Podcasts about Redistribution

BOSSes Anne Ganguzza and Tom Dheere dive into the essential digital toolkit for today's voiceover professionals. Their lively conversation spotlights practical solutions for safeguarding valuable audio, effortlessly showcasing your work, and leveraging the power of AI to streamline your workflow. They unveil their go-to platforms for reliable cloud backups, easy video conversion for portfolio building, and AI assistants that can help with everything from crafting professional communications to generating content ideas. By sharing their tried-and-true tech arsenal, Anne and Tom empower voice actors to work smarter, not harder, and confidently navigate the ever-evolving digital landscape of the voiceover industry. 00:02 - Anne (Host) Hey, if you're looking to take your podcast to the next level, my podcast consultation coaching services teach you how to sound more authentic, develop smart strategies, and market your show effectively. Let's elevate your podcast together. Visit anneganguzza.com to get started. 00:22 - Speaker 2 (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next level: the BOSS level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like1 a BOSS—a VO BOSS. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza.2 00:42 - Anne (Host) Hey, hey everyone, welcome to the VO BOSS Podcast and the Real BOSS Series. I'm here, Anne Ganguzza, with my good friend, Mr. Tom Dheere. Hello, Tom Dheere, how are you today? 00:53 - Tom (Guest) I am good. Anne Ganguzza, how are you? 00:56 - Anne (Host) I am relieved. 00:58 - Tom (Guest) Relieved? Want to know why? Yes, why? 01:01 - Anne (Host) Well, I had a scare this week where I all of a sudden went to go access one of my audio files to send to my client, and it said, "No, there's no drive." And I went, "Oh my God, I lost my drive!" And that's one of those things—I don't know if you're on an Apple Mac or any kind of computer—when all of a sudden the drive doesn't show up, you're like, "Oh my God, let me unplug it, let me replug it, let me unplug it, replug it," and you wait to hear it spin up. And back in the day, when I used to work in technology, it was a thing. Like your backup plan had to be solid because you could not lose any data, and it used to be very complex where you would have RAID systems and you would have dual backup systems, and you'd pay a lot of money to have systems backing up to other things. And I'll tell you what I got. 01:45 So, paranoid, I unplugged my drive, plugged it back in. Nothing. Same thing, did it multiple times, unplugged it from the cord, I rebooted my computer. Nothing happened. But I'll tell you, I was saved by my favorite tool in the world, which is called Backblaze, which backs up all of my data onto a cloud, and I was able to restore the data that I needed to send to my client to another external drive that I have and do it within the next couple hours. It was actually a few terabytes, right, because my drive... I put everything, Tom, and I think we can talk about this—I have, since I worked in technology, I put everything that's important on an external drive, and that drive gets backed up multiple times. And that way I don't ever have to worry about like, "Oh gosh, if I need to update my..." I never put anything important on my main computer drive, always on an external drive that gets backed up. 02:36 - Tom (Guest) Because it's easy. I think this leads into an extremely important lesson that we could just start right off with. For all you BOSSES out there: do not be 100% cloud-dependent with your data, and do not be 100% external hard drive or internal hard drive-dependent with your data. But back them up, back them up. 02:54 - Speaker 2 (Announcement) Make sure that they are backing each other up. 02:57 - Tom (Guest) What I have is I have Norton 360, which is generally... Norton is known for its antivirus software, and Norton 360 does that. But what it also does is it backs up my hard drive every single day up to one terabyte. And, like you, I have very little actual data on the hard drive of my desktop computer itself. I also use Google Drive's Google Workspace. 03:22 - Speaker 2 (Announcement) If you have a Gmail account or a Gmail address. 03:23 - Anne (Host) Same thing. Yep, you can use Dropbox as well. 03:25 - Tom (Guest) Yep, you can use Dropbox as well. 03:27 You can use OneDrive, you could use Box, you could use CrashPlan, you could use Carbonite. I used to use Carbonite for a very long time, and I was very happy with it, and then I realized I had Carbonite, Box, Dropbox, OneDrive, and Google Drive, and I realized it was so redundant. So my primary cloud-based data storage is a combination of Google Drive with Google Workspace and Norton 360, and I also have an external hard drive which I will actually occasionally hook up and physically back everything up and put it away. So I've got like three—two cloud-based and one drive external hard drive-based—home base for all of my data, in case something bad happens with one or, heaven forbid, two of them. 04:17 - Anne (Host) It's been a lifesaver, I'll tell you what. So Backblaze—just my favorite. By the way, I'm an affiliate, guys. I'm going to put a link for you. What I love about Backblaze is that basically, you just set it to work and it works seamlessly in the background. It will always... it backs up every minute of the day. It backs up, and it doesn't take a lot of resources on your system. So every time you create a file, it's just going to be backing it up to the cloud, and then you just... it's really simple. You go to your account on the cloud and you restore it, and it basically just keeps the most current backup. 04:45 You can keep different versions of backups. If you have version one of a file, version two of a file, you can keep all the versions of your backups for up to a year. It just really depends, and it is super reasonable. I think I pay $99 a year. So I use that in combination with Dropbox. I have like three terabytes for Dropbox, and I keep all my student data on that, and that way I can share my drive with my clients and my students, and that is my Dropbox, which is always backed up, so I don't have to worry about that data either. So I use the combination, and I also have a Google Drive. So those are my cloud-based: Dropbox and Google, and then my Backblaze, which is my backup for all my drives that I have on my computer, and I only put important stuff on my external drives. That way if I need to update my operating system, I don't have to worry about restoring all the other data onto that main drive on my computer. 05:36 And you can... even with Backblaze, you can order, like I had, a four-terabyte drive or a five-terabyte drive. If the entire drive goes—which drives do, I mean, they have a lifespan—you can actually just order a replacement drive, and it ships out within two to three days. It's an encrypted drive that you can actually just plug in via USB, and then ultimately you have that mirrored drive so that you don't have to restore the data through the cloud, because sometimes if you do have five terabytes of data—let's say if you have video—it could take an awfully long time to restore through the online version, and so you can just order a drive, and I've done that two times. So that's one of my favorite tools, Tom. So what are some of your other favorite tools that you have to run your business? 06:18 - Tom (Guest) Like I said, I do use Google Drive regularly. If you have a Gmail account, I think you already get 15 gigs of storage space, but with Google Workspace, you get two terabytes for like $15 a month, and I also use it to synchronize my email. Actually, that's really exciting—the ability to synchronize my email in Gmail with my phone, my desktop, my laptop, and my tablet, so I can access my emails anytime I want. But other tools that I've really been enjoying lately: this is something that comes up a lot. Voice actors of all parts of their journey desperately want to get their hands on the finished product, which is, most of the time, the finished video of a voiceover that they did, most of the time commercials or explainer videos or things like that. 07:07 So I have a two-pronged system. Number one, I go to YouTube once a month. I'm on YouTube every day, who am I kidding? But I mean, for this exercise, I go to YouTube, and I have a list of all the voiceover jobs that I did in the previous quarter or previous month, and I look at all the front-facing stuff, all of the commercials and explainers, the things that would be normally exposed to the public—not like the e-learning modules and the internal corporate stuff—stuff that has been published publicly. 07:34 - Speaker 2 (Announcement) Published publicly, exactly. 07:34 - Tom (Guest) And then what I'll do is I'll find all of them, find the ones that I can. I will save them to a playlist in YouTube, and I have a playlist for every genre of voiceover that... 07:46 - Anne (Host) I've done. Yeah, me too. 07:46 - Tom (Guest) But this is where the tool comes in. I download the YouTube video. There is a specific software that I use called Any Video Converter. We'll put the link down there. It's absolutely free. I think it's just anyvideoconverter.com. And then you download that free software, and all you do is paste the YouTube link in, and then it says, "Do you want audio only, video only, or audio and video?" You download it, and it downloads it to your computer, and then you can save it. And this is why this is really important. It's important for two reasons. Number one, a lot of us want to use professional samples of stuff that we've done to add to our demos. Yes, and we want to use it to add to our online casting site profiles, our sample lists and playlists on Voice123 and other places. But here's the other thing: YouTube videos don't necessarily stay there forever. 08:45 - Anne (Host) They're not necessarily evergreen. 08:47 - Tom (Guest) I have had multiple videos over the years where I went to go look at it, and it was gone. 08:52 Or it was linked to my website, tomdheere.com, and the video was just not there. There's just gray static, or "this video is no longer there." So what you can do is that if you keep that video by downloading it using Any Video Converter or any software of your choice, you can then upload it back to your website, right, or maybe even upload it back onto YouTube and continue to have it as part of your portfolio. 09:15 - Anne (Host) I just want to make sure that it's noted that you have permission and that it's public-facing to begin with. So make sure that it's public-facing. Sometimes, if you don't have permission from the company, it's always nice. I mean, I always, as part of my, "Thank you so much, it's been wonderful working with you," I always say, "If you have a link to the final video, I would really appreciate it. I'd love to see the final product. It was so great working with you." But a lot of times people are busy, and that doesn't happen. 09:40 And so, yeah, if it ultimately shows up on a YouTube, then ultimately it's public-facing. 09:45 And then I am assuming that it's public-facing, it's public property, and that I can take that Any Video Converter and download it. And, yeah, now you own it; you can put it back up on YouTube if you want. It's a video that's not going to disappear all of a sudden off your website if you happen to embed it. But yeah, that's a great tool, and it's wonderful to be able to show not only your demos but work that you've done, and you want that work to exist. So, yeah, that's a great. 10:08 I love that, Tom, because you actually go and actively seek it out, because sometimes I lose track of the jobs that I do, and then it's like, "Oh darn, I wish I had that job to showcase, right? Here's an example of what my voice sounds like in this particular job," or "here on this website." And I used to actually post the link or embed the YouTube link from their site onto my website, but, you're right, it disappeared from mine after a while. Sometimes people just don't keep those videos up on their YouTube, so having it for your own is a wonderful, wonderful tool, and that Any Video Converter, yeah. 10:42 - Tom (Guest) Definitely, and that task is on my monthly action plan. 10:46 - Anne (Host) It is one of the things that... 10:47 - Tom (Guest) I do every single month. It's in the tools section of my monthly action plan: "Download new YouTube videos and save to playlists." 10:54 - Speaker 2 (Announcement) Wow. 10:55 - Tom (Guest) This also applies to Vimeo as well, so you could also look around, because there are some clients that prefer Vimeo over YouTube, which—it's a great platform. I love Vimeo, but YouTube just has so much more SEO clout. Well... 11:06 - Anne (Host) I love Vimeo because I use Vimeo. I have a Vimeo account as well as YouTube, but I have a Vimeo account because if you want to password protect, you can do that on Vimeo. So that helps me when I do my VO Peeps events, and people are requiring access to the videos. I password protect them. 11:23 - Tom (Guest) Well, I'll bounce the ball back to you, Anne: what is another tool that you enjoy using? 11:27 - Anne (Host) Oh my gosh, there are so many. Let's see. I'm going to say I'm going to go the AI route, and I'm going to say I have a couple of AI tools that really, really help me in crafting emails to my clients that are super fast and efficient. And they help me just... First of all, I have a professional version of ChatGPT, which I think is well worth the 20 bucks a month, and I also have CopyAI, which I pay for on a yearly basis. It uses ChatGPT, but it also has different features kind of built in. So, depending on what I want to do, it has a little more marketing aspect to it, so it can create more marketing funnels for me. If I want ChatGPT, I can ask it just about anything. But again, both of them are the premium versions, and I use it for—gosh, I use it for anything. 12:09 Sometimes I'll just ask questions and I'll say, "Hey, craft an email response to my client that includes the following points," or I'll have started a particular email, and I'm like, "You know, I just don't have the time to word this professionally." So let me cut and paste it, and I'll say, "Just reword this professionally and in my voice." So you can train your little ChatGPT AI bot to have your voice in it. And so I use it constantly for crafting professional emails and basically doing a lot of web writing that I might have to do. If I want to craft my bio, I need to create a nice bulleted course list here and that sort of thing. I'll say, "Go to this webpage and tell me what are the major points, what are the summary points of this particular course that I can then utilize." So it's just training your robot, like training your dragon, is really a wonderful thing. 12:58 - Tom (Guest) Cool. Well, I also have two favorite AI tools, both of which are parallel to the ones that you just recommended. You're a paid user for ChatGPT. I am a Gemini fan myself. Gemini is the Google-powered version of OpenAI's ChatGPT. You do need to pay for it, but if you have a Google Workspace account, like I just talked about a few minutes ago, that I use to get more drive space and synchronize all of my emails and all of my devices, you also get access to Gemini. I've been using it very heavily for the past three, four months or so. And what do you use it for? What sorts of things? I use it professionally and personally. I ask it all kinds of questions, looking for statistics or data, potential voiceover leads. And what happened was, a few months ago, I'm here in New York City. I was invited by a Google Wix co-production talking about Google Gemini and then how to use Google Gemini to write blogs in Wix—not necessarily write them for you, but like to just kind of help you come up with ideas. 14:08 Spark ideas, maybe give you some outlines, and then you can put your own creative flair and writing style in it. I will give a quick AI prompt tip. Two things. Number one, always tell your AI who they are before you ask the question. So like, if you have a question about social media, you always say, "You are a social media expert." Then you ask the question. I don't pretend to understand how any of this works, but I do know that if you kind of put them in the, for lack of a better term, "frame of mind," it will give you more accurate answers. 14:43 - Anne (Host) Give me a more professional answer, give me a friendlier, give me more conversational. Yeah, you can absolutely, and... 14:50 - Tom (Guest) Oh, I refine them constantly. What's nice about Gemini is on the left side, it has a link to every single conversation that I've had, and I refer back to them regularly. The other tip is always say please and thank you. For some weird reason, they have noticed that—and this may be a little scary—that the nicer you are when you're asking questions, the better quality you're going to get. I know that's a little creepy. 15:15 - Anne (Host) Well, yeah, you don't want to be angry. I mean, a lot of times people are like, "No, that's the wrong, you stupid idiot." You know what I mean. You should not talk to Alexa that way either, by the way. Just saying. 15:24 - Tom (Guest) Right, no, you don't want to do that either. 15:25 - Anne (Host) No, because you want them to treat you right. 15:57 - Tom (Guest) I believe there are different tiers, like there are with a lot of these programs. I just started my affiliate partnership with them, so I'm exploring all the wonderful things that it can do, but Warmy.io—that's my other favorite AI tool. Wow. 16:07 - Anne (Host) I've got one more. 16:08 - Tom (Guest) I've got one more that I use, and that's Podium. For a long time... 16:11 - Anne (Host) I've used Podium for a good year or two now, I think. Podium takes my VO BOSS podcasts and it crafts out my notes, it crafts out my show notes, it crafts out takeaways, and I found that that works the best. I mean, I can put anything into ChatGPT, but the cool thing about Podium is I can feed it an MP3. So I can take a final MP3 of my episode and I can say, "Craft out 10 takeaways from this." And ultimately I do have to go through everything. I think it's always advisable, no matter what. 16:39 If you're working with AI, you always have to go through it. You always need the human touch, right? You need to like... sometimes it'll come up with some weird things, but for the most part, it does the best summaries, and it's the only one that I have that will take an MP3 or a video and transcribe it, and then it can create a blog out of it as well, which is super powerful, because once you can get from there to the blog, then you can tweak the blog. So it really has done a lot to help me. And so that's Podium, and yes, I'm an affiliate of Podium too. 17:08 So, guys, BOSSES out there, if you find tools that you like, you can always create a little affiliate membership with that, because, I mean, even if it's a few cents a month, it's a few cents a month, and I have people who follow me that I don't steer them wrong. I'm not going to be an affiliate of a product that I don't love and that I wouldn't recommend. And so that's the way I really feel that I've gotten people who follow me that trust my recommendations and these tools that Tom and I love. I mean, we recommend them wholeheartedly. It's not something because affiliate memberships don't, I don't think, make you enough money to... you know. I mean, I'm not just going to sign up for everything and become an affiliate. 17:42 It's only going to be the stuff that I absolutely love and the stuff that I'm going to talk about. And I actually got a little key fob the other day so that people can scan the key fob, and I can become an affiliate of that, so that they can scan the key fob and go get all my contact information, go to every website that I have, and it's really a lot of fun, and I'll be testing that out at VO Atlanta, so that's going to be really cool too. So all these tools that Tom and I are talking about are stuff that we've tested and stuff that we recommend. And so, BOSSES, that's another part of your income journey really, is thinking about products you love and maybe thinking about becoming affiliates of them. Any other tools, Tom, and I've got one more that I'm going to talk about that I love. 18:21 - Tom (Guest) It's funny because I wanted to... 18:23 - Anne (Host) It might be the same one. 18:23 - Tom (Guest) Well, I wanted to say that we are recording this right now using a fabulous tool called Riverside. Yes, and I've been guest hosting on the VO BOSS for a couple of years now, and she's been using Riverside, and I think it's a fantastic program. The one that I use when I have guests, when I am doing recorded video chats, is I use StreamYard. 18:43 - Speaker 2 (Announcement) They're both very similar. 18:44 - Tom (Guest) They have their own sets of bells and whistles. Both of them are fantastic. So if you're looking to start a podcast or if you just want to record conversations, Riverside or StreamYard—both of them are fantastic. 18:55 - Anne (Host) And here's one that I think we both have in common, Tom, I know that you use it, and it is... it is my graphic wonder, Canva. 19:03 - Speaker 2 (Announcement) Ah, Canva! I love Canva. 19:04 - Anne (Host) Canva changed the game, I'll tell you what. And I'm not saying that I'm a graphic artist, because nothing would ever replace my web designer, because my web designer is an amazing graphic artist. There's something about being able to see and visualize graphics and where they go and putting them together and making them look good. But if you're just a beginner and you need to do a few social media graphics, you need to do certain things like remove a background. You cannot go wrong with Canva. I've been using Canva for years. It is an absolute favorite tool of mine. 19:33 - Tom (Guest) I use it constantly. I mean, for those of you who have watched any of my how-to videos or have been in a workshop with me where I'm doing a presentation, I use Canva, I'm pretty sure. 19:43 - Anne (Host) Anne, you also have the... 19:44 - Anne (Host) Canva Pro. You have the paid version, Canva Pro. I do. 19:48 - Tom (Guest) So do I. I mean, it's got so many functions. You'd be shocked at the amount of things that it can make. I mean, I primarily use it for my how-to videos and presentations, but I also use it for making thumbnails for my YouTube videos. 20:01 - Anne (Host) Social media graphics. 20:03 - Tom (Guest) Yep, it's got a great library of content, and you can upload all of your content as well. 20:07 - Anne (Host) And also, I'm going to give myself one other plug. 20:09 - Tom (Guest) I'm going to give myself one other plug. There are a bunch of apps that you can have called up on the left side of your Canva. There is one which is to add an AI voice to your presentations, and one of my AI voices is one of those voices. So, yes, you could actually click on that. You could have me voicing your content. 20:27 - Anne (Host) Tom, I'm going to add you to my next presentation. I'm going to add Tom Dheere voice to my next presentation. But that's awesome. I love Canva and the Canva Pro. And remember, Tom, back in the day when you were creating, let's say, a website or a social media graphic and you would subscribe to these places where you could buy the rights to the graphics? Because you need to be legal about these things. You can't just be stealing graphics and downloading graphics. Canva has a great—and the Canva Pro version has a great—amount of graphics that you can use that are built within it and licensed. So you don't have to pay for another tool to get your graphics. So you can get professional graphics. If you need, like a studio graphic to put in the background of one of your social media posts, you can download it from Canva, and the license is there, and you're clear. 21:13 - Tom (Guest) Yeah, what's very interesting is that you can just run searches in their library to find graphics and stuff like that. And then, if you have the Canva Pro account—I don't know if you've noticed this, Anne—is when you click on stuff and you use it, it'll say, "You just saved this amount of money." 21:27 - Anne (Host) Oh, yeah, right. 21:28 - Tom (Guest) Right, because if you didn't have a Canva Pro account, you would have had to pay à la carte for all of these graphics, but as part of the Canva annual fee, you can get access to all of those graphics for free, and you are using them legally and lawfully. 21:40 - Anne (Host) Yeah, I love it. I love it. I love knowing that I'm using them legally and lawfully, because that used to be a worry for me. I mean, I used to be like, "Oh my God," and each graphic I would pay. Even sometimes I'd go to those websites. I think I had an Envato Elements account that, you know, I could go and get the graphics and use those for my social media. And it's just nice because it's built into Canva already, and everything that you use these days has AI built into it. 22:04 Guys, there's really not much that I think you're going to be using tool-wise that isn't going to have some sort of AI built into it. So, again, it's one of those things where I know we need to be careful of it for our voices, and we need to make sure that we're getting compensated. Make sure that any tool that you're using that has AI built into it, that you're within the confines of your own ethical thoughts and what you think is right and fair compensation. And, Tom, you're getting paid for that voice that you have in the middle of Canva, so that's good. And so tools that are ethically sourced, right, that are using AI, I think it's just going to be so embedded into a lot of our tools these days that we're not even going to notice anymore, and it's going to be like... you know, I always tell people with Voice over IP, back in the day I used to install Voice over IP phone systems, and people were like, "Oh no, it'll never work." 22:52 But honestly, that's all we use these days. There's not one phone call you make that isn't going over an internet or a network, a data line, and there are no more POTS lines that are installed. Back in the day, they were Plain Old Telephone POTS lines, P-O-T-S. And so nowadays, all of your communication goes over data lines, and that is Voice over IP. Really, same thing with AI. It's going to be embedded in just about everything that we do. So just be careful and be thoughtful. But these tools are something that I can't live without now. I mean, really. 23:23 - Tom (Guest) Me too. I don't know where I'd be without Canva and all the tools we just talked about today. 23:27 - Anne (Host) I don't know where I would be without my Alexa telling me how many ounces are in a tablespoon or how many... you know, when I need to do some simple conversion. I mean, we're talking like everyday life. So yeah, these are just some of our favorite tools. Tom, I'd love to do another episode in a few months from now to see if we've come up with any other favorite tools. 23:44 But I love sharing tech, geeky gadgets, because you're kind of a tech girl. I think we've come up with a really great list, and, guys, we'll list all of that in the show notes for you today. And thank you so much, Tom, for yet another wonderful, enlightening episode. 23:59 - Tom (Guest) Thank you, always glad to be here. 24:01 - Anne (Host) Big shout out to our sponsor, IPDTL, which I use every single day, by the way, guys. IPDTL, I use for all of my student communications. I love it. It's wonderful, people can record, it's super easy, and you can find out more at IPDTL.com. Guys, have an amazing week, and we'll see you next week. Bye. 24:21 - Speaker 2 (Announcement) Join us next week for another edition of VO BOSS with your host, Anne Ganguzza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at voboss.com and receive exclusive content, industry-revolutionizing tips and strategies, and new ways to rock your business like a3 BOSS. Redistribution with permission. Coast-to-coast connectivity via4 IPDTL.

