apartment is concrete, so that's yeah, concrete is always good.
14:45 And I using my Sennheiser 416, which is facing the concrete now.
14:50 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Why is that important that it's a 416?
14:53 - Tom Dheere (Host) the 416 is great because it has a very, very tight field. It doesn't pick up a lot outside of here, which is why, if you get a Sennheiser 416, your angle to the microphone makes a very, very big difference. So you need to find that sweet spot where you're sitting, how it's angled up like this and where it is like this, and where you are seated In relation to it to kind of get into that very tight Right and that's what makes that an ideal microphone for, let's say, a less than ideal Space right and it's also one of the reasons why I use it for travel as well, because of the pickup pattern, is very Concentrated and you don't have to worry so much about.
15:32 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Like I also have a TLM 103, which is a beautiful microphone. However, it picks up when you breathe because the pickup pattern is much broader than a 416. So yes, I think in terms of studio spaces, if you have less than idea, 416 or a shotgun type of mic that has a smaller pickup is much more ideal for that right.
15:51 - Tom Dheere (Host) The other thing is that the windows this is a 60-something year old apartment building here in New York City, but the windows are very new. They're very, very tightly sealed.
16:02 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Are they double-pained?
16:03 - Tom Dheere (Host) They are double-pained.
16:04 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I think most apartment buildings that are in in cities are double-pained anyways, right, A lot of them are double-pained yeah and I used the same exact carpet remnants and and Bessie's quilt.
16:14 - Tom Dheere (Host) From there I said everything I love it.
16:16 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) You got Aunt Bessie with you, see I ban out Bessie's quilt. She's with us, ann always she supports it.
16:22 - Tom Dheere (Host) Yes, and the monitor. Actually my wife, who's actually more mechanically inclined than I, and she actually drilled the monitor into the wall, so we set up all the acoustical treatment. She drilled it right in there and then it's still. It's a new set of monitors since the ones I had in New Jersey, but they're also networked the same way, with a splitter I bring the earmouse into the booth and so I just scroll, scroll, scroll. So I haven't printed a script in years, in years. And the quality it's even better than it was in New Jersey and I attribute it to a more solid floor and the concrete wall and better treated windows, so I actually didn't spend anything on the new booth actually.
16:58 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Right. And the other thing, too, is you probably have to be concerned A lot of times, like an inside wall or a wall that has concrete on the other side of, or a wall that isn't near plumbing is very helpful, and so if you're too close to a window, sometimes you don't have the protection I mean because that's yet another medium that can allow sound in or out or be reflective. I, literally right outside of this door, probably five feet away, is my front windows, and so I've got double windows there. But because I've got double doors here, if the waste removal trucks come right, actually I don't hear it through this, which is really fantastic, but if I've wanted the doors open, or if I have both these doors open, or if I'm sitting outside, yes, obviously I won't be able to record.
17:42 - Tom Dheere (Host) I've had jackhammers outside.
17:44 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Wow, that's fantastic.
17:46 - Tom Dheere (Host) The only thing that really really gets through is if my upstairs neighbor is vacuuming. That's the only thing that makes it impossible to record.
17:53 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So you're talking about the closet, then your actual studio is the closet behind you.
17:57 - Tom Dheere (Host) Right now that I'm seeing right, there's a front closet right here and then these other doors actually leading to the kitchen.
18:02 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And how big is that closet?
18:03 - Tom Dheere (Host) Three, by three maybe.
18:05 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Okay, and do you have anything else in it besides your recording equipment and or absorption material?
18:10 - Tom Dheere (Host) Not really. I mean, there's two shelves above it which we use for storage of various things. This time of year I've got two winter coats in there, but the rest of the year they're not in there.
18:20 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So actually, the two winter coats actually make it even a little more insulated, absolutely Especially if they're puffer jackets, right, I mean you can-.
18:26 - Tom Dheere (Host) One's puffy and then one's like a really nice one, like when we go out out. Actually, the only thing I did buy was the cable. I needed to make sure that the cable can run. So I'm sitting here and it runs and it runs across the floor right all the door and then I've got a rug that covers that and just snakes into the booth. I think that was the only additional investment and I live it by B&H, so it was like 20 bucks. I just went across the street, got it. Whatever, this is a 15-20 foot cable. I think that was the only additional expense to moving here from the old department and that was it. I also want to say this, ann, is that I was ashamed of my studio setup for a very, very long time. I thought that I wouldn't be regarded as a true professional, much less the VO strategist, if I didn't have a $5,000 booth. I am proud of my space.
19:07 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) You should be.
19:07 - Tom Dheere (Host) I am proud of the work that I do in it and the work that me, and with the a lot of help from my wife, did to get it to where it is. No, it doesn't cost a lot. No, it isn't pretty, but your job, bosses, is to be effective as voice actors on a performance level, on a logistical level, on a financial level and on a technical level.
19:25 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So I don't care if it ain't pretty Well again, nobody's necessarily looking, and even if they are looking at you and your studio, really what comes out of that studio is what's important, right? It's not what the studio looks like, and I know a lot of bosses out there. I think it becomes complicated to them and sometimes a pre-built studio solution or a studio solution like Studio Bricks or Vocal to Go or LA Boos or whichever is out there, it becomes a solution that's simple to them. Well, you don't necessarily need to spend that kind of money. If you have it, of course I think that's great, but I think if you're just starting out in the industry and you're just trying to see if this is something that is going to be good for you, and if you're going to really make a go at it and have a successful voiceover business, I don't think you need to invest a lot in a studio right away.
