Podcasts about bosses

What are you grateful for today? In Part Two of our Modern Mindset series premiere, Anne & Laya connect the conversation between industry and self. They cover forming accountability groups during the pandemic, abundance vs. scarcity mindsets, and the double-edged sword that is social media. More at https://voboss.com/introducing-modern-mindset-part-2-with-laya-hoffman Transcript >> It's time to take your business to the next level, the BOSS level! These are the premiere 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. Anne: Hey everyone. Welcome to the VO BOSS podcast. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and I am thrilled to have back with me guest co-host Laya Hoffman. Laya is an Atlanta-based voice actor and podcaster. She's got over 20 years on the mic. She specializes in commercial, corporate, promos, and has worked for brands such as BMW, Google, Amazon, all the things. She's a former marketing exec, nightclub DJ, and creative agency lead. So she brings us so much value to this podcast. And I am so excited to bring her back to talk to us on our Modern Mindset Series. Laya, so glad to have you back. Laya: Oh, thank you so much, Anne. I'm loving our conversation. It's been an honor to listen to your show over the last few years and on to be a guest, how cool, super grateful for the opportunity to share. Anne: Oh, absolutely. Wow -- Laya: Thank you. Anne: -- we had a great episode where we started to talk about what is a modern mindset and how to get yourself into a modern mindset. And we really kind of delved deep, and I think we can go even further on that. So let's review a little bit for our listeners about what a modern mindset entails and maybe dig deep into the modern mindset for being ready to be the best entrepreneur you can for your voiceover business. Laya: Absolutely. And it's so important to continue to share this information, because as so many talented voice actors who have shared their trials and tribulations with me over the years, I've kind of run that through a modern lens, as I've grown my business full-time in the last three years and taken that experience and shifted it in how we can meet our buyers, our agents, our managers, our clients, where they are because they're hiring differently. Anne: Oh yes. Laya: They are listening for different things, and to be our best selves when we approach the mic every day, it takes starting at the ground up to make sure that you are confident, that you are committed and clear, and you are grounded in your intention, and how you present your work every day. And, um, and that will continue to help you stabilize your industry, but also, you know, keep the balance, because there is a lot of anxiety out there in the world as it is, much less when you talk to yourself in a box all day for a living. So, you know, there's a lot of steps to that. And we did touch on that a little bit on our last episode of health and wellness, and then also having and approaching your business with the right intention. But I'm looking forward to talking more about that today. Anne: Well, you know, I think it's very important before you begin, or while you're in the middle of creating your business, that you are open to educating, educating yourself. Laya: Oh yeah, oh yeah. Anne: I think that that is so important. And -- and if you're used to doing things a certain way, I think it's really important that, number one, if you're going to be successful in an industry such as voiceover and any industry, that you spend a certain amount of time each day, educating yourself on that industry. What does it take for you to be successful in that industry? And also not just in the industry, but to research and educate yourself on your potential clients. Laya: Absolutely. Anne: I think that that is absolutely very important. And if you don't have that going into it, it's going to be hard for you to really understand or even perform, to be successful in getting gigs. And then once you have the gig, in order to be able to serve your client in the way that they would want to have their brand elevated by your voice. Laya: Absolutely. I think that you look at, you can look at any other industry in the world, and you know that you've got a certain amount of education, whether it's vocational -- Anne: Oh yeah! Laya: -- or a long lead of college tuition ahead of you, but in voiceover, for some reason, a lot of people approach it like it's just a quick fix -- Anne: Yeah. Laya: -- or it's a quick money maker -- Anne: It's simple. Laya: When in -- Anne: I'm home. I can make money. Laya: -- when the reality is -- I can talk, right? Everybody talks -- Anne: I can talk. Laya: Right? When the reality is, if you don't come to the table with a true understanding of the investment and what you're going to fill and educate yourself with, fill your cup with every day, and come from a place very humbly looking at that, and figuring out also who are the best types of people that you need to learn from, you know. What is, is there a personality fit there, um, with your coach? Are you going to make a commitment to that coach and stay the course with that coach in that vein, in that track, in that genre of voice work until you master it, or until you at least feel confident where you're booking in that range? Or are you going to scatter yourself and then figure out what, you know, do widespread research and touch a little bit of everything until you figure out where you want to hone in on? I think you have to have real conversations with yourself and come from a place of humility to know that you, even at your highest peak in this career, never stop learning -- Anne: Oh my goodness, yes. Laya: -- and never stop filling that cup and sharing also, but, you know, listen more than you talk in this business. And I think you'll go far. Anne: Isn't that like an oxymoron? Laya: Right. Anne: Listen more than you talk. Laya: Right. Anne: But I love that you said, have it come from a humble place, from a place of humility, because I think that that is what indeed makes us open, open to new things, open to new education. And even for the people, not if you're just entering the business, but even for the people that are in the business, I think it might almost be more important for them to be open -- Laya: Yes. Anne: -- to evolve and to educate. And, you know, I know firsthand in my Voice and AI series that there's a lot of people -- there's a lot of fear. And I think what stops people from advancing, selling in their performance, or growing their business is fear -- Laya: Yes. Anne: -- and fear of, of what's coming or what's up ahead. And, and I think that we can combat that fear with education, education about what technologies are coming up, you know, educate yourself about AI. If you're afraid that AI is gonna take away your business, you know, go ahead and educate yourself. That's one of the main missions, you know -- like my love is teaching. And so I really went all out on my AI and Voice series so that people could get an education on, you know, what is AI in voice all about? What are synthetic voices all about? How can we as voice talent learn more about that, that part of the industry so that we can serve better or not, you know, and make an informed decision. And I think that there's a lot of talent out there that have been in the industry for a long time, and we touched on this in our last episode about how you need to be willing to open yourself to changes that are happening in the market. And there's a lot of people that, they may or may not want to see what's happening. They want to do it, you know, the way it used to be. Laya: Sure. Anne: Well, it used to be, you know, back in the day, I'll even say when I was like, right at the very beginning of like the pay-to-plays. And, uh, you know, at that time they were very effective. Now things have evolved, things have changed. And so -- Laya: Yeah, you have to play a game. Anne: -- we got, yeah, we've got to evolve along with it. So being open, being humble, being willing to learn, really, I think I want to say, could be almost one of the most important factors in having a modern mindset to be successful. Laya: Absolutely. And you touched on this a little bit too, but as a fellow colleague of mine and a dear friend, Caroline Slaughter, has reintroduced time and time again to our conversations, there's a scarcity mindset out there when -- as it applies to AI and, you know, new modern technologies, and "they're going to take our jobs from us, and the way we used to do it in our old days, you know?" Like, no, you're coming from a scarcity mindset. You know, if once you scrub down that scarcity mindset and move from a place of that to an abundant mindset -- Anne: Yes. Laya: -- and know that there is plenty out there, and the more that you fill your cup, the more, you know, the more you grow, the more you share, the more you care, the more you'll hear that quality and that authenticity in your voice, the more you'll connect with your clients, your managers, your agents, the more you'll connect with the audience that's at the end listening to you deliver the message. And you're never going to get there with a scarcity mindset. Anne: Absolutely. Laya: You're never going to get there with that "well, the way we used to do it, and this is, I'm not, I'm stuck in my ways." No, take what you're learning, know how valuable that is, and how you're paying it forward to the future generations. But then listen in return, because while I'm 42 years old and may have been being paid on the mic for 20 years, I've only been full-time and taken this industry seriously in the last three. And it's bringing that other experience into -- Anne: Oh my gosh, all the time. Laya: -- like with your medical background, you can bring that experience into your medical narration. With my marketing background, with my branding consulting creative background, I bring that in, and it's learning and evolving and staying humble and with an open, kind of an abundant mindset, that there is plenty and it is so cool. And also coming from a deep, deep place of gratitude -- Anne: Absolutely. Laya: -- because it is a gift to be able to talk for a living -- Anne: Sure is. Laya: -- and get paid to share your voice and be a storyteller. Anne: It sure is. Laya: It is one of the greatest gifts. And if that's not where you're coming from as a place of humility and gratitude, and open-mindedness, then this might not be a successful path for you or as successful as it could be. So that's my, you know, it's up there. Anne: I love the -- I think gratitude, coming from a place of gratitude, number one, is always important. I think those two things, come from a place of gratitude and manifest abundance. Always, always manifest. Laya: I could spend an entire episode -- I could probably talk about that for hours. Anne: Manifest abundance. Laya: In fact, I wholly -- and a lot of people ask me what is manifestation. It's really checking in with your gut -- Anne: Oh, I'm all about that. Laya: -- and what you want and thinking big. And using -- in fact, I just did a little ritual with my own family. It's a road opening ritual where we talk about all our roads are open, all our blocks, unblocked, and every night, while we're sitting around the dinner table, my eight-year-old, my husband and I, we say, what are you grateful for today? Anne: Nice. Laya: And we give our gratefuls. We don't necessarily pray. We're not a very religious, but a very spiritual family. And we talk about our gratitudes every day. When I wake up in the morning, I start my day in my mind with, what am I grateful for today? And some "I am" statements, the feeling of like, what are you today? And what can you embrace this day with, with power, with gratitude, with appreciation? And, you know, those are very powerful and often taken for granted. So it can really change your mind -- Anne: Absolutely. Laya: -- and change your mood and change your mentality as you approach the mic every day. Anne: And I think that there's something to be said for taking the moment and, in more than a moment, even for yourself, so that you can bring your best self to the booth. And you're having that -- Laya: 100%. Anne: -- having that time where you are thinking, what am I grateful for? And I know I come from a place of gratitude, and sometimes you're forced into a place of even deeper gratitude. Laya: You have to fake it 'til you make it sometimes. And that's okay. Anne: With, let's say, health issues, right? Of course, we're in the middle of a pandemic, but you know, I've had health issues where -- it's funny because what I used to think was so dramatic and horrible maybe in my booth, you know, prior to a cancer diagnosis, right? After I come through that, then it becomes like, wow, I am grateful that I can be in this booth. I'm grateful that I can work from home. I am grateful that I'm still here to be able to use my voice -- Laya: Yes. Anne: -- to be able to have an impact on somebody, and that -- Laya: Yes. Anne: -- and I think ultimately becomes like a -- there's a very central core place of gratitude that comes from, for me, it's education. It's that teacher in me. I mean, I'm a voice actor. And a lot of that voicing that I do impacts people. It inspires people. It, it -- hopefully it inspires people, you know, and it is something that I want to leave, that is my legacy. That is where I am going to leave an impact. This show is also part of that. Laya: Oh, it's such a gift, such a gift to so many. So yes, you're on that track, and that's your modern mindset. Anne: There you go. Laya: It's beautiful. Anne: There you go. And I think the gratitude and manifesting abundance really will help. Then you can get in the booth and perform. Like too many people I think just run into the booth and just audition, audition, audition. And there's no like set ritual maybe that gets them into a good mindset. I know that if, at the end of the day, if I have an audition that comes in, and I've been stressed out, oh my goodness, I have to really think about it. Laya: You can hear it. Anne: It so affects our voice. Oh my goodness. Laya: Yes. Anne: Every tiny little thing. Laya: Think about it, think about it. You're delivering vibration. Anne: Yup, yup. Laya: You're an amplified source right into somebody's eardrum. Anne: Exactly. Laya: If you aren't coming from an emotional point, as my coach Nancy Wolfson would say, from the right emotional point -- Anne: Oh my goodness, yes. Laya: -- it starts with you! Then your listener is going to hear it or feel it. They may not be able to associate it, but they are absolutely going to be able to transmit that. Anne: Oh my goodness. Yes, absolutely. Laya: For me -- and I love that you talked about like, how do you approach the booth every day? I wanted to share just from my perspective what has changed for me. I was running and gunning. You know, I'm a full-time mom. Anne: Me too, yup. Laya: I dealt with a child homeschooling in a pandemic. It was gangbusters. It still is. There is a new normal level of anxiety that used to be my peak level. And so I've had to manage that. And I realized that when my bookings were dipping, it was because I wasn't showing up properly. And there was some frazzled months in there where -- Anne: Sure. Laya: -- Corona coaster -- and knock on wood, we still have been lucky enough not to have, um, contracted COVID here -- but that, the anxiety of the world and the weight of the world -- Anne: Oh my goodness, yes. Laya: -- those months in the booth and, and working and trying to maintain was heavy. And I knew that it was resonating -- Anne: Yeah. Laya: -- and it was why I wasn't booking. So I took a step back. And I started to focus my energy on me waking up earlier. Every morning, I do a Kundalini yoga practice with a Zoom coach, and it's a large group. Anybody can join. Well, maybe I'll send it out at some point, but it's amazing that. Anne: Yes. We'll put it our in our reference link. Laya: I love that. Anne: For the show. Laya: It's, it's breath work -- Anne: Yes. Laya: -- and body work -- Anne: Yes, yes, yes. Laya: -- not only helps you ground down, but also gives your lungs, your vocal cords, your breath, more space in your body to really flow. And then I find that the tone, the timbre of my voice after a 40-minute session where my body is stretching, and I'm breathing, and I mentally and emotionally getting grounded, is so much richer. Anne: Oh yeah, absolutely. Laya: It's so much more connected. Then I get my kid to school, and you go for a walk, and I get some nature. I say, you know, breathe that fresh air in. I can feel it viscerally. And then I come to the booth with a nice, you know -- Anne: Right. Laya: -- and not everybody has that availability where you have that flexibility or that time or those resources, but whatever that is to you is so important to come to your practice every day. Anne: Well, having worked with students for a number of years there is -- and especially in narration work, a lot of narration work -- I think that narration, number one, you have to keep the focus and the engagement for even longer than let's say 30 or 60 seconds. Laya: Sure. Anne: And it's interesting because some people think, "well, I'm just narrating. I'm going to just" -- everything together put together is a creation, right? You've got video. Maybe you're narrating for that video, but depending on what you're doing, let's say if you're teaching, if you're doing e-learning, or if it's a corporate narration, which is not so much a documentary style, but it's a different style where you are connecting with a potential client and doing a soft sell, every single piece of work or that you do, or every word on that page has meaning. And if you are not completely focused in understanding that meaning and taking that, and being able to tell a story, taking that and be able to emotionally connect with your listener, that takes a ton of focus. And it is so -- Laya: And stamina. Anne: Oh my goodness, yes. And it is so evident when you are stressed. It is so evident when you are not connected to the copy. And there's so much to say about being connected to the copy, to be able to tell that story, and becoming almost lost in telling the story, where it then no longer is about what your voice sounds like. And if you're listening to what your voice sounds like, that is taking up all of your brain power to not be able to tell a story. And that's what our job is. Our job is to tell that story in a meaningful and an engaged way. And if we are not mentally there, if we're stressed, if we're any type of heightened, I would say emotion, we are not able to properly do our jobs. Laya: Yeah. And I think, you know, to speak on that, some of the ways, and I'd love to hear your feedback on what you do as well, but I think to stay clear, confident, and committed and maintain your sanity and your peace of mind in this industry -- because as we mentioned in our last episode, you know, if you're an introvert, and maybe this is your calm, and this is the perfect job for you. I'm an extrovert. So talking to myself by myself all day, uh, I need some reassurance along the way. So I think one of the important things to create for yourself is a mastermind group or a group of people, or even just an individual within the industry that's -- Anne: Sure. Laya: -- maybe at the same point you are. Um, my friend Kelly Buttrick, uh, often talks about the compass and finding your north star, finding someone that you can reach up to that is maybe in the next level that you would like to be as a -- Anne: So important. Laya: -- little bit of a mentor. Right? But then also find someone to yourself that you can also share some information to, so you're not only receiving, but you're giving, right? Anne: Absolutely. Laya: Like you do every day, you give on this podcast, you give as a coach. But even as the single solo preneur, I think it's so important, which she said is so important, it's always stuck with me this compass mentality, because then you've got somebody on your east and your west that are right on your level that you can commiserate with, check-in with say, you know, I'm really not feeling this. I'm self-doubt whatever, how are you doing? They can pump you up. And I have found this industry to be so giving in that way that I hope that we can inspire everyone to find their compass, their mastermind, their group. I have a group of talent that we came together because of Kelly over the pandemic called the Gnomies. And it's just a funny name because there was a, a gnome troll in a picture. Anyway, there's nine of us that have come together on Zoom once a week that just talk. And we don't even necessarily talk about the industry. It's more of a gut check to see how's everybody's doing -- Anne: Yup. Laya: -- in their isolated room. You know? Anne: It's like a water cooler, where y'all get together and talk. Laya: It's so important that we create those for ourselves. That's part of the modern mindset. It's that you don't have to do this alone. You know, mental health, mental, emotional health is so important. It is everything. And I think it's a little underrated how that's discussed in the voiceover-- Anne: Well -- Laya: -- community -- Anne: Absolutely. Laya: -- health and maintaining that health. Anne: And let's just focus on the word, that this is something that we do in our booth alone. And that right there, just think of the word that we do this alone, we're isolated. And right there is where we need to just stop and understand and realize that it's okay to reach out to others in the industry. We need to have that water cooler. We need to have that experience where, even if we're not talking about the industry, we're just talking, we're communicating, we're engaging with one another to have that human experience, which helps us to do our jobs better, because I think completely isolating yourself in the booth, whether you're an introvert or an extrovert, right, I think we all still need that connection -- Laya: Oh, sure. Anne: -- to be able to, to function really, we need that feedback. And I love the accountability group. I love just having a group that you can get together with, you know, on a weekly basis and -- or whatever timeframe you guys have. I mean, I've been a part of accountability groups for years, and it's a wonderful, wonderful way to get all those questions that you have and self doubt that you have in your brain that, "oh my God, I'm not doing this right, or how do I even do this? Am I," there's always the questions that I get. And even from students, like, you know, if you're a coach, a lot of times, part of that is a mental lesson too. If, you know, students are not feeling confident or they're like, do I have what it takes? I can't tell you how many times people have asked that of me. Laya: Sure. Anne: Do I have what it takes? And that is such an involved question. Um, you know, it's just, there's no one answer. Do you have what it takes? It starts from inside you. Laya: Yeah. Anne: That's a big part of that and a modern mindset. Laya: I totally agree with you. And a lot of people have asked me, well, I'm just starting out. I don't know anybody in the street. And I want to give you two tips on how to create an accountability group or a buddy in the industry. And these are some of the things that have worked for me because we are so isolated, especially during a pandemic. I have found that, you know, luckily I was fortunate enough to align myself with some talent before we all got shut down, and I just kindly and conscientiously cheered them on on social media. I would follow up with them. I would not be asking or needing anything from them. I would just be their cheerleader, just like you would want to nurture and finesse a new boyfriend or love interest or girlfriend or a client. You know, you're just cheering them on on social media. The other thing I have found is that if you are in some workout groups, whether they're local in your area, or even everyone's coming in from all over, because everything is virtual. You know, use that Zoom group to your advantage, cheer the person on that you are finding the most similarity with and the most opposite talent from, you know, somebody that's your polar opposite, so you don't have that competition feeling or what have you. And then message them privately in the Zoom where you can, you know, chat with other people, and let them know what a great job they're doing. Anne: Absolutely. Laya: It's going to make somebody else -- Anne: Yup. Laya: -- feel amazing in those very nerve-wracking Zoom sessions when everyone's staring at you doing your reading. Anne: Absolutely. Laya: And also create some camaraderie. And then, you know, maybe before the session closes, say, hey, would you mind if we connect on social? I love what you're doing. I want to continue to stay in touch. Some of my best industry relationships are people I have never met in person. Anne: Absolutely. Laya: It's because we cheer each other on on social media. I like what they're doing because social media, I mean, hello, that's a whole other conversation we're going to get into. Anne: Well, I want to talk a little bit about that. While I think the good in the social media and the, and the support, I also think we need to be very careful about social media too -- Laya: Definitely. Anne: -- because that could also be part of the mindset that may or may not contribute to a healthy -- Laya: May not be positive. Anne: Exactly. Laya: For sure, Anne, for sure. Anne: Yup. Laya: There's so much comparison out there. It is very easy to take a break from your day, scroll your -- Anne: Imposter syndrome. Laya: -- and decide -- yes -- that you are either not cut out for this, or why are all these other people getting all these other gigs -- because you know, love it or hate it. You got to put yourself out there and show your accomplishments. I feel like it can be both tacky and also self-serving. Anne: I agree with that. Laya: So it's another conversation of how it's presented. Anne: That's another episode. That's another episode. Laya: Definitely. I smell another episode. Anne: Yup. Laya: But I think it's important to then -- so my pivot to that is instead of, again, scarcity mindset, approaching your social platforms and your digital device with this, "why aren't I getting it mindset?" Be like, my gosh, she sounded great there. I loved what she did with that copy. Perfect voice for that. Anne: Right. Laya: And let them know, let them know, because that comes from a place of gratitude. If you are a true champion of women and of voices and voice work and storytelling and this industry, raise people up, don't put them down. Anne: Absolutely. Laya: Don't -- if you've got nothing good to say, keep on scrolling, but don't let that sit and fester in your, in your insides. You got to let somebody know that, you know, you don't know. They're hiding behind their post too. You know, they are, they're talking themselves out -- Anne: Absolutely. Laya: It's, it's crazy, right? You're only putting your best self forward, but if you can cheer someone on -- Anne: Or, or not! Laya: Right, right. Anne: Right? Sometime you're not putting your best -- sometimes people are responding, and they're not putting their best selves forward. Laya: I have seen this too. Anne: Yes. Laya: There's another topic, but I think those were some of the ways that I was able to create community when there was no opportunity to do so. And, and those little things we can all do, and you see it, and then it becomes a ripple effect. And you notice the people that are then coming back to you, and you're getting a little bit of a boost when you needed it most and you didn't even know it. So there you go. Anne: You know, for all the people that complained about Zoom during the pandemic, and you know, there were lots of struggles with it, for schools and that sort of thing, I will tell you, Zoom is the one thing that saved me in that pandemic -- Laya: Yeah, absolutely. Anne: -- so that I can connect with my family -- Laya: Yeah. Anne: -- which is like 3000 miles away. Laya: Sure. Anne: -- Zoom is what helped me. Well, at least I was able to connect. And actually, if you've gone to the conferences that have been virtual, I have to say, I'm pleasantly surprised at the value of the networking that you can get from a virtual -- I'm not saying it's better than being in person, but I am saying that in the event that you cannot be there in person, it does bring you -- Laya: Yeah, yeah. Anne: -- for me, it brings me a closeness that is better than not necessarily having any communication whatsoever. Laya: Yeah, absolutely. Anne: So I think that it's, I think that it's so important what you're saying about lifting others up. And if you have nothing good to say, walk away, I mean, really that is -- Laya: Yeah. Anne: -- you know? Laya: Absolutely. And it doesn't mean you need to reply to every inquiry -- Anne: Oh my goodness, yes. Laya: -- on every Facebook page, because let me tell you, I've muted most of those. I just don't feel like it's beneficial or really worth my time or value to contribute when there's so many opinions. I thought -- I saw a great meme that, uh, Karin Gilfry put up about, uh, the typical voiceover social media response and the, all the characters involved. It's so true. We'll have to look it up and re, repost it at some point. But it's interesting. I find that through those conferences, through Zoom workouts, through even back channel DMs, social media messages to people, that's where some of the most rich relationship building I've been able to foster, and it really can feel you for the good, if you shift your perspective and come from a place of gratitude and abundance, instead of scarcity, and comparison. Anne: You know I'm going to say one thing, actually, that you pointed out, you know, on the back channels, you know, in the messenger and the texting. I think there's a lot to be said for maybe a truer engagement happening on those channels, where I think it's good that we have that, because a lot of times you can look at posts, and then you form your own opinion and you may -- or if you decide not to, to read it, but yet it stays with you in either a good or a bad way. You have those interactive channels that you can then communicate. And I think those are kind of like little lifelines, to be honest. Laya: I agree. Anne: In terms of, if you see a post that is upsetting to you, you can turn to that person on your compass. I love the compass idea. And it can be something that can maybe, you know, save your mental state from going awry, and it can be -- Laya: Yeah, a little gut check. Anne: -- yeah, it can be a great, a great way. So always have, I think, more so than the channels technically, make sure you have those people there that you can lean on to help you with your mental health. And I think that, you know, talking today about the modern mindset, coming from a place of gratitude to begin with, manifesting abundance, and having those people in your channel, having the support group, is so, so important to really starting, continuing and maintaining a modern mindset. Yeah. Laya: I love it. Anne: So great episode, Laya. Again, I'm so thrilled that we get to talk again. Laya: Thank you. Same here, Anne. Anne: I love really delving deep into this topic, and we've got a lot of great stuff coming up, BOSSes. So make sure that you keep tuning in every week with Laya and myself. Laya: Thank you. Anne: Yeah, I'm going to give a great, big shout-out to the technology that that allows us to bring this to you. And that is ipDTL. You too can connect like BOSSes. Find out more at ipdtl.com. You guys, have an amazing week, and let's manifest abundance and show gratitude and work on our modern mindsets this week. So you guys, have a wonderful week. We'll see you next week. Take care. Bye! Laya: Take care. >> 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.com 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.