BOSSes Anne Ganguzza and Danielle Famble tackle the often-overlooked financial realities of building a successful voiceover career. Their candid conversation reveals that achieving "overnight success" is typically the result of years of dedicated work and strategic sacrifices. They emphasize that time is a crucial financial asset and discuss the importance of making deliberate choices about where to invest it, alongside monetary resources. Anne and Danielle share personal experiences of delaying immediate wants to prioritize long-term business growth, highlighting the need for patience and a willingness to explore various income streams, even those outside one's primary passion. Ultimately, they empower voiceover professionals to take control of their financial journey by making informed sacrifices and defining their own path to sustainable success in the voiceover industry. 00:02 - Speaker 1 (Caller) Hi Anne, this is Jen Keefe from Real Women's Work Podcast. I just wanted to come on and say thank you, thank you, thank you for the series you're doing on AI and voice. I've listened to VO Boss Podcast for a few years now and it's always been informative and helpful, and not only is this series not an exception to that, but it is just the cherry on top. It has been so comforting and helpful to learn about this industry and I just thank you for taking all of the time you must have taken to research and understand, to know what questions to ask so that we're all better informed. It is just awesome, awesome, awesome. I feel excited and confident going forward into the future in the VO industry, all because of this series that you're doing. So thank you.  00:46 - Anne (Host) Hey guys, it's that season again. Are you feeling that tickle in your throat? Don't let a cold or flu slow you down. Combat your symptoms early with Vocal Immunity Blast, a simple and natural remedy designed to get you back to 100% fast. With certified therapeutic grade oils like lemon to support respiratory function, oregano for immune boosting power and a protective blend that shields against environmental threats, your vocal health is in good hands. Take charge of your health with Vocal Immunity Blast. Visit anganguzza.com to shop. 01:31 - Speaker 3 (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss, a VO boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza of.  01:45 VO Boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza. 01:47 - Anne (Host) Hey guys, welcome to the VO Boss podcast and the Boss Money Talk series. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and I am so excited to be back with special guest co-host Danielle Famble. Danielle, yay, hey, glad to be back, Danielle, it's been a while.  02:03 - Danielle (Guest) Yeah, it has.  02:04 - Anne (Host) And you've been traveling.  02:05 - Danielle (Guest) I have. I have been traveling. Me too, I just got back from the JMC Euro Retreat in Dublin, which was amazing. I went a couple days early to go shopping and had a really great time Speaking of shopping, I really like your shirt.  02:22 - Anne (Host) Oh my gosh, Well, thank you. I really really resonated with your shirt. Oh my gosh, Well, thank you. I really really resonated with the shirt. I also happen to be traveling in Europe and happen to go back to Amsterdam, which I absolutely love that town, and I saw this in the store no sacrifice, no success and it just had all these really positive, like motivating messages on it and I said, wow, I just really resonate with that and I must have it, and so I bought it and I wanted to wear it it.  02:44 And I said, wow, I just really resonate with that and I must have it. And so I bought it and I wanted to wear it today, and I think there's a message for all of us bosses. No sacrifice no success. Let's talk about sacrificing as it relates to the Money Talk series and financials.  03:00 - Danielle (Guest) Yeah, no, that's a huge part of financial success is sacrificing, sacrificing for your business, sacrificing the short term for your financial goals that are probably long term. That's a huge part of it. And I think that on the other side of that sacrifice, as your shirt says there is some level of success, because you need to be able to delay gratification sometimes to be able to get to success in what you're hoping to achieve in life.  03:27 - Anne (Host) Yeah, that's an interesting point that you bring up delaying gratification. You're absolutely right like I want this and I want it now because I feel like it's that kind of a I don't know. I feel like we're in that kind of culture these days where things are coming at us fast and we want things fast and a lot of times success does not come fast and so we need to kind of step it through. I was actually talking to one of my students the other day about like the steps I took to ultimately achieve my overnight success which, as I've said before on the podcast, took how many years.  03:59 I mean it took close to 10 years for that quote unquote overnight success.  04:05 But it took a lot of sacrifices, and not just financial, I mean. I know that this is the money talks, but financial can also mean your time, because your time is in essence money, especially when you're talking about your business.  04:17 - Danielle (Guest) Oh for sure, when you're talking about your business, there's parts of it that you just need to sort of stair step up.  04:23 So, you're probably front loading a lot of the education in the very beginning and that's a lot of time and it could be a lot of money, but it's mostly time intensive. And then from there then you can kind of take what you've been learning in that education phase and then implement it. But if you want to go from new to pro and you want it to happen quickly, if you try to go for like speed, you're going to be missing some things along the way. So the sacrifice is probably going to be sacrificing your time, it's probably going to be sacrificing your money and it's going to be making some difficult decisions. I mean, even with our business.  05:01 When I first started, I wanted a really expensive booth. I wanted the booth that I saw everybody else had on Zoom, and at that time I did not have that booth money. I just didn't. My business was not bringing in that much income and instead of just going after what it is that I wanted immediately, I chose to stair-step it and I chose to sacrifice what I wanted at that moment for the greater good of spending the money on coaching and spending the money on demos and things like that. And through that, for me success has come and I can afford that booth at some point. But now my goals have changed and the booth is not really the main thing that I'm wanting now. I'm wanting more education, maybe buying different mics or computers or peripherals to bring into the booth. So once you delay that, then you can kind of give yourself the time to recalibrate and readjust in your business.  06:00 - Anne (Host) Yeah, I love that you talked about like you're evolving, like because it does you stair-step it, but then your goals change and so even myself, I mean it's always, I think, an ever-growing, especially if you want to grow your business. Because I find myself I'm looking to diversify and to get into other things. As you know, everybody knows, I'm like a serial entrepreneur, but I like getting into other aspects of the voiceover business or other genres, getting into other aspects of the voiceover business or other genres, and so I've been actually spending a lot of time of which I don't have a ton studying and educating myself and taking classes.  06:31 And it was funny because, like last weekend, I literally I wasn't recording a VO Boss episode which is really odd for me because typically I do that on Saturdays but I found myself spending the entire day learning a new software so that I could see what were the capabilities, how could I implement this in the next step of growing my business. And that required me to sacrifice my entire Saturday and, of course, my happy hour and everybody's like you work so much. But I'm like, honestly, I really believe that doing the work now and getting the education and doing it during the times when I have available, I think it's going to and then commit to what they're going to do to get to those goals and figure out what sacrifices they're willing to make to get to those goals.  07:33 - Danielle (Guest) That's kind of the part of building and growing your business and scaling the business is that you're probably going to be making a lot of turns along the way, and are you okay with that and are you okay with the sacrifices that you're going to need to make in order to achieve those goals? So for you last week it was a sacrifice of time, but that time sacrifice is going to reap huge dividends later on when you know how to use that software. So really was the time sacrifice like that much of a sacrifice for you, or?  08:02 - Anne (Host) Is it something that was?  08:02 - Danielle (Guest) Really just an investment into your future.  08:05 - Anne (Host) And, interestingly enough, it was an investment into software, which I don't anticipate doing myself. I was looking into a new video editing software so I can create more content to get out right, so that I can again, like, get my brand out there. And so will I ultimately be spending all my time creating or editing videos? No, ultimately I'm going to be hiring somebody to direct them, but I want to know enough about this software to be able to intelligently direct them. And I think also, it's something to mention that, like you spoke about in the very beginning, we have to take sacrifices and maybe not get everything that we want immediately. Like our ultimate goal, I think, in voiceover is let's do something that brings us joy and let's make money at that. And ultimately, I think, along the way of achieving that goal, you might have to do things that may not bring you joy but will bring you income while you are trying to achieve that growth.  08:59 So I know for a fact when I was getting into voiceover and I went full time and I think I think I really speak to the people who are like they're part-time, maybe considering full-time, or they're part-time, considering dedicating more time to it that maybe they don't have and they've got a full-time job and they really hate their full-time job and they don't ever want to do anything like it again.  09:19 Well, I'll tell you what those skills are, what you have in order to ultimately, right, possibly, bring income in on a steady basis. So there might be an interim time where you might have to do consulting in something that you're really good at right. That can maybe help people so that you can bring in enough money to continually like reinvest that money into the growth of your career. And so I wanted to just say it may not be immediate gratification, like the society I think is these days, like I know myself, like I want it right away. I'm impatient, but I do believe that those steps to success and financially and when we talk financially we talk investing your money, having the money to invest as well as your time, which ends up turning into being money for you- oh, for sure, I always think that you need to follow the dollars and do whatever you can to get to your next dollar in business.  10:14 - Danielle (Guest) And if that is education, then follow that. If that is consulting, so that you can have additional money coming in, so that you can use that to channel into your business, then do it. Figure out how you can bring in resources and revenue so that you can use that to then grow your business. And I've said it before, I'll say it again it is totally okay to have your side hustle be what can fund your main hustle until it's time Like that's totally, totally fine, because there's no glory in being a starving artist.  10:52 I really don't think that that's the way that is going to be a long-term measurement of success for you to sort of take away from your current in the hopes of a possibility of a future when you could be doing things along the way to help like infuse capital into your life and your business to help keep you going for longer.  11:12 - Anne (Host) Absolutely. I mean, when you've got a family that might depend on that income, right, so it becomes more than just I mean really depends on where you're at in your life and who's depending on income coming in to pay a mortgage or to support a family. And so in reality, I'm always when my students are asking me should I go full-time into voiceover and they have a family and children, I'm like, well, you've got to really think about this because you need to be able to secure steady income coming in to be able to support, and it's wonderful and I get it. I mean, I think we all get to this point, or a lot of us get to this point, when we've been in a corporate job for a long time and we just it becomes toxic, we hate it and we're like we just want to do what we love full time.  11:55 Well, that may not be achievable within a day, obviously, or even a week, or even a year, because, as I mentioned before, it took me a good oh, I'm going to say maybe eight years before I really got a return on my investment when I went full-time. And so make sure you have that financial cushion to be able to support whatever it is that you need to support yourself, other family members, and it doesn't matter if you're an Uber driver or maybe you're taking the skills that you have during your day job and creating a side hustle business out of that in order to make the extra income. And I always try to say, well, let's make my side hustle. Something I love to do Doesn't necessarily have to be voiceover, and so I love podcasting, so I'm looking to expand my podcasting, consulting that kind of a thing. So how can I do that effectively? Right, how can I get the message out? And, gosh Danielle, after I figure out, like, how I want to grow, guess what comes next? I've got to market myself.  12:53 - Danielle (Guest) Yeah, and there's probably going to be more sacrifice in order to get to where you're going and also the sacrifice is looking at what is and figuring out what is or isn't working. So you're looking at your business, the landscape of your business now, and voiceover is working. The other things that you're doing are working, the podcasting is working, and so you're thinking, all right, well, all of these things are working, what else can I do and how else can I build it? And that's great. But also, if something's not working, then you really should look at that and say, all right, well, do I need to keep going down this path? That isn't working.  13:30 Maybe it is keeping a day job that you don't love and don't feel fulfilled with, but maybe you still need to be bringing in an income because you've got people to support and yourself to support.  13:40 Maybe it's just finding a different job that can help bring in income while you're working toward growing your voiceover business. Maybe there are certain genres that you really like, but you're not making a lot of money in and so maybe it's looking at all right, I do enjoy this particular genre, but I'm making a ton more money in a different genre. Let me keep cultivating that, but have the passion working in this genre that I love. That maybe isn't paying as much. Those kinds of hard questions are really the sacrifices I think that we're talking about here, not necessarily just financial, but understanding that to get to the level of success that you're wanting to get, whatever your measure of success is looking at the decisions that need to be made and making the hard choices and making those sacrifices, be it financial or otherwise, to then get you to where you're trying to go in your version of success.  14:35 - Anne (Host) I love how you brought up the different genres too, because it's something else to look at. When you're doing a genre, there's so many people that want to do, let's say, character voices or animation or promo, and it's something to be said that, while you're working toward that goal right, you can also financially invest yourself and your time into other genres that can be bringing you money in. While that happens and of course, that happens to be one of my specialties happens to be the corporate market, and I'm always trying to explain to people that it may not be the most glamorous and it may not be the one that brings you the most joy. However, when you talk about market share, you've literally got so many opportunities for corporate narration compared to maybe, let's say, animation, because there's only so many animated shows out there. However, I upped my number, I've now researched and my number is now 33.2 million registered companies.  15:28 It used to be 30.4. Now it's 33.2 million companies that are registered with the SBA in the United States, and so that's just a lot of opportunities, a lot of potential opportunities, because you've got those companies that probably have a website and they probably have a YouTube channel and they need a voice at one point or another to be able to talk about those products and services.  15:48 - Danielle (Guest) Yeah, that's a really great point, because there's part of this industry that can be purely just economics. It can just purely be about what pays the bills. And then there's other parts of it as actors, but figuring out what it is that you can do that pays the bills and also fills your soul. And it may not be the same thing, but how can you put your time and your energy and your efforts into creating as much money and fulfillment as possible in your day, in your life, in your business?  16:31 - Anne (Host) Yeah, absolutely. And it's so funny because I'm always like with corporate narration, people just think it's so boring and a lot of people just think it's so boring and I'm like, wow, I completely don't think that, because to me it's just challenging. It's challenging to be able to find the story in some of the corporate copy. It's not that it's necessarily to me boring, but I love the challenge. As an artist, I love the challenge of where is the story here and how can I tell it in the most interesting way. And also, just again, looking at the absolute size of the market that is out there and also understanding and keeping my eye on all sorts of other things happening in the industry. And so, while I have my eye on that, making sure that if I love being an entrepreneur and I love being a boss, how am I going to continue to bring in money when, let's say, maybe times are slow in the industry, Like there are also slow points in the marketplace Right now? Certain genres I think are busier than ever, like political.  17:33 And of course anybody that's doing commercials for the holidays, right? I mean, they've been busy. But maybe during the holidays there are certain other genres that aren't as busy, right? Maybe corporate narration isn't quite as busy, maybe e-learning is not quite as busy during that time. But understanding the fluctuations in the market and when those happen, for you I have the genre I always want to do character work, and so I'm continually working towards that. But to supplement my financial income, I'm going to do some corporate or I'm going to do some e-learning, or I'm going to do some telephony, whatever that is. And then understanding where the fluctuations are in the marketplace, and so if there is just no work coming in, then invest your time in figuring out how you're going to grow that business. And again, which translates to your time is money.  18:18 - Danielle (Guest) Yeah, and that is the measure of entrepreneurship, that is the measure of being the VO boss. That's what it means to look at. Okay, what's going on in the industry, what's going on with the things that I do well or genres that I would like to do well in, and how can I maneuver myself to be able to take advantage of all of it? Maybe not at the same time, but be able to move laterally into and out of genres when they're at their high points, or maybe moving out of something if there's a strike, for example. You know that's happening right now. Or figuring out, like, what's going on in the market and how you can maneuver your business to be the best positioned that it possibly can be. Like that's the name of the game. It's not just about what you do and how you show up in front of your mic. It's really about figuring out how you can position your business to win, no matter what the circumstances are as much as they say.  19:17 - Anne (Host) This is not a competitive industry, because every voice is unique. In reality, I'm competing against myself so that I can continually progress forward and win. I love it that you said win, because, danielle, I'm not competitive at all, right Me either.  19:32 - Danielle (Guest) I'm not competitive at all.  19:34 - Anne (Host) Not at all, but yeah, but really yeah, how can you win? How can you win? And, like you were mentioning earlier, what is your definition of success? Because there are some people that financial is not necessarily the definition of success and I know that we're going to actually have an episode coming up on like determining what is your hourly rate, like what is your hourly worth? Right In trying to determine what's working and what's not. How are you determining? Okay, I'm spending an hour learning this and what is that time worth? Versus if I get a commercial, I can make this amount of money. How does that translate into my hourly rate? If I do a corporate narration and I get paid once, how does that translate into my hourly rate? If I do a corporate narration and I get paid once, how does that translate? So you can kind of decide how you can move forward in your business and what you should work on, maybe what you should focus on or what goals you can set for the next level.  20:24 - Danielle (Guest) For sure I love that.  20:25 I think, then, that also brings a lot of ability to the individual voice actor to be the person who is choosing what winning and success looks like, and it's got nothing to do with what you're seeing in these Facebook groups or how other people are running their business.  20:40 It's got everything to do with what you have chosen, what you've decided, and it gives you something to do. I feel like sometimes it feels like so many things are out of your control. When it comes to running a business, when it comes to being a VO boss, it really is like, okay, well, I did this audition, did someone choose it or not? Have I been chosen? Are all these people, these gatekeepers out there? Is it working in my favor or not? But when you have something that you personally can do and you can take ownership of how you are running your business, it's empowering and really what you were just talking about is the individual business owner and entrepreneur and VO boss being able to empower themselves and choose what is your definition of success and what can you do to make sure that you get there. And then it's got nothing to do with anyone else choosing you or not choosing you. It's got everything to do with what you've done to make yourself the most successful that you can possibly be.  21:38 - Anne (Host) I love that. I feel like that could be a completely separate episode too, talking about what is it that you own, right? What is it that you own? There are things that we don't control, like do we get picked, do I get feedback? And that's the stuff I think a lot of voice actors get preoccupied with, like oh okay, so why am I not getting picked? Or I audition, but I never hear back, and so they spend all their time worrying about that.  22:02 But I think what you said is just absolutely on point, like what is it that you can do to control right? That you take control of what it is that you can control and that's going to be what moves you forward and that's what's going to keep you, I'm going to say, out of the mindset of self-sabotage or imposter syndrome. And so I can't control whether somebody picks me or not necessarily for my audition, because there are so many elements that aren't in my control. But I can control my performance. I can control how good I am right. I can control my performance. I can control how good I am right. I can control getting coaching if I need more. I can control marketing in my business, right. I can control researching what's happening and what trends are happening now. So those are things I can do.  22:44 - Danielle (Guest) You can control your audio quality. You can control how much money you're saving and reinvesting in your business. You can control who you work with. You can say no to working with certain clients and certain jobs if it doesn't serve you or the rate doesn't serve you or the subject matter does not serve you. There are so many things that are in your control that owning that and really living in the peace of the ownership of that really can be what helps you feel like you're actually doing a little bit more every single day to be the VO boss that you ultimately want to be.  23:20 - Anne (Host) Yeah, and your mention of how empowering that is, I mean that is so empowering. I mean I know that, me the control freak. Maybe that's why I'm a serial entrepreneur, I have no idea because I can control that, I can control the education, I can control the direction that I'm moving and if it's not necessarily moving the way I want it to or expect it to, I can move it again and I can change it again. And so that keeps me the control freak, which it can be a good thing, it can also be a bad thing, but I think for me, I utilize that personality trait that I have of always wanting to have control in a positive way to help me grow and then still understanding that I have these things under my control and then understanding, almost more importantly, what it is that is not under my control and not allowing that to affect me in any way in terms of my mental state.  24:06 - Danielle (Guest) Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.  24:09 - Anne (Host) Wow, what a great conversation. So yeah guys, no sacrifice, no success. I am a big believer in really taking the ownership, making the sacrifices that you need, and that sacrifice doesn't necessarily need to be money. It could be your time, your dedication, your effort, your spirit, right, all of that. Whatever, it takes that kind of go-get-em sort of boss attitude that just goes for it and just tries things. If it doesn't work, try it another way, right, and really tries not to allow any of that to get in the way, or even yourself to get in the way.  24:45 - Danielle (Guest) Yeah, I love it.  24:45 - Anne (Host) Danielle, I love it. Great, great conversation. I'm going to give a great big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl. You too can connect and network like bosses. Find out more at IPDTL.com and, guys, you have an amazing week. Go out there and make those sacrifices, because we know you guys are going to be great successes. So have a good one, guys, and we'll see you next week. See you later, bye.  25:13 - Speaker 3 (Announcement) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, Anne Ganguzza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at vobosscom and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution with permission. Coast-to-coast connectivity via IPDTL.   

Dans cet épisode, Olivier Babeau partage ses réflexions sur le processus de déclaration de revenus en France. Il évoque la complexité du système fiscal, le choc du montant à payer, la progressivité de l'impôt, ainsi que son sentiment que l'argent des contribuables est souvent mal utilisé par l'État. Il souligne également l'impact grandissant de la dette publique sur les finances des ménages. Une analyse détaillée des enjeux économiques et fiscaux qui touchent les Français au quotidien.Notre équipe a utilisé un outil d'Intelligence artificielle via les technologies d'Audiomeans© pour accompagner la création de ce contenu écrit.Distribué par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Olivier Babeau analyse les mécanismes qui découragent l'effort en France. Il explique comment la superposition de dispositifs progressifs, tels que l'impôt sur le revenu, les cotisations sociales et les tarifs des services publics, finit par gommer les gains réels des efforts des contribuables, notamment des classes moyennes supérieures. Cette logique de redistribution excessive au détriment du système contributif crée un sentiment de malaise fiscal et de découragement, pouvant même mener à des exils fiscaux. Olivier Babeau plaide pour un rééquilibrage du système afin de mieux valoriser les efforts des Français.Notre équipe a utilisé un outil d'Intelligence artificielle via les technologies d'Audiomeans© pour accompagner la création de ce contenu écrit.Distribué par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

MORE UNINTENTIONALLY FUNNY AI SLOP SHOWNOTES. Peter Hoistead? Thanks Gemini. Thanks listeners. We love you. Buy CBCo it's excellent beer. The Conditional Release Program - Episode 185: Federal Election 2025 Post-SpecialHosts: Joel Hill & Jack the Insider (Peter Hoistead)Overall Theme: A deep dive into the results and implications of the 2025 Australian Federal Election, focusing on Labor's historic victory, the Coalition's catastrophic loss, and the performance of minor parties and independents.Key Segments & Talking Points:(Part 1 - Approximate Timestamps based on original transcript, subject to adjustment)[00:00:00 - 00:01:23] Introduction & Election OverviewJoel laments being banned from betting on the election, particularly Labor's strong odds.Jack notes Joel would have won significantly, especially on Labor at $2.60.Historic Labor Win: Anthony "Albo" Albanese leads Labor to a significant victory.Libs sent into an "existential crisis."Albo is the first PM to be re-elected since John Howard in 2004.Largest Labor victory on a two-party preferred basis since John Curtin in 1943 (votes still being counted).Crucial Stat: The Albanese government is the only first-term government to have a swing towards it in Australian political history.[00:01:23 - 00:03:38] Significance of the Swing to LaborPrevious first-term governments (Howard '98, Hawke '84, Fraser '77, Whitlam '74, Menzies) all had swings against them when seeking a second term.Albo's government achieved an approximate 4% swing towards it (votes still being counted).Discussion points: Where it went right for Labor, and wrong for the Coalition, Greens, and Teals.Far-right "Cookers" performed terribly. Pauline Hanson's One Nation (FONY) might see minor representation.[00:03:38 - 00:05:11] Patreon & Sponsor Shout-outsReminder to support the podcast on Patreon: www.patreon.com/theconditionalreleaseprogram (for as little as $5/month).CB Co. Beer: Praised for their IPA and new Hazy XPA. Competition to win $100,000. Use code CRP10 for 10% off at cbco.beer.[00:05:11 - 00:08:52] Polling Inaccuracies & Liberal OptimismReiteration of the ~4% swing to Labor.Comparison of final poll predictions vs. actual results:Freshwater: Labor 51.5% (was Liberal pollster, told Libs they were close).Newspoll: 52.5% (Labor used their private polling).Essential: 53.5%.YouGov: 52.2% - 52.9%.Polling companies significantly underestimated Labor's vote, especially those advising the Coalition.The misplaced optimism at Liberal Party HQ on election night.[00:08:52 - 00:16:00] Specific Seat Results & Labor GainsGilmore (NSW South Coast): Fiona Phillips (Labor) won 55-45 (3-4% swing to her), despite Andrew Constance (Liberal) being the favourite.Bennelong (Howard's old seat): Jeremy Laxail (Labor) won 59-41 against Scott Young (problematic Liberal candidate), a 10% swing to Labor.Parramatta: Andrew Charlton (Labor) won 62-38 (was 53.47 in 2022).Aston (Victoria): Labor won in a historic by-election previously, now a 4% swing to the Labor candidate, winning 53-47.Boothby (SA): Louise Miller-Frost (Labor) achieved an 8% swing, holding the seat 61-39.Tangney (WA): Sam Lim (Labor, ex-cop & dolphin trainer) secured a 3% swing, now 56-44. Large Bhutanese diaspora noted.Leichhardt (FNQ): Labor's Matt Smith won 57-43 after Warren Entsch (LNP) retired (10% swing).Hunter (NSW): Dan Repiccioli (Labor) re-elected with 44% primary vote (5% swing on primary). Fended off Nats and One Nation (Stuart Bonds' inflated vote claims by "One Australia" on X).[00:16:00 - 00:18:49] Diversifying Parliament & Women in PoliticsPraise for non-lawyer backgrounds in Parliament (e.g., Dan Repiccioli, Sam Lim).Critique of the typical lawyer/staffer/union pathway.Labor's success in diversifying candidate backgrounds and increasing female representation.Liberals struggling with female representation despite some efforts. Discussion of potential quotas in the Liberal party and the backlash it would cause.Margaret Thatcher quote: "If you want something said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman."[00:18:49 - 00:27:26] The Teals: Mixed Results & ChallengesInitial appearance of a Teal "romp" on election night.Bradfield (NSW North Shore): Teal Nicolette Boele (Burle/Bola) behind Liberal Giselle Kaptarian by 178 votes (updated during recording).Goldstein (VIC): Tim Wilson (Liberal) leading Zoe Daniel (Teal) by 925 votes. Wilson is likely back. Joel comments on Wilson's IPA association vs. his "gay, wet, mediocre, progressive side." Jack notes Wilson often highlights his sexuality.Jim Chalmers' quip about Tim Wilson: "Popular for all those who haven't met him."Kooyong (VIC): Monique Ryan (Teal) leading by 1002 votes (97,000 counted, ~8,000 postals to go). Redistribution added parts of Toorak, making it harder for Ryan.Liberal candidate Amelia Hamer: "Trust fund renter" controversy, owns multiple properties, London bolthole.Corflute wars in Kooyong: Hamer campaign's excessive use of A-frames, obstructing walkways, went to Supreme Court over council limits. Jack doubts the impact of corflutes.[00:27:26 - 00:31:28] Why Did the Teals Go Backwards?Liberal party invested heavily in Kooyong and Goldstein.Voters potentially preferring a local member who is a Minister or part of the government.Redistribution impact in Kooyong (addition of Toorak).Zali Steggall's success in Warringah partly due to "fruitcake" Liberal opponents like Katherine Deves.[00:31:28 - 00:40:37] The Greens: Significant LossesLost all lower house seats. Adam Bandt (leader) gone from Melbourne.Lost Brisbane (Max Chandler Mather) and Griffith back to Labor.Ryan (South Brisbane): Likely Labor win in a three-way contest.Greens will have no lower house representation.Key Reason: Housing policy standoff. Accused of holding up Labor's housing bill for over a year (affecting funding for domestic violence victims, homeless), pursuing "perfection" over compromise.[00:40:37 - 00:49:57] Deep Dive: Housing Policy ChallengesA major challenge for the Albanese government. Not an easy fix.Supply-side changes could devalue existing homes or slow growth, angering homeowners.Joel's view: Subsidized housing (rent-to-own, means-tested) wouldn't touch the high-end market.Negative gearing: Not a quick fix; removing it overnight unlikely to change much; issue is supply.Homeowner expectations of property value growth.Construction industry at full tilt; skills shortages.CFMEU's role in skilled migration for construction.Free TAFE importance for reskilling/upskilling.Linton Besser (Media Watch) criticism of Labor "building" houses when they reconditioned unlivable ones – Joel argues this still increases supply.[00:49:57 - 00:59:16] Deep Dive: Childcare Policy & Global Economic HeadwindsChildcare another area for government focus.Labor's childcare policy: Rebates for high earners (e.g., $325k combined income).High cost of childcare; need for better pay for childcare workers (Labor delivered a pay spike).Ownership of childcare centers (Peter Dutton reference) and profit-making. Call for more public childcare.Uncertain global economic times, Trump tariffs.Port of Los Angeles imports down by one-third.US Q1 economy shrank 0.3%; recession likely.Japan, China, South Korea meeting to discuss tariff responses; hold significant US debt. Japanese warning to US re: trade negotiations.[00:59:16 - 01:07:13] What Went Wrong for the Coalition? Answer: Everything.Gas Price Fixing Policy: Cobbled together, no consultation with industry (unlike Rudd's mining tax failure), potentially unconstitutional (taxing for benefit of some states over others).Work From Home Policy Disaster:Conceived by Jane Hume and Peter Dutton, no Shadow Cabinet consultation.Initial messaging: All Commonwealth public servants, then just Canberra.Jane Hume's media run: Claimed all WFH is 20% less productive, citing a study.Implied WFH employees are "bludgers," alienating a vast number of voters (including partners of tradies).Labor capitalized on this after door-knocking feedback. Policy eventually walked back.Defence Policy: Released in the last week, vague promise to spend 3% of GDP, no specifics on acquisitions. Andrew Hastie (Shadow Defence) reportedly wants out of the portfolio.Fuel Excise Policy: Halving fuel excise for a year. Took a week for Dutton to do a photo-op at a service station. Fuel prices had already dropped.Melbourne Airport Rail Link Funding: Announced at a winery.Vehicle Emissions Policy: Clarifications issued within 48 hours.Generally a shambolic campaign, studied for years to come.[01:07:13 - 01:08:55] The Nationals & Nuclear Policy FalloutNats trying to spin a better result than Libs, but didn't win Calare (Andrew Gee back as Indy).Nuclear Policy: Coalition embarrassed to discuss it. Nats insist on keeping it.Policy originated as a way for Libs to get Nats to support Net Zero by 2050.Massive costs and timelines: Hinkley Point C (UK) example – 65 billion pounds, years of delays. US Georgia plant similar.Legislative hurdles: Repealing Howard-era ban, state-level bans (even LNP QLD Premier Chris O'Fooley against it).State-funded, "socialist" approach due to lack of private investment.[01:08:55 - 01:15:49] Coalition Campaign Failures & SpokespeopleDebate on government vs. private industry running power.Lack of effective Coalition spokespeople: Susan Ley sidelined, Jane Hume promoted. Angus Taylor perceived as lazy.Angus Taylor's past water license scandal ("Australia's Watergate," Cayman Islands structure).[01:15:49 - 01:28:03] Demographics: A Tide Against the LiberalsWomen: Voted ~58-42 for Labor (two-party preferred), worse than under Morrison. Libs failed to address issues like climate, domestic violence.Language Other Than English at Home (LOTE): 60% backed Labor (Redbridge polling, Cos Samaras). Indian and Chinese diaspora significant, impacting Deakin and Menzies (Keith Wallahan, a moderate, lost Menzies).Gen Z & Millennials (18-45): Now outnumber Baby Boomers (60+), voted 60-40 Labor (TPP).Preferencing: Labor "gamed the system well"; Liberals' deal with One Nation backfired in messaging to urban areas.Strategy Failure: Liberals walked away from "heartland" Teal-lost seats, wrongly believing voters were wrong. Dutton's 2023 claim of Libs being "party of regional Australia" failed. No connection or network in targeted outer-suburban/regional seats.Female Pre-selection: Aspiration of 50% in 2019, achieved 34% in 2025. "Male, white, middle-class, mediocre."Sarah Henderson Example: Lost Corangamite in 2019, returned via Senate vacancy. Criticized as a "waste of space," arrogant for seeking re-entry.Both parties have taken safe seats for granted (factional gifts), but Labor learning. Example: Batman (now Cooper, Jed Carney) won back from Greens after better candidate selection.[01:28:03 - 01:36:42] Fond Farewells: Election CasualtiesPeter Dutton: Lost his seat of Dickson (held 20+ years), got "smashed." Likely preferred losing seat to facing party room fallout. Gracious concession speech. Australia's strong electoral process praised (democracy sausage, volunteers, AEC, peaceful concession).Michael Sukkar (Deakin, VIC): "Unpleasant piece of work."Recount of February incident: Sukkar, at Dutton's prompting, used a point of order to cut off Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus (Jewish) during an emotional speech about anti-Semitism and his family's Holocaust connection (Shiloh story). Dreyfus called Sukkar "disgusting." Sukkar moved "that the member no longer be heard." Widely condemned.Gerard Rennick (QLD Senator): Anti-COVID vaccine, spread misinformation (diabetes, dementia links). Jack recounts being attacked by Rennick's "poison monkeys" on X after writing about it. Rennick gone, likely self-funded much of his campaign.(Part 2 - Timestamps restart from 00:00:00 but are a continuation, add ~1 hour 36 mins 50 secs to these for continuous flow)[01:36:50 - 01:44:07] The Fractured Hard Right ("Cookers") - Dismal PerformanceGenerally went nowhere electorally.UAP (United Australia Party) / Trumpeter Patriots (John Ruddock): 2.38% in NSW Senate (down from UAP's 3.2% in 2022). Less money spent than previous Clive Palmer campaigns.Libertarian Democrats (Lib Dems): 1.99% in NSW Senate. Controversial name didn't help. Alliance with H.A.R.T (formerly IMOP, Michael O'Neill) and Gerard Rennick's People First Party.Monica Smit's calls to "unite" contrasted with these groups already forming alliances without her.These three parties combined got less than 2% in NSW. Lib Dems