20:15 I mean, gosh, I always talk about when we are traveling and on the road. Tom, we certainly don't have optimal recording situations in a hotel room, because a lot of times you've got the ventilation system, you've got fans running, you've got people out in the hallway in your hotel room, you've got windows and what's happening outside of windows to deal with. And so for us again, what's important is that we protect ourselves to the front, to the left, to the right, behind and above. And so a lot of times when we are away and traveling, I do the old pillow fort, the non-glamorous pillow fort, and that is literally put the pillows in front of you, to the left, to the right, above you. I take the actual luggage rack and put it on top of the desk.
21:01 And then I take the extra comforter and I make a tent out of it and then I take my 416 and that's what we do. Now I also have a tri-booth, which is great. A tri-booth, love the tri-booth, and I've got a review of the tri-booth on my blog for any of you that are interested in it. That is a PVC kind of put together constructed booth with moving blankets and a stack that has been created by George the Tech so that you can recreate your home studio on the go, and so I absolutely love my tri-booth. If I decide that I want to take that, I can check that right on the plane. It comes in its own suitcase and it's super, super easy to assemble, and so you can do that.
21:42 It's not always necessary, though. I say Create a studio, try to get yourself acclimated to what sound it is that you're looking for, great sound. If you are somewhat into audio today, if you're a podcaster, make sure that that studio really does have your acoustics properly set up and oriented, because sometimes a podcast I mean I know that when I first started podcasting I would listen to other podcasts and go why are they not concerned about their room, their sound? Because I would hear echo, sometimes the sound quality just wasn't there. But if you are coming in from another segment of the industry or another part of the industry, understand that your environment is important so that you can create good quality audio Does not have to cost a lot of money.
22:29 And, tom, I love our conversation because you are proof that you can have an amazing sounding studio and not have to invest a lot of money. You can be in a crazy city with tons of traffic, not a lot of space, and create an environment that you can do work and excel at over and over again and you don't have to invest lots of money. So thank you so much for talking to me today about your studio. Any other tips that you have for, let's say, bosses, maybe just starting out, or investigating what kind of studio to get or things to do to create a great studio.
23:07 - Tom Dheere (Host) Well, I do at vostratagescom. I also have blogs and videos that talks about gear, and I also have a gear section on my site.
23:13 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I believe you do too right, I do Absolutely Studio gear.
23:16 - Tom Dheere (Host) Check out both, because I guarantee there are some gear recommendations I have on my site that Ann doesn't, and then she has some on her site that I don't. So definitely check them out. There's different price points and I've talked about this stuff for many, many years, just like Ann is. But do your research. Harlan Hogan's Guide to Home Recording Studios is a great book. Sound Advice by Dan Friedman is another great book those who can be a very, very big help. And you can always book a free consult. I believe George the Tech has free consults, or at least you can contact him through the George the Tech website, because he's got an army of great engineers and that between all of them they know every microphone, they know all the hardware, they know all the software, they know all the acoustical treatment secrets.
23:57 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I have an affiliate page with him too, so do I VO Boss can get you a discount as well, so there you go, whether you come to Tom or VO Boss, absolutely you can get a discount ona consult with George I don't promote that because I am an affiliate with him, but literally George has been with me from the beginning. I mean, he is the one who and I have blog articles written on that who literally took my father and my homemade booth and when we were like, okay, what else can we do? There's something missing, he was the missing key. He was the one that was able to take what we had done and make it sound.
24:31 And I used to get complimented all the time by audio engineers saying what is your studio?
24:36 It's amazing and in reality it's hysterical, because if you saw what my studio looked like, it certainly wasn't glamorous or elegant, but it really did the job and just like Tom's. I mean absolutely. And I think you can be proud and it's important for you to feel proud and feel good in the space that you're in, because it is our personal voice and it is our performance that needs to excel in a booth or in a space that we feel good in, and so you want to make sure you create that space. And so if Ant and I'm sorry, your Ant's name again, bessie, so if Ant Bessie is fully supporting you in your booth. I mean, I cannot tell you the affection and how good I felt being in a studio that was designed and built by my father and my father, by the way, had a lot to do with this studio as well and it does help. I sit in the studio and I feel good, and when you feel good, you can produce good audio, and I think that that's super important. And what a fun conversation today.
25:29 Tom, thank you so much for sharing your space and talking about studios with me today. Bosses, I want to invite you to imagine a world full of passionate and empowered, diverse individuals giving collectively and intentionally to create a world that you want to see. You can make a difference. Visit 100voiceshukerorg to learn more and, of course, our sponsor, ipdtl. I love IPDTL and use it on a day-to-day basis. I just love it. Use it for all my coaching students. Find out more at IPDTLcom. You guys have an amazing week and we'll see you next week. Thanks, guys, bye.
26:10 - Intro (Host) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, Ann Ganguzza, 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.
The podcast currently has 522 episodes available.
0 Listeners
18 Listeners
0 Listeners
115 Listeners
0 Listeners
46 Listeners
16 Listeners
15 Listeners
16 Listeners
33 Listeners
22 Listeners
2 Listeners
7 Listeners
0 Listeners
0 Listeners