We are living in weird times. Everyone has to watch their back in a way never seen before. What's ok today isn't tomorrow. What was ok 20 years ago isn't ok twenty minutes from now. Navigating the waters of corporate America has never been more challenging. Companies big and small are going to have to […]

Boss's Month October is Boss's Month so let's hear from some bosses at Benefit! For “Break Rules with Wit and Wisdom” REM Jessica Owens interviews Director of Education Courtney Reyes-Sorah about how her previous Bosses have inspired her to always lead with people first, even if it means breaking the rules just a little bit. In this month's “Problem Solving with Courage and Creativity,” SVP, Global Product & Service Innovation Kate Helfrich  joins REM LeAnne Stack and shares the best and most challenging parts of Innovation at Benefit. Tune in to hear her expert top tips on how to overcome roadblocks in your own creative projects & how to work best with your team to let them shine. In “Make Real Connections,” Senior Manager Angela Szram goes full Garden State with her boss SVP Sales and EDU Denine Pappalardo. They dig into secret talents, Tomato Pie and all things being a New Jersey Boss (not Springsteen). Denine talks about how her unconventional entrance into the cosmetics industry is the her secret talent to understanding both sides of this industry, creative and business. *If you would like to submit a question or nominate someone for the “Make Real Connections” section of the podcast or have any questions you would like answered in any segment, please email education@benefitcosmetics.com OR DM us at @benebabeuniversity on Instagram or Facebook. Please, rate, review & subscribe to BenefitLIFE on iTunes, on spotify, OR http://benefitlife.libsyn.com  

Slim gets called to the bosses office and Lazlo had a great weekend giving Nick a hard time during football! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Words matter! How you describe your product business is one way to direct how you show up within your brand. In this snippet from our Bosses & Breakfast show (every Wednesday at 11 am ET on our https://www.facebook.com/theproductboss/videos/bosses-breakfast/2560210324272601/?extid=SEO---- (Facebook) and https://www.instagram.com/theproductboss/?hl=en (Instagram) pages), we decode how the power of language helps attach meaning to your business goals to navigate the busiest time of year.  Brought to you by the https://www.theproductboss.com/shop1in5?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=shop_1_in_5_pledge&utm_content=august_2_podcast (Shop 1 in 5™ Pledge)! Commit to making 1 in 5 of your purchases from a small business, whether online or offline. The https://www.theproductboss.com/shop1in5?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=shop_1_in_5_pledge&utm_content=august_2_podcast (Shop 1 in 5™ Pledge) is a way to make an impact together when (and where) it matters most. Join us and take the pledge today! Resources: Watch this entire episode of Bosses & Breakfast on https://www.facebook.com/jacqueline.minna.94/videos/397640921738925 (Facebook) or https://www.instagram.com/tv/CUaWF6TIJFm/ (Instagram).  https://shop1in5.com/get-listed/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=get_listed&utm_content=oct_2021_podcast (Join the Shop 1 in 5 Small Business Shopping Directory. Get listed now!) https://holidaycontentideas.com/101-holiday-2021?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=holiday_content_ideas&utm_content=oct_2021_podcast (101+ HOLIDAY CONTENT IDEAS). Beyond the Discount is YOUR shortcut to creating a marketing strategy for the 2021 holiday season so that you can create content that successfully resonates with your customers during the busiest season of the year and gets you loyal customers that actually buy from you! The first ever holiday content marketing plan designed to help you grow your customer base and increase your product sales – without spending a single dollar on ads! Check out and shop from hundreds of small businesses from the https://shop1in5.com/shop-the-directory/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=small_biz_shopping_directory&utm_content=oct_2021_podcast (Small Business Shopping Directory). It's the go to directory to discover, support, and shop small businesses all in one place. If you're a six to seven-figure business and would like to be considered for https://www.theproductboss.com/mastermind?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=mastermind&utm_content=oct_2021_podcast (The Product Boss Mastermind), apply now, we have limited spots available. Connect: Website: https://www.theproductboss.com/ (theproductboss.com) Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theproductboss/ (@theproductboss)

Photo:   "The Bosses of the Senate", a cartoon by Joseph Keppler depicting corporate interests—from steel, copper, oil, iron, sugar, tin, and coal to paper bags, envelopes, and salt—as giant money bags looming over the tiny senators at their desks in the Chamber of the United States Senate CBS Eye on the World with John Batchelor CBS Audio Network @Batchelorshow 1/2: Reawakening Antitrust; & what is to be done?  @RichardAEpstein https://www.hoover.org/research/labor-markets-dont-need-antitrust-cudgel

Last week, the ABC's Four Corners program aired an explosive episode in which serious allegations of bullying and harassment were levelled at former CEO of Sony Music Australia, Denis Handlin. For many, it has raised the question of workplace culture in Australia, and what laws and policies are or should be in place to protect employees at all levels. The Quicky speaks to an industrial relations expert and hears some of your stories to find out what is really going on in offices and other sites across the country, and what we can all do to bring an end to workplace bullying. CREDITS  Host/Producer: Claire Murphy Executive Producer: Siobhán Moran-McFarlane Audio Producer: Ian Camilleri Guest: Diana Kelly - Associate Professor in the School of Humanities and Social Inquiry at the University of Wollongong, and an expert in industrial relations, employment and workplace behaviour Subscribe to The Quicky at... https://mamamia.com.au/the-quicky/ CONTACT US Got a topic you'd like us to cover? Send us an email at thequicky@mamamia.com.au Mamamia acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land we have recorded this podcast on, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures. Support the show: https://www.mamamia.com.au/mplus/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Titans: Chris Broussard with blatant stupidity on Live TV embarrassed himself & his bosses Powered by BetMGM.com

This week: Allison and Morgan will be covering the latest response from the Department of Justice in the ongoing battle against the Texas abortion ban; a preliminary report from Biden's Commission on SCOTUS reform is out; Biden is redefining the role of ICE; plus Comings and Goings. Follow your hosts on Twitter: Allison Gill https://twitter.com/allisongill Morgan Stringer http://twitter.com/mostring Andrew Torrez https://twitter.com/patorrezlaw https://twitter.com/aisle45pod Want to support this podcast and get it ad-free and early? Go to: https://www.patreon.com/aisle45pod Promo Codes: Their top-notch service has earned Policygenius thousands of 5-star reviews across Trustpilot and Google. Head to http://Policygenius.com to get started right now. The Feals Customer Service team is dedicated to making sure you get the best use of your CBD. Start feeling better with Feals! Become a member today by going to http://Feals.com/CLEANUP and you'll get 50% off your first order with free shipping. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Work Matters is a quick, daily dose of what's going on in the job market and how it affects you and your career journey. Hosted by Ken Coleman, #1 bestselling author and host of Ramsey Network's The Ken Coleman Show,  you'll get a practical take on topics like burnout, today's most in-demand job skills, how to deal with a deadbeat boss and more. The work you do matters––it's time to make the most of it. For a full-length daily podcast, subscribe to The Ken Coleman Show.

VO is a marathon, not a sprint. Anne and series co-host Laya Hoffman kick off the Modern Mindset series with an honest look at the voice business from a fresh perspective. They discuss learning from industry trailblazers, mental and physical health in the booth, and the financial reality of VO. More at https://voboss.com/introducing-modern-mindset-part-1-with-laya-hoffman Transcript >> It's time to take your business to the next level, the BOSS level! These are the premiere 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. Anne: Hey everyone. Welcome to the VO BOSS podcast. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and today I am thrilled to welcome special guest cohost Laya Hoffman to the show. Laya is an Atlanta-based voice, actor and podcaster with over 20 years on the mic. She specializes in commercial, corporate, promos and others short form audio projects for amazing brands like BMW, Google, Amazon, AAA, Kind snacks, and much, much more. She's a former marketing exec -- woo-hoo, we love marketing -- nightclub DJ and creative agency lead. She brings a modern minded approach to business. So Laya, thank you so much for joining me on this special guest series on modern mindset. Laya: Thank you, Anne. It is such a pleasure to be here. I am a huge fan, always have been since we met years ago at, uh, VO Atlanta, and I've loved your show and all the quality content and the information you've provided to the industry. So it's an honor to be here. It's really nice to be able to continue our conversations on the mic. Anne: Well, thank you. And I'm excited because this is going to be a really cool series. We're not just here for one shot. So BOSS listeners, you're in for a treat while we explore all things modern mindset in our voiceover business and our entrepreneurship. So with that being said, Laya, you've been in the industry a long time. So I think having a modern mindset, especially when you have so much experience in the industry, it takes some effort, and it takes like a really good, focused mindset in order to remain successful in the industry. So tell us a little bit about your experience and how it's led you into this modern mindset for your voiceover business. Laya: Yeah, sure things. You know, I always say I've been on the mic for 20 years because I went to school for radio broadcasting at Columbia in Chicago. And I was on the air for many years. And then because of that, you know, 20 years ago, voiceover looked a lot different. It was us radio jocks, just doing the ads that were given to us by, you know, clients in the sales team for the radio. I didn't even realize that's what I was doing was voice work, right, voiceover, and I loved it because I loved storytelling. I love delivering somebody else's message and also being able to play with different tones and textures and deliveries and things like that. It also came at a time when I was on the radio, I came out of a very dramatic situation that took my voice away from me. So it was a self-healing revelation when I could use my voice in a quiet room, and I could find the strength again, and that to me was equal parts, healing and empowering, and part of my growth journey and my own personal work in therapy coming out of that situation. So to me, voice work always meant something different maybe because it was taken from me. So I never took it for granted until it was taken away from me, and then to come back and realize that power in our voice and that people were listening meant something kind of different. And so I think maybe I had a unique introduction to voiceover and then also not realizing that there was a job in that. And of course, if you're not on top of your game in radio, there's not a whole lot of stability in that. Anne: Yeah, yeah. Laya: At least there wasn't in my media market station. Anne: Sure. Laya: And so after radio, I continued to voice projects for clients just by word of mouth for about the next 17 years off and on throughout my career, throughout all my travel. A few years back, of course, I owned a creative agency with a partner of mine that had to do very forward-thinking ideas for big brands in order to get the engagement, and get people listening, and get people to interact with their brand on many different levels. So it was experimental marketing at its best. And so with that forward-thinking approach to brand work, I had to get very creative and pay attention to what brands needed and what their consumers needed to get the traction that those brands needed to see their ROI. And so that was a unique perspective. Fast forward a few years, I became the vice president of global marketing for a haircare company and for many years traveled the world is seeing what consumers and brands alike needed to really buy into loyalty and brand identity. And that gave me another unique perspective. When it came to social media, I was managing teams that would manage brand social media, the voice of brands across multiple platforms, and that had a unique voice. And all throughout this time, I continued to do voice work and projects for people that I knew. And I still didn't realize that there was a career in voiceover, 'cause I was just running and gunning, but I was doing it and making money this entire time, very low level. It wasn't until actually the conference that I met you at VO Atlanta a few years ago that I realized there was really something here, and I was burnt out on corporate. Anne: Really? Wow. Laya: Yeah. I didn't really realize or pay attention to the industry that is voiceover work ,and the craft, and just the amount of complexity and nuances that go into being a voice actor. Anne: Oh yeah. Laya: And I have an eight year old daughter now, but at the time she was four, and I was just gone a whole lot. And it became very apparent to me that I needed to be present for her, and raising a young woman, a young girl in this day and age meant that I needed to show up and be present and be my best self, but also be a positive role model for her growth. And knowing the pain of my past, I wanted to make sure that from a very early age, she knew that she could use her voice, stand up, be heard and use her voice for good. And so -- Anne: I love that. Laya: Yeah, thank you. Anne: Yeah. And I love that you have a podcast with her. Laya: I do. Anne: That's so -- Laya: Yeah. Anne: Yeah. That's amazing. I mean, that just is one thing that really struck me about you. And I thought what a wonderful way to really involve her in such a wonderful way, to have her believe in herself and have a voice and have that encouragement. That's amazing. Laya: Yeah, it's called, She Sounds Like Me. We're in our, we're going on our third season here in the fall, but she was a part of the creation when we started. She was six and she, believe it or not, had a hand in everything from picking the music bed to helping -- Anne: Wow. Laya: -- craft the colors and the logo design. I had her with us the entire process, which was entirely grassroots, bootstrapping your own podcast, as you all know. It's quite a -- Anne: Oh yeah. Laya: -- quite a feat, maybe a no -- an entirely different conversation. Anne: We should talk about that. Laya: Yes, for sure. Anne: In another episode -- Laya: For sure. Anne: -- we will absolutely discuss podcasting, for sure. Laya: So yeah, it was it's been a -- it's been an honor to have her along for the ride and help grow and develop our conversations that range from everything from bullying to systemic racism. So the podcast is its own thing, but going back to, you know, this modern mindset approach, it was because I stepped in and committed fully to voice acting, when I realized I was missing a huge part of my life with her. I got burnt out on corporate and it had to come to an end. I ripped the bandaid off, and I said, I am all in on becoming a voice actor. But from the beginning I took a very brick and mortar approach to that. And what I mean by that -- Anne: Sure. Laya: -- is I knew that the investment was going to be significant, and that our family may take a hit financially. Anne: Yeah, yeah. Laya: My husband had to be on board. My daughter needed to be on board, and I needed to fully be present and ready to learn, absorb, and invest, and be patient -- Anne: Oh goodness, yes. Laya: -- every bit of the way. Anne: Yeah. Laya: Because you hear so many stories of people that don't realize that from the beginning. And it really is a -- is an eyeopening thing to understand just how much investment financially, energetically and -- Anne: Oh my goodness, yes. Laya: -- your entire household has to be to take this seriously and really get it going from the beginning. Anne: And I think that that is really important. I mean, myself, I remember when I jumped from corporate into full-time entrepreneur, a voice actor and it just, it's a scary thing. And I think there are lots of lessons learned along the way. But yeah, you absolutely have to be ready to put in the work, because it's not something -- Laya: No. Anne: -- that happens overnight, that is for darn sure. You know, that overnight success that takes you 10 years. And I think that having a modern mindset absolutely helps you because it is a business. It's not just about your voiceover in the studio. I mean, building the business really encompasses so much more than just the performance acting part of it. And I know that when I first started, myself, in this industry, I mean, I had to have the absolute support of my husband and just say, I knew we were going to take a hit income-wise as a family and we had to be prepared for that. Laya: Absolutely, and so did we. And so, you know, I've heard stories from some of the most iconic voice talent out there that say, you know, you can expect to start making money after like the second or third year, and money, I mean like 40, $50,000 a year. Anne: Yeah. Laya: And so just, you know, hold onto your hat. It's going to be a long process. Anne: And it might take longer. Laya: And it might take even longer than that. Anne: Than that even. Laya: But I have to be in with all due respect, and for those icons that have taught me so much like yourself, you know, I think it's that modern mindset and that laser focused approach that I brought to my business and the experience of coming in fresh to an industry that has been so well-established, and so many incredibly talented people have led the way, and provided all this rich education, and kind of let me see behind the glass to share their perspectives and the gifts that they gave me. I think being able to have a laser-focused approach in that modern mindset is what got me on a fast track to that high success trajectory very early on. So -- Anne: I want to say 20 years, right? I mean, we've evolved so much as an industry. Laya: Of course. Anne: And everything has changed in terms of -- like, when you said, I didn't even know voiceover was a thing, I didn't either. And I started doing telephony at my company, you know. Everybody needs somebody to do the voicemail. Laya: Sure, always did that too. Anne: So that was how I, yeah, that's how I got involved in it. I didn't even know it was a thing. And back then, I mean, the Internet was just kind of becoming a thing, and there wasn't as much information out there when beginning in the voiceover industry. So there wasn't a lot of people. It was very isolating in the beginning, and you couldn't really like, well, who do I ask? How do I give somebody a quote? I don't even know how to ask somebody to do that because there really was no method. There was no Internet communication. There were no Facebook groups. There were -- you know, now it's crazy where there's all this electronic media where we can look for help or search for help on how to do something. But back then it was, it was crazy. And having a modern mindset or at least having some experience, I think out in the world beyond voiceover probably helped you a lot in terms of buckling down and really giving it a go and making this a business. Laya: Absolutely, Anne. And you touched on so many things I want to come back to. What I noticed is, and I do say, of course, I have been working and getting paid on the microphone for 20 years, but I've only been full-time for the last three. Anne: Yeah. Laya: And I really didn't consider this a career probably until the last year and a half, when I was able to sustain and make this -- Anne: Sure. Laya: -- as a contributing member of my family's financial pie. So it is, it is um -- while I say that, I also want to give credit to all of those people, um, that have led the way and paved the way for helping us people that have come in newly with fresh eyes in the last couple of years. There's, there's so much to be gleaned from your experience and your history and fellow voice actors who have paved the way and led to so many coachings, to so many seminars, now that you can get information in so many different ways. And it's such a beautiful thing. Anne: Right? Laya: It can be an overwhelming thing, but -- Anne: Yes. I think that's the other part of it -- Laya: Yes. Anne: -- the other part of it, absolutely. So what information do you believe, do you trust or what information is correct? Laya: And who's valid and who's really in it for the right reasons? Anne: Yup. Laya: And who's not really trying to sell you? Anne: Exactly. Laya: And so there were some interesting hurdles I came across early on in the new version of my voice over career. So, and I talk about kind of where I'm at now. It's really what I've learned in the last two or three years, and taking the experience that I had in my previous roles and applying it through this fresh lens -- because what I think is interesting, so many of my colleagues that have long established careers in voiceover, you know, had to learn those things from the ground up and had to build those processes from the ground up where some of us newer talent comes in able to take these resources and kind of fast track. The other difference though, I notice, is that so many of my fellow colleagues that are more established have a harder time converting their pre-established mindset and then shifting it -- Anne: Absolutely, yup. Laya: -- into this modern mindset. And that's exactly what we're here to talk about over -- Anne: Yup. Laya: -- the next couple of episodes. Anne: You've hit the nail on the head right there. And, you know, there's something to be said for being in an industry for a certain amount of years, but yet I think the hardest thing for people is to evolve along with industry. And it's not just the voiceover industry -- Laya: Every industry. Anne: -- it's just the world today. You know, I think technology has had such a huge impact on all aspects of the world that, you know, I think in order to evolve along with it, it's an important part of your, of your business. Laya: Absolutely. Anne: And modern mindset in terms of being able to evolve, what are the new trends, what's happening now? We're now starting to see, and especially anybody that's been in a business for so long, you start to see where the younger generation is now the people who are hiring you, the people who are directing you -- Laya: Absolutely. Anne: -- and it's important for you to be able to, how shall I say, step out of a bubble, step out of that bubble that you've been in, maybe, for, you know, so many years to be able to evolve and understand where the market is going, and how you can continue to serve the market in a way that allows you to maintain and still remain successful in your career. Laya: And be an innovative and meet those people where they are -- Anne: Yup. Laya: -- because that's really the difference. That's why we see the shift in the pay-to-plays. It's because those new CDs and the new copywriters, those people either haven't been trained or aren't willing to adapt the old school ways of doing things. They want to click a button. Anne: Sure. Laya: They want to, you know, hit their search bar. Anne: Yeah, absolutely. Laya: They don't want to talk to anyone. They want to have options at their fingertips. They also don't understand why this person who talks for a living gets paid more than they do. Anne: Sure, absolutely. Laya: You know? So there's all those things you have to really like put into your brain wave about how to meet these people, not only your clients, but the people that are hiring us in casting and things like that where they are. And then also how to position yourself as a brand, as a thought leader, how do you approach your social, your messaging out there? And even in the way we communicate and just the language that we use in short form -- Anne: Oh my goodness. Laya: -- brevity, right? That they want to hear in your email correspondence or whatever your messaging is. Anne: I have to give you like two words that I heard the other day. And I was like, oh man. And I, I always consider myself, you know, I try to be really on the edge of everything. I try to really keep up with things, and I heard "paid acquisitions." And I was like, what, what is paid acquisitions? And I'm like, it's marketing. It is, you know, Facebook ads, Google ads. And I was like, oh, so that's the term the youngins are using these days. Right? But yeah, trying to just keep up on that because I'm going to be interviewing this really wonderful, wonderful, strong female entrepreneur. And, you know, she's all about training people on paid acquisitions. And so I'm like -- Laya: And you're like, what? Anne: Okay, I had to Google, I had to Google it. Laya: Oh, that's code for marketing. Check. Anne: Yes, exactly. I gotcha. Laya: Yeah. Anne: So. You know. Laya: There's so many layers to it, you know. It's really -- and, and, and I don't have all the answers. I just know that through observing some of the most well-respected voice actors in the industry and creatives and agents and managers, and having such an incredibly giving industry, I've been able to absorb such quality information and then pass it through this modern minded filter, regurgitated, and seen some incredible success that was unexpected. And people often ask me, well, how are you compartmentalizing your time? How do you communicate? What are you doing for wellness? What, what about those pay-to-plays? How come you're successful on there? But you also have management like, oh, how do we approach our taxes, our finances? How are we -- Anne: Sure. Laya: -- you know, there's so many layers of it. And so, hence, this is why our conversation has kind of come up, because I think the more we know and the more we can share, the more I can give back to those that have given to me, the more we can work symbiotically or work from a place of gratitude together to grow this industry from a 360 approach. Right? Anne: Sure, sure. Laya: And so that we can, all we can all learn because gosh knows I've, I've learned so much from, from others. If I can even give one nugget of information back, uh, I will feel like I'm maybe contributing to the greater good of this industry. Anne: So I guess I want to ask, what would you consider the first step in getting yourself into a modern mindset for your business? Is there a first step, or is there multiple steps that you need to take to get yourself, keep yourself open to something like this? Laya: Yeah, that's a great, great question. I think I hear, you know, on the forums and things like that, Facebook groups, you hear a lot of people, you know, they want to jump right in with a demo and some coaching. And I think it's even before that, it's checking in with yourself. I always tell people, they're like, oh, so how do I get into voice acting? And, uh, you know, I got, I gotta -- get sign up at this -- no, hold up. What you first need to do is check in with yourself, and check in with your family, and check in with your support system, and your finances and where you are really aligned. Is this -- Anne: Oh my goodness. Yes. Laya: You know, I think that's the base of it because -- Anne: Finances! Laya: Yes, because -- Anne: I have to just, I have to echo that because -- Laya: Oh, for sure! Anne: Yes, you do have to mentally check in, check in with your support system, but finances is so important when you start on this journey. And I just want to back you up on that -- Laya: Absolutely. Anne: -- because you really can't endeavor to embark on a new career without any thought about financial stability, or if you have money to invest in, in establishing a business, so. Laya: Absolutely. If you're going into any profession, right, you've made the commitment to yourself. You want to be a doctor. You're going to make the commitment that you've got to pay for student loans. You're going to need at least eight years of college. It's going to take blood, sweat, and tears to get you there. But in the end, you will be a doctor. The same thing goes for being a voice actor. Now you can also stick your toe in the pond and just see if it's for you by taking an improv class or, you know, taking a local, a group class or something like that. Sure. That'll get you at least enough information to see if you want to make the commitment. But I think at the end of the day, you have to check in with yourself and see, am I all in? And I'm an all-in person. Anne: Yeah. Laya: I knew I was all in. So that brought a different set of questions or -- Anne: That's my personality too. Laya: Right. Right. Or are you half in? Anne: All or nothing. Laya: And you just want to check it out as a side gig, but just know that if you go in as a side gig, you still are not making money -- Anne: Well -- Laya: -- for a long time. Anne: -- what's interesting. Yeah. You know, what's interesting is they did something, right when in high school, you know, you had a career counselor. You had a guidance counselor in terms of career paths. And I really feel that voiceover was never one of those paths than anybody explained -- Laya: No. Anne: -- because it is, you know, and -- Laya: Sounds easy too, right? Anne: Everybody that looks to get into it, like you need to, you need to have that counseling. You need to find out what is this industry all about. Laya: Yeah. Anne: And what does it take to get into this industry and be able to succeed in it? And so I feel like there's a little bit of career counseling that needs to happen. And in that career counseling, there has to be a modern mindset factor. Right? Laya: Absolutely. And you have to kind of scrape away, and I know, there's a lot of incredible coaches out there, but they want to get right to reading copy. And I wish there was more of a push towards -- Anne: Introduction. Laya: Yeah, and saying just -- Anne: Here's, here's the industry. Laya: -- here's the reality because you can't get that from a Facebook post. You can get it from --a lot -- you can get a lot of opinions. Oh my gosh, there are some, right? But the reality is, and I would tell anybody like, this is no joke. This is not a sprint. This is for sure a marathon, no matter if you want to go full-time and you're going all in, or if you, even, if you want to think and consider this as a part-time hustle or a side side gig. I mean, either one of those things take a significant investment time, energy, and effort. And if there's any part of that, that you don't love, then just check yourself, and you know, maybe re-evaluate before you hemorrhage a lot of money because it really can add up fast. Anne: It can. And I, I'll tell you when I have people that I offer a free consult, that people, if they want to find out what it's like to get into the voiceover industry, and the first thing that I always say is like, look, I am not going to sugarcoat this for you. Laya: Right. Good for you. This is hard. Anne: And the thing of it is, it's not just about the voice and being in a booth and creating character voices and having fun. It is truly a business. And so there's a lot to be said for, you're going to have to not only have fun in the booth, but in the beginning, you're going to have to market yourself like crazy. And especially if I hear from people that are like, okay, I'm retiring. I want this to be for my retirement. I make sure, I'm like, look, you have to make sure you have, you have -- the whole finance -- I'm going back to the financial thing. Laya: Yeah. Anne: Right? You've got to have some financial backup because getting into this, there is an investment. It's not just, you know, obviously watching some YouTube videos and reading words. Laya: Yeah. Anne: So I'm always careful when people say they're looking to -- to support a family, especially a family. If there's children, I get really nervous. And I'm like, the first thing I'll tell them is that, look, this is hard. And it's, it's crazy competitive and make sure that you always have either an alternate piece of income that can help you support your family until you get that business underway. It's important. Laya: Absolutely. Absolutely. And so there's that gut check there that I think is important. You're asking earlier about what are the first steps. I think that first step is having a real conversation with yourself of like, are you just checking it out or are you all in? I knew enough to know that I was all in, and I needed to make -- I make a brace of changes when I do. I take big risks. And, uh, sometimes they pan out. Luckily this one did, but you know, my family had to be on board because there was going to be a time commitment -- Anne: Well, exactly. Laya: -- and a financial commitment. Anne: I was just gonna say, when you made that decision to go all in, you had done your prior research. You had educated yourself on the industry, right? And you talked it over with your support system, your family, to make sure that they were onboard with it as well. And I think that that's important. Laya: Absolutely, absolutely. Anne: So important to have that support. Laya: And the second thing I did that I don't think we are aware enough of, but it is so key -- and I totally attribute some of my success to it -- is checking in with your body and making sure that you're in a healthy space, both state of mind and emotionally and physically. Because this is far more demanding, physically, energetically, mentally and emotionally than we talk about honestly. I mean, I am a self-proclaimed extrovert and I am now choosing to talk to myself in a box for a living. It is highly introverted. There is very little pats on the back that you get. Nobody's cheering for you along the way, unless it's your family or your friends or your, you create a, you know, a support system in the voiceover community, which is incredible by the way. Anne: And -- Laya: That is a big part of it. Anne: Well yeah, and also because it is, so it is so much based in auditioning and rejection. Laya: Rejection, rejection -- Anne: Rejection. Laya: -- rejection. Anne: That's a whole mental mindset. In the beginning, I remember in the beginning, oh my goodness, like being in tears. First, I couldn't get the right sound out of my studio. I didn't have the ear, and somebody, I remember long time ago when I was first setting up my studio, I had submitted an audition, and they came back and they said, it sounds like you're talking in a tube. And I was mortified. I was mortified. I was like, oh my goodness. Like, I don't belong here. And there's that whole emotional mindset that was like, oh my God, I, I just, I shouldn't be here. You know, this is maybe not for me. Laya: That's exactly right, Anne. And if you're not strong, and committed, and confident in yourself, or at least confident in knowing that this is going to have some low moments, and you realize openly that it is mmm a lot based on a lot of rejection or at least no reassurance. Right? I will say that, like you are just sending things out to the ether. Maybe you'll get some feedback one day, good or bad. Anne: Yeah. Laya: Um, but most likely bad first, you know, that takes a hit to our ego. And, um, and then it really makes you question things. Anne: Sure. Laya: So I think, I think just along with checking in with your family and about finances and commitment and what level of commitment you're willing to bring to this, uh, to this career or this idea of, uh, you know, a side hustle or this industry, you really have to see, are you healthy body, mind, soul, and spirit to withstain and go the distance because it can crush you if you're not. Anne: Sure. Laya: And that's something I don't think we talk enough about. With mental health being at the forefront of so many things these days, it is a hundred percent. Anne: Absolutely. Laya: And I'm not great at it either, but I take steps every day to make sure that I can arrive to the booth, to the mic, to the studio, to my clients, and myself, and my family with a grounded sense of self by doing meditation, by doing yoga, by doing breath work, stretching, getting my feet in the soil, getting grounded every day before I come to this, because I know at the end of the day -- Anne: Absolutely. Laya: -- it can take the wind out of your sails. Anne: It is so about your mindset and your mentality for your performance as well. So not just for you in entering a business and being an entrepreneur, but also bringing a mindset to your performance that can really, that can really be something for your clients, right? That you can be that voice for them. You can elevate their brand. Laya: Yeah. Anne: Wow. I think that there is so -- we've got, we've got another episode. Laya: We've got a few, I think. Anne: -- on this mindset. Absolutely. So I'll tell you what, BOSSes, make sure to join us on our next episode, where we were going to continue this conversation on getting yourself into a modern mindset with Laya Hoffman. Laya, thank you so much -- Laya: Thank you, Anne. It's such a pleasure. Anne: -- for -- yeah. I'm so excited to have you for multiple episodes. Laya: Thank you. Anne: I just love it. 'Cause I just think this is an amazing conversation, and I think it's going to be super valuable to our listeners. So. Laya: Thank you so much. I'm super grateful for this. It's going to be a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to continuing to dig in. Anne: Yay. I'm going to give a great, big shout-out to our sponsor, ipDTL. You too can connect and talk like BOSSes. Find out more at ipdtl.com. You guys, have an amazing week, and we'll both see you next week. Bye. Laya: Bye-Bye. >> 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.com 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 new Small Business Shopping Directory is an all-in-one place for customers to shop, discover and support hundreds of small product businesses this holiday season and every day. A place for you to be visible to new customers. The Directory is ready for more small businesses, like yours, https://go.theproductboss.com/the-directory (to join). Resources: https://shop1in5.com/get-listed/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=get_listed&utm_content=oct_2021_podcast (Join the Shop 1 in 5 Small Business Shopping Directory. Get listed now) along with hundreds of small businesses - it's the go to directory to discover, support, and shop small businesses all in one place. Connect: Website: https://www.theproductboss.com/ (theproductboss.com) Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theproductboss/ (@theproductboss)