BOSSes Anne Ganguzza and Lau Lapides delve into the expanding role of on-camera presence for voice actors. Their conversation highlights how versatility across different media is increasingly vital in the entertainment industry. They explore the shift from on-camera work being a side hustle to becoming a fundamental aspect of a successful voiceover career. Anne and Lau emphasize the power of authentic connection, both vocally and visually, and discuss the importance of building supportive online communities. They also touch on practical aspects of self-presentation, including beauty, fashion, and the impact of confidence, ultimately encouraging voice actors to embrace their full presence to thrive professionally and personally.   00:02 - Anne (Host) Hey, bosses want to be that well-rounded talent that's always in demand. I offer coaching in a variety of genres, including commercials that grab attention, medical narrations that educate, corporate scripts that inspire and e-learning modules that engage. Find out more at anganguzza.com.  00:24 - Speaker 2 (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss a VO boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza.  00:43 - Anne (Host) Hey, hey everyone. Welcome to the VO Boss Podcast and the Boss Superpower Series. I am here with my lovely host co-host. I don't know Host and co-host. Look at you, Lau, I called you my host.  00:57 - Lau (Guest) I could be called first things. I'll tell you what, right yeah.  01:01 - Anne (Host) I'm here with my lovely co-host, Lau Lapides. So wonderful to see you. It's been a little bit it has.  01:08 - Lau (Guest) It's awesome to be back. I'm excited 2025.  01:11 - Anne (Host) Yeah, I apologize. I was a little bit late, Lau, because, as you know, I had to do the hair and the makeup because we do video things now I'm so glad.  01:20 - Lau (Guest) I'm so glad you finally took the time to look appropriate. I'm so glad.  01:22 - Anne (Host) I'm so glad you finally took the time to look appropriate for camera. I'm always such a slob on camera, oh we're divas.  01:27 - Lau (Guest) You know that we're divas, we're fashionistas.  01:31 - Anne (Host) Well, it did take us five minutes prior to pressing record to finish putting our lipstick on. I think what's so interesting, Lau, is that there's like all sorts of parallel careers with on-camera and influencer marketing that can complement your voice acting career.  01:50 - Lau (Guest) And that is amazing because I never thought of it and I know a lot of listeners may not have thought of it, but you're actually involved with it and this is like something we have to talk about today is your on-camera appeal as a voiceover talent. I think it's been a long time that we haven't really faced that. No pun intended, we really have to face our face.  02:12 - Anne (Host) Yeah, I mean, I agree and I'll tell you what I know.  02:15 We had an episode prior to this where we talked about on-camera and how it was a great additional side hustle, but not really, it's not even really a side hustle, right, there's a lot of agents out there that really look for people that can be on camera as well as do the voice acting, and I think that, besides the traditional on camera, slash, theater, slash voice acting, I think there's also this whole other world of I hate to say, influencer marketing, but there's essentially your presence online that can help to get you and your brand known, and some of it may be influencer, some of it just may be.  02:54 You're creating those videos that other people see, and I'm kind of for this year, because social media is a little bit chaotic and I know there's a lot of people who are kind of fleeing social media, but I think that at some point here's my prediction right my prediction is that people will still form those safe communities, and those safe communities because we've been globally connecting with one another, especially in our industry, right, because we don't have an office, we all go into and meet and talk by the water cooler.  03:23 We are all online, and so I think we're all going to be in our communities wherever they may be, whatever platform they may be, and maybe not even on a platform, maybe just our own Zoom meetings, our Zoom water coolers where we can work with one another and talk with one another and also work with our clients and potential clients, and so I think it's important to talk about what's involved in kind of preparing yourself for this, because for so many years there have been people who want to be voice actors have always thought, well, I don't want to be on camera and that's why I want to be behind the mic, and that's what I love about that. But I think that we really need to kind of open our minds to thinking about our on-camera presence.  04:04 - Lau (Guest) Gosh, there's just so much to unpack about what you just said. We're going to break that up into segments. I think the first one is, of course, as an agent. The first thing I'm thinking about is and I just work with voiceover talent but I'm thinking about do you do on-camera work? Do you also do on-camera work? Because whether you're facing a boutique agency or you're up for representation in one of the bigger hubs, that's one of the first things on their mind is what do you do across the board? Do you do print work? Do you do modeling? Do you do on-camera ads? Do you do, of course, voiceover?  04:36 No longer are we compartmentalized into just being a voiceover talent. Now we're going to work with clients and reps that really want to know wow, could you be the face of this product, like you are? Could you be the model for what we're putting out there? And I'm being unafraid because I hear oftentimes and I know you do too oh, I got a face for radio and you know it isn't even funny anymore, because it's far from truth, it's far from accurate. We don't want you hiding behind a microphone. We don't want to not see you, we want to see you.  05:09 - Anne (Host) Yeah, it also plays into again, guys. I know that, like I said, we covered a lot of this in another episode, but I think it's really relevant and timely that we talk about it again today, because you know, we're talking about people wanting, needing that human connection right Again. We've got chaos right now, social media division everywhere and I think that human connection with like minds and I think that that's so important, that we establish that and on camera, helps that. It totally helps that, that we are representing ourselves as the human beings who have a voice, and not just a voice but a face as well, and we're real. We're real and we want that real connection.  05:53 - Lau (Guest) And we know that in the entertainment industry, seven out of ten jobs are going to go to real people, real looking people, real sounding people, real, authentic personalities Like. We know this for a fact. If you don't believe us, turn on media, go to a movie, listen to the radio, you'll hear what we mean. Right, we just don't hear as many announcers. We don't see as many announcers unless we watch the Super Bowl. So we really want to kind of be aware that, as real people, we're getting a lot more work these days. Real people were getting a lot more work. These days. They're super gorgeous, super model, super of what we think we should be on camera. But that's not accurate. For what today's market?  06:32 - Anne (Host)  Exactly and like even though we kind of were kidding around Lau and talking about putting our lipstick on for you know, for five minutes, that for me it's something that I love, that for me, five minutes, that for me, it's something that I I love, that For me, that's something that I am so passionate about. For myself, anyways, it's certainly not a requirement. I mean, my gosh, look at the celebrities out there that are beautiful without makeup, without the filters. I mean, that's a whole vibe, that's a whole thing.  06:59 So it's not necessarily, guys, that you have to put makeup on it's all about representing yourself and who you are, and I happen to find a very creative artistry in makeup. It's like a newfound passion of mine after so long of when I was behind the mic and not necessarily going out so much, where I didn't really think about it, but now it's like you know what, let me just get a little zhuzhed up for the camera, and I find that I really enjoy it. However, one thing that I have to say, and this is because, guys, I am dabbling a little bit in influencer marketing. I mean, I don't like to call myself an influencer, but I do work with a few brands where I will talk about the brands and put myself on camera and display the product and tell people what I think about that product, and so there's a certain presence and I have to prepare for that. That is something that doesn't come. I'd like to say, it came naturally to me, but there's practice involved and there's preparation time involved in that.  07:58 And it's funny because I do a lot of things Lau and this is like yet another thing on my plate and people are like, well, what are you influencing now? And I'm like, well, not really, I'm just basically doing something I'm passionate about and, yeah, I'm getting paid. I mean, hey, if I can get paid for it, that would be fabulous. And so I am working with a few select brands that I love, and so, because I can be real and human and tell people how much I love them, I can get a little kickback. It's like affiliate marketing. I'm very much on board with that. So I've been doing that and I'm excited to say that I'm on a couple different platforms now. And no, I'm not giving up voice acting. No, I'm not giving up my coaching or demo production business, but it's something I do on the weekends. But Lau, it takes me, like for me to get ready before I present on camera. I mean, it's an event.  08:44 This hair is an event.  08:46 People that have seen me at VO Atlanta. Know, I mean, I love hiring makeup and hair for VIO Atlanta. For me it's like going to the spa, but it is an event, so you have to really put your time in and it's also a different way of marketing yourself. And so there's a whole different world, a whole different way of doing it, and I have to educate myself on how to do that.  09:05 - Lau (Guest) And I'll tell you, you do this brilliantly. I think you need to move yourself forward, whether you're a male or a female, in a very unapologetic way. So if that is part of your jam, and that's what you do, and that's what you love, or that's what you want to get into the fashionista side of our industry, then go for it. There shouldn't be any explanation.  09:25 There shouldn't be any exposition about why you're doing it, or are you leaving, right? You just love it, right? So that's how we're motivating people to be thinking about this. I also want to talk about Annie. I want to talk about the regular people, the real people who get up, they get into their booth, they're behind their mic all day.  09:43 - Anne (Host) I'm a regular person.  09:45 - Lau (Guest) But I mean someone who authentically does not want to be in front of the camera. They don't like dressing up, they don't want to put on makeup. I get that.  10:01 That's probably most people to be honest with you and I'll tell you something. But that's also very real and very engaging and very like. It's like reality TV. Yes, I just want to say a shout out to those people because we love you, we appreciate you, we do. All we're saying is show up as the best you that you can put forward. And if you we just had a conversation about this last night In corporate it's very much the same way.  10:18 If you have a meeting in corporate on WebEx, half the people show up. They don't even turn their videos on in, they don't Show up. Turn on your video, Feel good about the way you look, Feel good about how you're presenting, Own your little square Right. Or if you're going into an office, come in and command the space and feel at home. Feel good about that. That's going to change your physical presence, right. And it's amazing when we look at actors, especially on-camera actors, and we say this actor isn't a particularly aesthetically beautiful person. But boy, are they sexy. Yeah, right, why are they so sexy? In fact, Hollywood always had a name for that. They call it sexy ugly people.  11:01 - Anne (Host) Because they have a confidence.  11:03 - Lau (Guest) They were just real people, regular people, but they were so confident. This is me, you know, yeah absolutely yeah, and they just come in and be like, yeah, this is me and that's you, and I'm excited, we're here, right, let's do some stuff. And that is the beauty of the mind, right? The aesthetics of the spirit that is coming along along with your gorgeous makeup color and your hair, and whatever you choose to do to embellish whether you do that or not, it's got to come from the inside. It's something internal, right?  11:35 - Anne (Host) It's all in how we talk to ourselves, right, it's all in the stories that we tell ourselves. And it's interesting and here's a shameless plug, Lau, I don't know if you're aware, but I did launch a new podcast in January called the Myth of you Self-Awareness in a Digital Age, and we talk about common myths that you might believe about yourself and we talk about the hero's journey. Believe about yourself and we talk about the hero's journey and we talk about how your experiences and how you can learn from your experiences and how you can rewrite your story. You can choose to tell yourself that you're beautiful, whether you feel that or not, and then ultimately really hopefully progress and move forward and be happy, successful.  12:11 All that good stuff and the fact is is that your mind is such a powerful, powerful tool, how you speak to yourself, and we talk a lot about those things. And I'm just so ecstatic to kind of delve more into that area because we've talked about it here as well, because being an actor, being a voice actor, it's very much a mental game, it's very much self-sabotage, the imposter syndrome. All of that is very real and this is such a cool podcast where we really explore that even further. You really need to talk to yourself. And it's funny even in my Pilates class the other day in my head we were doing center and balance class and of course we were on the BOSU ball and I was completely off balance because I feel like I don't know what happened to my balance as I got older.  12:51 But in my head.  12:52 I was going God, I suck at this. And at the time that I said that in my head, I swear to God, my Pilates instructor said now, guys, you may think that you're not good at this, but it's all in what you say in your mind. So remember that if you continually say I suck at something, right, I suck at balance, she goes. Don't say that to yourself. You need to manifest that you're good at balance.  13:13 You're good at center and balance.  13:15 - Lau (Guest) And ultimately your body will follow. And when someone says I don't look good or I'm not excited about getting on camera or I don't really want to offer, you know.  13:26 What are they really saying, like there's a subtext there. Yeah, they're really saying I'm not ready to show up and be present, I'm not ready to put forward who I am, and that's different than what you do. I think a lot of us work so hard and so much, annie, that we self-identify as our work, as our business, which isn't a bad thing, but we lose the sense of the separate self, and a separate self has to feel good about just being and showing up and being present.  13:57 - Anne (Host) Well, how interesting is that? Because when we talk about voice acting right and we're always talking about bringing yourself to your acting, to your read that is really allowing yourself to show up and be present, because, human to human, I connect. Well, I connect to you because of your personality, because of who you are, not because I think you look pretty or I think you sound good. Exactly.  14:15 It's all about bringing your personality, and that's what I try to tell people in. Voice acting it's not so much about how you sound really at all, I mean. How many times can we say that?  14:25 - Lau (Guest) I mean I feel like every coach in the world forevermore will be like voice acting really isn't about how you sound, I mean it's about the connection Right and if you can get out of yourself of your way to the other right to really pay attention and to be curious, to be authentically inquisitive like a child. Like what is that? What is she saying, what is she doing? Why is she? That is what is sexy and attractive and compelling to an audience, is an audience wants to be taken in by curiosity.  15:01 They want to feel that they're interesting. Right, if you can make someone feel that they're interesting because you're interesting. Make someone feel right Make someone feel right.  15:12 - Anne (Host) Isn't that like what it's?  15:12 all about Make someone feel Make someone feel.  15:14 - Lau (Guest) That's the reason why I listen or watch or pay attention to anything, really Okay so, listen, how do we connect this now to this base of your fashion, your branding, your look, your feel? When you get up in the morning, annie, and you think, okay, I'm going to get dressed, I'm going to do my makeup, I'm going to do my hair, I'm going to do my ritual, how do you select, how do you choose where you want to go with that, based on what is going to unfold in your day?  15:40 - Anne (Host) Well, honestly, I mean I just make sure that I get up and do things for myself that are going to make me feel good. Because if I can feel good, right, feel awake, feel healthy, feel alive, yeah, and feel like I've cared for myself, like self-love is not selfish at all, and I've learned that a lot in the past few years, especially because when I had gone through a lot and gained a lot of weight, I'd lost a lot of my confidence. I had a lot of inner dialogue that was not good, and now I said I need to make sure that I make the time to have self-care, because self-care for me really sets the tone, sets the day for everything that happens next, whether I am working with a student, whether I am working with a client. If I feel good about myself, then I can feel good and portray and project that in everything that I do and to everyone that I'm with.  16:38 - Lau (Guest) So, in essence, what you do as your choice, certain things aren't your choice, Like our age, is not our choice. It just happens and that's natural and we move through it. But our choice in everything else we do and how we put ourselves together. Our choice then ricochets and affects other people's choices because their perception of you shifts based on your choice. That's really powerful when you think about that, how much empowerment you have within you, but how much power it has for someone else's potential change for their future, absolutely.  17:14 - Anne (Host) And everything that you say to yourself and do for yourself is a choice. Right, there's always a choice. You always have a choice. Like I just took a great course on happiness. Happiness is a choice. Happiness, joy is a choice. And if you choose joy which I'm always talking about choose joy, do something that makes you joyful, then that will ultimately not only help you but also affect everyone that you are in contact with in every thing that you do, work-wise, personal-wise.  17:42 - Lau (Guest) It's a domino effect.  17:44 It's a domino. So how does someone let's say we take someone who's not accustomed to this way of thinking and just kind of gets up, grabs a coffee and goes to work or does what they need to do, gets up, grabs a coffee and goes to work or does what they need to do? What are some of the steps that we can offer? To revisit and again, I'm not just talking about your business brand, I'm not just talking about your persona in your business, I'm also talking about your personality and persona in your life how do they go about re-envisioning that and making new moves in that direction?  18:17 - Anne (Host) Well, first of all, as we were chatting about earlier, get enough sleep. That's part of self-care right.  18:22 Get enough sleep because.  18:23 I was recently very, very tired I'm kind of recovering from a cold, you can hear that and I had quite a few sleepless nights, while my husband also had a cold and was coughing, and I just was jolted awake multiple times a lot of times because I was worried. But anyways, running on little to no sleep does not help anything when you're trying to start your day out right. So I would say that, and again, it's got to be like how can you start the day? I know a lot of people say this, but I will say honestly what are you grateful for? How can you start your day on a positive note? Because when I was overtired, any little thing could go wrong and I just let it upset me Like I ended up being angry, I ended up crying, I ended up eating more. It was horrible. It was like this cascading sort of trauma.  19:09 - Lau (Guest) Bad choice. Yeah, it was a bad choice fondue.  19:12 - Anne (Host) Yeah, right. So if you can again start the day with figuring out what are you grateful for, what are you happy for? I mean, I know it's been a tough start to the year. I know a lot of people have suffered health issues, it's been chaotic out there in social media and politically, and turbulent in the world, and I think that we need to have our safe spaces where we can still acknowledge and no one can take that away from you by the way.  19:34 - Lau (Guest) I love that, no matter what. I love it.  19:36 - Anne (Host) No one can take your joy away from you. No one can take your inner state right and your choice of joy and gratefulness away from you.  19:46 - Lau (Guest) Yes, yes, amen, sister. And we know this Again my tattoo that says resilience, resilience. So many people live in horrors, yeah, horrors, yeah. So many people live in horrors, horrors, but still make the choice to have joy in their daily life.  19:58 - Anne (Host) Yeah, absolutely Because joy is small.  20:00 - Lau (Guest) It's very, very minute. It's a minutia choice to see things in a joyous way. I'm all for that. I'm going to give a practical and pragmatic one. Sure, okay, in the morning look at your closet. If you have more than one, go to your different closets. Look at your closet and make a concerted effort to choose something you haven't worn in the last six months and it's going to feel very uncomfortable to you because a lot of those clothes in there I guarantee you are for when you get thinner, are for when you feel younger are for that special occasion, or for when you feel younger, or for that special occasion or da-da-da-da-da, but you refuse to get rid of it because you've got some hopes and dreams and memories connected to it.  20:41 - Anne (Host) I have a sparkly shirt, mom, I'm going to challenge you.  20:43 - Lau (Guest) I love it. I'm going to challenge you. I got up and wore the sparkly shirt. Choose one of those. And here's the challenge. If you're not willing to choose it, I need you to give it away.  20:52 - Anne (Host) Oh yeah.  20:53 I need you to give it away I like that Because it's actually holding back your joy.  20:57 - Lau (Guest) It's holding back your beauty. It's holding back your full measure of confidence, Because there's something in there that says oh, someday I'll wear it, Someday I'll look good in it. Someday. It sounds small, doesn't it? But that's like a huge feng shui move. Oh absolutely.  21:11 - Anne (Host) There's like a whole science behind cleaning your closet. A whole science? Yeah, absolutely, and I'm that person that you know. I had clothes of every size in my closet Small for when I lost the weight, and large, and it's funny because after this last round of losing weight, I literally took everything that was sized larger than I was at the time and I said that's it, I'm donating it.  21:35 - Lau (Guest) That's right, let someone else enjoy it, Let someone else live in it and appreciate it and have a life in it, and it's not yours anymore, right?  21:44 - Speaker 2 (Announcement) Annie, it's not yours anymore.  21:45 - Lau (Guest) I got another one. Go to anywhere Go to Sephora, go to Mac, go online, go anywhere you like and get a new palette for yourself of color. It could be makeup, it could be wardrobe I love that. It could be hair accessories, it could be props whatever you want it to be. If you're a man, you might choose something that you're going to carry every day. Whatever. What's important about that is it's fresh, it reflects you today and it's hopeful. There's optimism in that right, that little moment of re-envisioning they used to have. They don't have as many now, but they remember Annie, the days where they had a lot of makeover shows Like every show was the makeover show.  22:26 They don't have as many of those anymore, but I mean, the idea of makeover is something I think internally that as human beings we need a couple times a year. We need to make ourselves re-envision, reinvent, so that we don't get static and held down and stale by the past.  22:44 - Anne (Host) Well, we don't want to talk about my makeup collection.  22:48 - Lau (Guest) I kind of do because you have the best makeup. It is large, I kind of do. It is a large collection. Build-a-beans we want to know, annie. It is a large collection.  22:56 - Anne (Host) Still the beans we want to know, annie, it is a large collection which I actually have to go through because they tell you, you know, after six months you need to dispose of your lipsticks your eyeshadows, tell the truth.  23:03 - Lau (Guest) I have a ton. How many?  23:03 - Anne (Host) closets? Do you have full of makeup? Well, I don't have closets, but I have lots of drawers.  23:12 - Lau (Guest) Wait, let me guess I'm going to say six.  23:15 - Anne (Host) At least three, but they're big drawers. They're big, they're like double-sized drawers. Don't believe her, it's got to be six. But there's a point, though, when you can't have too much and you've got to go purge, and so when you purge, that also is a wonderful feng shui cleansing ritual. But I like the fact that I have every color palette in the world, I feel. But then it's funny, because if I watch somebody like a video on Instagram and I see somebody with a different color, I'm like, ooh, I like that color, and so it's something new. It doesn't even have to be a makeup color. It can be like maybe just like a new product, and the product does not have to be expensive. I kid around about my Chanel lipsticks, but honestly, I have found much more cost-effective lipsticks lately in different colors that are amazing.  23:57 - Lau (Guest) Okay, Now I'm going to come from the real world too, because the real world would say, okay, that's fantastic and those are great products, good quality products too. But let's say I don't want them, I can't afford them, they're not for me. I might go over to the dollar store. Oh, absolutely.  24:11 - Speaker 2 (Announcement) I might go over to CVS In fact I might go over to CVS.  24:12 - Lau (Guest) In fact I might go online, so there's a lot of places you can get very similar.  24:17 - Anne (Host) Just watch your ingredients right, Make sure you don't have allergies that you're going to break out. Oh, there's a brand that I use. That's very drugstore cheap for facial products I mean. I used to buy it. Can you say what it is? Can you tell us ELF, elf.  24:32 - Lau (Guest) We love Elf.  24:33 - Anne (Host) I mean, it's good stuff, and I've been actually I replaced my entire. I do a lot of makeup from them and I also do skincare as well. I love it. I love it, so I'm not spending a ton of money on it either, and so you don't have to spend a lot of money.  24:47 - Lau (Guest) And again, it doesn't have to be makeup, but if it makes you feel good, absolutely I think you need to move it out too within a certain amount of time, just for, like, cleanliness and bacteria. Yeah, absolutely that, if you are using it within what is it, annie? Six to eight months, or something you're supposed to get rid of it?  25:03 And the other thing, too, is we all know don't double dip, right. So get your one-time applicators whether it's your eyes or very sensitive areas Don't double dip, because then all the bacteria is going into your makeup. These are things like that a lot of folks don't think of, they don't know that are so, so helpful, right what?  25:22 - Anne (Host) other tips? What other? Okay, so what sort of tips can we give for people that are not wanting to wear makeup? Let's say, maybe it's not makeup related, All right, I got one.  25:30 - Lau (Guest) I got one. This is for everyone, but men love this and you're seeing this more with aesthetics lines is taking care of your skin. So at any age, it's really important to hydrate, to exfoliate, to stay out of the sun or get a little vitamin D but not too much and really be careful with your skin, not just because of skin cancer and those types of things, but also because you want to have this inner radiant feel. You don't want to feel like a saddlebag, you don't want to feel like you know you've been worn down.  26:01 - Anne (Host) You know what I?  26:02 - Lau (Guest) mean Like someone's going to sit on you on a horse. You know what I mean. Like you want to feel fresh. You know? One of the things I love is I love humidifiers and a manicure pedicure can help anybody, I don't care who you are.  26:15 - Anne (Host) Thank you, can I? Tell you how many times my husband will be like, hey, do you want to come with me? Just to like keep me company. And oh, he'll be like, well, okay, but I know he enjoys it. Are you kidding me? How can you?  26:25 - Lau (Guest) not, I mean it's incredible, you know it's incredible.  26:31 - Anne (Host) What about a facial Massage?  26:33 - Lau (Guest) Oh my gosh, get a massage.  26:35 - Anne (Host) I am a big believer in massage. I feel like it moves fluids and it gets rid of toxins. Big believer in that.  26:42 - Lau (Guest) Now what about changing out one piece of your wardrobe? Because we all get comfortable. We have comfy clothes. We tend to wear them every day. You and I do similar things with the glasses. We tend to switch out our glasses just because we get tired of wearing the same glasses. It's part of the fashion, it's part of how you feel, it's part of how you look on camera. That's a very simple thing to do. To have I wear cheaters. I'm not into prescription just yet. I need the prescription.  27:10 No, I don't mind saying to people, I'll go to the dollar store, I'll get 10 pairs of glasses. I'll put them in all different places that I know I need to use them. I just went up. I think I'm like a 2.0 right now, or 2.5 or whatever it is, and that's enough for me. I don't need any stronger than that. And that way, every time I put them on, I have a slightly different feel, because it maybe matches the outfit or maybe matches the occasion. Maybe it just feels differently to me.  27:36 - Anne (Host) Right, let's see One there. You go Right here in my two. Wait there you go. I have three different pairs of glasses right here, so like I've got a tortoise shell.  27:46 - Lau (Guest) I love and I love your glasses. I've got black. I love your glasses. One more thing I want to mention too. I think I've got a red in here too. Who doesn't? I mean, red is the best, red is a power color.  27:57 - Anne (Host) This is my original boss glasses. They're gorgeous, Gosh.  28:00 - Lau (Guest) I love them. What about? Let's talk about jewelry for a second.  28:03 - Anne (Host) Oh, I love jewelry.  28:04 - Lau (Guest) So now a lot of folks might say I don't wear jewelry or it's too expensive, it breaks. I'm telling you go costume, go costume, oh God yeah. And think about how that jewelry reflects a piece of who you are. For instance, it might be culturally based, it might be a particular designer that you like, where they're from internationally. It might have a symbol that you care about. It might be a locket with a photo in it.  28:33 - Anne (Host) There's so many ways you can wear jewelry right. Amazon has a lot of great costume jewelry.  28:36 - Lau (Guest) That is reasonably priced. Just saying I wear costume a lot more than I wear the real thing.  28:41 - Anne (Host) A lot of this is Amazon costume yeah.  28:45 - Lau (Guest) Yeah, I wear a lot of beads. I really just am in love with beads because they break. You give it a little wish and a prayer and then you go on. I don't worry about it at all. You just don't worry like you'd worry about a very expensive piece. It's just fun. There's a fun in wearing different watches.  29:02 - Anne (Host) Well, it's kind of like I wear a lot of bling and it's funny because a lot of this is like vintage, a lot of it is my mother's and people will be like, well, wow, you're wearing a lot of diamonds there and I'm like, well, here's the deal. If they're not on my finger, they're in a safe and it doesn't make me feel close to my mother.  29:17 It's not that I'm trying to like say, oh, look at all the diamonds or look how sparkly. I mean I just want to feel close to my mother, and so that to me. I made that decision a few years ago. I said you know what? I am not going to the time, annie, with actors.  29:30 - Lau (Guest) Figure out your hair already. You know what I mean. Like a lot of people, are like well, I'm going white and I don't know if I want to go white. I've got red in it and then I'm like listen, it's fun, it's fashion, you can change it. It shouldn't be something that you feel married to or that you hate.  29:53 - Anne (Host) Yeah, I've never felt married to my hair, although lately, I mean, I have long hair. Should I cut?  29:58 - Lau (Guest) it. Can I take your hair? I love your hair. I'd like to see what I look like with long blonde locks.  30:03 - Anne (Host) But it's funny because I for a very long time had very short hair and so it really just depends. Oh, I didn't know that, oh yeah. When I was growing up I had very short hair. I had kind of like that pixie cut, and so I never had long hair until later on when I decided to let it grow and then it was just the thing, and then sometimes a little bit of it fell out when I was sick.  30:26 So then it grows back. Hair does grow back, that's right.  30:29 However, it is just hair and gosh Lau. There's always a wig, I know Right, there's always a wig. I know Right, there's always a wig.  30:37 - Lau (Guest) As we started this conversation by saying most things are choices, most, not all. My age is not my choice. It is what it is and I work with it, but most other things are my choice. My height is not my choice.  30:49 - Anne (Host) right, right, my voice is not my choice either. No, but as you train your voice. Yes, exactly, is not my choice either.  30:56 - Lau (Guest) No, but as you train your voice and you find different ways you can find different shades of your voice, then that's a nice choice to make is what can I do with my voice and where can it go? That does become a choice. So, wow, this conversation could go on and on, couldn't it?  31:09 - Anne (Host) I feel like we need to have more coffee and chit chat about makeup. I know, Bosses believe it or not, this does have a lot of relevance to you and, even though we were talking about fashion and makeup and influencing it, really, guys, get yourself out there because and show your humanness, show who you are in all aspects of your career. Really, I think that's one thing that's going to keep us moving forward in turbulent times and keep joy in our hearts and really, I mean, help us to maybe even propel our businesses.  31:38 - Lau (Guest) I love it and I'll leave everyone on this. Don't forget to smile, because we use that as a technical tool in voiceover but aside from that, it makes you feel good and younger and connected and happy and joyous, and so that is just your little technical tool for the day. And a lot of people say you look nicer, prettier, more warmer, younger, like all those fun stuff we love to hear just by smiling.  32:04 - Anne (Host) Well, great conversation, Lau. Thank you so much. It was wonderful to get back together with you and I'll give a great big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl. A great big shout out to our sponsor IPDTL. You, too, can connect and chit chat about cool things like makeup and hair and fashion and voiceover and on camera things. Find out more at IPDTLcom. You guys have an amazing week and we'll see you next week. Bye.  32:30 - Speaker 2 (Announcement) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, Anne Ganguzza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at vobosscom and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via IPDTL.   