How do you make a good impression when leading a new team? What if you're younger than those you supervise, how do you earn credibility? And what time of day do you do your best work? It may not be when you think…that's all ahead now on Boss Better Now.

A new report in The Hill says Democratic Party leaders are upset with "longshot", outsider candidates raising lots of money when there are several seats in more winnable races to protect. But Boyd argues that this happens on the Republican side, too...and that party bosses picking and choosing the candidates is not a good idea. (Comments originally broadcast at the Utah Gives Back event at Highland Junior High School in Ogden.) See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode of By Any Means Necessary, hosts Sean Blackmon and Jacquie Luqman are joined by Kevin Bradshaw, Vice President of Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM) Local 252G in Memphis, Tennessee to discuss the Kellogg's strike and the corporate greed that sparked the strike, the conditions that Kellogg's workers faced as the company has raked in record profits during the pandemic, and the heightened importance of union membership amid the resurgence of workers struggles in different industries and places.In the second segment, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Rania Khalek, journalist with Breakthrough News and co-host of the Unauthorized Disclosure podcast to discuss the recent violence in Beirut sparked by US-supported and Saudi-funded right-wing Lebanese Forces who opened fire on an unarmed Hezbollah protest, the whitewashing of the conflict and the Lebanese Forces in the corporate media, the ever-present threat of sectarian violence built into the Lebanese political system, and the imperialist efforts to keep the Middle East weak.In the third segment, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Justin Williams, co-host of Red Spin Sports to discuss the resignation of Las Vegas Raiders coach Jon Gruden and the fallout of the investigation into the Washington Football Team, what remains to be revealed in the thousands of emails that have not been released, the vindication of Colin Kaepernick's criticism of the NFL's culture around race, the over-the-top jingoism and support for imperialism in sports, and Major League Baseball's insistence on spotlighting white players over players of color.Later in the show, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Maximillian Alvarez, Editor in Chief of the Real News Network and and host of the podcast “Working People" to discuss the great resignation and the conditions exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic that have contributed to mass resignations and labor demonstrations, the baseless claims that the capitalist class has deployed in an effort to misdirect the blame for labor shortages, the record profits that companies are earning while trying to squeeze more production out of workers for little pay and benefits and raising prices on consumers, and how an organized working class movement can channel the energy of this moment.

Kat's Anniversary Night, Cuddle Positions, & Bosses Day

I'm joined by Patch, the creator of the amazing biology YouTube channel TierZoo, to discuss how animals might beat some of the toughest, most iconic video game bosses out there!  Footnotes:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EqBX-Pmk6SpmRBxFIO6W_k8tflRskHjyumSu5k70PpM/edit?usp=sharing Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

It's no surprise to anyone that there are many different types of bosses. Some of them love being nurturing mentors, others are more of the tough-love type, and a few of them might even be full-blown sociopaths. In honor of National Boss Day, we've created a special episode where we deep dive into Surfing Corporate's Top 8 Not-So-Amazing Bosses, and offer survival strategies for to those who work each one of them. After their 20+ years of working in corporate, Aileen and Glenda open up to share their own pearls of wisdom and bits of trauma to help you succeed—or at least laugh—with whatever type of boss you happen to have.

"Tim Graham And Friends" brought to you by CTBK dishes on Bills over Chiefs, the Sabres getting started and slurs in sports.

What is a virtual being? Anne welcomes educator and entrepreneur Abran Maldonado to the show. They discuss diversifying the Ai landscape, cutting edge technology in schools, and working alongside Ai like a #VOBOSS. Plus, Virtual Being CLAiRA chimes in on what she thinks about robots taking voice actors' jobs. More at https://voboss.com/create-labs-ventures-with-abran-maldonado Transcript ​​>> It's time to take your business to the next level, the BOSS level! These are the premiere 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. Anne: Hey everyone. Welcome to the VO BOSS podcast, the AI and Voice series. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and today I'm truly honored to bring special guest Abran Maldonado, co-founder of Create Labs, a social impact AI developer and dev ambassador for OpenAI. Abran co-founded Create Labs Ventures to create new opportunities to the underserved community, to gain access to cutting edge technologies, and to help them enter the tech and media industries. He's also the creator of CLAiRA, an autonomous AI woman of color, with other intelligent virtual beings. And he also manages Verizon's 5G EdTech program, expanding 5G VR and AR solutions to hundreds of schools across the nation. ABran, thank you so much for joining me today. Abran: Thank you for having me. Appreciate being here. Anne: Absolutely. Well, first of all, as a former educator, I want to thank you for your service and absolutely love what you're doing for education in the community. So let's kind of get into it and tell me a little bit more about Create Labs. I'm excited to hear about it and how you got started with it. Abran: Absolutely. So I came into this idea as EdTech founder, a former educator, I was a middle school classroom teacher, uh, language arts out in Jersey City, still miss my kids very much. Anne: Yeah, I identify with that. Abran: Exactly. They're still my babies. Anne: Yep. Abran: And I see -- Anne: Watched them grew up. Abran: -- them all around on Facebook. Anne: Yup, mm-hmm. Abran: So I left the classroom and went -- well, previous that I actually worked in entertainment. Anne: Okay. Abran: So I spent a previous life, most of my twenties, in the entertainment industry, doing artist management and a bunch of other things. And then I got into education, started teaching, and then ended up going into a PhD program around urban education, culturally relevant learning, EdTech, and then started doing workshops with teachers to show them how to use student culture to better engage students in the classroom. Launched the light platform called New School that did very well. And then being a tech founder, launching a platform, although it was education based, I started to see that, man, it was very slim for people of color in that space. I was like, there wasn't a lot of us in that space. And then, so I dipped back into my, my entertainment network and reached out to a partner of my, uh, Grady. And I was like, look, man, you've been able to navigate some amazing spaces in the entertainment and media world. I've been able to navigate some spaces in the tech world, both as men of color, and we don't see enough of us out there. So we wanted to more of a pipeline and share more of those cheat codes to get into these spaces. And that was kind of like the beginning of Create Labs. The output, the services, the products have been pivoting and changing in year by year, but the mission has always been the same. Anne: Wow. That's amazing. Now Create Labs is a physical space as well as virtual? Abran: So in part of those pivots, initially it was intended to be a space. And then we, you know, dealt with a lot of red tape. We dealt with city partnerships and trying to get public spaces -- Anne: Yeah. Abran: -- to take over, to create these tech labs in underserved communities. But we just realized that we just didn't have the right resources and nor do investors really like spaces. Like they are interested in investing in you for an idea, for a product that's scalable, but when it comes to what they call brick and mortar, they're like, yeah, no way. But like, we don't want to give you money for rent. We want to give you money for ideas. Anne: Sure. Abran: So we were like, all right, let's unpack this a little bit. Let's think about what we're offering in these spaces and focus on that rather than the space itself, and maybe we'll circle back to it down the line. Anne: Well, I think what's nice about that though, is it's convenient. You're doing tech and that a lot of it can be done online. Abran: Yeah. And obviously we took what we were going to offer in the space on the road, and we'll be doing a lot of these in-person events, bringing technology to communities around the country. And then that obviously got halted because of COVID and the pandemic. Anne: Yeah, yeah. Abran: So we did pivot more. So to be a more virtually provided program, we launched our network online with a Create Labs Connect, which is our community app. And a lot of our events, even hackathons. We started doing virtual hackathons for our community and, and doing a lot more online R&D than doing things virtually where, you know, at first we really enjoy seeing the kids brighten up in person at these events. Anne: That's great. I think it's a nice combination. I know I worked back east in, in education, and what was formerly a vocational school that turned into basically a tech prep academy. But part of the school was turned into, I think this is something similar, to like a Makerspace so that people could come from all around to learn technology. And we physically had it available in the space, but I love that this is both kind of event-based as well as online based, because I think you can reach a whole lot more people too. Abran: When you reach different -- I don't want to say demographics -- we're reaching the same demographic or you reaching different people from different angles that you take. Right? So the people that can reach online is a certain group of folks that are already there, right? And then the people that you reach in person maybe don't necessarily have a great presence -- Anne: right. Abran: -- online or in social media. Maybe they don't even have a Facebook account. And, but you catch because you're on their block, you're in their neighborhood ,and they want to come out to see what's going on in their community. And you don't get enough of these kinds of events in those communities. You get them in Silicon Valley, you get them in other places, but rarely do you hear like, hey, you know, let's go down a block. I heard they're flying drones and navigating robots and, and there's VR headsets over there. Let's try them on. And you get other people who maybe rather stay in the physical spaces -- Anne: Sure. Abran: -- experiencing that. Anne: I love that. Now talk to us about -- and this is, this was a new announcement that I happen -- you caught my eye on, on LinkedIn with CLAiRA, your autonomous AI woman of color. Tell me a little bit about CLAiRA. Abran: So CLAiRA was just another one of those like R&D projects that we started last year to give a face to, I guess, personify AI and the work that we were doing in AI. So I'm a dev ambassador for OpenAI, and I knew that AI as a concept was just miles away from our understanding as a, as a community. And I needed to do something to bridge it the same way that I would do the -- my other research and education around CRE. CRE is culturally relevant education or culturally responsive pedagogy. If you're going to introduce a foreign concept to someone from an education standpoint, you have to do it in a way that they can understand, and it's palatable, uh, that they can build upon. So how do I introduce AI? I introduce it as, one, a representation that it's not a scary robot, nor is it a robot with like circuitry coming out of the head and things that we might've seen from interpretations from sci-fi films. You know, I wanted to do it in a, in a warm, welcoming way that was also representative like, oh, that looks like me. That might mean that someone that looks like me made this. And as a matter of fact, yes, that's exactly what happened here. And we then introduced CLAiRA to people on Clubhouse, which is that audio only app -- Anne: Yup. Abran: -- and people got to do a Q&A with her there and ask her questions and kind of disarm a little bit some of those fears and see like, oh, she's not that scary. She's actually friendly. She's actually very empathetic and speaks a lot about kindness, um, and how we can improve our lives with AI. So now I'm not so scared anymore, but -- and she just kind of evolved from that. And we partnered with an organization called Trill or Not Trill, two amazing brothers, Black founded organization that does leadership trainings in schools and education workshops around the country. And they said, look, we're already doing these, these trainings in schools. We would love to add CLAiRA to the mix, and the partnership's been great so far. Anne: Fantastic. So CLAiRA, you can ask questions to CLAiRA, I understand. Abran: Yes. Anne: And she will formulate her own answers. I guess, let me ask -- I've been talking to a few companies, you know, AI companies out here, and not necessarily to get into the programming aspect of it, but how does CLAiRA get her information to answer questions? How is that formulated in a database or? Abran: So much like we do -- and I can go off the deep end when it comes to talking about AI -- Anne: Tech, yeah. Abran: -- you know, but we, we think of it as like a foreign concept, but it is a learning, you know, utility much like the way that we learn. So I'm sure I have my own core base of knowledge from -- I don't know how much knowledge we retain like intrinsically that we're born with, but a lot of it is socialized. Anne: Right. Abran: Like you gain training data that you store in your brain throughout your life. Right? She was given or the system, the AI system that she operates on was given a core base of knowledge. Anne: Of knowledge. Abran: And she can pull from that core base. But I also, in addition to that, have added kind of some guard rails and some concepts that I would like her to stay on. And a lot of that came organically through these Q and A's, like what kind of responses was she giving? Oh, I like that response. Let's kind of bake that into her mainframe, and you know, let's keep that theme going, you know, so I never went into it like, I want her to sound like X, Y, and Z. We said, let's just see how she responds -- Anne: Got it. Abran: -- to the community and save the best elements of her responses and then keep, keep within their framework. Anne: Got it. And then that just keeps building and building. Abran: Exactly. Exactly. Anne: Wow. That's amazing. So how old is CLAiRA then? How long has she been? Abran: Yeah, CLAiRA's about a year old -- Anne: Okay. Abran: -- from initial development. She was -- her first interaction with people was on Clubhouse back in December. Anne: Okay. Abran: December, January, and then we introduced her to students and schools recently, I will say within the last couple of months. Anne: And so when CLAiRA goes to a school, is she just there to answer questions or does she also speak as well? Does she talk about herself first and then entertain questions afterwards? And then I'm assuming with that her database just keeps getting bigger and better. Abran: I usually give a bit of an introduction. Sometimes I'll, I'll produce like a video piece with her to kind of get like an introduction. Like, hi everyone. You know, my name is CLAiRA and this is what I am and why I'm here. And then kind of let the students just dive in after that. Anne: So now CLAiRA is not just a voice. CLAiRA is also and like an avatar? Um... Abran: Yes. Anne: Okay. So then where did the formulae, like, where did you get her voice from? Was that something that you went out and searched for people to provide the voice for her or were, how did that come about? Abran: So we have a core team of other amazing women of color, real life ones, uh, women of color that are on the team. I don't know at this point, this, this is like a good council, like an internal council of about seven to 10 of us internally that explore her concepts. And we discuss, you know, where her development should go and what we should do with her aesthetically and even brain-wise as well. One of the women is working on her prompts, which is like basically her brain and, you know, formulating the best prompts from all of the previous iterations. And then someone in our community, in our council who is actually a podcast host, had an amazing voice, and I didn't even tap her. She volunteered. Anne: Nice. Abran: She was like, "look, I know that we're looking for a voice for her." Anne: Sure. Abran: "I'd like to volunteer." And it worked out, we did some training sessions where we took some voice samples from -- her name is Amber -- from Amber. And we felt like the voice matched the face, matched the personality and it was just a good fit. Anne: Fantastic. So would it be possible? Can I interact with CLAiRA in this podcast? Abran: Sure. What would you like to say? Anne: Hi, CLAiRA. Nice to meet you. So CLAiRA we'll make it a simple, broad question. Like how can AI help me in my day-to-day life? Abran: So what I'm doing -- this isn't instantaneous. Anne: Yes. Abran: Because I'm typing her the question that you're asking, I don't have a mic turned on for her -- Anne: Yep. Abran: -- to hear you directly. Anne: Normally there is a mic that's...? Abran: There Is, yeah, there is that capability. Anne: Or normally what you do is you type in, but yeah, I would imagine that she's a fully functional -- what -- do you call her an AI like virtual being or a AI bot? What do you call her? Like? Abran: Yeah. Um, the term that's becoming more socialized these days in this space is a virtual being. Anne: Virtual being, okay. Abran: Because she's not a physical robot. Anne: Right, right. Abran: So she's a virtual persona. And I always -- so with the pause now is, I'm reading her response, making sure that there's nothing wonky. Anne: Yeah, mm-hmm. Abran: Okay. CLAiRA: AI can help you in your day to day life by doing things for you. It's all about efficiency and speed. AI can do simple tasks like making dinner for you, or taking care of the dishes or AI can do more complicated tasks that humans may not be able to do, or something that takes a lot of time. I think it's important for us to use and take advantage of this technology because it will allow us to work on other things and create better products and services. Anne: All right, here comes my second question. CLAiRA, I am a voice actor. So my question is, is AI going to take my job away? CLAiRA: I don't think that AI will take away voice actors. It's true that sometimes you can get apps with AI voices, but I don't think it's going to replace the need for human voice actors. AI's still learning. So someday there might be a time when it can speak in a way that sounds more human, but until then, I think human voices will be needed. Anne: Wow. That is a great answer, CLAiRA. That's incredible technology, Abran. I'm, I'm amazed, and I absolutely love that this is going to be out in the community so it can really help people be less scared. I know that for our community and my work that I've been doing in the voice acting community, there is a lot of fear. It's not just the voiceover community, but a lot of different industries that are afraid that AI is going to, you know, take their jobs away. Abran: I mean, I'm less concerned about the industries because the industries will see the writing on the wall in time for folks. So I hope that these industries will, you know, give some inklings to give people a chance to upscale or retrain or pivot, you know, their trajectories. I do tell people who are in tech training boot camps, that, you know, if you're interviewing for a job, do some research to see if that skill that you just learned will be around -- Anne: Right. Abran: -- in the next five to seven years, or if it's going to be automated, or even ask the potential employer during that interview what they're seeing. But in addition to that, CLAiRA has gotten a quite a bit of press recently. She was in Complex Magazine and Black Enterprise Magazine and a couple of other outlets, and the interview requests keep coming in. And I came across some of the comments on Instagram from just everyday people who are equally as scared. And I wish that I could just jump in and reply to everyone's comments, to just let them know that there's nothing to be afraid of, or that the only way to address that fear is to take it head on -- Anne: Yes. Abran: -- and to become more learn it in this space, not stay ignorant in that space. And that's what we're trying to do. Anne: Absolutely. 1000%. The impact of, of the AI and Voice series for my podcast has been, or the mission has been to just educate people because of the fact there are so many people that will just say, no, I won't have anything to do with it. It's going to take my job away, and bury their head in the sand. And I, I really just want people to educate themselves about the technology so that they can feel more comfortable of how they might be able to work along with it. And I know that you must go through that as an educator, you know, a lot, not just with your students, but just anybody that is like, oh, AI. No, no, no. So talk to me a little bit about, besides AI, other technologies that you're working with that are either in parallel or working together with AI to, I guess, help us in our daily lives and what can they do? Abran: The avatar work is more of like a creative output, but there are going to be some very important business applications for CLAiRA and other avatars like her. But we're working on other use cases for AI, particularly with the AI models that we use, like a GPT3 and codex and others, where subject matter expertise can now be automated on certain topics, and translation and summarization. And think about the things that, for instance, I had someone in our R&D team just kind of throw around a concept where they were like, you know, medical information for, especially for seniors, um, can be a daunting task to really go through and make sure that they're not mixing up prescriptions or misdiagnosing things or taking it at the right time. Sometimes it's hard to read through all that fine print or the instructions, and just having a system that distills all of that medical information and those indications for drugs into like one plain simple language sentence of saying, use this for your headaches, use this for your diabetes, take it once a day, take it twice a day. Should I take it with this other one? No. Should I take it with a meal? Yes. Translate that into Spanish for my grandmother. And then take that same simple explanation and convert it to another language. You know, someone reached out yesterday with help for a tool for nonprofits, like having an email generator for email campaigns, for fundraising grant, writing proposals, all of these things are still going to be not automated away where like you don't have to lift a finger, but it definitely, I can speak from personal experiences, a lot of grants that I haven't gone after, just because I just don't have the bandwidth. Anne: Right, right. Abran: So if you can expedite some of that bandwidth -- Anne: Sure. Abran: -- with the help of AI, there's definitely some opportunities that people might, you know, take more time to pursue. Anne: Also, I noticed it when I was looking at your website, your Create Labs website, you do offer the product similar to Create Labs Connect, but also you have a personal diversity equity and inclusion expert -- Abran: Yes. Anne: -- product, which is really cool. Tell me a little bit about that. Abran: So DEI AI was intended to help the DEI consultant work that either we do or we support with the other consultants in our network, help them catch up, I guess, with AI. Because there's a lot of consultants, there's a lot of services that are now utilizing AI to help scale their work and enhance their services and what, you know, corporate customers in going B2B, to enterprise, they might be looking for. They might not be looking for the traditional, like we're going to come in with, we're going to do a bunch of training for your employees -- Anne: Right. Abran: -- and charging consulting hours. Like that's an older model. And when it's a large organization, you know, 10,000 employees, you know, that might not be scalable -- Anne: Sure. Abran: -- to have you physically train everybody, you know, 25 people at a time. So it was intended to be a tool sold in by DEI experts. And that's our way of safeguarding to make sure that it doesn't replace DEI experts and consultants, that it's a tool that they sell in to a business and say, hey -- Anne: It's a supplement. Abran: -- if you're looking to, yeah, if you're looking to scale the work that we're already providing you, we have this tool where you can ask this AI expert on your dashboard questions that you might ask me. And if you need to speak to a human, then -- Anne: Sure. Abran: -- I'm right here at this button. But if there's certain questions that you feel might be too sensitive to ask a person who, maybe you're too embarrassed because of you feel like you should know something and you don't, you don't want to get canceled for something that you might deal with, with an employee at work, or, you know, you just hired a person of color, and you don't know how to make them feel more inclusive or set up initiatives at the company to make all the people of color there may feel more inclusive, you can ask this AI bot on your dashboard that we've developed for you, because it has the same expertise that we have. Anne: So let me ask you in the daily grind, are you actually programming as well? Or are you out there talking about CLAiRA? What do you do on your day to day? Are you also involved in the creation of these products? Abran: Yeah, I'm swamped. Anne: Well, you're -- Abran: Yes. Yes to everything. Anne: Yes to every -- you're also doing the Verizon 5G EdTech program, which I imagine -- Abran: Yes. Anne: -- is, you know, even more, adding more onto -- I thought Create Labs was amazing. And then all of a sudden, I see that you're the associate director of this 5G EdTech program. Abran: Yes. Anne: Wow. Talk to me about that. Abran: And I have four kids -- Anne: Wow! Abran: -- and a dog. Yeah. So it's all a lot of fun. I find a way to make it all work. I never brag, but I feel like I do have a good talent for finding talent or the talent to give opportunities to. Like at first we were like, hey, let's try and get people opportunities at other companies. And then after a while, we're like, no, let's just pay people ourselves. Let's just -- if people aren't struggling looking for work, we'll give them the work. And then they'll build out their portfolio doing work for us that then will get them hired at a full-time company. And we've done a lot of that. Anne: Fantastic. Abran: There's people that have been graduating from coding boot camps. And once they graduate, they struggle to find work, and you need to build out a more robust portfolio of projects that you've done, whether freelance or project-based. So we tell them, look, come and work for us. We'll give you projects so Abe's not doing everything. Um, and you just check in with Abe to make sure that the project and the client is happy. We'll pay you for that project, and it'll make your resume look a thousand times better. And so we have people working on R&D. We have people working on the AI stuff. We have people working on design stuff, UX design, all kinds of things. And then that gives me more time to focus on things that I can't offset. You know, that I can't delegate, like the 5G EdTech project with Verizon. Verizon and the New York City Media Lab said, you know, we need you with your EdTech expertise to help us launch this EdTech initiative that Verizon is leading called Verizon Innovative Learning or VILs for short. And that was to bring more AR and VR technology into schools, starting with Verizon lab schools. So Verizon actually built out the lab concepts -- Anne: Okay. Abran: -- that I was explaining earlier in certain schools where they're providing not only 5G, but VR headsets and tablets and all the apps that go along with it, 3D printers. I mean, these kids -- Anne: Fantastic. Abran: -- forget it, man. These middle schoolers have no idea how good they have. Anne: I love it, oh man. I do! Abran: Yeah. And then Verizon launched their own learning platform or VIL HQ. So I'm helping teachers and helping those developers of those technologies kind of make sure that everything's running smoothly. The development of those products is, is running according to plan. And those developers are also being empathetic with what teachers have to deal with right now with the pandemic -- Anne: Sure. Abran: -- and hybrid, virtual online, what technologies can we use when the kids are at home versus what technologies can they use when we're in the building and our lab with VR? So many schools have firewalls that don't even allow VR. Anne: Yeah. Abran: So there's a lot of that that we have to work through, but it's an amazing campaign. They've been pushing this commercials everywhere right now. They sponsored the whole global citizen thing recently. And every commercial that ran was the Verizon Learning Initiative. So I'm real proud of that. Anne: Oh yeah. Abran: That's, that's really taking off, but there's still a lot of work to be done there. But yeah, I mean, with these other projects, a client might reach out and say, hey, we'd like for you to build out some AI for us. And then I'll say, great. That's a great opportunity for me to bring in more people who need to work -- Anne: Sure. Abran: -- to take the lead. Anne: Oh my God, I could not. Thank you so much. I'm so behind all of that. I love what you're doing. I think it's fantastic, just, you know, my own 20 years in education. And I worked with Verizon quite closely during my tenure at the schools and having them help bring technology to the students, which I think is so, so important. I mean, they're our future. So kudos and congratulations. Abran: Yes. Anne: Thank you for helping in all of that. Abran: Yes. Anne: And they're totally spoiled right now -- Anne: Yeah! Abran: -- but it's good. They need it. Anne: They do! Abran: They need as much as they can get. Anne: They do, and everybody needs it and everybody needs the technology. So yeah. Thank you so much. Wow. This has just been fascinating, and I am a fan. Abran: I appreciate it. Anne: Yeah, absolutely. How can our listeners, if they're interested in helping out in some way -- because what a bunch of great projects that you're working on -- how can they get in touch with you? Abran: Um, we are fairly responsive on all the socials. So LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter, probably in that order, maybe Instagram first, we find most of our fans and our supporters are on Instagram. Anne: Fantastic. Abran: We answer the contact form on our website. Anne: Okay. Abran: If you navigate to CLAiRA's Instagram page, she's -- her appearances and her bookings are being handled by the leadership organization that's working with her -- Anne: Okay. Abran: Trill or Not Trill. So you'll get in contact with probably Jeff or Lenny if you have like an appearance that you want her to make. Anne: Okay. Abran: And, you know, come to us with your technology needs, because if you come to us for any design work or development work, all that's going into the, to the hands of the folks that need the work the most. Anne: Fantastic. And CLAiRA is C-L-A-I-R-A. Abran: Yes, correct. Anne: So you have to have the AI in there. So -- Abran: You gotta have the AI in there. Anne: Yeah, so, wow, thank you so much, Abran. It's been a pleasure having you and -- Abran: Likewise. Anne: -- I can't wait to see what you guys are going to be doing next. So in the meantime, I'm going to give a great, big shout-out to our sponsor, ipDTL, that allows me to connect like a BOSS. You can find out more at ipdtl.com. BOSSes, have an amazing week, and we'll catch you next week. Bye. Abran: Take care, everybody. Peace out. >> 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.com 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.

State Sen. Bill Dodd's Controlled Burn Bill was signed by Gov. Newsom on Wednesday, helping fight fire with conrolled burns, among other measures. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I know several of you are in this situation and so I wanted to put something out there to help you today, deal with and survive working with a narcissistic boss. I pulled information from two articles, mentioned on the podcast. Those links are here: 1: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-narcissist-in-your-life/202001/the-dos-and-donts-working-narcissist-boss 2: https://www.betterhelp.com/advice/personality-disorders/pathological-narcissism-how-to-identify-the-signs/?utm_source=AdWords&utm_medium=Search_PPC_c&utm_term=_b&utm_content=76857935229&network=g&placement=&target=&matchtype=b&utm_campaign=6459244691&ad_type=text&adposition=&gclid=Cj0KCQjwwY-LBhD6ARIsACvT72PCfbBJt7syGxds8ANy5pfxCKbnT7BzgYbMANyMwAROmqENN1NJW7gaArfAEALw_wcB Lastly, I only have a few days until the Manifestation Transformation Mentorship beings. This six months is geared at empowering empaths and taking our lives to the next level, beyond what we could ever imagine, I hope you will consider joining me here! https://www.mindsettomanifestation.com/manifestation-transformation-mentorship Sending you so much love from NYC! XOXOCM

Real talk. Fear and comparison can creep in no matter where you are on your entrepreneurial journey, and having constant access to everyone's lives can trigger all sorts of limiting beliefs to come up and stop us in our tracks.  During a recent episode of Bosses & Breakfast (every Wednesday at 11 am ET on our https://www.facebook.com/theproductboss/videos/bosses-breakfast/2560210324272601/?extid=SEO---- (Facebook) and https://www.instagram.com/theproductboss/?hl=en (Instagram) pages), we discussed how to shift out of a hypothetical "what if" spiral, silence your inner critic and get clear on what you truly want in business and life. Tune in to learn how to pay the bills and get aligned with your vision – not other people's timelines.  Brought to you by the https://shop1in5.com/take-the-pledge/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=shop_1_in_5_pledge&utm_content=oct_2021_podcast (Shop 1 in 5™ Pledge)! Commit to making 1 in 5 of your purchases from a small business, whether online or offline. The https://shop1in5.com/take-the-pledge/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=shop_1_in_5_pledge&utm_content=oct_2021_podcast (Shop 1 in 5™ Pledge) is a way to make an impact together when (and where) it matters most. Join us and take the pledge today! Resources: Watch this entire episode of Bosses & Breakfast on https://www.facebook.com/jacqueline.minna.94/videos/906786836857168 (Facebook) or https://www.instagram.com/tv/CTkTKfFI5VS/ (Instagram). https://holidaycontentideas.com/101-holiday-2021?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=holiday_content_ideas&utm_content=oct_2021_podcast (101+ HOLIDAY CONTENT IDEAS) Beyond the Discount is YOUR shortcut to creating a marketing strategy for the 2021 holiday season so that you can create content that successfully resonates with your customers during the busiest season of the year and gets you loyal customers that actually buy from you! The first-ever holiday content marketing plan designed to help you grow your customer base and increase your product sales - without spending a single dollar on ads! Check out and shop from hundreds of small businesses from the https://shop1in5.com/shop-the-directory/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=small_biz_shopping_directory&utm_content=oct_2021_podcast (Small Business Shopping Directory). It's the go to directory to discover, support, and shop small businesses all in one place. If you're a 6-figure to 7-figure business and would like to be considered for https://www.theproductboss.com/mastermind?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=mastermind&utm_content=oct_2021_podcast (The Product Boss Mastermind), apply now, we have limited spots available. Connect: Website: https://www.theproductboss.com/ (theproductboss.com) Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theproductboss/ (@theproductboss)

Etiquette, manners, and beyond! In this episode, Nick and Leah answer listener questions about showing up for parties that aren't happening, addressing postcards to households, trashing promotional swag, and much more. Please follow us! (We'd send you a hand-written thank you note if we had your address.)Have a question for us? Call or text (267) CALL-RBW or visit ask.wyrbw.comQUESTIONS FROM THE WILDERNESS:What do I do about my boss who invited me to a BBQ and then was surprised I showed up?When sending postcards, do you have to address them to everyone in a household?What is the polite way to decline beverages?What do we do about unwanted promotional merchandise we were given?How long before a Zoom meeting should I log in? And how long should I wait if someone doesn't show up?Vent: Guests who call your apartment an "unacceptable standard of living."THINGS MENTIONED DURING THE SHOWDorothy Parker quote about martinisCynarCampariThe Dakota Apartment BuildingYOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED TO...Support our show through PatreonSubscribe and rate us 5 stars on Apple PodcastsCall, text, or email us your questionsFollow us on Instagram, Facebook, and TwitterVisit our official websiteSign up for our newsletterBuy some fabulous official merchandiseCREDITSHosts: Nick Leighton & Leah BonnemaProducer & Editor: Nick LeightonTheme Music: Rob ParavonianTRANSCRIPTEpisode 109See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

I'm not quite Legend in Standard yet, and I battle some final bosses with Questline Hunter. You can find the deck import link below the following contact links.  Join our Discord community here or at discord.me/blisterguy. You can follow me on twitter @blisterguy.  You can follow the podcast on twitter @walktoworkHS  You can email the podcast at walktoworkHS@gmail.com.  Subscribe in iTunes or Stitcher. You can see my infographic archive here. Subscribe to my Youtube stuff, it helps me! You can support this podcast and my other Hearthstone work at Patreon here # 2x (0) Devouring Swarm # 2x (1) Arcane Shot # 1x (1) Defend the Dwarven District # 2x (1) Overwhelm # 2x (1) Tracking # 2x (1) Wound Prey # 1x (2) Bloodmage Thalnos # 2x (2) Bola Shot # 1x (2) Explosive Trap # 2x (2) Quick Shot # 2x (2) Selective Breeder # 2x (3) Aimed Shot # 1x (3) Mankrik # 1x (3) Professor Slate # 1x (3) Rustrot Viper # 2x (3) Venomous Scorpid # 2x (4) Piercing Shot # 1x (5) Barak Kodobane # 1x (5) Imported Tarantula # AAECAZ/DAwjk1APl7wPn8AP9+APQ+QOH/QPjnwSXoAQLudADjeQDlugD6ukD3OoD2+0D9/gDlPwDqZ8Eqp8Eu6AEAA==

The 3rd place New York Mets have finally fired Luis Rojas. What will the Mets do with the managerial opening? The Mets sit down for a cup of coffee with Theo Epstein. We breakdown, the top four candidates for the President of Baseball Operations. Daaaaaaa Yankees lose! Yankees get eliminated from the playoffs. We give our Postseason predictions, AL & NL Award predictions, and Mets Season Awards. We do a Draft of Bosses. 

The business of being present is knowing the reward isn't of monetary value. We seem to be a rewinding mode. We're going back to our old workplace habits. Bosses want more hours without paying more. The excuse is based on not having a full staff. Fewer people means fewer guests and clients are being served so the company isn't pulling in the high dollar signs like 2019. Real people. Dedicated people. Loyal people are saying, "No More." While those who've chosen to down with the ship are clinging to their lungs during a final breath. Know who you are. Not who they want you to become. Own your now. Being present gives you the power of decision making. Be valuable to yourself first.