In this episode of Millennial Mind, I sit down with economist, journalist, and author Grace Blakeley to demystify the economy in a way that makes sense to everyone. We tackle the issues surrounding wealth inequality, the influence of billionaires like Elon Musk and Donald Trump, and the intricate relationship between political and economic power. Grace shares her insights on creating a more democratic society, the importance of redistributing power, and the social movements that are making a difference. Don't miss this eye-opening discussion that reveals the hidden systems shaping your paycheck, rent, and future. 00:00 Introduction to Economic Inequality 01:17 Welcome to Millennial Mind with Grace Blakeley 03:11 Understanding Socialism and Democratic Economy 06:10 The Myth of Deserved Wealth 09:58 Empowering Employees and Redistribution of Power 13:46 The Problem with Wealth and Power Imbalances 17:03 Taxation, Wealth, and Economic Rents 32:52 The Role of Tax Havens and Avoidance 37:48 The Power Dynamics in Politics 38:12 Historical Movements and Community Organising 41:14 The Role of Politicians and Accountability 45:01 Economic Inequality and the Influence of Wealth 01:01:47 The Challenges of Homelessness and Social Support 01:08:31 Empathy and the Human Condition

BOSSes Anne Ganguza and Tom Dheere examine the state of the voiceover industry a few months into 2025. They discuss the direct impact of political and economic events on booking trends and content. The conversation explores how corporate messaging is adapting to cultural and policy changes, the ongoing role of authenticity, and the evolving, perhaps less threatening, landscape of AI. Ultimately, they offer a message of adaptation, education, and resilience for voice actors navigating the current climate.   00:03 - Anne (Host) Hey bosses, are you new to voiceover and not sure where to start? Join the VOPeeps VI Peeps membership and get access to over 350 hours of pre-recorded classes, a 15% discount on all VOPeeps, guest workshops and free monthly workouts. This membership is perfect for those wanting to get started in the industry. Find out more at vopeeps.com. Slash join dash now.  00:32 - Speaker 2 (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. And successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today Rock your business like a boss a VO boss.  00:54 - Anne (Host) Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguza. Hey everyone, welcome to the VO Boss Podcast and the Real Boss Series. I'm your host, Anne Ganguza, and I'm here with the one and only Mr Tom Dheere. Hello, hello, hello, hi, tom. Oh goodness, tom, we're a few months into 2025, and it's been quite a year so far, wouldn't you say I would say yes, it has.  01:13 Lots of disruption going on in the world in so many ways I would say economically, socially, I mean. It's a new administration and I know that we spoke earlier about setting your goals and starting off on the right foot for 2025 and finding out who you are. Now that we're a few months in, I think we should go back and readdress what's happening. What's going on? How are you feeling about the state of things? Let's maybe open it up with the state of our industry, the voiceover industry. How are you feeling the state of voiceover is a few months into 2025?  01:49 - Tom What's interesting about it, Anne, is that your emotional state when you are watching the news or doom scrolling on social media is going to make you feel a certain way about how everything is going and, depending on your political inclination, you may think everything is going wonderfully or you may think everything is going terribly.  02:12 But then there's that pesky little thing called reality, which is the reality of how many auditions am I getting, how often am I booking, how much money am I making? Where are those voiceover bookings coming from? And, based on what's going on in the world, how much of that is directly or indirectly affecting our individual voiceover businesses?  02:39 - Anne (Host) Absolutely, and because we're service-based right. It affects us very much. Right, it affects us because companies are hiring us to, for the most part, entertain or sell. Right, and, depending on how the companies are feeling and companies are reacting to the issues that are going on in the world today, may have a direct impact on our business.  03:01 - Tom Yeah, so just as a point of reference, let's look at 2024. Our business? Yeah, so just as a point of reference, let's look at 2024. One of the major things that happened that had a huge impact on voiceover work was the presidential election, because, distressingly late in 2024, we weren't sure who was running for president on either side of the aisle, much less who their running mates were. That had a massive effect on corporations when it came to advertising budgets and what the content of the advertising would be. So last summer, 2024, july August there was a huge dip in voiceover work across the board because companies didn't know where to put their money.  03:46 - Anne (Host) Except in political maybe.  03:47 - Tom  Except in political.  03:48 And then when September, October, hit, the political campaigns all went crazy and a lot of the advertising got stopped up because so much ad space was being taken up by political advertising.  04:02 There was a noticeable drop in commercials for television and radio because all the political ad buys were taking up all the real estate. So that is one pretty clear, direct example about how what's going on in the real world affected what was going on in the voiceover industry. So let's look at spring of 2025 of what's going on right now is since there's virtually no political ads, as in campaign ads. I mean, there's a smattering of them here and there and a smattering of issue ads, but I didn't notice any more than there usually has been, which means the void that the political ads left got immediately taken up by commercials, left got immediately taken up by commercials. So there seems to be as much work as there was at any given time in recent voiceover history. I agree with you there. But the question is, what is the content and context of the ads and other voiceover genres and what are the casting demands and what are the performance demands for?  05:09 - Anne (Host)  Now also, we're thinking, I think, right now, commercial broadcast style voiceover. When we think about that, I agree with you that, yes, there's as much work, I think, as there ever has been. However, it's the content that might be changing and the context. You're absolutely right, but also there might be in terms of industrial content, like the industries that are advertising, the industries that are hiring voice talent that may or may not be broadcast. Maybe we're talking e-learning, we're talking corporate, we're talking all the different non-broadcast style voiceover. I think, in that realm where I'm seeing I'm not seeing a drop necessarily, but I'm seeing companies looking very carefully at what they're saying and what they want their brand message to be.  05:54 - Tom Yes.  05:54 - Anne (Host) And that is very key for somebody like myself if I produce demos, to make sure that the content is reflective of the culture and the society of the times.  06:06 - Tom Yes, culture definitely has an influence on advertising broadcast and it also has an influence on internal content, e-learning content, corporate industrial content. Actually, I just realized last year I had narrated an app for a large governmental organization, let's just say, and it was about harassment in the workplace and it was a big project and I did it all and the client was thrilled and I got paid and everything was great. Just a few days ago, the client wrote me and said hey, as a result of all of these executive orders that have been stripping away DEI policies and verbiage, I had to record a decent chunk of it all over again with the new policies and whatever we'll call it, awareness of it in mind.  07:01 - Anne (Host) Yeah, that's the biggest thing that I am seeing and, again, we're not here to be political. However, the two of us need to take a realistic look as to okay, so what are companies having to do to maybe adhere to policies? Because companies that maybe depended on support from the government may have to rewrite some policies. They may have to rethink how they're speaking, and that directly impacts a lot of the corporate work that I've done and also corporate training as well I do. The majority of my work in the e-learning aspect is through corporate.  07:34 I do some educational, which I think that also can be touched, but not in such a direct manner Like, let's say, dei or I'm just trying to think like, what other types of topics and support and safety and environmental. Let's think about environmental changes. Right Before, in a lot of corporate, there was a lot of talk about sustainability, talk about climate change. There was a lot of talk about sustainability, talk about climate change. Companies wanted their audiences to hear that they were supporting these things, because that's what mattered to the majority of people, that they wanted to be on board with them. Now, is that a thing when we're talking about alternative energy right, alternate energy are we going to now be talking about drilling and fracking versus, you know, solar power or those types of things.  08:18 - Tom  Yeah, absolutely, and top-down policies are going to have a trickle-down effect, but also, as in if federal laws are changing or being enacted or being repealed, that's going to have a big effect on a lot of the policies of the companies, because they have to be compliant with local, state and federal law to be able to run their business legally and effectively. So, yeah, it will definitely have a top-down effect. The other thing is economic.  08:47 - Anne (Host) Yes, we always have to look at the economics.  08:49 - Tom You always have to look at the economics of it, and we're still seeing what the full effect of all of these tariffs are going to be on multiple countries, which is going to the majority of economics say, regardless of your political bent, that this is going to create an increase in prices of many, many items. Or some items just may not be available in the United States to be imported and there's some based on reciprocal tariffs. There may be items that the United States manufacturers that cannot be exported.  09:23 - Anne (Host) Well, absolutely, and in terms of hiring, and in terms of hiring. In terms of hiring. I do know that I heard from one of my students, canadian students, that is it favorable now to be an American voicing a Canadian brand at this point?  09:38 Or vice versa, or vice versa, and so we have to think about that or any global brand. So it's interesting to really see. I think a lot of us are so in our studio bubbles that we forget how this impacts the industry, and it impacts our jobs. It can directly affect our jobs, and so it's something that we need to keep our eyes open to. And even though I know a lot of people are like I'm off social media or I you know, it's just sometimes it's difficult for people to watch the news I do think that we have to keep ourselves in touch enough to understand where the trends are going and what things are happening if we want to keep our businesses afloat. And now I guess the next question, Tom, is are we doom-scrolling our voiceover industry at this point? I mean?  10:27 - Tom How do you feel about it? There's a lot of hysteria and confusion and frustration and fear and anger on every social media platform that I have seen. Some of it is a healthy discourse, some of it is fear and hate-mongering. Some of it is a healthy discourse. Some of it is fear and hate mongering. Some of it is a cry for desperation and comfort and commiseration. It's a combination of all of those things.  10:44 So the question is do you shut off all of your social media and go take a walk? Sometimes that's a very, very good idea. But, just exactly to your point, anne, we need to keep an eye on what's going on. Also, all of the social media groups that we're on, they're national or international, so we can keep an eye on what's going on in other parts of the country and other parts of the industry and how it may or may not affect us. Like, for example, I just saw recently a social media post Somebody was talking about well, what happens if there's a recession? How is that going to affect the voiceover industry? Now, I don't know if you remember, but 2008, 2009, the great recession oh, I do. I did not remember and I went back and I looked at my numbers. I didn't notice any effect, noticeable effect, on it.  11:29 When COVID hit March of 2020, there was a noticeable dip, but then April it went right back up and 2020 was a pretty good year for me. But paying attention to things like that and you know, instead of being in your own little bubble, about being terrified about everything, but when you're actually doing your own research off of social media and looking for intelligent discourse on social media to find actual facts, and listening to people who've been around the block a few times, like you or I, who was like, yeah, no, the recession was not a big deal and oh, yeah, covid, things bounced back really quickly and, like I said, last year's, well, the strikes, the SAG-AFTRA strikes, the interactive strike, which is still ongoing, unfortunately, but hopefully they'll be able to fight for their rights and protect all of us. When it comes to AI and other bad practices, the voiceover industry seems to be relatively pliant and relatively resilient. Yes, because, no matter what, people are still trying to sell things. People are still trying to buy things.  12:28 I love that. You said that People still need to teach things. You know what I mean.  12:31 - Anne (Host) I mean, we are a company ourselves, right, we want to stay afloat.  12:34 We're right now looking at and if you aren't, you need to be right Always, you need to be looking at how are you going to stay afloat, how is your business going to continue to show progress, move forward, be successful?  12:46 And it just basically comes down to we're evolving. We're evolving with the times, right, and I think that I agree with you wholeheartedly that I don't think there's going to be any less of a demand for voiceover because, as you mentioned, companies still want to exist, they still want to sell a product, and so part of that sell is including a voice to speak the brand and to communicate that sell to others. And so I don't think it's doom scrolling, but I do believe that we need to educate ourselves on what the trends are, and not just the trends on the style of voiceover, although I think that it's good to understand, like, what's out there? How is that message being told? I always maintain that the best performance trend, the best voiceover performance trend to follow, is just be an actor, be a damn actor, right, because if you're an actor, you evolve, you can evolve and change, just like you need to do with your business.  13:44 And I think that you kind of touched on synthetic voices and AI Again, if we were to talk about how do you feel that that's affecting the industry these days? I can tell you, in my opinion, right now, I think that things are working themselves out, hopefully on a more positive note, and I don't think that the fascination is there for me. I'm not seeing the fascination there with voiceover jobs being stolen by AI. I believe that more of the focus needs to be on let's just protect our voices so that they're not being used without our permission and being developed into a synthetic voice. Or, if we have a synthetic voice, make sure that we're getting compensated for it. What are your thoughts?  14:22 - Tom  I generally agree, because everyone who decided that AI is the devil and decided not to get involved in any level of critical thinking or investigating about it, they have not changed their minds. The people that jumped in with both feet are probably still jumping in with both feet. What I think to your point you're saying is that everybody that wanted to give it a sniff, that wanted to try it out, test the water, has done it not just once, but maybe twice, because ChatGPT rolled out November 2022 and now we're in mid 2025. So I think there's been like At least from my observation, there's been like two rounds of companies giving AI a try. The first one was just to, oh, let's see what this is all about.  15:03 And then some were like, oh, this is great, this is perfect. Others are like, no, this is awful. And then there's others who, a year or so later, is like you know what? It's probably gotten two years better. Let's give it another try. And then same thing happens. Some thought, oh, okay, it's good enough now, or it's not good enough now, or making whatever decision. But yeah, the fervor from the consumer end, I think, has settled.  15:26 I think so too, and I think the terror from the voiceover end I think for the most part is settled. There's still questions about it.  15:33 - Anne (Host) Sure, and we've got great organizations fighting for us as well. Nava has been doing a phenomenal job in that regard, and if you're a business and you're not using AI in some capacity to manage your data, you're missing out. You're missing out on the boat, and we did talk about that previously in an episode, tom, you and I. It's just getting better and better at that, but it's not necessarily getting better at speaking your voice synthetically. But data management, I think, is just leaps and bounds and it's integrated in a lot of the products we're using and you may not even know it. It's kind of like.  16:07 I think I mentioned this to you before Back in the day I installed voice over IP phone systems when they first came out and people just said oh my God, they sucked, They'll never work, They'll never last, and ultimately, that's what we do today. I mean, it's all voice over IP. Everything that we're doing is we're communicating, Our phone lines are over data internet lines and it's just that's what's happening. Now. We have voice over IP and we don't even know it. It's seamless. So I believe that the AI data management is being built in seamlessly into things that we use like Google or I think you're using Google Workspace.  16:36 - Tom  I am using Google Workspace and Google Gemini is my favorite AI, google Gemini.  16:39 - Anne (Host) I have ChatGPT. I have a couple other products that do some automated things for me that are under the ChatGPT, and I continually look for tools that can help me to run my business more efficiently. So I don't think that in the voice realm of things. Oh my God. I just said a company.  16:54 - Tom  Naughty, naughty.  16:54 - Anne (Host) I didn't even know In the voiceover world. I don't know if synthetic voices are quite the terror and the scare that they were in the last couple of years.  17:03 - Tom  I still think the same thing is exactly what you and Andy said on that wonderful narratorlife interview that you did, which you said garbage in, garbage out. Good actors are going to make good AIs, bad actors are going to make bad AI are going to make bad AI. And the relevance gap I still think is growing, of people that are lacking in talent or training storytelling training, that are trying to enter the world of voiceover, are just not going to be able to get in. So I think that still stands.  17:28 - Anne (Host) And everybody I talk to we're talking about. Like anything today, if you want to capture someone's attention, right, marketing, wise, right it's all about authenticity. It's all about authenticity. It's all about give the human aspect to you. Even when I write a newsletter, it's like give somebody that vulnerable part of yourself that talks directly to them and doesn't just try to sell them or doesn't just try to, like, promote things. And give that authenticity. And I really believe that, as humans, that's who we are and that's what we have and that is just our strength. And when we are performing voiceover and we are voice actors, I think the more that we can be authentic in whatever genre we are voicing, the better off we are and the more successful we will be.  18:08 - Tom I agree. I had another thought about. Something that we were talking about a little earlier is that unemployment seems to be rising because of all of these federal layoffs.  18:19 Layoffs, yeah, and then as a result of tariffs.  18:20 if prices are going up, they have to maintain profit margins, so sometimes they need to cut labor. So what's been interesting in voiceover is that, as a result of AI, there has been less of the entry-level, lowest budget voiceover work, which means there's less opportunities for people who are entering the voiceover industry, and that may mean some people are not able to have a sustainable voiceover business model, so they're leaving the voiceover industry. However, if employment does keep going up the way that it does, does that mean more people are going to come back who want?  18:55 - Anne (Host) to give voiceover a shot. Yeah, exactly that was my experience when COVID happened.  19:01 And people, how many of my coaching business, I mean I had like tripled business with people who were using the time to learn voiceover and to get into voiceover and to utilize their voice for something good. I mean, I think that's still like. The desire of most people that get into this industry is they want to use their voice to do something good and, of course, make some money. Sure, that's always a key element to be successful in voiceover business. But what other aspects, tom, have we not covered here in this few months, now that we're in 2025? We've talked about, I mean, really, how dependent our industry is on the economy and the message that is out there, the brand that is out there.  19:50 - Tom Right. Yeah, it's dependent and it's independent at the same time, when we are getting into what seems to be a very interesting year on a sociological, social, cultural, political, economic level, what can we as voice actors do? So what should us bosses do? It's the same answer all the time, anne Right.  20:11 - Anne (Host) What do we do? Keep training, keep learning.  20:13 - Tom Keep growing, keep marketing, keep marketing. Keep following industry trends. Continue to have conversations with fellow voice actors. Continue to have conversations with your current and potential clients. Pay attention to what's going on on social media, but don't get sucked in by it. But pay attention, learn, grow, adapt, evolve and educate Educate yourself and educate each other.  20:33 - Anne (Host) Educate, adapt, evolve. I love that. Educate, adapt, evolve. I think that really should be our mantra for this year Educate, adapt, evolve and I think everything will be absolutely fine in this voiceover industry. And also just one thing that I want to make mention is that during those lean times where you may not be finding work or work slows down, it's always important to kind of go back and listen to other voiceover podcast episodes that I've had with Tom, of course, about your business and how to build your business and be successful, as well, as I've had a money series with Daniel Fambul, which talks about the fact that if times are lean for me or I'm considering investing more in my business, which would mean maybe I'm going to get coaching, maybe I'm going to get a new demo, maybe I'm going to get a new website which, by the way, I've done all those things and I've had to make a lot of investments this year, and so it's important to have the mindset right, the mindset of being willing to invest.  21:32 I think that's important being willing to invest in this career If you love this career and this is what you want to do and you want to grow, having the mindset of being willing to invest, and I, right now, in my own business, I've transitioned over to a new website, I'm doing a lot of new things that are on the scary side of things for me. I mean, I think if you're not scared every day, you're not taking a risk every day. And, by the way, this risk is not just a risk performance-wise or strategy-wise, it is a risk financially-wise, because I'm investing in a part of my business that I want to grow, and so it's not easy and it's scary, but it's something that I believe every boss needs to really take a look at and be willing to take a little bit of a risk. Take a look at and be willing to take a little bit of a risk, and I'm thankful that and, tom, we've talked about this I'm thankful that I have a little bit of a nest egg that I can make these investments yeah.  22:26 - Tom So my new mantra will now be if you're not taking risks, you're not trying, and if you're not scared you're not trying hard enough.  22:33 - Anne (Host) Oh, I like that a lot. Yeah, Tom. So I admit that I'm scared. Are you scared? Are you scared every?  22:39 - Tom  day. Am I conscious? Yes, of course I'm scared.  22:41 - Anne (Host) Yeah, what things scare you? I'm just curious what things scare you in running your business?  22:46 - Tom Well, I mean just as a basic normal, semi-normal neurotic human. I still have my imposter syndrome. I hear you I still have my FOMO.  22:55 I'm still afraid that 30 years later, that clients are just going to be like well we don't just like his face anymore and they're just not going to book me and they come back. They all come back, as in you know, most of them come back for all good reasons and other people don't come back for whatever other reason. 99% of the time has absolutely nothing to do with me. But my biggest fear is the fear of being irrelevant, and I've had a couple of times in my voiceover career where I, as a result of very poor business decision-making, I made myself less relevant.  23:28 The jumping off of Voice123 in 2013 and then being off it for seven years made me less relevant as a voice actor because I wasn't paying attention to what was going on in the industry. I was up my own you-know-what about it and making decisions based on fear, ego, insecurity and arrogance and ignorance.  23:47 - Anne (Host) Oh, my God, I just love that. You just you were so authentic with that. That's really wonderful. I mean, I love that you're sharing that with us because that's something that I think everybody can take and really learn from myself included taking these risks that have not always worked out and, yeah, a lot of it is because I was stubborn. I have a little bit of a stubborn streak. I'll admit to you that mine would be stubborn in feeling like what I was doing was the way and there was not another way to do.  24:18 It was the way and there was not another way to do it. And that stubbornness and not allowing myself to open my eyes, especially when because I hire a team of people right, and trying to do everything myself, thinking I was the only person that could do it, being that kind of a person, that control freak which I am that held me back. It was scary to me. I was scared that if I didn't control it myself, that I would lose control and that I wouldn't be able to grow the business. But quite the opposite happened. After all, that, when I allowed myself to be open to collaborating and working with others and it's one of the reasons why I love to collaborate with you, tom, because there's so much power in collaboration together and that is one of the basis is for when you want to run a strong business. I'll never forget Gary Vaynerchuk said hire people who are better than you to do those things and don't be afraid of that. Don't be scared of that and treat them right, because that's going to help you all grow and move forward.  25:07 - Tom Absolutely Surround yourself with smart people who disagree with you is another mantra that I've heard over the years, and it's really really true.  25:14 - Anne (Host) Yeah, yeah, I love it, tom. Thank you so much. I think that last nugget was the best of all out of this episode. I really love talking with you in these podcasts, so thanks again. I'm going to give a great big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl. You too can connect and network like real bosses. You can find out more at IPDTL.com. Bosses have an amazing week and we'll see you next week. Bye.  25:41 - Speaker 2 (Announcement) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, Anne Ganguza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at 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.   