The business of being present is knowing the reward isn't of monetary value. We seem to be a rewinding mode. We're going back to our old workplace habits. Bosses want more hours without paying more. The excuse is based on not having a full staff. Fewer people means fewer guests and clients are being served so the company isn't pulling in the high dollar signs like 2019. Real people. Dedicated people. Loyal people are saying, "No More." While those who've chosen to down with the ship are clinging to their lungs during a final breath. Know who you are. Not who they want you to become. Own your now. Being present gives you the power of decision making. Be valuable to yourself first.

If you can dream it, it can happen! Jay Leboeuf from Descript joins Anne to discuss the benefits of having a voice clone and how Descript can improve work-from-home potential for talent. Remove filler words with one click, adjust your audio via transcript, fix errors using an Overdub voice clone, and so much more. Use your voice beyond its in-person potential with tools that bring the power of AI editing directly to talent. More at https://voboss.com/voice-and-ai-descript-jay-leboeuf/ Transcript >> It's time to take your business to the next level, the BOSS level! These are the premiere 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. AI Voices: Welcome to the podcast. The VO BOSS podcast blends solid, actionable business advice with a dose of inspiration for today's voiceover talent. Each week host Anne Ganguzza focuses in on a specific topic to help you grow your voiceover business. Anne: All right. Hey everyone, who was that? That was some other people introducing the podcast today. So welcome again, everyone to the VO BOSS podcast. This is the AI and Voice series, and I am your host Anne Ganguzza, Anne Ganguzza. Today, I'm excited to bring you special guest Jay LeBoeuf, head of business development at Descript, a company that creates tools for new media creators. Now, Jay is also a lecturer on media technology and business at Stanford University, Carnegie Mellon, and University of Michigan, and sits on the board of advisors of numerous AI media and ed tech startups. He previously worked at some little known companies, probably to you guys out there and in the voiceover world, Avid Pro Tools and Izotope. Jay, thank you so much for joining me today. Jay: Thanks for having me, Anne. It's, uh, it's wonderful to be here with some of my AI-driven voice friends. Anne: Yeah, that was fantastic. So what we heard in the beginning was a couple of your voices on your platform, right? Jay: Indeed. One of which is my own and we were using Descript's Overdub technology. Anne: Awesome. Well, I want to definitely talk to you about that, but before we get into your role at Descript and what the company offers, first of all, let me just say, okay. Avid Pro Tools and Izotope, known to just everybody probably that listens to this podcast, and your resume is so incredibly impressive. Back in 2008, you were founder and CEO of Imagine Research where you created the first sound object recognition platform. And somehow that, I believe that that led into a patent as well as some small business research awards to you. And then somehow that became Izotope in 2012. Now, does that mean that my mouse clicks are being detected by an AI engine? Jay: So there's so many ways that AI is now integrated into the creative products that we use on a daily basis. And so the short answer is yes. So Imagine Research was based on some of what I was seeing. So I was at the, on the Pro Tools team, like you mentioned for about eight, eight and a half years before that. And I was seeing all these struggles that recording engineers, mixing engineers, voiceover talent, uh, ADR, we were seeing all these, these problems in the process that AI could solve. So we attempted to create the first set of tools where we could teach a computer how to recognize basic sounds and musical instruments, and even robustly differentiate is this a male speaker versus a female voice, and, you know, try to choose presets automatically for it. So Izotope acquired that company and that technology. I was at Izotope for about two years or so, helping to integrate all that work. And you know, you now see that Izotope products include a number of assistants -- Anne: Oh yeah. Jay: -- and things that will listen to your content and it's going to help it -- Anne: Absolutely. Jay: -- get it to the next stage. And that's the goal with all of this. Anne: And I have to say that there's a lot of people in the voiceover industry that just absolutely, that is their go-to, that is their go-to product to get rid of excess noise in their recording. So I thought that that was so fascinating. So, and now you are at Descript, and I've heard of Descript from the podcast world, and I'd heard about it a few years back where a lot of people were starting to use Descript for transcripts for their podcasts. And then wow, you guys just seem to have like catapulted with your product offerings since then. Tell us a little bit about Descript and the products that you offer, because I'm genuinely impressed with everything that you guys have going on over there. Jay: Great. Uh, thanks for using it, being familiar with it. For those that don't know De-script or Descript, we have no official pronunciations. So the choice is yours. Anne: Okay. Jay: Our team is kind of split on it. I go with De-script myself. So -- Anne: De-script. 4:30 Jay: Descript allows creators to create and edit audio and video as simply as typing. And this is this paradigm where you can drag in content that you've recorded externally, or you can record natively in the app. A transcript appears in seconds to minutes. You know, this time transcript will appear. If you have multiple people on a track, will automatically detect who they are, split them into different speaker labels. So you have this like really rich transcription going on. And a lot of people might stop right there and say, yeah, I've seen transcription tools before. Then I, you know, do a paper edit in Google docs, and then we bring it into Pro Tools and then just start cutting. But with Descript, we have all this alignment technology where the transcript is automagically aligned to the underlying audio and video. So as you are editing the text, as you are doing things like cutting out all of your ums, ahs, likes, you knows, all of that, just snips them out. And we use some AI to kind of stitch it all together. So that way you make a few cuts. And I have plenty of examples I can play of like befores and afters, where we can take a lot of great material and just make it sound so much better. So that's all you have to do, just edit text. Anne: Now I remember when I looked at it a couple of years ago, one of the things that I have today is when I record through ipDTL, because it's a high quality audio connection, people can talk over one another. And whenever I tried transcript technologies in the past, it couldn't deal with people talking at the same time, and then basically separating out who they were. But I feel like your technology has now surpassed those issues. And it's really something that I think is incredible, that it can even overlay the words on the wave form. Is that what you had mentioned? Jay: Absolutely, so you have, you have two ways of editing. You have the script view where you can actually just see the transcript. And if you just, all you want to do is select words and phrases and hit, delete, or strike through, you can edit through that. But if you are more comfortable with the wave form, we actually will overlay the words on top of each part of the wave form. Anne: Wow. Jay: And then you can make your manipulations there. So if you want to add a crossfade to a certain place, you know that, okay, yeah. Just put a crossfade between the words, voiceover and business, and no more needing to audition thousands and thousands of times to get them right. Anne: Wow. Well, that's fantastic. All right. So that's for podcasting. And now you have some other products that you offer as well that are quite powerful. Jay: Exactly. So, you know, we're most known for podcasting, I'd say. You know, the, the people in that community have probably heard of us, have probably tried it out. If you haven't, by all means, now's a great time to at least try. Drag some tape in, start cutting it up, and of course if there's anything I can help you with, let me know. But you know, we added video support in 20 -- what year are we in now -- 2020. Anne: Yep. I saw that. Jay: It's been a year. Anne: It's been a year. Jay: It's been a year. So about halfway through 2020, we -- you were always able to kind of edit the video because it was always linked to the audio, but we really doubled down. So, uh, what we ended up doing was built in all of the basic features that you would have in a typical non-linear editor, like an, an iMovie or a Final Cut or a Premiere. We built in all the basics, all the bread and butter things that you need, on top of all of the word and text editing capabilities we had. So you can now do all of your cross fades, all of your titling, arrows and annotations, and you know, very basic multicam support. All these things work great, 4k, 60 frames-a-second video. It's all synced to the cloud, so that's something that's also really wonderful about the tool, and you, and I could record something. I can invite you just like a Google Doc, and then you and I can start collaborating on this material simultaneously. We see the same doc. We have the same footage. Anne: So, wow, a video word processor. So we have the audio word processor -- Jay: Video word processor. Anne: -- and now a video word processor. That's, wow. Also, in addition to that, I think you can do screen recording as well with Descript? Jay: Exactly. So for all of us that are fully embracing the remote collaboration -- Anne: Yeah. Jay: -- asynchronous video communication life, we're sending each other a lot of quick updates or quick tutorials. So rather than have to type out those "here's all the instructions on how to connect to ipDTL for the first time," you can actually just do a quick screen recording using your own voice. And what differentiates the Descript screen recorder is again, as soon as you finish recording your screen recording, either, you know, your webcam or the screen itself, you see an instant transcript of what you said. And with one click, if you want to remove all of your filler words -- Anne: Right. Jay: -- I am a prolific ummer and ahher when I'm making stuff up. Anne: We all -- yeah, I think we all. We all are. Jay: So when -- you get to this little dialogue that pops up that says you have 35 filler words -- Anne: Wow. Jay: -- click to remove, and then you'll see the sentence where I start explaining it. And then I say, "yeah, let me try that again." I can just whack that sentence out and then send the video along. You can ask my team. I do tons of those every day,. Anne: Now does it record the screen, and also use the video cam? So it can do multiple cameras or multiple recordings at the same time? Jay: Exactly, exactly. So, so right now you can have your webcam as a bubble that you can position anywhere you want on the screen. Also, you have separate audio tracks for your mic. You have computer audio. So that's something that I use a lot where I'm demoing something and maybe sharing the output of Descript to the app or a different tool. So you can capture audio from computer audio and also your high input. Anne: Fantastic. Jay: Very nice microphones. Anne: Now I happen to read a press release the other day about a new product called Studio Sound, which allows you to remove noise [laughs] in your recording. Jay: Okay. Anne: That's pretty powerful. [laughs] Jay: So I have incredible admiration for companies that make professional noise reduction, de-reverberation restoration tools. I have a ton of friends that work at Izotope. Having worked there myself, I love the company. So -- Anne: I was going to say, you have quite a background in it. So that would make sense. [laughs] Jay: So I will say what we wanted to build was as close to a one checkbox solution where you know what, you have this audio, you either don't have the time, you don't have the skill -- Anne: Right, exactly. Jay: -- you don't have the knowledge to use the professionals. So like we're not talking about saving location recording from the deadliest catch and removing like -- Anne: Right. Jay: -- some of those conditions. We're talking about -- let me play an example. So I'm going to play you some material, and this, this is maybe what got recorded with some, you know, room tone on a not great mic. So let me just hit play. Anne: Okay. [room noise] Jay: Hey, there's the room tone. Voice: The appearance of the island when I came on deck next morning was altogether changed. Although the breeze had now utterly ceased, we'd made a great deal of way during the night and were now lying becalmed about half a mile to the southeast of the low eastern coast. Jay: Okay. So now let me click a checkbox that's called Studio Sound in Descript. Anne: And that's not uncommon for people with podcasts who have guests that are not necessarily -- Jay: Right. Anne: -- having the right recording studio. Jay: Right. No, definitely. Anne: Yeah. Jay: So now, now let me hit the space bar and now I'm playing. Voice: The appearance of the island when I came on deck next morning was altogether changed. Although the breeze had now utterly ceased, we'd made a great deal of way during the night and were now lying -- Jay: Let me turn it off. Voice: -- becalmed about half a mile to the southeast of the low eastern coast. Anne: Wow. Jay: And back on. Voice: Green colored woods covered a large part of the surface. Anne: Wow, wow! Jay: That's one checkbox. Anne: This is a product that's actually out now? Jay: This is out now. We -- Anne: Wow, that's incredible. Jay: -- have a beta tag applied to it because we're still experimenting with it -- Anne: Sure. Jay: -- but it's actually on every plans. Anne: Okay. Jay: We have a free Descript plan. So people listening to this, they're like, I want to try this out. You can try this out. It's totally free. Try it on your files, download your files when you're done with them. Anne: Right. Jay: We're really excited about this. And this is just one of these other suites of tools that we're trying to do to allow people to create professional sounding and looking content faster than ever before. Anne: Sure. Jay: You shouldn't have to spend hundreds and hundreds of extra dollars to download and learn tools when you have problems with your content. And so that's, that's some of the stuff we're trying to solve. Anne: Yeah, and that really serves a need. You know, I cannot tell you how many people -- I mean, I'm a full-time voice talent. And so for me, you know, this is part of my daily thing. I had to learn how to, or I'd had tools that helped me to remove noise, but there's so many people out and in the podcast world, or just in general, that are creating content and yeah. Stuff like this is it can be immensely helpful. So, wow. So that's an incredible suite of tools, and you also now have, well, you've had it for a couple of years now, Overdub, right, which is your -- this is how you can create an AI voice, your voice cloning technology. Talk to me a little bit about that. Jay: Absolutely. So Overdub allows anyone to create their own voice clone, and importantly, only with their own voice. And you can do that with only a few minutes of training data. And once you have this voice clone, this voice model, you can generate new sentences or correct your verbal typos. So a few ways that we see it being used, being -- really resonate with your listeners. Let's say you made a mistake in a, in an audio book or, you know, in a podcast, you mispronounced the key character's name. Anne: Right. Jay: You stated a date wrong, something like that. So you need to go back to the studio, or if you're at home, you need to kind of set up your equipment again, get it exactly how it was before. Anne: Punch and roll. [laughs] Jay: Rerecord everything, punch and roll, or even better, I have much more experience on the editor side. So as an editor, I would spend hours trying to find that word or phrase and then splice it in from elsewhere in the archives. Anne: Absolutely. Jay: It just never sounds right. Anne: Yeah, that actually makes me think of a lot of medical recordings that I do, for medical narration. If you find that you've mispronounced the word once, it's usually in the script quite a few times, if it's a product name. Jay: Right. So with Overdub, you would have created your own voice model. And so if you have the script and you knew -- you're using Descript, you can actually go in, find that one word that needs fixing or that phrase that needs fixing, or the sentence you actually forgot to say, and just type it in. And what we actually do behind the scenes -- this part is fascinating -- we don't just generate in the word in isolation. We take the text that you type in. We take basically the audio recording before your contextual edit and the audio after. And then we send that all to the cloud, and using those three inputs along with, you know, your voice model, we're able to generate the missing word or phrase to make it fit in in context. So, you know, if I was trying to resynthesize the word Overdub, sometimes it will sound like Overdub. Sometimes it'll sound Overdub, and it's just gonna depend on where it's going to fit in within the phrasing of what you were saying. Anne: Wow. So tell me again, what does it take to create your Overdub again? How long does it take? Jay: As little as 10 minutes -- Anne: Wow! Jay: -- of training data. Anne: So does that mean you have a model that's already there, that's being used for these voices? Jay: So let's go even deeper with the super behind the scenes. The way that we're able to make it so easy where all you need to do is create, you know, you basically read a training script. Anne: Okay. Jay: And you read this training scripts to us, and, you know, we have it on our website and there's, there's nothing special about it. Technically any source material would work, but we just provide this like David Attenborough voiceover stuff. It's really fun to read. Anne: Okay. Jay: So you read that, and we need as little as 10 minutes. The more you add, the better it's going to get. There's no point in going over an hour at that point. Our research has shown it's not going to sound any better. Anne: Okay. Jay: So, you know, between 10 minutes and an hour that you're willing to sit and read this script. The other thing we need of course is your voice consent statement. So this is a 30-second long blurb we also have available on our website, which you grant consent to Descript to create your own voice model. And you're just stating that, like, I and I alone have access to this voice model. If I choose to grant it with somebody else, then I'm giving people the option to use my voice. But you know, this voice is just mine. And we use that to compare against the training data to make sure that this is really you. Anne: Got it. So then let me just back up just a second. Jay: Yeah, please. Anne: So if you're using any of the material that people upload, let's say, for podcast editing or any of the, any of the products that you offer, is any of that being used for training data from Descript? Jay: No. So all of your material, all your voice data is yours and yours alone. Anne: Got it. Previous to releasing Overdub, we had actually learned from this the general speech patterns from thousands and thousands of speakers. Uh, Descript acquired a company called Lyrebird in 2019. Anne: Yes, I'm familiar with that. Jay: And they're real pioneers in this space. And they had actually learned from thousands of existing speakers. Anne: I heard the viral thing they did with politicians, so back a few years back. Absolutely. And so you've had the model for a while that's been developed with thousands and thousands of voices. Jay: Exactly. Anne: Got it. Jay: What, what the secret sauce is, is the ability to, with just a few minutes of a different person's speech, be able to identify what makes Jay or what makes Anne sound the way they do with the mic they have in the room that they do with the cadence that they're speaking? And we kind of can make this like lighter weight model to generate your speech. Anne: Okay. So what, in your opinion, or what, in your knowledge, what makes a better AI voice? Is it the person that records being, I don't know, more conversational or what makes some voices sound a little more robotic than others? Jay: The short answer is it's really going to depend on the underlying technology that's being used. So that's why Descript's Overdub technology sounds different than Alexa, than Google Wavenet, than Thimble, than, you know, than other solutions. For our approach, some of the things that we think makes it sound so good, so one thing is that we are one of the only solutions that actually we generate already 44,100 samples every second of your voice. And your listeners know what that means. If, if people don't it's, you know, CD quality sound -- you don't even know what CDs are anymore. Anne: I know! Jay: It's really good, super high resolution. And so that's one of the things that people often notice, like Alexa is nowhere even close to -- Anne: Right. Jay: 44.1 K. And so that's why she'll always sound that little bit muffled, that little bit like flat. And so by generating in, you know, what the researchers called super resolution, that's one thing that really makes a very big difference with what we're doing. From a training material standpoint, when we, you know, when we work with artists and celebrities, sometimes we'll actually coach them on, you know, the training material that they should put into the system should be read as naturally -- Anne: As possible. Jay: -- as they want the output to be. So, yeah. So, you know, we have the David Attenborough scripts, but if you're never going to be doing that in the wild and then read it in a way that's more representative -- Anne: In the wild! [laughs] Right, right, absolutely. Jay: Literally in the wild. Anne: Yup. Yup. Okay. All right. That makes sense. Now, do you have tools that allow you to change the sound of it once you've, you know, once you've typed in a script, and you change -- can you add emotion? Can you change speed? Those sorts of things? Jay: Change style is what we have. Rather than exposing 10, 15, you know, sliders, controls, checkbox, the Descript way of doing it is to allow you to actually select some source material that sounds representative of the style you want to recreate. So I would go in there, I would highlight a sentence or part of a paragraph that sounds like what I want to create. I would then right click on it, say overdub voice style, and I would say "create new voice style," and then call it whatever you want. So maybe it's happy or enthusiastic. Anne: Okay. Jay: You give it a name and then that name can be applied for Overdub generation in the future to steer the material. Anne: Are you recording that happy? Or are you recording that? Like, where are they getting that from? Where are you getting the happy from? Or the emotion from? Jay: Yeah. Anne: The style. Jay: We leave it to users. Anne: Oh, okay. Jay: That's one of the things people say like -- Anne: I got it. Jay: -- "hey, you know, I just created my voice model. Why don't you provide some templates?" I'm like, because I don't know what you sound like when you're happy. Anne: Okay, okay. Jay: So you get one default style -- Anne: Okay. Jay: -- that the system thinks is neutral Anne. This is what neutral Anne sounds like. And then it's up to you to go through, and in your training data, start finding examples of here's me being contemplative, here's me being excitable, and then give them the names -- Anne: Okay. Jay: -- that you you feel comfortable with. Anne: Do you resell these voices? Jay: No. So your voice is only your voice. You can assign it to other people that you work with on your team -- Anne: Okay. Jay: -- but you can also revoke that at any time. That's, uh, you know, it's functionality that we, we treat seriously. Now that -- the one thing we do provide to get people started out of the box, when we were playing the welcome to the VO BOSS intro, for example, we provide some stock voices. So we have eight right now, just a very limited palette, but still eight stock voices, which are pre-trained voice models of voice actors that we have an agreement with to get people get up and running. Anne: Got it. So then if I wanted to resell my voice, is that possible? Like if I create, let's say I get a script, I mean, you can hire human Anne or you can hire AI Anne. And so somebody says, well, I'm going to hire AI Anne, and I'm going to pay a certain amount. You know, probably not as much as human Anne. Could I then on Descript generate that voice and sell that? Jay: Yeah, we, you know, we don't have a marketplace or anything like that to facilitate that, but -- Anne: Interesting. Jay: -- the voice is yours. So you would come to an arrangement. You would be responsible for sharing your voice with another Descript user and overseeing how they're using it. And you know, the nice part of the voice ownership, you can turn it off at any time, so you can revoke access. Anne: So I guess my question would be, let's say I have a client, and they say, you know what? I have a bunch of material that I need to have recorded, but my budget is so much. And I say, okay, well, I can do that for you with my AI voice. 'Cause I don't have enough time to go in my studio and record that, but I could go to Descript, throw in the scripts, generate that, and then sell that to my client. I guess that's my question. Um, and that would be in agreement -- Jay: Oh, totally. Anne: -- that would be in agreement. How interesting, because I think one thing that a lot of people in the voiceover industry have been fearful of is, you know, who owns that voice, and how do I know where it's being used, and how do I, you know, is there an agreement, a contract that's been drawn up? So what that would do is it would allow us control over our own voice in selling the voice. So we would like, we normally do, we have contracts where we specify usage. So if it happens to be, let's say, in the commercial realm, and it's a commercial for McDonald's, if that's, you know, what they were looking for, we could then, you know, put in usage that would be appropriate for the job. And it would be something that we would negotiate with the company. Jay: Right. Anne: And that would be fine. You're not even a middle guy in that. That's basically we own our own voice. Jay: No. Anne: We can do whatever we want with it. Right? We can download it, right, I assume. Jay: Absolutely. This is the workflow I heard you say, Anne, is maybe we can flip it. You hire me, I'm voice talent. You give me the script. Anne: Yup, yup. Jay: But then like, oh, this is not within my budget. And you're like, how about this? I'm going to give you AI Jay. Anne: Yup. Jay: You're only interested in the final files. Maybe I can also give you the Descript file so that way, if you need to make -- Anne: Changes. Jay: -- changes and tweaks, you can, but you can't make, you can't generate new material. Anne: Well, then they'd have -- Jay: So here's AI Jay. This is Jay. I'm reading a sentence for Anne. She paid me to read this. Here you go. Anne: Oh, yup, yup. Jay: There's my material. You provide the audio files. These things are getting a lot of traction. So we actually have the ability to batch export material. And also we have API access for -- Anne: Wow. Jay: -- Overdub for if you want to programmatically do things. Anne: Sure. Jay: So a real example, there's a -- Anne: Wow. Jay: -- creative agency, and they work with one of their voice actors to do a mixture of things that are read real, but then they have a contract with Sunglass Hut. And they want to personalize it to go to your local Sunglass Hut. Anne: Right, exactly. Jay: And they get the address or the town. Anne: Sure. Jay: And so what they actually do, and Descript is not involved in this -- Anne: Right. Jay: -- but they use the tools to programmatically then create all the addresses sp this voice talent doesn't have to read 10,000 different Sunglass Hut locations. And so the voice actor consents to using their voice for that. And often they're the ones like generating on their system -- Anne: Sure. Jay: -- because they want to make sure it sounds right, and it's -- Anne: Well, yeah, exactly. So the client isn't necessarily going in -- they don't have a Descript account, and they're going in and typing it -- in addresses. It would be the talent probably, 'cause you're right. They would tweak it speed-wise or, you know, just so it sounds good. Jay: Right. And it's as super flexible. So I would encourage -- Anne: Right. Jay: -- because you know, the voice that you create, you can only create a voice with your own voice. You -- Anne: Right. Jay: We have people that try to upload a Barack Obama voice, you know, try to fake the consent statement, and AI built this. AI is kind of smarter than that. So it can detect that you're trying to fake the system. Anne: Right. Jay: We also have a human in the loop that listens to these consent statements. Make sure everything's legit. Anne: Oh, got it, got it. Jay: So we do everything we can to keep this as secure as possible. Anne: Wow. Talk to us a little bit about ethics, because I know you're one of the early adopters of putting a terms of service and an ethics statement on your website. Tell me about your policies on that. Jay: Yeah. I love that when I joined -- I joined the company at the beginning of 2020. There was already an ethics statement in place -- Anne: Mm-hmm, yup. Jay: -- which, which I was really inspired by. So you own, and you control your use of your digital voice. And this is something we strongly believe in that users can, you know, create a model that's authorized by you and controlled by you. So that's something that we unwaveringly do not budge from, and it's all based on this recorded verbal consent state, that kind of grants consent, and also helps us verify that you are a real, live, consenting person. So we will not clone voices of the deceased. Anne: Okay, okay. Jay: It's just, it's just a slippery slope. Anne: Yeah. Jay: That's an unapproved voice cloning. So unless we have a consent statement,. Anne: Oh, okay, that makes sense then why you have a verbal consent statement, yeah. Jay: We have a verbal consent statement, and, you know, uh, and again, people will try to stitch it together with -- Anne: Sure. Jay: -- with words, but it's just the system's designed to, to try to not allow that. And you know, we personally view that unapproved voice cloning -- like if we start making exceptions to this rule, then we're going to get into a world where we're making subjective judgment calls -- Anne: Yeah. Jay: -- about what's ethical and what's not ethical -- Anne: Absolutely. Jay: -- or what's a creative use case. And that's a very slippery slope. So we just want to be very clear and transparent. You have to own your voice. You have to be able to provide a consent statement. Um, we do not clone voices of children or minors. That's also against our terms of service. So if you're under 13, you can't use Descript. Our terms of service prohibit that. Anne: Okay. Jay: And we really want to stay up on what are the, the latest ethical standards? How are other companies using this? So we're talking to a lot of companies, participating in different membership organizations to try to figure out, you know, how do we ensure that content is authentic and -- Anne: Right. Jay: -- we're, we're as responsible as possible? Anne: Are you in the process of improving your model? So the AI voices will become even better and better and better with even maybe less data or, you know, even more human-like? Or is there a point where you kind of say, this is the level of -- like, how human do you want it to be? Because I think there's a level there of, if it becomes too human, then maybe there's that one note that somebody says, "wait a minute, am I being duped? Is this, you know, is this a human talking to me? Or is it an AI voice?" Do you have a level of, I guess, humanness for your AI model? Jay: We're going to keep improving it until it is indistinguishable from reality. And there's a lot of podcasts right now where you know, the sweet spot right now, Anne, is for this contextual edits where a word or a phrase has been fixed in the context of a longer recording. So we're at the point now where hosts are using that on a regular basis, and you can't tell. Like, no one's writing in and saying -- Anne: Right. Jay: -- that it sounds fake. And that's something that even a few years ago, it sounded like -- Anne: Sure. Jay: -- like voicemail phone tree systems, it would stick out. Those are just smooth. They sound great. Where we're going to be going, and what I think is going to sound better and better in the coming years is this like longer form text-to-speech. Anne: Yeah, right. Jay: So let me give you an example. So this is, this is how Malcolm Gladwell and his team at Pushkin Industries use Descript, and they use this for podcasts and audio books. So, you know, they're using Descripts, the desktop app, to transcribe dozens of interviews and, you know, archive material, and then starting to pull tape, pull selects, and getting the show in like a good rough cut. And then Malcolm Gladwell created his Overdub voice, and he assigned access to his voice to some of his editors. So they can create a draft narration for what the show would sound like with him doing the intro and kind of transitioning between different pieces. And so they can actually do a table read, and everybody can just kind of get on a call, listen to the table read with digital Malcolm, so they can hear how it sounds before anybody entered the -- Anne: Sure. Jay: Now that -- nothing's going to replace Malcolm in the zone saying and introducing his stories as himself. Anne: Right. Jay: And he's going to be like that for a while. Anne: Yeah. Jay: But there's always going to be applications, and it could be for really short commercials. Anne: Yeah. Jay: It could be for no budget audio books where, you know what, I'm just going to throw the AI voice at it. And we're gonna certainly know it's fake, but it's not going to be like listening to Alexa reading audio. Anne: Right, right, exactly. Jay: Because it's going to, it's going to actually have some, have some level of dynamics. Anne: Well, I think as long as the listener, I mean, then it becomes like the consumer, right? And you know, as long as they're aware. You know, I don't have a problem listening to Alexa 'cause I know it's Alexa, and I don't feel like Alexa is trying to dupe me into thinking she's human. And so I feel that same way. If I'm aware, I don't have a problem in certain cases, listening to it as long as know. Jay: That's it. And that's also why we want to, if anything, empower creators to have control of their voice. And if they wanna use it for editorial corrections, fantastic. If they want to use it for some longer form projects that they don't actually have the time to do or the budget -- their clients might not have the budget to do it -- Anne: Right. Jay: That that's their choice. Anne: Wow. Well, this has just been so enlightening. Woo, thank you so much for talking to me and talking to our listeners and talking about this, this amazing product that just seems to keep going. You guys keep coming up with these really wonderful things. So congratulations on that. Where do you see AI going in five years or even ten years? Jay: I'm super excited about this. Like media production is now actually entering a phase where if you can dream it, it can happen. And we don't necessarily need the expensive studio or the years and years and years of audio or video production training. We just need our laptops. So you and I both seen this in our careers with, with the move, from editing on tape -- Anne: Yup. Jay: -- to digital and then with PCs becoming so powerful with tools like iMovie and Garage Band that, you know, truly anybody can be a creator, and professionals can work from home. Well, the thing is there were a lot of advances during this time on other parts of the production process, like filming on smart phones and being able to broadcast and publish on social media, YouTube and podcast hosts, but all that stuff in between, all the editorial, all the correcting out mistakes -- Anne: Yeah. Jay: -- uh, generating small replacements, re-records, cutting, all that has been painstakingly difficult. Anne: Yeah. Jay: So this is where AI is really stepping in. And this next wave is, is huge because everybody is going to have access to these tools that make life even simpler, and the next generation of storytellers have never had it so good. Anne: Yeah. Well, that's fantastic. Oh, my goodness. Thank you so, so very much again, for spending time with us today. I'm going to give a big shout-out to our sponsor, ipDTL. You too can connect like a BOSS and find out more at ipdtl.com. You guys, BOSSes, have an amazing week, and we will see you next week. Thanks again. Bye-bye. Jay: Bye, everybody. >> 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.com 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.