Dans cet épisode de Yes We Care, Faustine Duriez reçoit Jonathan Salmona, co-fondateur de Shodo, une ESN qui hacke les codes du secteur. Shodo, c'est 150 collaborateurs, 16 millions de chiffre d'affaires… et un modèle radicalement différent. Redistribution des marges, capital ouvert à tous, semaine de 4 jours, transparence salariale, congés menstruels ou parentaux élargis… mais sans jamais sacrifier la performance. Jonathan partage comment, en partant d'un constat simple – un turnover insoutenable et une déconnexion entre discours RH et réalité – il a co-construit avec les développeurs un modèle de salariat désirable. Et ça fonctionne : 5 % de turnover, 95 % de transformation des candidatures, et une marque employeur qui attire (et filtre) naturellement. Dans cet épisode, on découvre : - Comment Shodo a hacké les pratiques classiques des ESN avec une transparence radicale et un modèle redistributif. - Comment ils ont mis fin aux entretiens annuels, aux négos salariales et à l'approche top-down du management. - Pourquoi Jonathan défend un salariat "cool", qui respecte l'intelligence et la liberté des individus. - Comment cette approche attire les bons profils et responsabilise vraiment, sans angélisme. - Ce que ça change, concrètement, en termes d'efficacité, de croissance... et de sérénité. Un épisode pour tous ceux qui pensent qu'on peut réconcilier performance, justice sociale, et plaisir de bosser ensemble ! Hébergé par Ausha. Visitez ausha.co/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

BOSSes Anne Ganguza and Tolupe Kolade, a leading voice from Nigeria's vibrant voiceover scene, connect to explore the sonic tapestry of Africa's storytelling. They unpack Tolupe's experiences building a career and community within a dynamic market, offering a window into the unique challenges and triumphs of voice acting on the continent. Listeners will discover the crucial role of genuine expression in connecting with audiences, gain understanding of the industry's growth in Africa, and appreciate the power of shared narratives across borders. Anne and Tolupe also discuss practical pathways for aspiring voice talent and the evolving nature of the global voice landscape.   00:01 - Speaker 3 (Announcement) Anne changed my life a few years ago while coaching me for my commercial demo. Since then, I've been traveling throughout Europe and the UK and I never miss a VO Boss podcast. It's just how I start my Wednesday, no matter what country I'm in. I love that I can stay connected with her and continue to learn about VO even from across the pond. Love you, Anne.  00:23 - Speaker 4 (Ad) Hey guys, it's that season again. Are you feeling that tickle in your throat? Don't let a cold or flu slow you down. Combat your symptoms early with Vocal Immunity Blast, a simple and natural remedy designed to get you back to 100% fast. With certified therapeutic grade oils like lemon to support respiratory function, oregano for immune-boosting power and a protective blend that shields against environmental threats, your vocal health is in good hands. Take charge of your health with Vocal Immunity Blast. Visit anganguza.com to shop.  01:00 - Speaker 3 (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss a VO boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguza.  01:22 - Anne (Host) Hey, hey guys, welcome to the VO Boss podcast. I'm your host, Anne Ganguza, and today I am honored to have a very special guest with me today, all the way from Nigeria, Tolupe Kolade, also known as T-Code, which is such a cool, I love that name. He is a Nigerian voiceover artist, podcaster and coach, and a 2024 Sova's Award nominee for Outstanding Commercial Best African Voiceover. As the creator of Nigeria's first voiceover podcast, Everything Voiceover's, the African Perspective, and the creative partner of the Association of African Podcasters and Voice Artists, APVA, T-Code champions the African voiceover industry, mentoring new talents and collaborating with top brands to bring impactful storytelling to life. I love that. I love that so much. T-code, it is so nice to have you on the show. Finally.  02:13 - Tolupe (Guest) Finally, Thank you so much.  02:15 Anne.  02:16 It's been years of listening to you over the seas and I can't express how excited I am right now to share the same podcast with you being a guest. Oh my God, I feel so great.  02:29 - Anne (Host) Well, I'll tell you what. You sent me, oh my gosh, years ago, a really lovely audio testimonial about my podcast. And I just recently if obviously you've been listening to the podcast, you know that I never really did any ads or anything and I finally decided, gosh, I should do some ads for my own podcast for however many years. And so I started featuring some of the audio testimonials from people, and I featured yours and then, all of a sudden, I got flagged in this amazing video that you created for me and bosses out there, if you ever want to do a testimonial that will get the attention of a potential client right, this is a very boss move. I love this .T-code Create a lovely video that does a nice shout out, that expresses gratitude, and it was a lovely video and I was so touched that you took the time to create a video and, by the way, the production value was just amazing.  03:20  kudos on the production value of that. I mean it was insane, and I was just so excited that you were excited and I wanted to talk to you. I mean, with all these accomplishments, you are quite a VO boss, and so I was only too happy to ask if you would be on the show, and my apologies because bosses out there. I don't know about this time zone slash day but I completely messed up the first time that we were supposed to get together, so I'm just so glad that we're finally here.  03:48 So glad to have you on the show.  03:50 - Tolupe (Guest) Thank you so much.  03:51 - Anne (Host) Yeah, so let's talk about your start in voiceover, because I think a lot of bosses here we know what happens in our own little bubble here, but it's difficult to really find out what's going on in other countries. And how is voiceover? How is it doing in Africa? And you're championing it. So I think it's a wonderful start to talk about how you got started.  04:14 - Tolupe (Guest) Okay, so I'm going to talk about how I got started and then we talk about the industry in Africa. I got started officially in 20. So there was the 2016 version of me getting into voiceovers and there was the 2016 version of me getting into voiceovers and there was the 2020 version of me getting into voiceovers In 2016. It was more of broadcasting. As a broadcaster, I worked on radio and that was where I got introduced to the world of recording audio.  04:40 Prior to that time, well, even while I was in university because I graduated from the university in 2015, I did a bit of radio stuff and that was actually the first time that I would do a voiceover. I wasn't a presenter at the time, but someone heard my voice and said, oh, would you like to come to the university radio station? Which I said okay, yes, I did. And I got there and they said oh, said oh, okay, what stuff have you got? So the radio station's name was something around Versity Radio at the time and I just said you're listening to Versity Radio, something around that, and they were like whoa, that was great and they allowed me do the voiceovers for the radio station, the audio branding and all of that at the time, but then I wasn't schooled about voiceover. I didn't really know what it was, so I continued my radio journey.  05:29 2016. I would go to other radio stations and do the same thing for the radio stations and the presenters on the radio. Then, 2017, I started understanding what voiceover was because I was officially working on radio at this time.  05:43 - Anne (Host) Did you have your own radio  at this time, and did you have your own shows at that time? 05:47 - Tolupe (Guest) Yeah, I had a show on radio, but I was more on tv because the establishment was a tv and radio station combined. Okay, so I was doing more of tv, but they would call me to do some of the promos for some radio and tv shows and I would do all of those at a time. But I still didn't understand what voiceover was until fast forward to 2019. I was working in another radio station. The demand for my voice had increased and some money started coming in, but very little at the time. So I started getting curious to how the industry in voiceover was at the time. So I started asking questions, I took online courses and 2020 was when I got into voiceover officially. So there were different versions of that.  06:40 But late 2019, I took a bold step to find anybody who would need my voice on the internet. So I went on youtube and I found some youtube channels by africans who were doing voiceovers on their youtube channel as to narrate stories on the youtube channel. But they weren't professional voiceover artists. But compared to what I was doing at the time, I could read better. So I would respectfully reach out to them and say Hi, I'm a radio presenter and a voiceover artist here in Nigeria and I don't know if you don't mind, I would love to record your voiceovers.  07:14 At the time I didn't have any idea of exactly how the industry worked, but I just wanted a platform somewhere to put my voice out there. So I reached out to a couple of youtubers and one of them reached back to me and was willing to offer me some stipend monthly for recording voiceovers for a channel, and that was how it started. So the moment I got to realize that I could earn a living from voiceovers and there was opportunity for me to improve and grow my skills, I took it so serious and I started looking for resources and I think it was 2020 and 2021,. I discovered your podcast and it was just a whole new height for me because I was connecting to the voiceover industry globally and that really just opened my mind to more about voiceover. So that's the story of how I got into this.  08:05 - Anne (Host) I love that. So prior to that you were full time in radio.  08:08 - Tolupe (Guest) Yes, radio and TV. I did that for about six years.  08:11 - Anne (Host) Got it. Got it Radio and TV. So where did we're going to fast forward to the podcast? Because you've been doing your podcast for a while now and now you realize that it's a labor of love. It is something that does require like a focused, like passion to creating content that goes out there on a consistent basis. Talk to me about what drew you into the podcast. Were there other podcasts, voiceover podcasts, let's say, specifically in your area, that talked about African voiceovers or voiceover in Nigeria? What prompted you?  08:43 - Tolupe (Guest) Okay, so my first foray into podcasting wasn't because I wanted to podcast at the time, and this was in 2019. So I was working on radio. I needed a medium to save my radio shows right, because people would listen. And radio is a medium yeah, radio is a medium where people just listen once and you can't rewind, you can't listen again on the go. So I had that program I was doing on radio and I wish to archive it. So I was looking for ways to do this on the internet for free, and that was how I stumbled on podcasting, because, of course, you could just upload an audio and it's there.  09:22 Right, right, right. So that was how I started I love that that's so interesting.  09:24 So that was how.  09:24 I started. I love that.  09:25 - Anne (Host) That's so interesting because I have to tell you that I wanted to get into radio but I wasn't, and so I said, well, let me create a podcast  09:32 So it's very interesting, and that was my radio. 09:36 - Tolupe (Guest) Oh yeah, it still feels like radio because I resigned from radio. In 2021 to face Voice of Us full time. Oh, okay, in 2021 to face voiceovers full time.  09:44 Oh, okay, yeah but back to the question of how the podcast came to be. So, prior to the time I was entering into the voiceover industry, there was no voiceover podcast that I had heard of. And 2020, I took a course at the voiceover workshop. That's one of the few voiceover training institutions we have in Nigeria, so I realized that there was more to this. People did this full time. There was an industry around this, so I was curious to know more. Podcasting was already getting more popular at the time, so it just made sense that there should be somebody on the internet podcasting about voiceover. So a friend shared a couple of podcasts and then I saw this article the top 10 voiceover podcasts in the world. Your podcast was a part of them, with a couple of other podcasters that I respect a lot.  10:37 - Anne (Host) Wow, I didn't even know that. That's awesome. 10:40 - Tolupe (Guest) Yeah, and then I checked it out and I just fell in love with it because the style of the presentation you were so real, so relatable. It felt like you were trying to help people, just groom them, feed them and you break down the stings. So I'd stalk to your podcast and I'd listen and listen. And I checked the African space. At the time there was only one lady from South Africa podcasting about voiceover and it was quite refreshing to find her at the time, but not in Nigeria. I didn't find anybody in Nigeria. So I wanted to start because I felt it would be so great for voiceover artists in Nigeria to share their stories.  11:22 So people can know what we're going through, because a lot of things needed to be restructured in the voiceover industry at the time, in my opinion. But there was nothing like that. So from 2020 the idea came, but I had this imposter syndrome because I was like, oh, you're just young into the industry, how do you expect to be the guy to host people and just talk about voiceovers? So I delayed the idea till 2022. And in 2022, nobody was doing it. I'm like, well, you have to do it. So I started the podcast. Prior to that time, I had the experience of podcasting. I'd worked on radio, I understood how to record a deed and put things together, upload a podcast. So I just took all of that knowledge and I started the Everything Voice of Us podcast, the African Perspective, which was for Africans, by Africans, to tell African stories.  12:16 - Anne (Host) I love that, you know. What's so interesting is that I don't know if it's a prerequisite or a requirement to be the expert if you want to start a podcast, because for me, I remember, before I started the podcast I started my VO Peeps group because I had moved across the country and I wanted to kind of get to know the people in my industry, and so I basically started to interview my heroes. I didn't necessarily present myself as the expert at anything, but I was absolutely interested in sharing resources and educating the community, and I think that that is a great way to look at any type of a podcast that you want to start out there, bosses, so that you can share and educate, and I think that is a really great angle to come upon it. And so I think for you, you do a lot of interviews in your podcast and I'm sure people are very eager to get their voices heard as well, and so it's kind of a win-win for both, for both of you?  13:15 - Tolupe (Guest) Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.  13:17 - Anne (Host) Yeah, what would you say has been your biggest I don't know your biggest takeaway from now starting and having a successful podcast. What would you say is your biggest takeaway from now starting and having a successful podcast. What would you say is your biggest takeaway?  13:29 What's your biggest gift from the podcast?  13:29 - Tolupe (Guest) That's a huge question, 13:30 - Anne (Host)  And what's the biggest challenge?  13:33 - Tolupe (Guest) Okay, so first the biggest gift from the podcast and then the biggest challenge.  13:38 I think the biggest gift from the podcast has been connecting me with the world.  13:43 Like the world is so big and there are people waiting to be heard and people wanting to hear more, so my biggest gift is that I've been able to connect with the world and share that network, or the stories that I learned across the way, with people.  14:02 Because of the podcast, a lot of people know me and because of the podcast I can also access a lot of people from different parts of Africa and even outside Africa, and it has helped me to grow such network that many prominent things happening in the voiceover and audio creative space in Africa. I am often involved in most of these things and it's just a very humbling experience for me. So the network is a powerful gift that I've gotten humbling experience for me, so the network is a powerful gift that I've gotten. I think the biggest challenge for podcasting, as you've said earlier, anne, is that it's a should I use the word thankless job, or it's a service, it's something it is. Yeah, it's a very sacrificial thing to do because literally I don't know how it works over there, but we don't get paid in Africa for podcasting.  14:52 - Anne (Host) No, we don't get paid here either, and to get sponsors is very difficult.  14:57 - Tolupe (Guest) It is. It is so. It's something that if you are not convinced, if you are not passionate and selfless, you're going to burn out real quick. So I have invested my time, my energy, my money into this. I had to create a team. I mean, for the first two seasons of the podcast, I was doing this independently and since, in theory, I took on some boss moves. To be honest, you inspired me as well on this episode you did, where you talked about podcasting and you I think it was the beginning of this year you said something about how much you spent on podcasting the previous year.  15:34 It's not cheap, was it like $15,000 or something. It was like $10,000 to $15,000,.  15:39 - Speaker 4 (Ad) Yeah, yeah, and when I heard that I'm like guy, you can do more. People at the top do a lot to get to where they are. So I decided, okay, I'm going to invest more into this. And they are. So I decided, okay, I'm going to invest more into this. And my focus was to help him build a better voice of our industry. That has always been my inspiration to doing many of the things that I do. So, yeah, that's my gift and the biggest challenge, the fact that you're just doing it on your own. But, yeah, it's still a blessing at the end of the day, Right?  16:10 - Anne (Host) Now you mentioned that you thought there needed to be restructuring or you were wanting to be active in restructuring the voiceover industry in Africa. Tell us a little bit more about that. How has it evolved and what do you want to do to restructure that?  16:24 - Tolupe (Guest) Interesting. So, interestingly enough, yesterday I had a conversation with one of the very respected voiceover artists in Nigeria top voiceover artist on my Instagram page where we talked about the evolution of voiceover in Nigeria and I see something very similar to that in Africa. Voiceover for the longest in Africa, has been heavily associated with broadcasting. I believe it's almost the same thing every other place, but the difference is that for a lot of African countries that I have observed, voiceover is still somewhat glued to broadcasting, meaning broadcasters are the ones who officially do voiceovers.  17:04 Not many people come to claim the career to be voiceover artists. It is still being viewed as a part-time side hustle, right. So when I was coming in, of course it started as a part-time stuff for me as well, but I met a few nigerian voice actors, like eric maximus, who I was just referencing, e, and a couple of people like that. These people stood out as full-time voice actors Chilu Lemba, you know, femi Bakes these are my colleagues and I was inspired and also, listening to you, I realized this was possible. So the things that I felt could be restructured is that I needed people to see this more as a business, more as an industry and, gracefully, some people as far back as 1999, 2000 in Nigeria had realized this is what we needed to do, so they created an association in Nigeria at the time called the Association of Voice Over Artists in Nigeria.  18:08 Oh, okay, yeah.  18:10 And this association has been for about 22 years. But unfortunately the growth of the association has seen a lot of challenges because technology came quicker the old era of voiceovers, where everybody had to go to physical studios with the agencies and directors and all of that had gone, but a lot of people here were stuck in that era. So the new era of having a home studio, you know, and working with international rates and how things are being done live sessions, directed ones these things were into the norm over here and I felt that we needed to do better. Our rates weren't standard, as it were, very low at the time when I came, and just the attitude of people towards voiceover is just like a side hustle. People didn't respect the craft. So these were the things that I wished could change.  19:06 Also, if you look at the American space, you had organizations that would fight for voiceover artists and you had resources for voiceover artists the coaches. There were people who had written books, there were award shows and things like that. We didn't have so much of those here. You hardly would find any book written by anybody about voiceover If you go to the internet, any book written by anybody about voiceover. If you go to the internet. There were no like very scanty.  19:35 So I felt like people needed to own this craft, people needed to build the industry, and I had to do what I had to do. There were a few companies, like training institutions that existed already at the time, so I just had had to contribute. I joined the association, joined another association called the African Association of Podcasters and Voice Actors, and together we started forming the policies and the building blocks, creating resources for voiceover artists, for podcasters in Africa, creating events like award shows. So we have the APVA Awards, we have webinars. We started creating these things and I must say it's been an interesting journey, a challenging one as well, but quite an interesting one since then.  20:17 - Anne (Host) Yeah, absolutely.  20:18 It's kind of like you're building it from the ground up, which I think is really amazing, and that is something that having knowledge of building things, being a kind of a pioneer in building things as the technology evolves and as our space voiceover industry grows.  20:33 It's a lot of thankless things, a lot of donation of your time, and so I think it's wonderful that you have really kind of gotten in on the ground floor so that you can help to develop policies and guidelines and then also you have a platform that's able to broadcast that out to the world.  20:51 And what I love is, and what I'm hoping, is that our connection here can also help you to be even more globally known, because that, of course, as I mentioned multiple times on my show, the podcast actually cost me money, but it also gives me a lot back in terms of people know who I am, lot back in terms of people know who I am, and so I think we know, and I think you must also know, that that is one of the most important things when you're trying to get your voice out there and when you're trying to become known as a business as well, so that you can survive full-time on voiceover.  21:23 Would you say that you are able to survive full-time on voiceover now, or is it still something that you are building? I know that it took me a few years to do that and you've been working already at it for a few years. Is it something that is a realistic goal for, let's say, I have been thriving as a voiceover artist full-time and I have colleagues who are also doing the same full-time, but we're not so many compared to the US, and the reason for?  22:01 - Tolupe (Guest) If you look at those of us who are doing voiceovers full-time, we are multi-skilled. We are able to record, we're able to edit and produce, we understand acoustics, we have learned about voiceover, we understand marketing as well. So it takes all of the skills to be able to stand and say, oh, I'll do voiceovers full-time, but majority aren't able to do that. Also, looking at the economic challenges and the reality surrounding what it takes to be a full-time voiceover artist, where in a country and largely in many parts of the continent, we don't have stable electricity, so you could be working and you run out of power, and that affects your work, especially if you're In your livelihood.  22:48 Exactly Right. So there's also the challenge of being able to erect or build a home studio for yourself, and also the fact that the equipment could be very expensive. Looking at our exchange rate, when we convert this equipment that costs some maybe $500 or $200 into Naira, whatever currency, it's a lot. So it's very challenging to decide to go full-time into voiceover, but for the few of us who are able to do it, it's also rewarding, especially and I must say, the fact that we get to work with clients out of Nigeria, especially clients from the us, using platforms like voice one, two, three and other pay-to-play sites. They open us up to opportunities with foreign clients and getting paid in dollars has its own advantage. So, yes, it's quite rewarding to work as a full-time voiceover artist, but it's also very challenging for a lot of us.  23:48 - Anne (Host) So what would be your best advice? That you would give aspiring voiceover talents in Nigeria Africa if they're looking to get into the industry. 23:57 - Tolupe (Guest) All right. So for people who are looking to get into the industry, the first thing that I recommend they do is to acquire knowledge. A lot of people still think, oh, you could just record voiceovers on your phone and I'm like, no, it doesn't work that way. So you need to learn, and I'm grateful that we have voiceover institutions in Nigeria and also other parts of Africa. We've got one in South Africa. That's the South Africa Voiceover Academy. In Nigeria, we have Voiceover Workshop Voiceover Academy. There are a couple of them and they've been able to come together to gather the body of knowledge needed for young voice artists to start. So I recommend. Second thing I recommend is podcasts. Listening to podcasts helps to develop the required skill in a sense, because you're listening to experts in the field. Now, I've been learning from you for many years and we had never met and it's been free, so that's the beautiful thing about podcasts.  25:01 It is a beautiful thing, isn't it? Yeah, it's absolutely free.  25:05 So I encourage people because you might not be able to afford hundreds of dollars to have Anganguza or any other top voiceover artists, so listen to podcasts. I recommend that as well. The third thing is to practice and take the big step, because I've also been coaching people in voiceover for a while. I realized that oftentimes they come, they train but they don't implement. There's this fear and imposter syndrome of calling yourself a voiceover artist. They hardly make the bold steps, they don't do demos and put themselves out there. They're waiting to be perfect, they're waiting to get it all figured out. So they compare themselves to someone like me or other colleagues of mine or people ahead of me and they're like I don't have what it takes, I don't sound like you just yet. So I always encourage them Start now, when nobody even really knows you so much. Make the mistakes Grow, because we all started somewhere. We didn't start perfect. So these are the things that I'll encourage them.  26:07 - Anne (Host) And I also think and this is kind of my big thing when I have students that say, well, I don't sound like I'm not there yet I'm like in reality and I think you must know, because you've had such a lengthy experience in being on camera and also in radio and podcasts when you connect with someone, nobody's really listening to how you.  26:27 I mean, yeah, we can sound good, but in reality that is only like a temporary, fleeting thing, that, okay, it sounds good, it sounds clear, I understand you, but when we connect, we connect on an emotional level and that really comes into the storytelling, that comes into that point of view that we're able to express. And I think that podcasting helps us to do that, like, especially if it's a conversation between you and I. But I use those skills in my voiceover to connect with that theoretical client and that's really where it becomes the most important. So how important would you say the connection in storytelling is for, let's say, the current trend and styles that are happening in your area? I mean because globally, I think we all need to be able to tell stories. But I'm just curious in terms of locally, when people hire you, are they hiring you for that big, deep, booming voice? Or are they also hiring you for that storytelling capability?  27:18 - Tolupe (Guest) That's a very good question, because in the continent, especially in Nigeria, I'm going to take Nigeria we have been very influenced by the Western cultures the things we see from movies in hollywood, the cartoons that we've seen growing up, so these has heavily influenced how we tell our stories in the media. There's still a lot of true storytelling, I must say, but when people think about voiceover, a lot of young people think about Disney, they think about all the Cartoon Network stuff and what that affects is the accent. So they're tempted to want to sound like the kids they watched growing up. They think that's what voiceover is. And it doesn't mean that's not what voiceover isn't. It just means the people you see on your screens.  28:14 They're telling stories that are relatable to them. It's their local stories. The animation you watch, even though it's fiction, but the communication, the nuances, you know all of those expressions. They're very akin to wherever they come from. Over here there's a way we tell our stories, the way we crack our jokes, the lingua. It's very local. So it's a lot of work to try to explain to upcoming talents that see, your accent is good enough yourself.  28:50 The way you sound is good enough. It's good enough you are enough.  28:54 You don't have to sound like barbie. You don't have to sound like right.  28:58 - Anne (Host) I'm so glad that you like this. It gets me emotional actually. I'm so glad that you like this. It gets me emotional actually, because I'm so glad that you said that, because it's important for not just locally you, it's important for us, it's important for the world to hear those stories. Right, it's important for us to understand you and how you tell stories, because it may be different than how I tell the story, but it's certainly very interesting to me.  29:19 You know what I mean.  29:25 And it's something that I feel I could benefit from hearing and I could enjoy it and it could be educational, it can be entertaining and I think just getting that experience and that culture and that storytelling is so important to a global audience.  29:35 Yes, absolutely, which I?  29:36 think is important to your business, which?  29:38 is so important to your business, so I think for anyone and I love how you talk about the imposter syndrome, which I think we all have.  29:44 I think that's a global thing, right? Everybody has imposter syndrome I still think, at the very heart of it, the fact that we can share and that we can communicate and we can connect with one another, that is something that is very much wanted and desired.  30:03 It may not be, as, let's say, marketable in certain places yet. Right, because even in America there's a lot of places that say they want the conversational connection, but yet a lot of times what you hear on television turns out to be something different because of whoever's directing you, whoever is hiring what they hear in their head. Right, Because they could have grown up with those kind of announcer kind of broadcast sort of sound and that's who ended up directing you and that's how the commercial sounds or that's how whatever it is that you're doing sounds. But I do believe that when it comes to people that really want that connection, that engagement with their brand, that they're going to hopefully continually go more and more into the storytelling aspect and it becomes less about your voice and more about how you can reach that person that's listening to you at the other end of the mic in reality.  30:52 So, yeah, I think it's all about the connection. So let's talk a little bit about any type of, let's say, memorable story or project that showcased your unique storytelling. Is there anything that you can talk about that is out there on a global level that can really speak to your unique storytelling?  31:14 - Tolupe (Guest) Now that you say memorable, I've done a couple of voiceovers for different brand. I think the most recent that I did was for coca-cola. So I've done a couple of voiceovers for different brands. I think the most recent that I did was for Coca-Cola, so I've done a couple of them. I think the two most memorable would be getting cast on one of the biggest animations to come out of Nigeria, which would actually be out next year, 2025. And that animation is called Iyanu. It's going to be on Cartoon Network on.  31:42 Showmatch in Africa. So I'm one of the cast and it was such an honor to be on that because it's not just a cartoon for the world to enjoy, but it captures African stories. The entire cast were Nigerian, so we spoke the true Nigerian accent. It was quite a mix of traditional and youth, friendly and young. You know all of that, so I'm happy to be on that. I play a character called Shiju, which people would come to find out much more about later. Then the other one would be.  32:16 Recently I did a voiceover for a friend. She started this podcast and I recorded the voiceover and I just something about that voiceover stood out for me. It's on a podcast anyway, so, um, it's memorable to me personally. It's not like it's for a global brand of some sort, but it's just something that when I think about that particular voiceover maybe because the way I read it it was just so real and I just felt everything in that script Very powerful story, very touching experience. It's titled the First and Last Time I Saw my Parents Dance and that story was just so powerful. So, yeah, that works for me too. It's on podcasts and platforms.  33:02 - Anne (Host) Awesome. Well, I'll be connecting those links up in the show notes for any of those bosses that are looking for more information. So tell us what's next for you Any exciting projects on the way or other goals that you're working toward. Any other associations you're going to pioneer. Any other associations you're going to?  33:21 - Tolupe (Guest)  Next up for me is my youtube channel. Already I have the podcast running on youtube, but I am planning on creating a youtube channel where I talk more about voiceover extensively, particularly for Nigerians and africans my extension, so that is going to be coming up next year. I also am working on some online courses. Although right now I teach voiceovers, I mentor people one-on-one. I also teach voiceovers with other voiceover institutions of learning in Nigeria, but I realized that there's a lot of demand out there and I can't always be physically there to teach over and over and over. It's very demanding. So I'm putting together an online course that will be available, and my website is also in the works. So by January 2025, everything will be ready. So these are the things I'm working on.  34:13 - Anne (Host) Well, that's quick, that's like next month. Yeah, I love it. So tell our bosses where they can find you, where they can learn more about you. Follow you on socials.  34:25 - Tolupe (Guest) Okay, so my Instagram handle is tcode70. That's T-C-O-D-E underscore 70. My YouTube channel is I am tcode70. So you can find me on YouTube and on TikTok I'm also tcode underscore 70 TikTok. Tcode underscore 70. On X, which is formerly Twitter, my website will be out really soon will be, I mean, launched so my website is iamtcode.com Iamtcode.com.  34:57 - Anne (Host) Love it, love it. And that's coming January, January 25. So now I'm hoping that I myself am releasing a new website that is supposed to be out in January of 2025 as well. So it's just a little refresh of my brand.  35:10 So  oh my gosh, it has been so much fun chatting with you and I am keeping my fingers crossed for Sunday, which is coming up in a few days, to find out about that Sova's nomination. But the way I feel if you're nominated award nominated is just as good as award winning in my book, and actually even that is subjective. But yeah, my fingers are crossed for you and I'll be listening. I've got a couple nominations myself that I'm going to be you know. We'll see if that works out and in the meantime, it has been such a pleasure chatting with you and I want to actually check up with you next year again so that we can reconnect and see what other amazing things you've done, because you are definitely a VO boss for sure, and it's been a pleasure chatting with you today.  35:56 - Tolupe (Guest)  you so much, and it's been a pleasure chatting with you too, and thank you for inspiring me and millions of others, because, yeah, a lot of people are still going to listen to this. Podcast is a platform that people can listen to many years to come, so thank you so much, Anne.  36:12 - Anne (Host) No problem, all right, I'm going to give a great big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl. You too can connect and network like bosses, like Tico to myself. Find out more at IPDTLcom. Bosses, have an amazing week and we'll see you next week. Bye, bye.  36:28 - Speaker 3 (Announcement) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, Anne Ganguza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at VOobosscom 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.   