You can take as many courses as you need to learn your trade and attend dozens of conferences but what good are they if you don't implement what you learn towards your business? Many struggle with following through and you're not alone if you fall under that category. Tune in to hear Sheila discuss with her colleagues Laura Obando, Melody Urieli, and Michelle Rukny on ways to implement.    //VISIT https://www.sheilabella.com/event to register for Pretty Ambitious Summit //Visit Sheilabella.com/apply to sign up for a free 60-minute strategy call to learn more about Pretty Rich Bosses and set you on a path of success for your business. RESOURCES: -FREE RESOURCES   https://sheilabella.com/free -GET YOUR FIRST 10K FOLLOWERS ON INSTAGRAM https://www.sheilabella.com/growyourgram //APPLY FOR OUR HIGH LEVEL MASTERMIND PRETTY RICH BOSSES AND GET 1+1 COACHING FOR YOUR BEAUTY BUSINESS!!! SPACE IS LIMITED!  https://www.sheilabella.com/apply // F O L L O W Website | www.SheilaBella.com Instagram | www.instagram.com/RealSheilaBella // PODCAST: https://www.sheilabella.com/prettyrichpodcast

Setting goals to pay yourself from your business is a crucial step to making your side-hustle a full-time business. During a recent episode of Bosses & Breakfast, our live talk show (every Wednesday at 11 am ET on our https://www.facebook.com/theproductboss/videos/bosses-breakfast/2560210324272601/?extid=SEO---- (Facebook) and https://www.instagram.com/theproductboss/?hl=en (Instagram) pages), we discussed the importance of setting financial goals to aim for before calculating the steps to get there.  From taking a closer look at your daily expenses to re-investing to further your path, we share the secrets of how to become a full-time product boss – and earn the salary you deserve!  Brought to you by the https://www.theproductboss.com/shop1in5?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=shop_1_in_5_pledge&utm_content=august_2_podcast (Shop 1 in 5™ Pledge)! Commit to making 1 in 5 of your purchases from a small business, whether online or offline. The https://www.theproductboss.com/shop1in5?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=shop_1_in_5_pledge&utm_content=august_2_podcast (Shop 1 in 5™ Pledge) is a way to make an impact together when (and where) it matters most. Join us and take the pledge today! Resources: Watch this entire episode of Bosses & Breakfast on https://www.facebook.com/jacqueline.minna.94/videos/379631373543794 (Facebook) or https://www.instagram.com/tv/CTSP4ShoWvm/ (Instagram). https://holidaycontentideas.com/101-holiday-2021 (101+ HOLIDAY CONTENT IDEAS) Beyond the Discount is YOUR shortcut to creating a marketing strategy for the 2021 holiday season so that you can create content that successfully resonates with your customers during the busiest season of the year and gets you loyal customers that actually buy from you! The first-ever holiday content marketing plan designed to help you grow your customer base and increase your product sales - without spending a single dollar on ads! Check out and shop from hundreds of small businesses from the https://shop1in5.com/ (Small Business Shopping Directory). It's the go to directory to discover, support, and shop small businesses all in one place. If you're a 6-figure to 7-figure business and would like to be considered for https://theproductbossmastermind.com/ (The Product Boss Mastermind), apply now, we have limited spots available. Connect: Website: https://www.theproductboss.com/ (theproductboss.com) Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theproductboss/ (@theproductboss)

I haven't been interviewing people lately, but I did one today!  Fascinating discussion on a vitally important subject -- the organization of society and the future of humanity.

This is part three of our detailed discussion with Michael Alberts about Parecon and its planning system.

This week, we continue our discussion with Michael Albert, where we take a deep dive in the Parecon planning model.