BOSSes Anne Ganguza and Andy Roth delve into the nuances of voice acting from the perspective of a seasoned casting director. They explore strategies for success in auditions, emphasizing the importance of authenticity and making genuine choices. Listeners will gain insights into the casting process, understanding the client's vision, and the significance of following instructions. The episode addresses the impact of AI on the industry while reinforcing the irreplaceable value of human connection and unique interpretation. Anne and Andy also discuss practical advice for creating compelling auditions, handling limited information, and cultivating a resilient mindset in the face of industry challenges.   00:04 - Anne (Host) Hey, what's up bosses? Join our VI peeps today and gain access to over 350 hours of pre-recorded workshops designed to enhance your voiceover skills. From industry insights to practical techniques, our workshops cover a wide range of topics. As a VI peeps member, you'll also receive a 15% discount on current workshops and free monthly workshops to keep your skills sharp. Don't miss out on this opportunity. Sign up for VI Peeps membership now at vopeeps.com    00:39 - Speaker 2 (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss, a VO boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguza.    00:58 - Anne (Host) Hey, hey everyone. Welcome to the VO Boss Podcast. I'm your host, Anne Ganguza, and today I am so excited to have a very special guest Andy Roth with me here today. Andy has a career that has spAnned three decades and he is an award-winning casting director, voice director, producer and writer and is known for you Would Do it Too, too Hot to Handle Valeria, the Animal People, the Forest, my gosh this list Andy is going on and the Peculiar Adventures of Willoughby Starr. He's also served as casting director on over a thousand commercials. That is a lot of commercials. So welcome to the podcast, Andy. It's so wonderful to have you.    01:40 - Andy (Host) Thanks, I'm excited to be here. Thank you.    01:43 - Anne (Host) Gosh, I met you not so long ago and I'm not quite sure why it took so long for me to meet you, but I thank Jessica Blue for introducing us because I feel like I've known you forever and you're just amazing and I want the bosses to know how amazing you are as well. And so let's talk about you and your long, spanning career of gosh over a thousand commercials and all these productions. It's amazing. How did you get started?    02:11 - Andy (Host) Honestly and yes, I think I have worked on more commercials than any human being should probably ever really be exposed to. I got started in this business actually back in 1994. A friend of a friend heard about an opening for an assistant at a talent agency which was called CED at the time. Now it's called CESD and it was in the voiceover department and so I became an assistant there, did that for several years, then became their in-house casting director and did that till 2007 and then left on my own and I actually I didn't even know when I started that voiceover was its own thing.    02:49 - Anne (Host) I was going to ask you, did you get the experience on the job as you were casting?    02:53 - Andy (Host) Yeah, like I mean, of course I always knew about commercial voiceover and animation and things like that, but I didn't know how vast it was until I was really in the heart of it and I just I fell in love with it.    03:05 - Anne (Host) I can't imagine. I mean and so how has the industry changed and evolved over the years?    03:10 - Andy (Host) for you, Well, it's gotten bigger. So many changes I mean, it's been 30 years since I went through a couple of strikes. It was the explosion of the non-union entity, which has become a whole other thing, of the non-union entity, which has become a whole other thing. Yeah, it's become its own area of the business. I've discovered that voiceover is anytime there's something new. Voiceover is the first thing there. Oh, how interesting. Anytime there's a new piece of technology, somebody wants to put a voice on it. Siri's a voiceover. Yeah, Alexa is a voiceover. Holograms have voiceovers. Augmented reality, virtual reality. When I started in this business, it was basically 13 chAnnels and people really mostly only cared about four of them. Yes, yes.    03:58 - Anne (Host) I hear you on that.    04:00 - Andy (Host) And then cable became a thing and you had this box with three numbers on it so you could have 999 chAnnels. And now with streaming, it's just icons. I mean it's unlimited. It goes on forever. And people have discovered content from other countries that's exploded and become a thing and voices are everywhere. We are the first area of the business to adapt and change and we're sticky Once we're in a place voiceover is just going to be there.    04:32 - Anne (Host) I love that. I love that, and especially because you've been in the industry for so long and we talked about, you know, the explosion, like the technology explosion too, I mean, with first it was all union, then non-union kind of came aboard, because of the pay to place, I'm sure, and the online casting, and now we're under the threat of AI. But I guess I'd love to hear your thoughts on that, because here you are with all these wonderful, hopeful things that you're saying about voiceover, which I love and I like to tell my bosses out there as well. I mean, I think there's always a place for human voiceover.    05:00 - Andy (Host) What are your?    05:00 - Anne (Host) thoughts on that.    05:02 - Andy (Host) I think there are certain areas of the business that may be a little safer from AI, especially animation. People love to go to cons to meet the voice of their character. You can't really replace that with AI. Is it 100% safe? Maybe not, but there are people dealing with it, fortunately, and AI does a lot of good things for the world too. I mean, I've seen programs where people who have no ability to speak can speak because AI helps them. It helps search engines. I mean there is definitely a place for AI. But as far as the possibility of replacing humans in this business, there are people out there that are concerned about it, that are helping, and fortunately they've been on it since it really became apparent it could be a thing. I'm optimistic. I'm realistic in that there will be some areas where AI is going to be there. It already is, but I'm very, very optimistic about protections.    06:02 - Anne (Host) Me too, me too.    06:03 I really am. There's a lot of people fighting and, with the strike going on, which you know, fingers crossed, people are listening. I mean, I think what it is is we have voices and hopefully they're being heard, because a lot of people out there, like back in the beginning, when I got into voiceover, like what is that? Even, and even when you said you started, like what is that? Even. I think bringing awareness to the global community about voiceover and what we do as creatives and how important the creative process is, I think is really impactful in helping get us protections as we move forward. And I am a tech girl and I believe there is a lot of space for AI in the world, but I also believe there's a lot of space for human and human engagement and human creativity and I think that people crave that, no matter how good. And let's talk about this because an AI voice is perfect, and so you and I also with my students, we talk a lot about like I don't want a perfect voice when I'm directing my students.    07:02 I mean I want to hear that imperfection because that makes it real and that makes me engage and connect with it. Let's talk a little bit about that, about really, what should voice actors be doing now to really separate themselves from the crowd and also from AI?    07:19 - Andy (Host) Well, honestly, being a presence having a discussion, you don't connect to AI the way you connect to another human when it reaches its pinnacle and it's really ready to go, which it's not totally now. But the good thing about AI is it's going to do whatever you ask it to do whenever you ask it to do it. The bad thing about AI is it's going to do whatever you ask it to do whenever you ask it to do it. There are some moments that have come out of projects I've worked on. I mean, I've voice directed I think like 22 shows now that are on the air. The great thing is you give a direction and the human being interprets it their way, and sometimes you're right on the money and you're really simpatico and it's exactly what I asked for. Thank you. Sometimes we figure things out together. Sometimes they come up with something they thought was what I asked for but was actually a lot better.    08:13 When you get two independent minds with human experience, with a life, with a history of interacting with other human beings, there's a thought process there that, at least at the moment and honestly, in my opinion, for the foreseeable future, can't really be duplicated. I mean, ai is intelligence, but it is artificial and we cast based on human interaction. We connect with roles we direct. This whole industry is built on human interaction. So, to a certain point, yes, ai can get things going and smooth out maybe some of the bumps, but it's not really going to be the base on which this industry is built for human beings to connect to other human beings. That being said, not everybody sees it this way, so be vigilant and be aware of it. But as far as how people can stand out honestly, the best way for people to stand out is to be themselves. There are a lot of people I know that send me auditions that I can hear they're trying to be what they think the right thing is. Yes, absolutely.    09:19 And if I've asked you to audition, you're already the right thing. I don't know if you'll get the job, but I know that you can do the job. And I've had auditions that people didn't book lead to other jobs that they didn't even audition for. That actually just happened on a show I am on right now. I cast somebody and he was like did I audition for this? I'm like well, sort of you auditioned, like two shows ago.    09:43 - Anne (Host) I love that. Yeah, I think that's very encouraging for those actors out there who it's such a personal thing, right.    09:50 When you submit an audition, it's so hard not to get personally attached to it or feel like, oh gosh, like I really, really want this, and but then you don't hear anything or you may never get feedback and then ultimately that is, I think, when people are first starting out in this industry. It's something very hard for them to kind of let go of because it is such maybe a personal connection. But I love that you're talking about bringing yourself and the human element to the audition, because that's really what makes you unique. I'll even tell my students, because I do a lot of work in the long format narration like corporate and e-learning, and most people feel like that shouldn't have like a point of view or a feeling, but most absolutely it does, because I tell people to think about like okay, if you're going to do an e-learning module like what was it when you were going to school that made someone your favorite teacher?    10:37 Like did you have a subject that maybe you hated, but then all of a sudden, the teacher was amazing and then that's what made it interesting. And that's the type of voice that I want to come out. And there's always a point of view in that, believe it or not, it's a point of view that says I care about you as a student, that I care that you learn, and so that comes through in the voice and if you're just reading the words, or even if you're just reading the words in the sound in which you hear them all the time, which typically is very robotic for a lot of e-learning, I go on and on about why that happened for so many years. Because nobody chucked us on it and nobody was an actual teacher.    11:09 And I say that because I was a teacher in front of the classroom for 20, some odd years. But still, even if you think in what you hear, I have so many students that say, but I hear it on the commercial, it sounds like this and I'm like, yeah, but that might not have been what got them cast. It might be at the moment that someone directed them to be. And even you, if I ask, if you're directing someone, do you not only sometimes have to like talk to the client to see?    11:33 if that's what the client is thinking is good, and even what you might be like, this is great. This actor's got it nailed. The client might want something different.    11:41 - Andy (Host) Well, I work with the actor for the client. The actor is sort of the most profound connection artistically. That's the relationship that ultimately creates a thing. But I do work for the client and ultimately what they want.    11:57 I kind of think of it like this: this is a hive mind and there's a queen bee somewhere in an office with a checkbook and the rest of us are workers trying to make sure the hive is ready before it rains. So I very, very much listen to the client, want to do what the client says. I'm very much back and forth with the client. If it's a dubbed show that I'm directing, I am constantly because I could get a read that I'm like that's brilliant, that's amazing, I love it. And then I'm like that's brilliant, that's amazing, I love it. And then I'm like let's compare it to the original, because if it doesn't match or do the same thing, I'm like I love it, but we have to shelve it and we have to do what the client wants.    12:34 - Speaker 2 (Announcement) But at the end of the day.    12:35 - Andy (Host) The client has built a container that they want filmed with humAnness and it is my job to fill it up, and that happens just through us connecting. Part of what I listen for on an audition is do I get you? And I don't mean like, are you a Pisces? Or something like that. I mean Long walks on the beach, right exactly Pina coladas getting caught in the rain, not that I have a problem with pina coladas or getting caught in theaters, or long walks on the beach.    13:05 - Anne (Host) Long walks on the beach.    13:06 - Andy (Host) Let's be fair, but I do feel like I want to feel like there's a human there, because that makes me feel like I know what's going to happen in the studio, and I don't want any of us to do more work than we absolutely have to do. I want us to connect, do something, play with it, do it again, move on, and it needs to be within the container that the client has given me to fill. Does that make sense?    13:29 - Anne (Host) Yeah, absolutely so. Then if there are casting specs, and someone is paying attention to the casting specs, which a lot of times. Casting specs sometimes seem fairly generic and sometimes not. How much should they be paying attention to that and trying to like create that versus bringing their most human self to that read?    13:49 - Andy (Host) Well, I will say this about casting specs and yeah, sometimes they kind of suck and I'm sorry about that, but they are designed to help you. They are coming from somebody's mind to kind of get you to the place where you can be you in the relevant context. Sometimes they're just not actable, sometimes they are a little generic, sometimes they're not understandable, but more often I think they are. And even if we don't realize every nuance, just reading them often will get us to an emotional place where we can be ourselves, because happy you is very different than sarcastic you or sad you or angry you. I say, always pay attention to them, always read them. But If you can't make a choice based on them, then maybe sort through or throw them away, but they are always there to help you.    14:42 I mean, I do know some people that are like, oh, I never read the specs. I don't think that's the best way to go. Sure, yeah, always. But I mean again, you don't have to be beyond completely throwing them away. They're garbage or they're just completely not you, but they weren't paying attention to. Also, sometimes we put things in there like naming conventions, if I say I want the file named role underscore full name.    15:12 And I get something that's named a different way Well before I've even listened to it. You've told me you don't really care what I have to say. So yeah, I would say, always pay attention to them.    15:21 - Anne (Host) I like how you turned that into the message right.    15:24 So a lot of people I'll be like I don't understand why I will have my students name files a particular way, because they submit their homework via Dropbox and they have to name it a certain way. And if they don't, I spend half of their session looking for their file and what happens is they seem to think I'm insane for asking them to name it a certain way. And I'm like, in reality, there's a method to my madness here. I mean because if you audition, you're going to have to name that file specifically the way they're asking, otherwise it's going to get tossed to the side. I like how you mentioned that. Yeah, you've already shown that you have respect for the process by naming the file correctly, and it shouldn't be a task to do that. And if it is a task, then I think maybe you should get some computer training that can help you to do that task and to pay attention, because that's part of our job when we're submitting.    16:14 - Andy (Host) I mean, you're going to name it something.    16:16 - Anne (Host) Yeah, exactly, why not name it what we're asked?    16:19 - Andy (Host) You're not just going to send me a file with nothingmp3. Also, I find that some of these rules, although they may not be the creative process, they may not be the most fun thing, they actually do help their creative process. I was talking to somebody who is an on-camera person. They're working on their own project and it's great. And I said have you ever interned or worked at a studio? You know, it's California, there's no shortage of them. If you can't intern, well, I think that that would get in the way of my creativity and I don't want to. And it's like okay, I understand that, because you'll be in their world with their creativity, but nobody writes a screenplay and says I can't wait to gaff this.    17:08 I'm so excited to hire security and craft services. Working at a place where all of these things are just laid out, where, okay, I have to get security, I have to get craft services, I have to go file permits, I have to do all this. Working at a place that's going to make the part you don't really want to do easy, is going to free you up to focus on the creative and it's actually going to make you creatively freer because, whether it's a horror movie or a romance or a comedy, getting a permit is getting a permit. It's the same and getting used to saying, okay, I know how they want to do this. It's the reason I have people name certain things is because often I want all characters grouped together.    17:44 - Anne (Host) Yeah, absolutely yeah. There's a good reason for that, yeah.    17:47 - Andy (Host) Right, and if yeah, like you said, if I have to go searching through it, you made my job harder finding you than it was for you. To just name it what I asked you.    17:55 - Anne (Host) Don't give you homework, like I shouldn't be giving you homework.    17:58 - Andy (Host) If I'm submitting an audition, it should not be homework for you to find it and to listen to it, and yeah, absolutely, and I just may not do it.    18:06 - Anne (Host) Yeah, exactly Because you know you're that student that sits in the back of the class. I mean, I already know this about you, having met you briefly, but those are the most fun students.    18:18 Those are the creative ones that usually you know they're geniuses in the back because they're causing all kinds of trouble, but you don't want to give your talent agent or your casting director or whoever it is you're submitting your audition to. You don't want to give them homework. So what other things would you recommend are strategies for maybe creating a great audition or getting to the humAnness and the point of view that you're looking for in terms of this is the actor I want to cast.    18:45 - Andy (Host) Don't try to get it right. Don't deliberately get it wrong, like if the role obviously needs you laughing. Don't cry uncontrollably to stand out, because you will stand out.    18:55 - Anne (Host) It's got to make sense.    18:56 - Andy (Host) Yeah, you will stand out, just not necessarily in the way that you want to, but being free. So many people hang so much on every audition it's like, oh, this is the job, and if I don't get this job I failed. And that's not true. Every audition can get you more auditions. An audition is really a way to establish or reaffirm a relationship, and you'll get opportunities and jobs in this business. For one reason Somebody wants you to have that opportunity, or that job.    19:30 It's not who you know in this business, it's who knows you. Ah, I like that in an audition. I mean there's nothing anybody can teach you that's going to guarantee you're going to book everything. But being yourself making simple choices, Okay, the first line is oh my God, I'm so happy, I'm going to make a simple choice, I'm going to smile, I'm going to be happy, I'm going to listen back to it, see if it needs more or less, maybe something else, but trying to be like what did they mean by? You know, let me stand out, let me get? You don't know enough at the audition point to stand out. You haven't heard the other auditions. You don't know about the conversations the casting director's having with the client. You don't know who else is cast. You don't know. You don't know any of the parameters. Sometimes somebody wants somebody who's done a million jobs because of a time frame or there's a relationship.    20:22 Sometimes we specifically don't want that person because that person has been heard on eight other projects. You don't know any of that. What you can know is that if we've reached out to you with an audition, it's because there's already something there that lets us at least believe we know who you are. I don't need some weird ethereal happy, I just need your happy. It's also not about not needing to be directed. It's about us getting you so we can ask can you be?    20:52 - Anne (Host) happier. Can you be less happy?    20:53 - Andy (Host) Yeah, keep it simple, there's a thing.    20:57 I call the four disagreements yeah, if you want to serve the script, don't worry about serving the script. If you want to get it right, don't worry about getting it right. If you want to play the moments, don't worry about playing the moments. And if you want to make the casting director happy, don't worry about making the casting director happy. Make the choice or choices that you feel are right for the script, for the context and any other information you may have.    21:23 Was somebody that I felt was really, really right for a role. I thought they were great, they were perfect for it. I read them, I gave my little write-up about why I thought they were terrific, sent it off. The director really, really liked them and it came down to that person and one other and the other person ultimately got it. That's what the director was feeling and it was a great person. I mean, the person who got it was terrific and I liked them and I worked with them all the time. But I was like, not the way I would have gone, but fine. So season two.    22:08 I ended up directing season two and I called this actor and I said do you mind if I submit you? And they said sure, what do you want me to read? I said I don't. I want to resubmit your audition from last season. And they said but it didn't get me the job. I said no, but there's different brains involved now and we'll see. And the person who booked it last time can't do it again because they did it last time and it's a different role. And I resubmitted it with the same write-up and they ended up getting a lead role. So we hang so much on everything that we micromanage, we microanalyze. Don't look for information you don't have and not going to have. Say this is what I feel is right. I'm not an idiot. I know the business, I know my choices are right. I sometimes book. I get asked to audition again. Do them, and I'm not going to say forget about it, because that's not always how brains work.    23:03 - Anne (Host) Try to forget about it. Yeah, exactly, don't let it mentally hassle with your yeah yeah, don't schedule an extra therapy session for it or anything. Yeah, exactly.    23:12 - Andy (Host) Yeah, I mean it'll be in your head and it's fine, but know that your audition is out there working for you. Just be you. Make simple choices, things you know you can do, things you feel are right and do them.    23:24 - Anne (Host) Now here's a question which I know is on a lot of people that are just getting into the industry, or students that are just getting into the industry. It's about the lack of. They're like the words are on the page and they don't make sense to the student, because they're talking about some visual that's probably already been done or it's in the process, or the person that wrote the copy knew what visuals were going to be along with it. But yet here's the copy, but yet no storyboard. There's no other information except for maybe like casting specs about oh, we want female age, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so then they're like well, how do I interpret this? How do I even because I'll okay, who are you? Who are you talking to? You know, create that scene. And when I'm just like well, look, as long as you're committed right, you're committed to those words and they make sense, you can make up whatever scene you want that allows you to be authentic and genuine with it.    24:15 And sometimes I'm very surprised at stuff that I've done. When I look at what comes out afterwards, I'm like whoa, okay, I didn't expect that. So why is that? Are we a step in the process where we don't get fed more information, like is there a reason why there's not more storyboards or there's not more you know what I mean information given at the time of the audition, or just curious?    24:36 - Andy (Host) I never asked anybody this and I will say this. It sometimes is as frustrating for me. I would love for the actor to have everything the actor needs, but sometimes you can't. Sometimes projects are secretive. Sometimes there actually is a storyboard. I'm just not allowed to tell you. Sometimes there's information about what show it is or what the product is. I remember when Apple first started advertising the iPhones and we were casting in person because it was a long time ago and we weren't even allowed to put iPhone on the door. We weren't even allowed. It would be secret product, you know, and people would be like oh, a phone that does stuff.    25:17 - Anne (Host) But we weren't allowed to say it.    25:19 - Andy (Host) So there'd be like on the door it would say like jet plane or freezer burn or just some random word, so you would know where you should go. I worked on a show recently where there were these athletes going to this really important game and one of them is looking out the window and it's starting to rain and he's nervous and he's like, wow, it's raining out there. And the coach looks at him and goes, yeah, but it's raining for the other team too. Whatever information you don't have, neither does anybody else.    25:54 Whatever problems you have, everybody else it's raining for the other team too Sure.    25:59 - Anne (Host) Sure, I love that. It's so nice for you to validate that you know, what.    26:03 - Speaker 2 (Announcement) I mean.    26:03 - Anne (Host) Because I think a lot of times people are like but why, how? Come I don't know anymore. Why can't?    26:07 - Speaker 2 (Announcement) I.    26:08 - Anne (Host) I said it's very rare in any of my jobs in all these years that I've ever gotten a storyboard. I mean after. I get it maybe I'll get a storyboard. There'll be times I'll get storyboards with a commercial audition, but I think it's gotten less over the years. Yeah.    26:23 - Andy (Host) You get what people feel you need, and they're not always right.    26:26 - Anne (Host) And a lot of times they change again. Yeah.    26:30 - Andy (Host) And it's very much. You get what you get. You don't get upset, but you will always have everything you need to do your job. You may not feel it, it may not be as much as you want, but it is enough to get you to a place where you can come up with specifics. Even if you make them up, you can come up with a.    26:50 - Anne (Host) I'm happy, I'm sad. I'm a wise ass.    26:53 - Andy (Host) This business. We do everything we can to give you everything you need to do your job and only be as specific as you can. Don't go to a place where you're making up a whole scenario so you can feel more complete as a performer that I'm not going to get. Does that make sense?    27:12 - Anne (Host) Yeah.    27:13 - Andy (Host) Know that when we send this out, we are ready to fill in these blanks in the job Right.    27:19 - Anne (Host) And usually, if I'm not mistaken, the voiceover is probably one of the tail end of the things to be filling in, or no Is? That not a correct Like. Usually the media is finished, the things have been written. Usually there's visuals somewhere along the line that have been made and then the last thing to be cast is a voice, but maybe not when we're talking on camera. I mean, that could be. That's a different part of the process.    27:40 - Andy (Host) Yeah, well, I mean, I would say probably, I mean anytime there's an actor involved. A lot of work has been done before. Yeah, before we even start talking to actors, and a lot of work's going to be done after the actors are gone. So, yeah, on camera, yeah, of course you're on set for a little bit longer probably than voiceover, but, yeah, often things are in place and we do our best to ask is that what you're saying? Yeah, yeah, absolutely yeah, yeah, but there's a lot that happens before anybody asked me to do anything.    28:12 - Anne (Host) There's a lot that happens before the mixer's involved or anything yeah, yeah, I think it's good to know that we're only one tiny piece of like an entire project and sometimes, I think, in our own little worlds. We tend to forget that in our booths right. We're like oh the voiceover is like front and center and in reality there's so many other components to probably creating this project or commercial or movie or whatever it is.    28:38 There's so many other parts and we get so wrapped up in just our part of it that I think we have to realize that we're just a cog in the wheel so to speak, it's an important cog I mean, the machine won't work without it. Exactly.    28:50 - Andy (Host) But we do mesh. It's a great analogy, metaphor simile, simile, it's a great simile. Yeah, right, I thought I was an English teacher. There you go, simile, there you go. Oh, I love it. I love it, it's a great, yeah, simile.    29:10 Yeah, because, like I said, we're all worker bees yes, yeah, I know that we have a lot of the same issues too. There's stuff I can't know, there are things I'm not allowed to be a part of, and there's a lot of processes. So, yeah, just do your job. Don't worry about what we want or what somebody else is looking for or somebody else is hiding. We're not, we're not hiding anything. We just need you to be you, to know what that cog is.    29:26 And again, I have anxiety attacks when I get a job, sometimes because there's just so much stuff I haven't gotten to sit down with it yet. I haven't seen a script, I don't have a cast. Sometimes I don't have all the episodes of a show or all the spots in the commercial campaign. There's a lot I don't know either. And I understand it can be isolating. It could feel lonely, you know, when you're alone in your booth it could feel like everybody's working more than you, everybody's auditioning more than you, everybody in the industry does have that. It's been a few weeks. Am I ever going to work again?    30:02 - Anne (Host) Do I belong in this industry? It just becomes very dramatic sometimes.    30:06 - Andy (Host) I state something. I offered a potato chip. Did that offend somebody? And we spiral out. Every single person involved does it. Oh, nice to know, I'm not alone, right, I mean, because even after all these, years.    30:20 - Anne (Host) Sometimes it's so hard not to get those thoughts in the way. I swear that, like everything that we do, sometimes it's so hard not to get those thoughts in the way I swear that, like everything that we do, is sometimes it's not a God given talent.    30:28 Well it is, but it's the most important thing, is our mental state about it all, because it can affect so much I mean the fact is is that we can just like let those feelings and ideas spin around in our head and be like oh my God, did I do something to offend? Am I good enough? Am I? You know all that talk in your head is the stuff that I think is probably some of the most dangerous talk and things that you could have as a voice actor.    30:52 - Andy (Host) Yeah, it's. It's like Schrodinger's audition the audition is simultaneously good, bad and not submitted. There you go.    31:02 - Anne (Host) I love it. Oh my goodness. So then I would say, with the thousands of commercials that you have directed or produced, what? Would you say, is the cast that you've cast? What's the best thing a talent can do? In hopes of maybe getting cast. And what's the worst thing that you've seen a talent do that wouldn't get them cast?    31:22 - Andy (Host) Yeah, I don't know that I'm going to say the worst thing.    31:24 - Anne (Host) Or yeah, maybe not a smart thing. So yeah, that kind of tends to be pretty specific to a person.    31:30 - Andy (Host) And if it's the worst thing I've seen, it means probably only one person did it and so I'm not going to tell, I would say, the most probably impractical thing that.    31:39 I've seen people do is be like, okay, I'm going to be the person who is going to get the job. I'm going to try to fool you into thinking that I'm the person you're really going to hire, and so I'll get a read and somebody's clearly doing this and it's like well, I know it's a car commercial, but I didn't ask for that and that person is available and they work for what you work for.    32:04 If I reached out to you, I don't want an impression of that person or people that change their voice into a better version of you know, it's like if I called somebody because they have a certain depth to their voice.    32:19 - Anne (Host) This is my voiceover voice, right, yeah?    32:21 - Andy (Host) And if I haven't asked you to do that and I might I mean there are things but if I haven't asked you to do that, don't do that. It may even turn into that at the end of the day.    32:32 - Anne (Host) Isn't that the truth, right? It may turn into that at the end. That's what. I end up getting is people be like. But I listened to the commercial and it sounds just like this and I'm like but that doesn't mean that that performance got you the job.    32:43 - Andy (Host) Yeah, I've had people come up to me. Andy, I heard that spot, I could have done that. Why didn't you ask me to do that? And I'm like is it your first day in the business, have you never? It's like nobody did that. The person who booked it didn't do that and the client liked the director is directing and they call the client and the client's like can we hit this word a little bit more? And I feel like we're not pushing.    33:07 - Anne (Host) Yeah, and I always say that the person who's actually making decisions like it depends on, like what they hear in their head, right. And maybe they're a 65 year old person that's been listening to announcery commercials all their lives and that's what they hear in their head. And that's what ends up getting directed, or whatever it is. I think our voices become a product of the years and years that we've had and your musical, I know this right Of hearing things right.    33:31 And so that's why when we go in and we say this is what we think you want to hear, because we're mimicking over a period of years that's why in our head there's a certain melody Also. I think there's a certain melody also. I think there's a scientific and tell me and if you think I'm right, I think there's a scientific like reason why people, when they read words, they read them in a melody. That's very expected, because I can tell you exactly like.    33:52 Here's a paragraph, I can mimic exactly what you're going to do. If you're not thinking about like acting and you're just thinking about reading along a melody, I know that melody already and it's funny because I'm right like 99.9% of the time with that melody. And what is that? That's a scientific study that you read words in a certain melody.    34:11 - Andy (Host) Well, I'm not a neuroscientist, Damn it Andy, why? Not, you're everything else. That was my fallback, that was plan B, just in case yeah, I mean you've got that medical background. But the brain doesn't think in words, the brain doesn't think in images. The brain thinks in little synaptic flashes, billions and billions and billions of them. You're sounding like a scientist, thank you.    34:36 Thank you very much For anybody who's like questioned me on that, which, fine, by all means question. My answer is what's the word that keeps you balanced? What's the word that keeps your heart beating? What's the? Your brain doesn't need words. Your brain just does little flashy things like a microchip. Your brain's basically a macrochip, holds, I think, about 10 terabytes of information and it processes it certain ways. So when you look at a word, it doesn't actually see a word, it sees an image that sparks a whole sequence of synaptic flashes. The people that organized those words in the form of a script or a book or whatever learned the language. The way you learned the language. They learned it by hearing it. And even if it's your second language, yeah, okay, maybe there's some schooling, but at the end of the day, you're really learning it conversationally, by hearing people do it. So your brain doesn't just process. Okay, this is this sequence of words with a dot or a line at the end of it, or a squiggle or something.    35:36 It actually processes the whole thing as a rhythm. The rhythm that was born into it will probably be the rhythm that comes out. And yeah, is it 100%? No, sometimes there's typos, sometimes things are weird, but it's also why, like, there's this thing online where there's a whole paragraph and every word has first, last and middle letter in the right place, but the rest of the words are just jumbled.    36:03 - Anne (Host) Oh yeah, and we know what that.    36:04 - Andy (Host) yeah, I've seen those and you can still read them, you can still get the rhythm, you can still do all that. So acting is a physics term is one of the things I say in my class. Acting is doing something that has an effect on a receiver. You say something, it affects somebody else. It hits a series of triggers. A script is the same thing. A script is a series of things that will trigger you in most cases, which?    36:30 is why somebody leaves a word out of a line. You often may not even notice that word's not there. Your brain's just going to put it in. So, yeah, exactly like you said, you're going to be right most of the time, because it is how your brain now thinks. And sometimes you won't be. But those are flukes. Those are rare. They do happen. They're. Certainly those will be the ones that we look at and focus on, because they're messed up and we'll use them to define ourselves. Oh, I'm terrible. How could I have made that mistake? But the truth is, usually things go right, and so trust yourself. It's why one of the four disagreements if you want to get it right, don't worry about getting it right.    37:11 Yeah, don't worry about getting it right, absolutely yeah, read it listen to it and, to be honest, if it's terrible, throw it away. Nobody's going to hear it.    37:18 - Anne (Host) Right, it's so funny. I remember when I was teaching in front of the class and I would get so excited. Sometimes, like my brain, I'd be like, oh, and I want to tell them about this, and then what would come out of my mouth sometimes didn't follow, because I was so excited, but the funny thing is is that I never once had a classroom that didn't forgive me for that, do you?    37:35 - Speaker 2 (Announcement) know what I mean?    37:36 - Anne (Host) Yeah, yeah, because I was so intent on sharing, and excited and passionate that they forgave the mistakes I made, and I truly believe that that's how you need to approach your copy, because it's more about how you're making me feel really. And, like you said, it's a series of synapses or reactions or the words are there to trigger something and so the acting is reacting, kind of thing.    37:59 And so that really needs to be built into all of your auditions, all of your performances in some form or fashion. And yeah, worrying about making it perfect is spending too much time worrying about making it perfect and not enough time worrying about how are you going to make someone feel or how are you going to engage with them and tell that story.    38:17 - Andy (Host) Yeah, it's not your job to not have a problem. It's your job to have a problem in a way that nobody else thinks it's going to become their problem. It's your ability to deal with it. Yeah, exactly, we worry about so much One of the things that I tell you have to do a do you can't, do a don't. I'm going to be happy. That's a do you can do that, I'm going to talk fast.    38:39 That's a do. I'm going to talk slow. I'm going to talk with an accent. I'm going to be really big or I'm going to be really small, I'm going to whisper Any of these things. These are things you can do. You can't do a don't. I don't want to be wrong is not a choice. I don't want to mess it up is not a choice. I'm trying to not be too fast, or I'm trying to not.    38:59 Those are not choices, those are don'ts. I would rather have you be too fast and ask you to slow down which is an inevitability of our relationship as director and actor anyway than have somebody who's delivering at the perfect pace but the copy is sounding like this and there's no humAnness to it. Cool, we learn more from our successes than our mistakes. HumAnness to it. Cool, we learn more from our successes than our mistakes. Everything you're good at, you've gotten good at by doing it right over, over, over, over over and sometimes messing it up, but being able to fix it because your brain knows what the right is. So whoever's listening to it or interacting with you in an audition is going okay. When they stumble, it's not going to be a big deal.    39:44 - Anne (Host) Yeah, exactly, we'll move on yeah.    39:45 - Andy (Host) Yeah, nobody cares.    39:46 - Anne (Host) I want the intent.    39:47 - Andy (Host) Yeah, nobody cares if you screw up, I mean, and the reality of it is is.    39:50 - Anne (Host) I mean unless you're being live directed right. I mean we're all human. Everybody understands that. If you're not and you're doing it later on, I mean good Lord, we can just edit it.    40:01 - Speaker 2 (Announcement) I mean, so if you stumble on a word.    40:03 - Anne (Host) I mean, we all do it. I'd love to speak perfectly 100% of the time, but I certainly don't. And so, yeah, we all make mistakes and so it's just you fix it. And so when I'm having somebody read for me live, I don't care if they stumble, I want their acting, I want to hear their acting. And if they stumble, it's okay because inevitably they're going to get it right. If I'm paying them $10,000 for the job, I mean they're going to go do it until they get it right.    40:25 And so if you're going to stumble in front of me, that's fine. I just want to feel you and hear you.    40:30 - Andy (Host) Yeah, just don't have a meltdown in front of me about it, don't beat yourself up, don't apologize. I want to be a director. I don't want to be a therapist.    40:39 - Anne (Host) You probably are for most of the time.    40:41 - Andy (Host) I don't want to. I don't want to do that. Yeah, I mean like people can go bleh, you know, and do a pickup. I don't mind a blip, that's huge. But I've seen people really like beat themselves up and feel like they're less than or feel like they're stupid I mess up words that I'm making up.    41:00 - Anne (Host) I mess up words when I talk in everyday conversation.    41:03 - Andy (Host) Yeah, yeah, and I don't even have a script, I'm just making that up. Yeah, exactly.    41:07 - Anne (Host) That's brain to mouth.    41:09 - Andy (Host) Oh, I screwed that up, yeah there's a lot that happens between synapse and noise and there can be a problem at any step of that process, so worry less about that, bosses. Yeah, worry less. There's a phrase that I hate practice makes perfect.    41:26 - Anne (Host) I mean, I don't know, if you say it, I'm sorry if you do, I probably. No, I don't okay. Good, I mean because it's never happened.    41:30 - Andy (Host) I mean, how long does something have to not happen before we stop acting like it's going to? The purpose of practice isn't to become some theoretical idea. The purpose of practice is to make you comfortable with the inevitability of your imperfection.    41:48 - Anne (Host) Yeah, I like that.    41:49 - Andy (Host) Yeah, you'll be reading a sarcastic role, or a happy role or an angry role. You'll be selling hamburgers or beer or a car. Scripts will change, attitudes will change, voices may change, but messing up a word and dealing with it doesn't. Yeah, yeah, you know that's the same. A typo, that doesn't change you. Getting mush mouth or dry mouth, that doesn't change. So the purpose of practice to get you comfortable with the fairly limited number of ways you're going to have a problem yeah, yeah, yeah yeah so that it's not a big deal.    42:23 I like that.    42:24 - Anne (Host) I'm always saying if there's a mistake in the script, and especially well, for me it makes sense because typically long-format narration scripts go through rounds and rounds of approvals, through like corporate hands and even like your stuff, I'm quite sure, goes through many hands of approval and so like, if you're going to be that actor that's going to point out a mistake in a script, no, don't be that actor.    42:44 Be the actor that reads it exactly the way it is but makes it sound like there's no mistake you know what I mean, that's your job is to make it sound beautiful, like, even if a word's missing or I mean if it's really really obvious then you just graciously. Hey, here's an alternate take, just. But don't ever like point out the mistake. Goodness gracious, no, nobody wants to be that person.    43:03 - Andy (Host) And if you have an opportunity to ask say is there a missing word? Sure, by all means, but sometimes you just don't have that opportunity. Sometimes you don't have an answer it's raining for the other team too.    43:14 - Anne (Host) Yeah, I love that. It's like that's such a great takeaway. That's such a great takeaway, that and just not worrying right and not worrying about being perfect, and I think that that has just been a wonderful takeaway and I feel like we need to have part one, two and three of this interview.    43:30 I would love that it's so wonderful. Thank you so much for chatting with me today and imparting those words of wisdom. Are you available, Like if people want to find out more about you? I mean, do you have a website? I mean, is it one of those things that people can reach out to you?    43:47 - Andy (Host) I do have a website. I have Andyrothcasting.com.    43:51 - Anne (Host) Okay.    43:52 - Andy (Host) Yeah, that is my website. I can't really always talk about things I'm working on, Of course. I mean almost everything is NDA, but things I've done are there. If I do have a class coming up or something, it's listed there.    44:03 - Anne (Host) And speaking of though, we do have a class coming up. I'm going to have you for my VO Peeps guest director guys. So boss is coming up.    44:11 Make sure you sign up, and I will say that when I met you at Mavo, you were doing a couple of classes and people were just raving about you and so, and they were really like taking a lot away from your classes. So I can't wait, I can't wait for you to be and you're going to be in. What did we decide? It was, oh my gosh, it's like May, may, march.    44:34 - Andy (Host) April, april or April or May, I don't know.    44:36 - Anne (Host) Peeps check the calendar because he's going to be here and Andy Roth, make sure you sign up, and I'm so excited for that.    44:44 - Andy (Host) Me too, me too. I'm really excited, and every opportunity to hang out and talk with you. Yay, I will take every one of those opportunities, awesome.    44:52 - Anne (Host) Well, hey, I can't wait to do this again. Thank you so much, thank you For being with me today, and a big shout out to my sponsor, ipdtl. You too, can connect and network like bosses. Find out more at IPDTLcom. Bosses, you have an amazing week. I just sounded Jersey. I think it's because I'm talking to you, Andy. I said bosses, have an amazing week and we'll see you next week. Bye, guys.    45:16 - Speaker 2 (Announcement) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, Anne Ganguza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at vobosscom and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution with permission. Coast-to-coast connectivity via IPDTL. 