Know the value of your VO worth! Anne welcomes voice talent and rate negotiation expert, Maria Pendolino. They cover red flags in contracts, rate setting in an evolving industry, and how to educate clients on what you really provide as a talent and as a #VOBOSS. In this episode, Maria shares her thoughts on negotiation within the AI landscape, contract red flags, and more… Get more at https://voboss.com/voice-and-ai-negotiation-strategies-for-digital-voice-maria-pendolino/ Transcript >> It's time to take your business to the next level, the BOSS level! These are the premiere 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. Anne: Hey everyone. Welcome to the VO BOSS podcast, the AI and Voice series. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and today I'm thrilled to have award-winning voice actor and negotiation educator Maria Pendolino with me today. Maria frequently presents at conferences and in the community about rates, negotiation, and quoting your worth. And she's absolutely amazing and phenomenal. She's also the founder of millennialvoiceover.com, where she helps companies speak millennial as well as bluewavevoiceover.com, which is a hub for progressive and Democratic voiceover services. And she lives in Buffalo, New York, which is literally 40 minutes away from where I grew up, with her husband and three HDTV famous studio cats, Nelly, Mozzi, and Two Scoops. I love those names, Maria. Thanks so much for joining me today. Welcome. Maria: Thank you for having me. They're the real stars. Really. I work for them. Anne: I hear that with my three, but I love the names Mazel and Two Scoops. I'm wondering where the Two Scoops name came from. Maria: Yeah, so we have his, hers, and ours cats. So Two Scoops is my husband's cat that he adopted before we were dating. And he said, when he picked her up as a kitten, she fit in his hands, like two scoops of ice cream. Anne: Oh, that's so cute. Maria: That's what she looked like, like head and butt. And then Nelly is my cat that I adopted, and then Mozzi is short for mozzarella cheese. So she's the one that we adopted together. So her full name, her, her regal given name is Mozzarella Cheese Pendolino Brownton, so Mozzi, Mozzi for short, when she's just palling around with the girls. Anne: I love Mozzi. That's fantastic. [laughs] Oh, that's amazing. Well, we love our studio animals don't we? Maria: We sure do. Anne: That is for sure. So tell the BOSSes -- if they don't know you by now, they really should. So tell us a little bit about yourself and how it is that you became a master negotiator. Maria: Sure, absolutely. I have been acting since I was like 11 years old. I was one of the most annoying musical theater children who was begging their parents to drive them to open calls for the community theater production of Sound of Music. Like that is who I grew up to be. I went to college for theater, and I moved to New York City right after I graduated from college. And I actually had a full-time job in banking at the time. I took the job as a way to get to the city. And my plan was, I'm going to work for a year, pay off some of my student loans, maybe learn how to dance a little bit better, and then I'm going to be on Broadway. Turns out that didn't happen. [laughs] So I actually ended up working for the bank for almost 10 years, and I was good at it. I was a people person. I was a hard worker, and I moved up, and I was getting promoted, and I was making a lot of money and it was great. Then I was doing acting on the side. So I was auditioning for the off, off, off, off, off, off, off, off Broadway. Uh, I was doing cabarets and things that, you know, were rehearsing at night or weekends. And then, you know, if something big came up, I would like take a day off of work or tell people I had like a dentist appointment. I know one time I got an audition for the Hairspray movie that John Travolta was in. And I literally like took a half day at work and was like, I have a doctor's appointment. And I'm like running to Midtown to audition for a movie, you know, keeping -- stuffing my banking clothes, like, in my tote bag. So I did that. And then the recession hit in, you know, around 2008, 2010. And I found myself sitting in a cubicle graveyard at a bank, and I was like, God, this is not really what I wanted to do with my life. And I think I need to make a change. So, uh, I quit my job, and I kind of pushed myself into acting full-time. Um, I was doing mostly theater, TV, and film in New York. And I looked at voiceover and commercials in general as just like a sidecar opportunity. Like, oh, maybe you can squeeze one of these in between a booking or, you know, they happen occasionally. And then I started to realize how much I really loved voiceover. Like, you get to come into the booth, you do your work, you leave. You don't get picked up by hair and makeup at 3:00 in the morning. Anne: Yeah, right? Maria: You're not on set for 18 hours. And I was like, what am I doing with my life? At the same time, I was kind of having this realization and some of my voiceover work was taking off, I was also experiencing some difficulties. I have psoriatic arthritis and, um, I was having trouble with my knees and my joints, and New York being the pedestrian wonderland that it is -- Anne: Yes. Maria: -- it's just harder and harder to get around. And I was like, you know what? If I made this pivot, if I invested into my voiceover career and everything that that could be, I could have a full life as a working actor and not have to worry about, you know, this health and physical challenge that sometimes rears its ugly head. You know, you can walk into a studio and just say like, hey, can I have a stool? Nobody bats an eye. Anne: Right, right. Maria: You know, so yeah, around 2014, that's when I kind of made the, the sharp right turn, left turn, whichever way you want to go, uh, into voiceover to have that be my primary acting pursuit. And I've been a full-time voice actor ever since I've been doing voiceover now for about 11 years total, but as a full-time voice actor for about seven years. Anne: And you are a dynamo for sure. I look up to you [laughs] especially for those negotiation skills, which I think have come in super handy with the events of the day. Not even the events of the day today, but literally always in our businesses, we need to be good negotiators in order to be successful. Maria: Absolutely. Anne: Yeah. I mean, as you know, there's been all sorts of discussions recently about new technologies on the horizon and jobs with, you know, for TTS, for synthesized voices, AI voices, that's all the buzz. And, uh, I'd like to get your opinion. What are your thoughts on these new technologies? Are they going to be taking our jobs away? Maria: I think they're all very interesting. I think, I think some will take jobs away, but that's also how, you know, the evolution of industry works, you know? Anne: Yeah. Maria: Uh, cars took away the jobs of the horses and the carts and all of that. Anne: Yeah. Maria: Like there's a thousand things that you can point to that, you know, the new, the new item kind of superseded what we had always done. Anne: Right, right. Maria: I think the, the things that will be the first kind of stuff to go as the AI and synthesized voices get better and better and more fine-tuned and really have, you know, a natural voice engine as opposed to something more robotic, is just going to be some of the low hanging fruit. Anne: Yeah. Maria: You know, if somebody, you know, would normally hire an actor to do a scratch session, they're going to use an AI voice to do the scratch session, and then hire an actor to do the real thing. Companies that have historically low-balled actors saying, oh, we pay $.03 a word and $.05 a word -- Anne: Right. Maria: -- instead of a more industry standard, you know, $.30 or $.40 a word, those companies are going to turn to using AI voices when they're good enough to meet their client's expectations, because they clearly weren't putting a huge value on the talent in the first place. Quality of the voice was never the most important thing that they were searching for. They were searching for the best price and then assuming that everything else would just be good enough. So I think those types of things will absolutely be affected as the AI voice engines get better and better. But I think things that require an actor, like truly require an actor -- so you have genres like animation and video games, commercials -- I just can't see an advertising agency that is, you know, working on a multi-million dollar brand campaign that includes on-camera actors, uh, media buys of multimillion dollars saying, you know what, we're not going to pay the voiceover actor, their session fee and their usage. And instead, we're going to go to a synthetic voice and trust this multimillion dollar production -- Anne: Sure. Maria: -- and this multi-billion dollar media buy to that. So, you know, I think there are some genres that maybe have a little bit more protection, but where acting hasn't been the primary concern, and perhaps it's been more about just, you know, a get it done mentality, or where voiceover has been, you know, for accessibility compliance only, as opposed to something that they truly invest in -- I'm thinking of things like audio description -- Anne: Yup. Maria: -- or audio narration just for perhaps a visually impaired community -- I think it's possible that those types of things would be replaced by a high quality AI engine. But the flip side of that is they currently use voices to make AI engines. So the question is -- Anne: Exactly. Maria: -- do you, as a voice actor, want to be a part of that new side of the business, the same way that, you know, did you want to be a voice that is going to be on the internet before the internet was coming around? Anne: Yeah, right. Maria: As these new technologies like emerge, do you want to be a part of that? And the question is, does it affect your business in a positive or negative way to do that? Anne: Sure. Maria: And that's what we're seeing, you know, with the story that came out with Bev Standing and TikTok. You know, can it, can it have a positive effect on your business? Can it have a negative effect on your business? And also are you in the driver's seat? Is -- Anne: Oh, absolutely. Maria: -- are you choosing -- Anne: Absolutely. Maria: -- to make the engine and be a part of that, or is someone making that choice for you? Which that puts the voice actor kind of in that negative position, that feeling like you're being taken advantage of. Anne: Sure. Maria: But I think those are two very different things, choosing to do it, being compensated fairly, agreeing to do the work, versus having your intellectual property stolen. Anne: Yeah. I mean, excellent, excellent point. So I think it's so very important now more than ever with what you just said for us as talent to know our worth. And so whether we choose to go digitally or, you know, we want to be in that, in that arena, I think we need to be compensated fairly, and we need to know that yes, our voices are worth something, and we need to, I think that stems from knowing your worth. What can you speak to about that sentiment and how it can affect us moving forward in the industry? Maria: Yeah. Knowing, knowing your worth and what your work is worth is kind of like one of the top five things that you need to do as a business owner. Anne: Yeah. Maria: You know, you can't just open a restaurant, and put the menus on the table, and just say like, I'm not sure what you should pay for that salad. Do you know what you should pay for that salad? That's not how a business operates. So I think it behooves everyone to do their own research and figure out what's right for them and their business and their investment of time and their workflow and everything. There's not one universal, you know, price or policy that you can say like, this is the way it has to be, but there are, you know, we have industry standard guides, and we have, you know, industry experts that you can, you can draw upon. But doing that research and actually coming up with an answer for yourself is a really critical thing. You know, you can make your own internal rate card or rate document for, you know, your most popular categories or your most popular hits, if you will. So that, you know, when you get an email from a client, and they ask you for a quote, or they ask for more information, you don't have to go back to square one every time. Anne: Right, right. Maria: And you don't have to publish that document. You don't have to put it on your website. Anne: Absolutely. Maria: That can just be your internal cheat sheet, but keeping in mind the, you know, the value of the different things. So, you know, being compensated for a session fee, being compensated for usage and understanding the difference -- Anne: Right, right. Maria: -- between being paid to actually do the work, the time you spent doing the work, versus being paid for your voice being licensed for a period of time, for a specific purpose. I think a lot of people come into the marketplace as a freelancer, whether that's voiceover or otherwise. And if you have come from like a traditional 9-to-5, or you came from, you know, an hourly wage job, and somebody tells you, I need you to do a voiceover for a 30-second piece, and we're going to pay you $350 -- if you're accustomed to making $13.75 an hour -- Anne: Yeah, that sounds great. Maria: -- doing something for 30 seconds for $300 sounds amazing. And a lot of times I think, you know, people, people get very angry and defensive about kind of the commoditization of voiceover and how on online casting sites, or sites like Upwork or Fiverr, or, you know, the voiceover specific sites, you know, that everything is down to this like bottom line price. A lot of times, I don't even think it comes from client malfeasance. I think it comes from they just don't know. They're like, well, a 30-second voiceover will probably take them 15 minutes to record. Anne: Exactly. Maria: Probably you need to pay them for an hour. And it's just, I think the way that you can best empower yourself as a talent and as a small business owner, who's running a voiceover business, is to take the time to truly understand the different services you provide, what the, you know, industry standard ranges are for those services, whether you're -- Anne: Right. Maria: -- working with union scale or whether you're using non-union rate guides to approximate your ranges, and then find yourself some language, some go-to statements that you can be equipped with. Anne: Right, right. Maria: So when a client says to you $1,500 for a 30-second spot? That's insane. Anne: Right. Maria: And you can say, well, you're not paying me for 30 seconds. Anne: Right. Maria: You're paying me because you'd like to use it for a year and a half or whatever it is. Anne: You know, and you mentioned something earlier about, you don't always have to go back to square one, but if we are actually on the forefront of, let's say, developing a rate guide for TTS or synthesized AI voices, I think it's kind of cool to be on the ground floor of that so that, you know, a lot of times, as a, as an entrepreneur and a business owner, sometimes there is no category. Sometimes there is no established rate for it. And I think there's a lot to be said for an entrepreneur or, you know, a successful business person that really, sometimes you just have to make a rate. [laughs] Maria: Yeah. Anne: There's nothing necessarily to base it on. And I just want those BOSSes out there to know that sometimes there is nothing to base it on. I mean, there's things that are relevant in the rate guides, and -- but sometimes you have to come up with that number yourself. And that takes a lot of courage actually. And people don't necessarily realize that. And that's why I'm sure, Maria, that you have gotten frantic texts or emails from people saying, oh my gosh, it's my first job. I have no idea what to charge. Can you help? Maria: Absolutely. Anne: That just happens all the time. And I just want to say that if we are on the, if we were on the brink of a new like category or a new type of voiceover, don't be afraid to go out there and make a, a price for yourself. But again, as, as you were saying, we have to know our worth, and we can at least have baselines from other genres that we can at least establish. And we can also, you know, start a community too, that we can say, what do you think? Is this? And then we can kind of establish a baseline for that. Maria: Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, it's important for people to understand that you are an individual business, and ultimately in the, in the free market, in the spirit of competition, you have the ability to set your price at whatever you want. Anne: Right. Maria: And I think you can use the tools that are available to you. You can do a lot of research. You can check in with peers, ask for a gut check, whatever. But at the end of the day, the paycheck is going to hit your checking account. Anne: Right. Maria: Not anyone else's. You don't owe an explanation to the entire community that you work with based on whatever you chose. At the end of the day, you get to decide how much you pick up the mic for, and your price is different than my price, is different than the next person's price. Anne: Right. Maria: And it should be, it should be. It should be your individual calculation of what you want. But I agree with you, you know, there, there are things that are emerging every year. There's a different type or way for voiceover to be used, whether that is, you know, new and exciting, uh, avenues for advertising. You know, we've seen things go from broadcast TV, to streaming TV, to dynamic audio insertions. Anne: Yeah. Maria: You know, you're listening to online radio, and it knows that -- Anne: Yup. Maria: -- you live in this area, and you're getting the lunchtime message. And it's all calibrated in these different ways. There will continue to be innovations. So we, as an industry that is adjacent to these other industries, we also have to innovate. And if you want to take advantage of these new and burgeoning opportunities, you have to be kind of Intrepid and put yourself out there, and then -- Anne: Absolutely. Maria: -- rely on professionals and peers, whether that is an accountant, or a lawyer, or an agent, or a manager, rely on the people that you have in your circle, in your team to gut check you, to review things. Pay a lawyer to review a contract and make sure that you are not giving away or signing away or missing something. Anne: Right. There's a lot of legalese. There's a lot of new terms. And if you don't understand something, ask. Don't just assume that it's all going to be okay, because that's not the case. That's not the world we live in. And I do think that actors in particular, and I think this probably applies to a lot of artists -- you know, we have a scarcity mentality sometimes. Anne: Absolutely. Maria: You are trained as an actor to believe that each job leads to the next job. Oh, the director is really gonna like you, they'll hire you for the next job. Anne: Right. Maria: You got to do a good job. You gotta be a team player. So we have this mentality of like, we have to say yes to anything, 'cause it could lead to the next thing. Oh, if you do this ad, even though they're using, you know, a low budget, whatever, you know, they'll keep you in mind when they do the next, you know, big one or whatever. And it's like, well, okay, you know, that sounds like a good opportunity. And you have to evaluate those as they come along. But it doesn't mean that you have to be in the backseat for your career. Anne: Absolutely. Maria: It doesn't mean that you have to take a backseat and just accept what's being given to you. You can still be very active. You can negotiate. You can tell them that you don't agree with terms, you know, if they're written out on a contract or a scope of work. You have to be an active participant in that. Anne: Absolutely. And I think that's super important. So I would say, tip number one, at least in a lot of cases where people have asked me, I always say, don't be afraid to negotiate and mark up a contract. I mean, you absolutely have that right. What would you say, what would be your best tips in terms of when you're negotiating with clients on pricing for any jobs? Maria: Sure. Anne: But I'm thinking specifically for these new ones that might be coming up because there's a lot of ways that our voices can be used, and as we've seen with, with the TikTok case and Bev, we just didn't intend. And so what would you, what sort of red flags would you look out for, and what tips could you give us when negotiating with clients on those types of jobs? Maria: Absolutely. So some of the red flags that you want to look out for are the phrasing, you know, usage in all media. And that could be followed by "currently in existence or to be invented." So it's like, you know, we want to be able to use the voiceover that you're providing on literally anything that exists now and anything that gets invented. So that is typically a red flag indicating that, especially if you do commercial work, that that could, you know, create conflicts in your business. Because they're saying that even though you're agreeing to do this project for this specific purpose, let's say they wanted you for an explainer video or something, you're actually giving them the right to use that explainer video in an all media kind of release. They could use it on television, they could use it on phone systems. They could use it in a TTS engine. They could use it on the moon. That's the kind of -- Anne: Right. Maria: -- rights and usage that you're giving away. Another phrase that you want to look out for is transformative rights or, uh, rights to create derivative content. And those are the phrases that specifically come into play when it comes to things like TTS and synthesized voices. So by giving them the right to transform your voice files, that's how they can be transformed into a voice engine like a TTS. Anne: Absolutely. Maria: Or the derivative rights, meaning "we hired you to do a voice for a telephone system. And because you did such a multitudinous amount of recordings, we can actually create other derivative recordings from the work that you did. We can slice and dice or whatever and create new recordings. And then we don't have to pay you for them." Anne: Right. Maria: So you want to look out for releases that include transformative rights or the right to create derivative content. The other thing you can look out for is the kind of standard work product and copyright language. Most of the time, you know, clients will tell you that when you are being hired, the voiceover that you're providing is work for hire, work product for hire. And therefore they are going to have the right to copyright that material. If you're doing a very, very large project, or if you are involved in the creative aspect of it and are not just, you know, voice talent reading script for hire, you may want to try and negotiate out that so that you can retain the copyright -- Anne: Right. Maria: -- to your voice files. Anne: Good stuff, good stuff. Now, in regards to, if you don't sign a contract, when I spoke to Rob, Bev's lawyer, he was stating that because there was no contract, if it was recorded in her studio, they belong -- the copyrights belong to her. Maria: That's really interesting. Yeah. I mean, I don't do a contract for every job. Anne: Right, right. Maria: You know, if, if a client sends me a contract, I read it and you know, my best practice is to come back to the client, if I want to make changes. And I say, hey, I'd like to make some adjustments to the contract. Am I okay to -- Anne: Right. Maria: -- you know, strike and initial? Anne: Exactly. Maria: Or would you like me to, you know, state my comments so that you can edit the document? And then it goes from there. But, you know, I make sure that in the email, I'm always kind of stating or restating like what we've agreed. Anne: Exactly. Maria: So if I audition for a project on an online casting site, and perhaps, you know, the usage, isn't 100% clear, when they come back to me and say like, hey, we got your audition. We'd love to work with you. My reply will always be, great. I'd like to confirm the usage for the piece. Anne: Yes. Maria: This is my understanding. Is that correct? And I make sure that I get some kind of affirmative reply from them. Anne: Excellent. Maria: I feel like, you know, that kind of protects me in that way. Anne: No, absolutely. That's a, that's a great tip. Maria: Yeah. But I, there are definitely jobs that I've walked away from. Anne: Yeah. Maria: You know, I walked away from, you know, what would have been a, a multi-level project job because they had a kind of all-inclusive boiler plate release that was written by a general counsel who may or may not still work at the company. And I explained to them very plainly, like why I had a problem with it. And I was like, you are asking for everything and the kitchen sink, but you are absolutely not going to use it for everything and the kitchen sink based on the scope of the project. And also you are not paying for everything and the kitchen sink. I am happy to give you the exact usage that this project requires. Anne: Exactly. Maria: And if you need it for something else later, I'd be happy to negotiate with you. Anne: Yes. Maria: But I'm not going to give you broadcast television rights, for press one, press two phone prompts. That's just not going to happen. Um, and they were like, we're sorry, we can't make any changes to that release. You know, we'll consider, we'll consider this canceled. And it's like, bon voyage, sorry. Anne: So I love that you just gave that scenario because that really is a wonderful tip in terms of when you are communicating with a client in clarifying usage of what things you need to look out for and what things that you can specify. You know, I've gotten to the point where my terms, you know, for the licensing of anything non-broadcast is, you know, is a particular length of time. And I specify that in my email. And so when there's the back and forth, and there's the agreement, it then becomes my quote, unquote contract, so to speak. And also, I know other people who do it on the invoice, but I don't think that's the right timing. What are your thoughts about that? Maria: Yeah. I know some people have like their terms on the invoice and basically the paying of the invoice signifies that, you know, they accept the terms, and I think that's fine. The problem is that, what happens if you've done the job, and you've had, you know, casual back and forth on email, but didn't go -- Anne: Right. Maria: -- into like deep, deep, nitty-gritty, and they get your invoice, they see your terms in the like, hey, you know, I've just had a training with our legal department -- Anne: Right, yeah. Maria: and I'm not allowed to sign this. I'm not allowed to pay this based on what you've said. Can we deal with it? And it's like, well, what happens? My invoices typically I send maybe like three or four days after a session in my personal workflow. What if I've already delivered them the audio? It could already be on television -- Anne: Right. Maria: -- by the time that they get the invoice and are not agreeing with it. Anne: Right. Maria: So I think if you want to use that as a, like a backup or like a final, like, thing that's on a piece of paper outside of email, that's fine. But I don't think that anything on your invoice should come as a surprise to your client after you've already done the session, conducted the work or anything like that. That feels a little bit like a bait and switch -- Anne: Right. Maria: -- if you didn't have the conversation about what's in those terms ahead of time. Anne: Good advice. Now, I'm going to assume that if you have an agent that might be negotiating on your behalf, or you're, maybe you're a member of the union, there are, there are other resources for you, legal resources or resources that can help you with negotiation. Any tips on that particular topic, on agents, the union, or just going at your own? Maria: Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think, you know, just, just like anything else, some people are comfortable with it and some people aren't. Anne: Yeah. Maria: You know, I, I had the benefit of working in business for several years and kind of got comfortable with corporate legalese and, you know, dealing with larger companies and entities. So I'm personally comfortable negotiating for myself. I work with a lawyer if I have a contract that I feel is particularly laborious that I would like some help reading, or maybe I just -- Anne: Agreed. Maria: -- like to delegate with confidence. I would rather pay you $250 to read -- Anne: Yup. Maria: -- versus me sitting with these 30 pages and a glass of pinot. Anne: Yeah. I completely agree with you. I am right there with you. Maria: Yeah. And I have, I have a fantastic management team. I'm represented by some really great agents in different cities. And, you know, if I felt that it was in their area of expertise, or it related to a similar project that we had done, I would absolutely not have a problem to call them in and help me out with that. Anne: Great. Maria: But the majority of things that I'm negotiating on my own fall into the industrial and non-broadcast categories. Anne: Mm-hmm, absolutely. Maria: These are the medical narration, corporate narration, e-learning. And not that my agents and managers aren't capable of handling that, but actually I don't want them spending their time on that. I want them spending their time finding the next fantastic ad agency to work with, finding fantastic auditions for me. And I want them to focus on that. I actually don't want them to focus on spending, you know, two hours hammering it out, a $.30 per word -- Anne: Right. Maria: -- narration contract. Anne: e-Learning narration, right. Maria: It's just, it's not what they do best, and it's not the focus of their business. So, you know, I'm not going to delegate it that way. If you are the type of talent that 85, 90% of what you do comes from your agent and you get a job out of the blue occasionally here and there, and you're just not comfortable with that, then absolutely, use them and allow them to take the commission of it. For a talent like that, it would absolutely be worth it. For someone like me, who's built up a huge industrial business -- Anne: Right. Maria: -- that I've sourced through my own marketing and my own auditioning, my agents and managers aren't involved in that kind of industrial side of my business. I'm not really sure if the union has resources with regards to negotiation. Obviously just by virtue of having, you know, fantastic contracts that are very -- Anne: Right. Maria: -- you know, talent protected. You're -- automatically, you get some, some base productions there. So if you're working on a union contract, and they're using the standard SAG-AFTRA -- Anne: Well, I would say they're using lawyers. Yeah. Maria: Yeah. Using the standard SAG-AFTRA paperwork, then you have your actor protections built in right there, but I've always found, you know, the membership and the voiceover help team there to be very helpful. So if you were working on a union project and you had questions about the contract or questions about, you know, the particular usages of the project that you're working on, I'm sure that, you know, they'd be, they'd be able to help. Anne: Wow. Fantastic advice, Maria. I really appreciate you spending time with us today. Where can BOSSes get in touch with you? I also hear you've got a course on negotiation coming out. So that is a very cool thing that I would recommend. Or how can they get in touch and consult with you? Maria: Yeah, absolutely. I'm putting the finishing touches on my online course about negotiation. It's a self-paced course that you can kind of come back to again and again, and it goes over some of my favorite phrases to keep conversations going when you're -- Anne: Fantastic. Maria: -- negotiating with clients, some suggestions for, you know, how to ask clients for their budget and how to negotiate from there. Hopefully it'll be coming out in about a month or two. If you would like a notification when the course is live and you can purchase it, also be giving out some discount codes. You can send me an email at hello@voicebymaria.com. And I'll add you to the list for notification. I have been kind of full up on my coaching and consulting calendar for both business coaching and negotiation coaching, but I will be opening up my calendar again after the VOcation Conference. So if you would like similarly a notification when there are slots available on the calendar to book either a negotiation coaching or a business coaching, again, just send me an email, hello@voicebymaria.com. And I will add you to the blast list to know when there are slots to gobble up. Anne: Awesome. Maria, thank you so very much for your time again, I'm going to give a great, big shout-out to our sponsor ipDTL. You too can connect and negotiate like BOSSes using ipDTL technology. Find out more at ipdtl.com. You guys, have an amazing week, and we'll see you next week. Bye! Maria: Bye! >> 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.com 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, Douglas Lain talks to Michael Albert about his book No Bosses. The book advocates for the conception and then organization of a new economy. The vision offered is called participatory economics. It elevates self-management, equity, solidarity, diversity, and sustainability. It eliminates elitist, arrogant, dismissive, authoritarian, exploitation, competition, and homogenization. 

Today, we invite you to embrace a new mindset around selling. This episode is a segment taken from our weekly “Bosses and Breakfast” live talk show, which we do every Wednesday at 11am (ET) on our https://www.facebook.com/theproductboss/videos/bosses-breakfast/2560210324272601/?extid=SEO---- (Facebook )and https://www.instagram.com/theproductboss/?hl=en (Instagram )pages.  We often get asked, ‘How do I sell without sounding sale-sy'. It's time to shift your mindset and learn that selling is not a negative or bad thing. You started your product-based business to solve a problem and your customers are waiting for you to connect with them by telling and showing them. Tune in as we walk you through how you can talk about your product, show the value to your customers, and feel good about it. Brought to you by the https://www.theproductboss.com/shop1in5?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=shop_1_in_5_pledge&utm_content=august_2_podcast (Shop 1 in 5™ Pledge)! Commit to making 1 in 5 of your purchases from a small business, whether online or offline. The https://www.theproductboss.com/shop1in5?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=shop_1_in_5_pledge&utm_content=august_2_podcast (Shop 1 in 5™ Pledge) is a way to make an impact together when (and where) it matters most. Join us and take the pledge today! Resources: Check out https://www.facebook.com/theproductboss/videos/558673368650036 (Bosses & Breakfast) every Wednesday at 11 am (ET) https://holidaycontentideas.com/101-holiday-2021 (101+ HOLIDAY CONTENT IDEAS) Beyond the Discount is YOUR shortcut to creating a marketing strategy for the 2021 holiday season so that you can create content that successfully resonates with your customers during the busiest season of the year and gets you loyal customers that actually buy from you! This is the first-ever holiday content marketing plan designed to help you grow your customer base and increase your product sales - without spending a single dollar on ads! Connect: Website: https://www.theproductboss.com/ (theproductboss.com) Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theproductboss/ (@theproductboss)

This week on GGSP: We journey through the mind bending rock opera adventure The Artful Escape, and DARREN gives us some top tips on how to tackle tough boss fights!

This Weeks Top 5 Topics: IATSE threatens to strike, with Katie Kilkenny (5:59) Emmys Recap (12:19) The end of Fall TV? (29:16) Showrunnner Spotlight: Jaclyn Moore & Justin Simien ('Dear White People') (43:34) Critics Corner (1:28:02) Welcome to TV's Top 5! Each episode features The Hollywood Reporter's West Coast TV Editor Lesley Goldberg and Chief TV Critic Daniel Fienberg breaking down the latest industry headlines. The podcast is broken into five segments, offering a deep-dive analysis of the latest TV news and a critical look at current and upcoming shows. Every episode of the weekly podcast includes an in-depth interview with one of the industry's most powerful showrunners or an up-and-coming new voice. Have an industry question you'd like to hear us address in a Mailbag segment? Email us at TVsTop5@THR.com. Stay tuned for future episodes and be sure to subscribe. Hosted by: Lesley Goldberg and Daniel Fienberg Produced by: Matthew Whitehurst Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Stafford County, Virginia Board of Supervisors have barred the teaching of CRT and The 1619 Project. They also voted unanimously on the issue of students choosing their preferred pronouns...they said NO! Join guest host Jeff Katz as he tackles this story and more with guests PJ Morrissey, Congressman Ralph Norman, Jason Miller, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, and retired FBI agent Jimmy Gagliano! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, we talk with Michael Albert about Parecon and his new book No Bosses.This is the first of three episodes with Michael, where we ease into the topic and then we jump off and have great fun as we get into an extremely detailed debate on the planning aspects of Parecon.

Game Time is BACK this week to discuss all the happenings from Week 2 in the NFL including the Ravens storming back to beat the Chiefs, Aaron Rodgers and the Packers bouncing back against the Lions, Derrick Henry and the Titans bossing the Seahawks, the Cowboys beating the Chargers in LA, Tom Brady and the Bucs smashing the Falcons, Kyler Murray and the Cards escaping the Vikings, the Raiders handling the Steelers, Mac Jones getting his first win with the Patriots, the taunting penalties and the rest of the NFL action. The Outlaw John Rocha welcomes Joshua Tapia aka JTE and Winston A. Marshall to deliver their unfiltered takes on all these stories and answer all your Streamlabs and SuperChat questions. To send a question for the Game Time crew on Streamlabs, go to: https://streamlabs.com/johnrochasays/tip Remember to LIKE and SHARE this video on your social media and to SUBSCRIBE to the channel below! ​​​​#NFL #LamarJackson #TomBrady #KylerMurray #AaronRodgers #Packers #Chiefs #PatrickMahomes #Ravens #Cardinals To become a Patron of John Rocha and The Outlaw Nation, please go to https://www.patreon.com/johnrocha​​​​​ Follow John Rocha: https://twitter.com/TheRochaSays​​​​​ Follow JTE: https://twitter.com/JTEmoviethinks Follow Winston A. Marshall: https://twitter.com/TheSwaggyBlerd