New San Francisco program backed by Newsom will issue speeding tickets based on income Please Subscribe + Rate & Review KMJ’s Afternoon Drive with Philip Teresi & E. Curtis Johnson wherever you listen! --- KMJ’s Afternoon Drive with Philip Teresi & E. Curtis Johnson is available on the KMJNOW app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever else you listen. --- Philip Teresi & E. Curtis Johnson – KMJ’s Afternoon Drive Weekdays 2-6 PM Pacific on News/Talk 580 & 105.9 KMJ DriveKMJ.com | Podcast | Facebook | X | Instagram --- Everything KMJ: kmjnow.com | Streaming | Podcasts | Facebook | X | Instagram See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

New San Francisco program backed by Newsom will issue speeding tickets based on income Please Subscribe + Rate & Review KMJ’s Afternoon Drive with Philip Teresi & E. Curtis Johnson wherever you listen! --- KMJ’s Afternoon Drive with Philip Teresi & E. Curtis Johnson is available on the KMJNOW app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever else you listen. --- Philip Teresi & E. Curtis Johnson – KMJ’s Afternoon Drive Weekdays 2-6 PM Pacific on News/Talk 580 & 105.9 KMJ DriveKMJ.com | Podcast | Facebook | X | Instagram --- Everything KMJ: kmjnow.com | Streaming | Podcasts | Facebook | X | Instagram See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