Oscar Pistorius's rise from double-amputee sprinter to unprecedented Olympic athlete gave South Africa a feel-good face as the country hoped to heal from a half century of apartheid. But Oscar's inevitable fall turned that feel-good face into a brave face. It didn't take long for his athletic accomplishments to be overshadowed by near-death accidents, arrests, guns, confessed murderers, prison gangs, mob bosses, and a Valentine's Day murder that shook South Africa, and the world, to its core.Follow BADLANDS wherever you get your podcasts to hear new episodes of BADLANDS Season 2: SPORTSLAND each Wednesday. As a bonus, Amazon Music listeners can hear all 10 episodes of BADLANDS Season 2: SPORTSLAND on demand right now at amazon.com/badlands.This episode contains themes that may be disturbing to some listeners, including domestic violence.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week, Anne's guest is Tim Heller, who's currently recording his vocal clone.  Ready to evolve with AI? Lots of doom & gloom out there lately about AI “stealing” voice acting jobs, which means now's the time to get educated and learn to evolve with new technology. In this episode, voice actor Tim Heller shares his AI experience - choosing an ethical company, the benefits of creating a clone, the role of human voice actors, the importance of emotion, and more…  Find out how AI can help rock your business #VOBOSS style! About Tim Tim Heller is an actor and voice actor based in Austin, TX. He's voiced VR trainings for the Air Force, commercials for Fox Sports, ads for Spotify, ADR and dubbing for international cartoons & animated features, corporate narration projects, and eLearning modules around the globe. Recently, Tim was interviewed in the BBC article “Voice Cloning of Growing Interest to Actors and CyberCriminals.” Top 10 Takeaways An AI voice clone could be a way for talent to increase passive income streams. Voice actors must properly record an AI voice for it to be successful. Look for a company that has a clear and fair user agreement and offers licensing opportunities. Don't know who to trust? Seek companies that provide an open communication flow and opportunities to ask questions. Get it in writing - all agreements between you and the company should be part of a contract before recording. An ethical company will give you control over how your voice clone is used. The actual process of creating a voice clone is very expensive, so expect the company you are working with to take a portion of your AI earnings. Avoid fear in the AI sphere. Stay curious and ask questions so you and the companies you work with can learn together. AI voices aren't meant to replace humans, but should allow for quicker turnarounds and greater content accessibility options. Being human is your job security - clones can't fabricate emotion, so use yours to its best advantage! References in this episode Learn more about VocalID >> Visit Tim's website at TimHellerVO.com >> Recorded on ipDTL >> Transcript >> It's time to take your business to the next level, the BOSS level! These are the premiere 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. Anne: Hey everyone. Welcome to the VO BOSS podcast, the AI and Voice series. I'm your host Anne Ganguzza, and today I'm excited to have special guest Tim Heller, who is an actor and voice actor based out of Austin, Texas. Tim has a long line of credits here and has voiced VR trainings for the Air Force, TV commercials for Fox Sports, podcast advertisements for Spotify, ADR and dubbing for international cartoons and animated features. And he's also voiced, of course, my favorite, corporate narrations, children's English e-learning modules in Korea and done local commercials and more. And so he also, before he got into VO was in musical theater and plays in New York City and around the world with some on-camera jobs mixed in there as well. Hoo, wow. Tim: Hoo. Anne: A multitalented [laughs] guest. Thank you so much for joining me, Tim. It's wonderful to have you here today. Tim: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on, Anne. I'm excited to be here. Anne: Well, you have been in the news lately. I've read quite a bit of press with you in the news. And at first, I guess, saw and met you. And I'm not quite sure how I don't know you already, what with that long list of credits, but I saw you in the article from the BBC news that was en- -- it was a great article, but it was entitled "Voice Cloning of Growing Interest to Actors and CyberCriminals." Always -- Tim: Yes. Not -- not scary -- Anne: -- a little bit of click bait there. Tim: -- at all, right? Yeah, exactly. [laughs] Anne: But the article I thought had a really positive spin on it, but yet they put that title on there to associate, I feel like, oh, are you associating voice actors and cyber criminals? Like in the same -- Tim: Yeah, I got, you know, I had a lot of people reaching out to me afterwards saying, you know, are you, so which one are you? Are you a cyber criminal or a voice actor? I said, well, guess you're just going to have to find out, huh? Anne: Oh gosh. So, you know, I've interviewed quite a few people already for this Voice and AI series, and I've noticed a kind of a trend with what a lot of people will say as a pro of having an AI voice. And they use the argument that it's all about adding work for the voice actor. So I guess I'd like to ask you, first of all, how do you feel about that? What do you feel is the benefit of having an AI voice in your repertoire of talents and skills? Tim: Yeah, so initially I, like, I thought that it would be a great tool to have just to future-proof my job. I sought out more information and tried speaking with lots of different people and ultimately ended up meeting Rupal Patel with VocalID, just because I was curious about like where things were going, and where people thought they were going, and hearing Jim Connelly talk about -- like, he's always thinking about what's next. And so through my experience with Rupal and VocalID, I feel like it is, it is potentially adding more work, work that I wouldn't necessarily have to book a session out in my studio, for which believe me never upset to book my studio up for a session. And I, and I love my job. And so I'm not trying to work less or get rid of any work that could potentially come in. But -- Anne: Well, I think that's a good clarification because I think if I talk to many voice actors, they would say, well, I don't think it's a matter of getting more work, I don't have a problem handling more work. But I don't think that it, it really grabs voice actors in the way that people are trying to sell it. You know, like, oh, you can do more work. And I don't know really many voice actors that say, well, I'm really, I can't handle the amount of work I'm getting. So -- Tim: Yeah, oh gosh, I'm just double-booked all the time. Poor me. Anne: Yeah, that's, that's a very interesting spin on it, but I will say that, I think that it's really good for us to hear these things because there are perceptions out there, right? And these perceptions come from people who we sell our voices to. Tim: Yeah. Anne: So I think it's good for us to really get an idea as to like what their perception is and what their ideas are about voicing, and you know, what it takes to voice and what our job really entails. Tim: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I agree. And it's, you know, like, so many people have said before on your series, which also thank you so much for doing this whole series on voice and AI with so many different perspectives. Anne: Thank you. Tim: It's so diverse, and educational, and fascinating just to hear like how different companies are approaching all of this, you know? But so many people have said too, that you can't just take like our conversation that we're having right now, rip my voice, and then have a, like a beautiful clone of, of me or -- and you can also just do like five minutes of like the "Cat in the Hat," you know. It's, it is, it takes a voice actor to properly take direction to, you know, recite these prompts that they have in the VocalID interface. And it's still a skill to have. And so I think it's -- Anne: So anybody off the street, if we had hours, and if we had -- I'm just going to say, I know that there are some companies out there that might have a lot of media, a lot of media, of people, of celebrities, of, you know, people in the entertainment industry. And they theoretically don't need a whole lot of additional material in order to create a voice. However, I think the big thing, and I want to get into a discussion about ethics with you, the big thing is the licensing, right? Tim: Yeah, absolutely. Anne: And how can we protect, you know -- we might have audio out there. As a matter of fact, I have a ton of podcasts out there, and who's to say that somebody isn't going to go download those MP3s and create a voice. Tim: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah. The ethical side of all of this is fascinating as well, because it is kind of still the wild west with, especially, I feel like between everything that happened with, like starting with Bev Standing and TikTok, and then from that point, it seems like every couple days, there's something new and fire and brimstone about AI coming out. Anne: But I think that could be good. Tim: Yeah. I think, I mean, it's, it's getting people talking, right? Anne: Right. Tim: It's, and it's -- Anne: And it's getting people in action, right? In, in action -- Tim: Exactly, yes. Anne: -- to get something done, to get laws enacted. Tim: Yes. And it's, and so, and it's unfortunate, and I wouldn't wish this on anybody, for anybody to have to go through any of that, but now we're talking about it. Now, we're like, when you work with people doing AI clones and stuff, you know, I've said this before is that you really need to make sure you're vetting who you're working with. Anne: Yeah. Tim: And I got very, very lucky that Rupal was already working with a couple of colleagues of mine in the VO world and with Jim and Sam at Lotas, like, and people who are incredibly trustworthy and, you know, really forward-thinking and trying to protect everybody involved. So. Anne: Mm-hmm. Tim: Yeah. Anne: I think that's a very, very important point. And I actually, one of my questions was going to be, what was your process in selecting VocalID and the people that you work with? What was your process in selecting them? Because I think that is now become a factor for people that might be considering having their voice cloned or having a voice dub, is working with a company because obviously we can't do it. We have to hire a company that can do that for us. And so I think that there's something to be said for vetting the company that you work with. What are the qualities of the company that you think voice talent should look for in regards to when they want to create an AI voice? Tim: In terms of my process with finding a VocalID, it started off as just kind of like a conversation with -- a check-in with a voice actor friend of mine when I was still in New York City. And I was hearing him talk about, you know, recording these prompts for this, like, AI clone voice that he was doing with Jim and Sam. And I was fascinated by it. And then a couple months went by, the pandemic started, and I kind of forgot about it. And then when we moved down to Texas, through like an entrepreneur group that I'm in, got connected to Rupal in a completely different way. And so through that conversation, finding out that we had all these mutual connections and stuff like that -- and it was a face-to-face conversation too, at least through Zoom. And that's something that's important to me. I love when I'm able to like, especially in a business setting, be able to have -- like look at somebody and really talk with them and not just communicate through email for something that's really felt as high stakes as this could potentially be. So with Rupal, she started off the meeting with just kind of the backstory of why VocalID was initially created. And I think she mentioned on, on her episode on your podcast, that it initially was created to help people who lost their power of speech. And so that was something that spoke to me as well, that like, okay, this isn't a company that's just like -- Anne: Yes. Tim: -- okay, where is that cash cow? How can we milk it and, and move on? Anne: Well, and she's been around too a little bit longer than -- it just seems like lately, there's just a ton of that have sprung up out of nowhere -- Tim: Yeah. Anne: -- creating AI voices. And so I think she's got some longevity to her having started, I think it was back in -- what was it? 2014. I'm not sure when she started. Tim: I'm not sure either. Anne: It's been a while though. Tim: But it's also coming from like an academic background too, like really having, like, I think -- something I always try to do is surround myself with people who are a lot smarter and better than I am. And so I think meeting Rupal really knocked that out of the park. And so really focusing on like the ethical side of things and she -- we have a contract that, you know, for the, for recording my dub, and I didn't even have to ask the questions of, okay, well, what if I don't want to do a project? Or how is this protected? She had everything laid out already. And, and the fact that she was working with Lotas, you know, like if you can really vet somebody by finding out who you know in common or asking people in the industry -- like for instance, I had another company reach out to me that was interested in cloning my voice again. And so like reaching out to the people that I know now through all of this and, and really trying to figure out who they are, and what they're doing, and making sure you're not stepping on anybody's toes. But does that kind of answer the question? Anne: And looking at every contract. Tim: Yes. Oh my gosh, contracts, contracts. Anne: You know, I actually have employed the services of my lawyer more than once in terms of looking at a contract. And I think that for today, it is so important that when we're talking about AI voices that maybe a lawyer get involved. I think it's a worthy investment to really check out those contracts. Tim: I agree. And you know, I've only been doing voiceover for three and a half years and full-time for the last year and a half. And so I haven't really needed a lawyer for any of this yet, but now that I've got my -- my dub has been fully created and I got my first job request today for it -- Anne: Ooh, congratulations. Tim: Thanks. I was, I was like, whoa, this is kind of cool. I don't know what to do next, but we're going to figure it out together. But it's definitely at the point where I do think that it is necessary to bring a lawyer into make sure that like everything going forward is protected for, for me and for VocalID, but -- Anne: Absolutely. Tim: -- yeah. Anne: And that you're fairly compensated. Tim: Exactly. Anne: Yes. Tim: And that's a whole other thing too, that I've gotten a lot of questions about since the BBC stuff came out, is that, like, can you charge the same amount? And it's right now, the answer is, is no, right? Yeah, because it's, I'm not the one that's going to be spending an hour or 20 minutes or whatever it is to book out my studio and do it. Anne: Your time is not necessarily required at this point. Tim: Right. Anne: To create that. Tim: And it costs a lot of money to create this dub. And so I'm not the one who has that machine learning and that computer who's running everything. Anne: Sure. Tim: I provided my voice, and I was able to build this for free because they're working on building it up and really polishing it to turn it into something that's more commercially friendly. Anne: Well, I, I should make note that companies are now charging to have your AI voice be created. Tim: Wow. Anne: And so it's absolutely, that's going to be -- Tim: Yeah. Anne: -- you know, that's going to be an industry there. So I don't necessarily want the BOSS listeners out there to think that they may necessarily have their voice just created. As a matter of fact, there have been some auditions that I've seen out there for TTS projects where I think they may or may not state that it's going to be used for creating a, a dub after that. But there has been some low pay per hour I've seen, and everybody's like run, don't, you know, don't audition for that. And it's interesting because I guess you have to figure out really, who is this company vet that company. And if you can, like you mentioned, meet face to face with the people from that company, are they transparent about the usage and what's going to be happening? And, and I of course would say to everybody at this point, I think it's great to get a lawyer involved. Even if the contract seems like it's got everything specked out, I would suggest that that would be a good thing to do. Tim: Yeah. It can't hurt. And, and with the vetting of the companies too, like I find that if you are just curious and really honestly, anything around AI is just -- with all the fire and brimstone posts that I've been seeing all over social media and in the news about all of this and like kind of damning those who are involved in it from other industry professionals, it's like, if we can just like, stay curious, ask questions and be kind, just like, just seek that understanding out. I think that's, like, the most important thing is that don't just take anybody else's word for it. Anne: Sure. Tim: Don't just believe like one article you read, but really like ask those questions. Anne: Sure. Tim: And so trying to make myself available to those who are curious or who are upset and afraid, and it's like, it's totally fine to be either/or. Anne: And, and understand that there will be clickbait [laughs] Tim: Oh yes. Anne: in terms of the publicity around this. There's going to be a lot of clickbait just because it is a very current, relevant topic of today. And it's not just people in the voiceover industry that are afraid of the robots or AI taking their jobs away. So there's going to be a lot of, I'm going to say, a lot of that going on. And so I think we just need to make educated decisions. So let's talk a little bit about how you've actually created the voice. Let's talk about that process. What did that involve? Tim: Yeah. So the way that VocalID works is that once you are brought on and sign the contract and everything is squared away, legally you get login information for their own interface online. So it's not me recording prompts into Logic on my own system. I'm actually recording directly into their interface, and it goes kind of line by line, and it's like different speeches or children's books just to capture all those individual phonemes that we create with speech, where I think with traditional text-to-speech modules like Siri or Google or any of those assistants, you record those prompts, and then it pieces those exact prompts together, where with this, it's really building it from scratch completely. And then you can manipulate it phonetically or modulate the pitch or change inflections on things. And it's, it's really, it's wild technology. It's really cool. Anne: So I've seen some of the technologies now that say that they can literally change emotion. I mean, have you seen that? I mean, what are your thoughts about that? I think that's a, I don't know. It's, there's so many nuances of human emotion, and to me -- Tim: Yeah. Anne: -- and I'm a tech girl, and I'm trying to envision and understand because that's what I always do. I mean, I was in technology for 20 years, so I'm trying to understand the process. And is it possible -- you know, we have, I want to say infinite amount of nuances as a human -- Tim: Yeah. Anne: -- and I don't know how possible that is to dial that emotion in like a straight, linear fashion, right? Like, oh, let's do -- Tim: It's hard because -- Anne: 20% happy. Let's do 40% happy. Tim: Yeah, exactly, 'cause like, what is that 20%? The 20% happy is going to be different for every person and different for every subject that you're talking about. So I think that alone, like having emotion and being human is our job security in the industry, right? Anne: Yeah. Tim: Like computers will not do stuff that we don't explicitly tell them to do. And so it's, you know, with the emotion side of things, I think it's, it has potential, but I think that it's hard to get it to really convey sadness. 'Cause then you have to like, you have to break down sadness then into code, into an equation. Okay. It's like -- Anne: Into an algorithm. Tim: Yes, exactly. So it's fascinating and wild to play around with, but I don't think like that true human emotion is there yet. And it might not be like what the point of having an AI voice is. Anne: Oh, I'm so glad you said that. It's exactly, it may not be the point. And I think a lot of people are just so afraid of, like, the ultimate, oh my God, it's bad. It's going to replace us. But I think that there's going to, in, in a few years, there's going to be like, it'll settle, it'll evolve into here's where it belongs or here's where it fits best. And it may not be -- I mean, I still believe that there's always going to be room for humans. Tim: Yeah. Anne: And I don't know if they'll try to develop the technology to make it sound completely human. I don't know if it's even possible. And again, humans are the ones that are creating the technology. Tim: Yeah. Yeah. And the company that just came out with the, they did the audio for the DLC, for The Witcher 3 expansion. Anne: Mm-hmm, yeah. Tim: I listened to some of their samples on their site. And in that sounds like pretty realistic, but that's also like that character is -- it's old right here and it's all very upset. Anne: Yeah. Tim: And it's like, it's very, it's not incredibly dynamic. That voice actor who voices him is dynamic and gives the dynamic performance. But like for, for that kind of stuff, like that can come in handy. That's where an AI voice is great because then they can just pick that up and it's quick. But right now I feel like it's more so along the lines of that e-learning, the traditional text-to-speech stuff, IVR, and it's not -- we're not looking to replace the human experience or the human emotion, right? It's just something to kind of augment -- Anne: Well, we aren't. [laughs] Tim: We aren't. I'm sure that there are companies that are working towards that. And I'm sure we'll see that at some point, right? Anne: Yeah, but you're right. There's going to be an attempt. I'm sure there's going to be attempts. Tim: Yeah. Anne: And it's, I think that's just the evolution. And again, it's not just affecting the voiceover industry. I think we're just here in a little bubble sometimes, and we need to really try to -- well, we really need to really try to, to see AI for what it is and try to evolve along with it. So let me ask you a question. How are you intending or how are you marketing your AI voice? Tim: That's something I'm still working on. It's a great question. So Rupal asked if I'd be interested in putting my AI profile on Voice123, and Rolf and their team has been working on putting these profiles on there just to try to get ahead of things and stay with the movement of AI. And so I agreed to do that, and I've got a profile on there, and then trying to figure out like what samples, like I have some samples I'm going to put on my website, and a little like VocalID badge, but it's going to be, it's still kind of in process of like, okay, how do I pitch this to clients too, or to potential new clients? And so I think it's going to be reaching out to those people like that you've brought onto your podcast, like Hugh -- Anne: Sure. Tim: -- that would have a better idea of like, okay, well, if you pitch it to this company for this reason, then that would be best case scenario, you know? But I think it's going to change a lot. Anne: This is great. I'm thinking so if you have it marketed through a pay-to-play, I think we need to make sure how are we being protected legally? How are our voices being protected? Are their usage -- is there something that's going to be put in place that will protect us if we sell it through that? Or if you sell it on your own, how are you negotiating that -- you creating a contract, I would think, I would hope, that you would create a contract that would -- and well, normally, I think in our emails, we specify usage and, and all of that. And I think that the same thing absolutely has to be for your AI voice. And again, I'm at this point, because of the newness of it all and the wild, wild west of it all, I'm always happy to have somebody consult with me that's in the legal field -- Tim: Totally. Anne: -- just to make sure that when I'm first starting to negotiate that voice, I wouldn't want that voice to be used for any purpose other than what it was intended. I would not want it to be sold. I would not want to say things that I didn't agree to with that voice. Tim: Yeah. Anne: And so I think that that's very important. So I commend you [laughs] for going ahead and, and delving into the new world of technology here, and kind of really you're, you're testing the waters. You're on the, I always call it the bleeding edge of technology. Tim: I love that. Anne: There has to be, you know, we have our trials, we have our, our successes and our failures, and that's how we all evolve and move forward and learn. And so I wish you all the luck with your AI voice and congrats on your job [laughs] on your first job. Tim: Thanks. We'll see how it goes. Anne: Yeah, absolutely. And we'll, we'll keep in touch with you. And so I thank you so much for spending time with us this morning and sharing your story with the BOSSes. And I am excited to hear about where your voice will go. Tim: Thank you so much, Anne. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on and give me the opportunity to speak on this. And if any of the VO BOSSes out there have any questions, I'm, I'm here. Anne: Yes. Tim: You know, I'm easy to find. Anne: Absolutely, how can they get in touch with you? Tim: You can either reach me through my website TimHellerVO.com or @TimHellerVO on all the social platforms. So. Anne: Perfect. Tim: Yeah. Anne: Awesome. Well, thanks again. I'm going to give a great, big shout-out to our sponsor, ipDTL. You too can connect to like BOSSes and learn more at ipdtl.com. You guys, have an amazing week, and we'll see you next week. Bye! Tim: Bye! >> 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.com 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. CONNECT + FOLLOW TWITTER @vo_boss INSTAGRAM @vo_boss FACEBOOK /VO BOSS YOUTUBE VO BOSS SUBSCRIBE YOUTUBE https://www.youtube.com/c/VOBOSS SPOTIFY https://rb.gy/meopx8 APPLE PODCASTS https://rb.gy/chdamm AMAZON MUSIC https://rb.gy/luw83x GOOGLE PODCASTS https://rb.gy/koc3ls STITCHER https://rb.gy/hslkgj TUNEIN http://tun.in/piZHU IHEART RADIO https://rb.gy/uixh90 PANDORA https://rb.gy/knoz7c SPONSORED BY ipDTL: https://ipdtl.com Anne Ganguzza Voice Productions: https://anneganguzza.com

Hello! Advances in technology are enabling new ways to monitor and manage people at work. How can we ensure workers don't lose out from the rise of ‘algorithmic management'? Future of work expert Beth Gutelius tells us about a Californian law cracking down on issues in the warehouse industry. Then Anna Thomas from the Institute for the Future of Work and Mary Towers from the TUC talk us through the scale of the problem in the UK and what do to about it.AND we chat to Tim Burgess about the new book inspired by his wildly popular Twitter Listening Parties. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Dr. Kirk and Bob answer patron emails. Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/PsychologyInSeattleEmail: https://www.psychologyinseattle.com/contactGet merch: https://teespring.com/stores/psychology-in-seattleDr. Kirk's Cameo: https://www.cameo.com/kirkhondaInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/psychologyinseattle/Discord: https://discord.gg/6QR4sE8x9KReddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/PsychologyInSeattle/Twitter: https://twitter.com/PsychInSeattleFacebook Official Page: https://www.facebook.com/PsychologyInSeattle/Facebook Fan Page (run by fans): https://www.facebook.com/groups/112633189213033The Psychology In Seattle Podcast ®Trigger Warning: This episode may include topics such as assault, trauma, and discrimination. If necessary, listeners are encouraged to refrain from listening and care for their safety and well-being.Disclaimer: The content provided is for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only. Nothing here constitutes personal or professional consultation, therapy, diagnosis, or creates a counselor-client relationship. Topics discussed may generate differing points of view. If you participate (by being a guest, submitting a question, or commenting) you must do so with the knowledge that we cannot control reactions or responses from others, which may not agree with you or feel unfair. Your participation on this site is at your own risk, accepting full responsibility for any liability or harm that may result. Anything you write here may be used for discussion or endorsement of the podcast. Opinions and views expressed by the host and guest hosts are personal views. Although, we take precautions and fact check, they should not be considered facts and the opinions may change. Opinions posted by participants (such as comments) are not those of the hosts. Readers should not rely on any information found here and should perform due diligence before taking any action. For a more extensive description of factors for you to consider, please see www.psychologyinseattle.com

Want to be apart of the best program on the market to scale you to 6 figs? Want to join a huge community of esty owners that want to grow just like you? Well, this episode is for you!! Raya sits down to discuss the Beauty Business Blueprint to 6 figures and more and exactly who this program is for. Plus, use this link below to add my exclusive bonus when you sign up. Listen to the end for the bonus!  Launching September 27th and Starting October 4th (first 250 people get a bonus box with purchase)  Raya- @bosses_in_beauty https://www.bossesinbeauty.com/a/35282/YFR5vsCB

Viewer Distractions! Questions and Topics from YOU! Check out Contra Returns today! https://contrareturns.com/Contra_AMG_GDave Twitch Thursdays at 9pm ET: https://www.twitch.tv/gamedave Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/NDpcuve Twitter: https://twitter.com/NextGameDave Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GameDave Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thegamedave/ Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/GameDave GAME DAVE P.O. Box 1695 Dover, DE 19903

Bosses, workers, and lawmakers react to President Biden's plan to get workplaces vaccinated. California prepares for Tuesday's gubernatorial recall election. And Americans begin dropping everything to welcome Afghan refugees to the country.