BOSSes Anne Ganguzza and Danielle Famble discuss the critical role of marketing in the voice acting industry. They explore various marketing strategies, including the importance of having a professional website, effective SEO practices, and the role of direct marketing. Learn about the impact of high-quality demos, the significance of direct marketing, and the potential returns when executed correctly. They touch on direct marketing services like VO Boss Blast, emphasizing targeted marketing without the spammy aftertaste. The BOSSes further explore the roles of online casting platforms, agent representation, and direct marketing, emphasizing the importance of diversifying marketing efforts and understanding the financial commitments involved. 00:01 - Rick MacIvor (Ad) Hi, this is Rick MacIvor with the VO Video Village YouTube channel. You know, when I started doing voiceover, I listened to the VO Boss podcast religiously. It was my go-to source of information about the industry and I still listen to it to this day. Every week there's an amazing new guest and Anne is able to really get some great information. I just love it. So thank you so much, Anne, looking forward to next week's episode.  00:33 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey, amazing voiceover talents. Do you ever wish boss marketing was as fun as it was being behind the mic? Well, check out my VO Boss Blast. It's designed to automate and make your marketing simpler. You'll benefit from your very own target marketed list, tailored to meet your goals and your brand the VO Boss Blast. Find out more at voboss dot com.  01:00 - Intro (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss a VO boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza.  01:19 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey, hey everyone, Welcome to the VO Boss Podcast and the Boss Money Talk Series. Hey everyone, Welcome to the VO Boss Podcast and the Boss Money Talk Series.  01:28 I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and I am ecstatic to be here once again with the one and only lovely Danielle Fanbel. Hey, anne, so good to see you. Thank you for having me back on the podcast.  01:37 Awesome. Oh my God, it's such a pleasure talking money with you.  01:41 - Danielle Famble (Guest) Oh, I love it, I love it.  01:43 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I love money. I love money. I still have that segment when we talked about say it along with us bosses.  01:48 - Danielle Famble (Guest) I love money.  01:51 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So, speaking of money, we've talked a lot about investing money and receiving money and saving money, saving money, but one thing that we haven't really delved into so deeply is investing in money in the market, right? Because, in reality, we can't make money if we don't have a market to sell to, and we really need to be able to get in front of people in order to say hey, I'm here, I have a product and you are absolutely able to buy. Yeah, marketing your services, yeah are absolutely able to buy.  02:23 - Danielle Famble (Guest) Yeah, marketing your services.  02:24 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, marketing your services. So, yes, it is absolutely related to financials, because you need to invest in marketing yourself money and time, and so I thought it'd be a good time to talk about the different types of marketing that are out there, like how is it that voice actors acquire jobs? I think there's four. Is it that?  02:46 - Danielle Famble (Guest) voice actors acquire jobs, I think there's four, four ways, right, Danielle? Yeah.  02:52 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) There's direct marketing. We'll go over all of these as we go through the podcast. So there's direct marketing there's pay to plays Sure, yeah, there's agents Okay.  02:59 - Danielle Famble (Guest) Yeah.  02:59 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And there's one of my favorites, which actually just happened. The other day I got a direct inquiry on my website from someone that was looking to hire a voice my voice because they'd come to my website and they listened to my demos and they asked me what would it cost to do such and such, and so that would be your website slash SEO, which one of my favorite types, because I really didn't have to work hard.  03:23 I had to work hard to get the SEO, so that I could be found, but it's nice when people find me because they've already listened to me, and so that is what I consider a warm lead.  03:33 - Danielle Famble (Guest) Mm-hmm. Yeah, and it's actually one that you have so much more control over as well, because you can choose what you put on your website. You can choose how much SEO marketing that you do, how much money you put into your SEO marketing, and then, when it's out there, people find you and they know a lot about you because you've already put a lot of time and energy into cultivating and curating what they see when they come to your website.  03:58 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So, yeah, I mean, since we're already on the topic, right, let's delve deeper into that.  04:02 Because when I ask people like, what do they have money to spend on, I mean it's almost like a last ditch effort.  04:07 I feel like that voice actors say, oh well, I've got to get a website up, but I don't think they understand the importance of having that online storefront because, honestly, that works for you 24 seven. If you have people finding you on your website, that is your marketing investment that is available day in, day out, 24 hours a day, and the cool thing about it is is that you can showcase your product with a good demo. By the way, when you showcase that product and they listen to that demo and then they inquire and you make it easy for them to inquire about your product, then I say that you haven't had to audition. You know it's a warm lead and that lead is usually quite effective because then, once they inquire, you can ask for more information and then start a negotiation process which, again, is absolutely under your control, and it's probably, I would say, one of the easier. Once you've got your website up and running and you've done the work to get good SEO, it's one of the easiest ways to acquire work and to get paid.  05:08 - Danielle Famble (Guest) Oh yeah, and it comes directly to you. So you're not there's no friction of having to speak to your agent or your representation or going through a portal on like pay-to-play sites. I mean, it really is just direct and you can really cultivate how that relationship how you want to. You can ask them if they want to do directed sessions with you so they can see your process a little bit more in depth. You control, like, how quickly you are or are not responding the negotiation process huge. But, yeah, having them be able to find you and typically that is finding you via, like a Google search or that's finding you through social media, if you've done any social media touches as well. They could even find you on certain websites that you are on, for example, like a pay-to-play website.  05:53 But then you have your demos. You also have your email address, your website, so there are different ways that you can sprinkle around the essence of who you are and your digital storefront, hang your shingle out there and you can point it back by using SEO. You can guest blog, you can be on podcasts, you can do so many other things that bring awareness to who you are. That points a potential client to you, to your website, and then, when it's there, then they can take a look and see everything that you've curated for them to see about you and possibly working with you.  06:26 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Absolutely. And so think about it, guys, when you shop online, right. So these are important things to know right about your website. When you shop online, what is it that you're looking for? Or when do you shop online? Right, you shop online when you have a need, right, and so, typically, people that are searching at the Google prompt or they see something that you might have curated on social media, they've been sparked because they have a need, and this is the very essence of marketing, right, because you need to contact those people. They need to be ready, right, or they need to be preparing to be ready, or they need to be researching the buy, and you are there in front of them, and that is probably half the battle, if not the majority of the battle is to get there in front of them, and then, when they have the need, they're going to buy.  07:13 So I'm always talking about well, I shop for fashion, for lipstick, and when I have a need, I will go to the Google prompt or I will go to a website that I know, right, a brand that I know and I trust and I've purchased from before. So that's always a good reason to have a website, right, people who you've worked with before they'll go to your website again. They might be showing your voice to somebody else. They might just be coming to contact you again to get your email address, but having people come to you is, I think, the majority of the work, and so make sure that your website is easy to navigate, make sure that you have your product displayed promptly and like right up at the top so that they can hear your voice, and also all of your contact information so that they can get in touch with you.  08:02 - Danielle Famble (Guest) They know how to find you.  08:03 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, and you don't have to do the audition. That's what I say. You don't have to be like it's 24-7, because a lot of times the other types of marketing we're going to talk about is your pay-to-plays or your auditions, because you have to do a little bit of work first and then you get cast, but with your website it sits there, available and it works for you, and so make sure your SEO, which is your search engine optimization, is up to snuff on there. And it used to be that people paid for SEO. I don't know, do people pay for SEO much anymore?  08:33 - Danielle Famble (Guest) It became almost like a scam at one point.  08:36 I do. I actually pay for SEO. I've paid some people to help me navigating, like acquiring backlinks and making sure that anything that is out there on my website or pointing to my website is something that Google likes and can help someone find me. If there are certain keywords that I want to be found for, if someone's searching in Google, I want to be able to make sure that I rank high for those. So it is definitely something that you can definitely invest money into and I would say, probably hire someone who knows how to do that, and that is a wise use of your investment. If that's what you choose to do, you can absolutely do that, and you can also just take care of what is on your website.  09:18 So make sure that your brand is exactly what you want people to see, and you need to reverse engineer it. Think like a buyer. Think like if I'm looking for a voice actor who sounds like this particular type of brand. Make sure that you've showcased that that's what you do and showcase it in a way that is easy to digest and that people can take it for what they need. For example, make sure your demos are downloadable. If they need to like, take off demos off of your website. If they know how to reach out to you, make sure your email address is on it, not just a contact form. Make it so that if you were a person who was looking for you, they would know how to find you just on your website.  10:02 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And make it quick.  10:03 - Danielle Famble (Guest) And make it quick Make it quick and painless.  10:05 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Quick and painless right. You don't want to make it hard on your potential clients, so we could probably have an entire episode and I know I have had previous episodes on websites and how important they are, but in terms of the marketing of you, they're critical. So don't leave that to be like the last thing that you do or the thing that you don't want to invest your money in. Because I'll tell you what, for me, when I shop, a website literally is the clincher for me, because I want to make sure that that website looks professional, that it looks trustworthy and it has the things that I want on it, that I can see I can get the information quickly, because I don't have a lot of attention span and I don't have a lot of time, right.  10:46 - Danielle Famble (Guest) And it's not a set it and forget it kind of thing too. It's something that needs maintenance, which also requires money and time, because certain plugins need to be updated, your hosting needs to be updated, and maybe you even need to refresh what's on your website. Maybe it's that your demos get updated, or any videos or social proof of what you've done needs to be updated as well. So this is not a set it and forget it. This is something that requires maintenance, and that maintenance does require time and money investments Exactly.  11:16 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Now let's talk about, like I said, we could go on forever about this, but let's talk now about the second method, and these are in no particular order. I'm just having to be thinking of pay-to-plays and online rosters, right, yeah, and there's lots of different places out there that can help you to write a great profile. If you are unfamiliar or you're scared about writing about yourself. Lots of places out there that have helpful hints on how to write a good profile and also have your products ready to upload or be on display, right. So have those demos and make sure those demos are. You know, again, that's your product, so make sure those demos are good demos, or those samples are good samples, and that they make you shine. Okay, not just like oh, I created a sample, let me upload it, because, again, you're going up now against other people At this point.  12:08 You're on a website that has other people that have products as well that are displaying, so you want your product to be the best product, right? You want your product to look the best, you want your product to sound the best. It's all in like the display, like if I'm working in retail and in clothing and if you walk into a store and it's just real pretty and it's got a good feng shui about it, then you're like, oh, I'm more apt to buy. So if you've got a demo and it just kicks butt, I mean, people, I think, are going to be impressed by that. And there's so many differing opinions on like, do you need a demo these days? Well, I think you need something that absolutely exemplifies and showcases your voice, and it's very best. And so a lot of times when you're beginning and you're just starting out, you don't know what you don't know and you don't have an ear for it.  12:52 So that's when you trust a good coach demo producer. But the pay-to-plays are an investment, right? Your demos, your product is an investment. Your online casting, well, pay-to-plays for sure are an investment, because there's typically a membership involved in that and online rosters can be an investment. It can absolutely be an investment of your time, maybe, I don't know. I don't know any online rosters, though, except pay-to-plays, that ask you to pay a membership fee. Do you?  13:19 - Danielle Famble (Guest) Danielle Right? No, I don't really know of any online rosters that ask you to pay a membership fee. That sounds to me more like a pay-to-play. But the idea of making sure that your marketing everything that you're offering on your portion of the pay-to-play is professional and showcases what you do well is really important, because you are, if you think about it, like being in a grocery store and you're in like the ketchup aisle. There are several different brands of ketchup.  13:45 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) There are so many ketchups, yeah.  13:46 - Danielle Famble (Guest) So what are you choosing and why? So you really want to make sure that, like your portion of the digital landscape that you're taking up on, that pay-to-play represents who you are and the branding of it, like ketchup label, for example really showcases what it is that you do and what you do well, and again, how people can contact you. If it's through that pay to play, cool. If it is to your website, then that's sort of a second link to making sure that there's consistency.  14:13 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, now, in terms of marketing, right, what's important in the marketing of that, right? So, on your website, it was important that you had SEO, so people knew where to go, right, they know how to get to your place, they get to your online storefront, and that's done through the actual verbiage that you have on your website as well as, let's say, social media and emails that drive people to your website. Now, with online casting and pay-to-plays, right, online casting and pay-to-plays, they're doing a lot of the marketing for you as well, because their SEO already includes a lot of voice actors. So, when people are searching for that voice actor or corporate narration voice or whatever they're searching for, because they have a series or a bunch of voice actors on there, their SEO is already working in their favor. Plus, they're probably doing their own marketing because they want to get clients in.  15:01 I mean, that's like one of the roles of an online pay-to-play is to get clients in because they have a need, right. So at this point they have a need and now they go to the pay-to-play or the online roster and now they have to choose right, and again, like you said, just like in the ketchup aisle, you want to make sure your ketchup is the best and your ketchup stands out and that your brand is really represented well. And so the marketing investment there is your investment in that membership, as well as the investment of, let's say, your product right to have a great product so that it stands out, and the way that you're writing that description right, and the things that you can control on the pay-to-play or the online roster.  15:39 - Danielle Famble (Guest) Yeah, and recognize that you are in that particular marketing instance. You are attaching your business on the back of another business, exactly so making sure that you agree with how that business is running. Maybe you don't choose a particular pay to play because you don't agree, but know that you are attaching your business to another business, so that business's success is also your success. But you need to make sure that it's not the only way that people can find you, which is why, like this four-prong approach I think is really smart, just making sure to diversify.  16:13 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, absolutely, you're right, don't put all your eggs in one basket, right? I've seen that around. You know you want to make sure you don't put all of your time and all your investment in just a pay-to-play, because there's lots of different ways to acquire work, and so that was the second way, and again, we could have a whole podcast episode just on pay-to-plays, which we might do. But our third one that we're talking about is agent representation, maybe management right and management right. And so in that marketing instance, right, the agents have a relationship right, or the managers have a relationship with either other agents or with potential clients, and those clients depend on the agent or the manager mostly the agent right Because the choices to them by just searching at the Google prompt are overwhelming.  16:57 There's a lot of voice talent out there, and so they might have worked with an agent for many years and they trust that agent, and that agent is the one that probably gets them the short list right. They have dependable, qualified voice actors on their roster. They have an audition which they'll give to the agent. The agent will then distribute it to their roster and then at that point they'll get back those auditions and the agent will shortlist, for the most part the agent will shortlist and then send that shortlist to the client and that kind of keeps the client's decision-making process make it a little bit easier, not as overwhelming- yeah, it's a little bit more of a curated way to get what you're looking for and again, that's connecting that to another business.  17:43 - Danielle Famble (Guest) So as long as that agent or manager or whomever has these robust relationships with potential buyers, then you're riding along on that relationship. So it also then means with your marketing is making sure that your agent knows everything they need to know about you, and so it's managing that relationship with your agent and making sure they have what they need. They have your most updated demos, they have your most updated work. They know if you have conflicts and you can't audition for certain things. It's making sure that you have watered that relationship and you managed until the garden of that relationship, because it's not just with your demos or what you've done, it's also making sure that that interpersonal relationship is healthy.  18:28 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Right, and so your financial investment with an agent or a manager right is usually going to be a percentage of the job that you get. So you're going to have to have number one to get a good agent, you probably need a really good demo. There's going to be the investment in getting a really good demo. Especially because agents and managers typically work in the broadcast part of the industry. You want to make sure that you have a tip-top demo because they're very busy people. Typically that's going to be like your demo is going to get you in the door. That in the recommendation probably.  19:01 So there's the investment in that. And then there's the financial responsibility. If you audition for the gig, it's going to be your time in auditioning right for your agents. And also, when you get the gig, it's going to be a percentage anywhere from 10 to 20 percent. And then managers typically are nurturing relationships between you and an agent, and then you're paying a manager as well a certain percentage. So there's your financial investment in that leg of the marketing.  19:28 And then finally, we have, after that, we've got the SEO. We talked about your investment, which was investment in your website, in your product, and then your negotiation skills, your pay to play or your online rosters, is your investment in the membership, in the investment in having a product that stands out and, again, having a great demo, having a way to make sure that your brand stands out for that. And then we just spoke about the agent manager. Right, your financial investment is going to be the percentage, it's going to be your demo and it's going to be your percentage that they're going to take once you get the gig. And what is our last one?  20:02 I've been cracking my brain like, oh God, what is the last one? We?  20:05 - Danielle Famble (Guest) have four. I was looking for the last one.  20:08 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I was like I hope she pulls it out because I can't SEO pay to plays, SEO pay to plays managers, agents, oh, direct marketing.  20:15 Yes, absolutely so, and one of the reasons gosh, I should know that is direct marketing. I think is probably one of the most unpredictable and probably difficult, but can be really, really a great payback if you invest in it. So there's probably the most, I would say, unknown investment in direct marketing, because direct marketing is you contacting a potential client, and so how did you get those leads? It's either leads that you've curated yourself right Through mining the internet, linkedin, getting contacts at companies.  20:51 And yeah, and so you're reaching out to them directly, and so there's a whole issue of, okay, you got to be careful to not be spammy. So there's your time investment with that and you have to be careful that you're not spamming, because how many of us have gotten an email from somebody we didn't know that?  21:06 is peddling their services and we kind of get upset right and we say I didn't ask for this. So you have to be very careful, be spam compliant, which is why I created, by the way, the VO Boss Blast, and I don't want this to turn into a whole VO Boss Blast marketing effort by me. But I'll tell you why I created it. Because I didn't have a ton of time to do auditions right. I auditioned for my agents only. I didn't have time to be on a pay-to-play to audition 10, 20 times a day.  21:34 So I created a direct marketing product called the Boss Blast, which basically just gives me a list. I purchased a list that is curated by another entity and basically is continually updated. So that was not a cheap list. I don't sell the list to people, but what I do is I use a portion of that list and I market to that list for you.  21:56 Now, the one advantage of the direct marketing on that list, as opposed to just mining the internet and sending somebody an email saying, hey, I'm a voice artist and if you need my services I'm here and blah, blah, blah, which could be considered spam is that the people on this list have already agreed for the VO Boss domain to market to them.  22:14 So therefore I market for you on behalf of my domain and so they've already said it's okay to market. So I've got about 90,000 creatives on this list, and it's not that you couldn't buy that list either, but I spent thousands of dollars on the list, so I mean you can certainly make that investment yourself as well. The other thing that I invest in in order to send that email or to send out lots of email at one time, is investing in a mail service and I use ActiveCampaign, so I spend thousands of dollars on that as well. So in order to recoup those costs, I offer it to a small percentage of the voiceover community if they want to market and use a portion of that list. But the most important thing about direct marketing is understanding. So the investment is you're going to pay somebody to direct market for you or you're going to spend the time curating the leads and then that's not like something you can do overnight and you can't send to a thousand people at once.  23:06 However, you're investing your time in that, and typically in a marketing class too, because you want to make sure that you're not being spammy, and a lot of people need help marketing A direct marketing product like VioBoss it is a paid thing. We market for you. The one thing that you have to understand about direct marketing it's very effective. However, you have to understand that timing is everything on a direct marketing campaign, because I tell people like this I have a need for shorts when the summer comes around and I subscribe to the Old Navy list, I always use Old Navy. I don't know why, but I subscribe to many lists, but Old Navy sends me three to four emails a week. I've agreed to allow them to send me emails because I made sure I checked that box that they can send marketing emails, but I don't buy right, every time they send me an email, I do not buy. As a matter of fact, the only time I buy is when I have a need, right, do I have a need for shorts? Well, I've got 20 pair of shorts that I just bought this past season, so do I need another pair. I don't know. Maybe what will convince me that I need another pair is if I maybe figure out oh, but these are cute and they're the right, price, right or whatever it is. However, they've been packaged in that email to say, hey, either there's a sale and I'm not suggesting that voice actors create a sale, but I mean theoretically you could. I mean I have knowledge. I have knowledge that there's a new season, it's summer and these cute trending shorts are at Old Navy. I must have them right. So I have a need.  24:32 I click on the email right that says Old Navy's got new summer wear and I look at what's on that email and I have an interest and now I click right because I might want to consider buying. When I click and I go to that website, I want to make sure that website is trustworthy. I want to make sure. Well, old Navy, I already bought from them, so I trust them. But it could be a new brand. But when it's a new brand and I'm not familiar and I haven't purchased before, I make sure that that website looks legit, not familiar and I haven't purchased before. I make sure that that website looks legit and I do research to make sure that they're legit and then, if everything happens and the timing is right, I click to buy your voice acting product. Your voice is the same exact way. So I ask you, danielle, how many times does Old Navy need a voice to sell a product? Is it every day? It may not be every day.  25:21 - Danielle Famble (Guest) They might want to change their marketing once a season or every couple of years, you never know, but it's not daily.  25:29 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It's not daily. So you have to understand when you're paying for direct marketing or your direct marketing on your own right. If you send one email to a thousand people on a list or no matter how that gets accomplished, you may not even get somebody. People might open the email but you may not get a purchase. So you cannot expect from direct marketing because it is such a timing related thing, you cannot expect that. Well, I paid someone to market for me and I sent out a thousand emails. I didn't even get anybody that wrote back to me. Well, do you write back to Old Navy when they don't? You know what I mean.  26:04 - Rick McIvor (Ad) Old Navy sends me emails three, four times a week Do.  26:07 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I write back to them to say no, I have no need, I'm sorry. Or hey, do you have shorts? Like no, I just don't. I look at it, I open it. Maybe I go to the website and click. So just keep that in mind when you are direct marketing.  26:22 And, by the way, for my VO Boss Blast, we do go over who opens your email because we can track that, because I purchased these services. My ActiveCampaign server actually tracks who opens the email and it tracks who clicks on email. So if we put a click in an email saying go to your website, I'll know that they went to your website. Now do I know if they purchased? No, I don't. Only you know that, only you know if they've sent an inquiry. Once they've gotten to that website, which was the very first marketing method we talked about right, they've looked at your website and if you're unknown to them, they look at it. They see something and it sparks trust and they listen to your voice. It's accessible and they like it. So then they get to know you by seeing your brand, which you've represented on your website. So they know, like and trust and that will give them a reason to buy.  27:11 - Danielle Famble (Guest) And what I like about your Old Navy example is, for a lot of people, and myself included, I've been personally really afraid of direct marketing because it feels like it's such a heavy lift and you've always got to be doing it and there's just so much to do and how do you have the time to send out you know a thousand emails or what have you.  27:31 But the point that you're making and the point that I'm receiving from what you're talking about is really that this is sort of the engine that is constantly running in the background to bring more leads into your business, or at least more eyeballs on your brand, so that they can see who you are. When they are ready, then they will be reaching out to you. But you have to constantly be doing it and it can just be a little bit at a time, but just one touch is not enough. So you have to continually put in the energy and the effort for it and then, going back to the finances of it, recognize that you will either be paying with your money or with your time. You can outsource these things and it is something that is possible to outsource that somebody else is doing it, which is exactly what the VO Blast is yeah, and people will say and my blast.  28:16 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) If you decide, after you send out an initial blast which introduces by the way, it introduces you to the list that I've created for you, and then after that, it becomes top of mind, just like you said, continually, they've got to be reminded, like I forgot, oh, I forgot, that Old Navy has got a new. If I don't see it in front of me, I might forget. So I need to be reminded. So, even if I don't open the email, I need to see the email coming through my inbox, right, that it's coming from Old Navy and the subject line will say, right, summer sale or summer fashion. And then I'll be reminded. Yes, now the time is right, let me click, let me go, let me see if it has what I want and I will buy if it, you know, if it suits all of my needs. So just know that reaching out to someone once a month, which is what we do in reality, I could be reaching out for you a couple times a month and I've thought about changing up my product offering to allow maybe two times a month. That is not spam, that is absolutely not spammy and I, by the way, I want to make sure that we're not spamming people, because if you yourself have been spammed, you know how off-putting that can be and that can take a promising lead and just kill it forever, because I've had people who have reached out to me trying to sell their services and I've been completely turned off and I basically blacklist them. So, as a provider of this sort of service, I have to be careful that VioBoss is not sending spammy messages. So keep in mind, if you ever are interested in that, you can find out more at that. Vioboss is not sending spammy messages. So keep in mind, if you ever are interested in that, you can find out more at the VioBoss website. It's called the VioBoss Blast and I can also talk to you about the specifics of it.  29:48 But I am very protective of my domain. I make sure that we're not spamming. Your email goes through my eyes every single time, so I want to make sure that I'm protecting my brand as much as I'm protecting your brand. But yeah, so your financial investment there will be in your time curating leads yourself right for direct marketing and then being careful that you're not spamming or investing and outsourcing it to someone like a VO Boss Blast like myself or somebody else to do your marketing for you. Be careful.  30:16 I will just say, if you're buying a list because I'm selling you marketing to a list, I'm not selling you a list. The list, I happen to know, is a reputable place that constantly updates their contacts so that if somebody doesn't work for the company anymore, they're taken off the list. I don't send emails to a stale list and I don't give you a list because of that Number one. You don't know how long that list has been around. You didn't verify those people and you didn't find out from those people that they've allowed you to send them email. You've not gotten permission.  30:47 So I'm the one who has permission based on the list that I am curating for you and then sending email out on behalf. So your investment there is, whatever it costs, to outsource the marketing and the generation of that email to a permission-based list. So, wow, so that was a lot. Yeah, that was a lot, but it's so important, bosses, that you understand that without people having a need for your product, for your voice, your business, won't exist for your product, for your voice, your business won't exist.  31:19 - Danielle Famble (Guest) And that marketing is a huge way to keep your business flowing, because either you are doing the direct marketing yourself or you are connecting your business to other businesses. But it does require a time and financial commitment to keep all of this up and it has to be done on a daily basis, and even including auditioning. Auditioning is marketing. So auditioning on all of these different platforms and your own is ways to market yourself as well. So this is just. It's got to constantly be happening in order to bring your business continual revenue.  31:52 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, absolutely, and so there is a financial investment everywhere. It's so funny, danielle, because this series on money. It's funny how much people don't necessarily want to talk about it, but it's in every single aspect of our business, of our performance, of our auditioning, of our it's your time or your physical money that is involved and we have to be conscious of it and we have to be educated about it and we have to be accepting of it, right.  32:18 - Danielle Famble (Guest) Yeah, absolutely.  32:19 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Which is what our series is attempting to do for the bosses out there, danielle, and I'm so grateful that I get to talk to you about it, because, god, you just bring so much to the table. Thank you so much.  32:28 - Danielle Famble (Guest) Thank you so much, anne. I love talking about this and I think that having an open and honest dialogue about money, about how we can have it, make more of it, make it grow, how we can bring it into our lives and our businesses, is really what helps us impact the world around us, because it requires money and there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, it's wonderful and, as we always say, I love money and I love talking about it.  32:53 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) All right, bosses, we love money. Go out there and market. Thank you again, danielle. This has been a really great episode. I'm going to give a great big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl. You, too, can connect and network like bosses. Find out more at IPDTLcom. Bosses, have an amazing week. Go out there and market yourself, and we will see you next week. Bye, bye.  33:16 - Intro (Announcement) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, Anne Ganguzza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at vobosscom and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via IPDTL.   

******Support the channel******Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thedissenterPayPal: paypal.me/thedissenterPayPal Subscription 3 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ybn6bg9lPayPal Subscription 5 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ycmr9gpzPayPal Subscription 10 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y9r3fc9mPayPal Subscription 20 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y95uvkao ******Follow me on******Website: https://www.thedissenter.net/The Dissenter Goodreads list: https://shorturl.at/7BMoBFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/thedissenteryt/Twitter: https://x.com/TheDissenterYT This show is sponsored by Enlites, Learning & Development done differently. Check the website here: http://enlites.com/ Dr. Christopher Federico is Professor of Political Science and Psychology at the University of Minnesota. He also serves as President of the International Society of Political Psychology. His research focuses in particular on the nature of ideology and belief systems, the psychological foundations of political preferences, and intergroup attitudes. He is co-author of Open Versus Closed: Personality, Identity, and the Politics of Redistribution, and a co-editor of the volumes At the Forefront of Political Psychology: Essays in Honor of John L. Sullivan, and The Political Psychology of Democratic Citizenship. In this episode, we start by talking about the foundations of political preferences, and liberal and conservative attitudes. We discuss an elite-driven view of ideological belief systems. We talk about the phenomenon of collective narcissism, and how it relates to in-group satisfaction, nationalism, and perceptions that the 2020 election in the US was illegitimate. We also talk about collective self-esteem, ideological uncertainty, and the link between religiosity and political ideology. Finally, we discuss the phenomenon of feelings of group-extinction threat, and how (white) people react to their perceived numerical decline.--A HUGE THANK YOU TO MY PATRONS/SUPPORTERS: PER HELGE LARSEN, JERRY MULLER, BERNARDO SEIXAS, ADAM KESSEL, MATTHEW WHITINGBIRD, ARNAUD WOLFF, TIM HOLLOSY, HENRIK AHLENIUS, FILIP FORS CONNOLLY, ROBERT WINDHAGER, RUI INACIO, ZOOP, MARCO NEVES, COLIN HOLBROOK, PHIL KAVANAGH, SAMUEL ANDREEFF, FRANCIS FORDE, TIAGO NUNES, FERGAL CUSSEN, HAL HERZOG, NUNO MACHADO, JONATHAN LEIBRANT, JOÃO LINHARES, STANTON T, SAMUEL CORREA, ERIK HAINES, MARK SMITH, JOÃO EIRA, TOM HUMMEL, SARDUS FRANCE, DAVID SLOAN WILSON, YACILA DEZA-ARAUJO, ROMAIN ROCH, DIEGO LONDOÑO CORREA, YANICK PUNTER, CHARLOTTE BLEASE, NICOLE BARBARO, ADAM HUNT, PAWEL OSTASZEWSKI, NELLEKE BAK, GUY MADISON, GARY G HELLMANN, SAIMA AFZAL, ADRIAN JAEGGI, PAULO TOLENTINO, JOÃO BARBOSA, JULIAN PRICE, EDWARD HALL, HEDIN BRØNNER, DOUGLAS FRY, FRANCA BORTOLOTTI, GABRIEL PONS CORTÈS, URSULA LITZCKE, SCOTT, ZACHARY FISH, TIM DUFFY, SUNNY SMITH, JON WISMAN, WILLIAM BUCKNER, PAUL-GEORGE ARNAUD, LUKE GLOWACKI, GEORGIOS THEOPHANOUS, CHRIS WILLIAMSON, PETER WOLOSZYN, DAVID WILLIAMS, DIOGO COSTA, ALEX CHAU, AMAURI MARTÍNEZ, CORALIE CHEVALLIER, BANGALORE ATHEISTS, LARRY D. LEE JR., OLD HERRINGBONE, MICHAEL BAILEY, DAN SPERBER, ROBERT GRESSIS, IGOR N, JEFF MCMAHAN, JAKE ZUEHL, BARNABAS RADICS, MARK CAMPBELL, TOMAS DAUBNER, LUKE NISSEN, KIMBERLY JOHNSON, JESSICA NOWICKI, LINDA BRANDIN, GEORGE CHORIATIS, VALENTIN STEINMANN, PER KRAULIS, ALEXANDER HUBBARD, BR, MASOUD ALIMOHAMMADI, JONAS HERTNER, URSULA GOODENOUGH, DAVID PINSOF, SEAN NELSON, MIKE LAVIGNE, JOS KNECHT, LUCY, MANVIR SINGH, PETRA WEIMANN, CAROLA FEEST, STARRY, MAURO JÚNIOR, 航 豊川, TONY BARRETT, BENJAMIN GELBART, NIKOLAI VISHNEVSKY, STEVEN GANGESTAD, AND TED FARRIS!A SPECIAL THANKS TO MY PRODUCERS, YZAR WEHBE, JIM FRANK, ŁUKASZ STAFINIAK, TOM VANEGDOM, BERNARD HUGUENEY, CURTIS DIXON, BENEDIKT MUELLER, THOMAS TRUMBLE, KATHRINE AND PATRICK TOBIN, JONCARLO MONTENEGRO, AL NICK ORTIZ, NICK GOLDEN, AND CHRISTINE GLASS!AND TO MY EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS, MATTHEW LAVENDER, SERGIU CODREANU, BOGDAN KANIVETS, ROSEY, AND GREGORY HASTINGS!

00:05 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey guys, Anne Ganguzza here. Imagine a voiceover journey where every step is filled with discovery and growth. That's the path I want to work on with you, through nurturing coaching and creative demo production. Let's unveil the true potential of your voice together. It's not just about the destination, it's about the gorgeous journey getting there. Are you ready to take the first step? Connect with me at Anne Ganguzza.  00:37 - Intro (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss a VO boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza.  00:56 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey everyone, welcome to the VO Boss Podcast and the Boss Superpower Series. I'm here with my lovely, lovely co-host, Lau Lapides. Hi, Lau Lapides, how are you? I'm great, how are you? I am wonderful, wonderful. So, Lau, this week it's funny how many times I usually ask my students for their headshots so that I can help promote their demos that we've just finished and I produced and I like to put them in my YouTube channel, and I like to put a headshot with demo and testimonial. And it amazes me how many voice actors don't really have a good headshot or don't have one. They're like, well, I'm waiting to get my headshots or I haven't thought about getting headshots yet. Or can I just give you this picture, and it's funny because I think headshots are so important for our careers, and so maybe we should talk about why do we need headshots and what goes into a good headshot.  01:51 - Lau Lapides (Host) I love that, annie. It's such a long time coming too, because I hear so many clients and some of my talent actually most of my talent now are really on the headshot wagon for their websites, for their whatever they're doing.  02:03 A lot of them are actors on IMDb, on Actors Access, on Casting Networks, you name it. They're kind of all over the moon, and so one of the things we talk about all the time is you have to have great headshots, not only for your marketing, your PR, for your business, but also it's important if you're ever going to do on-camera work, and some of them do really want to do on-camera work authentically. They're excited about doing industrials or training videos or whatever, and so we have to have industry standard, professional demos. I think one of the biggest problems we see, annie, is people going to their mother's brother's first cousin to shoot their headshots, and it's always bad when they do that, because you're doing that to save money and we have to be careful of that.  02:50 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, yeah, I agree. I think that there's a lot to be said for a really good shot on your iPhone, because you know the cameras are getting better and better. However, there's a lot to be said for going to get a professional headshot, and I am a big believer in that, and anybody who just goes to my website or has ever gone to my website knows how much I utilize my headshots in my website for like every other page and it really helps in my marketing, in my branding, I mean.  03:19 - Lau Lapides (Host) And we get so tired. Annie, god bless you. I know you and I, who use our shots all the time. I get so tired of the same shots. Yeah, me too. I myself did three headshot shoots last year alone. I did three and I'm like, oh my gosh, it's like I'm an A-lister. No, I'm just a business owner. I'm a business owner that wants to have different feels, looks, appeals for different kinds of things, yeah, that work for different instances, and I'll tell you what.  03:50 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So my last headshot right, when we talk about what goes, it may be prepping for your headshot, but what goes into it, because I've been doing this for so long and I have the same headshot photographer that I've had for probably 10 years and she knows me very well and I know her very well. And this last time, when I went, I literally brought at least 10 different changes of clothes and that is kind of excessive. But I knew what I wanted, right, I knew the different types of shots that I wanted and it took me weeks to curate my outfits, but it really worked for me, right, it really worked for me.  04:18 And I got a variety of different shots and literally we shot probably the entire day, which you know it was not necessarily a cheap thing, but I have gotten so much use and so much footage out of these headshots that it's been really incredible, I mean honestly. And she even did video, and the video helped too, because I've got video that's on my website as well. And me in action me behind the mic, me doing different things. So let's talk about first of all. Tell me why you think it's necessary these days to have a good headshot.  04:50 - Lau Lapides (Host) Oh, 100% airtight, you need a headshot. I would even say that if you're not a performer, I would say that if you are working in banking, if you're a real estate person, if you're an attorney, you need excellent even for your LinkedIn Like that's become a big thing shots for your LinkedIn, but still the shots are not great that you're seeing in corporate America. They just really are not great. So I would suggest that you look up you Google or you go to your coaching team and say I need excellent photographers in my area within this radius that are actor headshot photographers, not business photographers, not wedding photographers, not child photographers, but they understand the sensibility of a professional headshot and I need to have that because I'm going to be putting out my photo everywhere, whether I'm doing it in my own advertising, whether I'm working a project and they want me to send them shots for that project.  05:47 I mean, there's so many Social media. Put your great shots on social media. There's so many reasons why you have to have it now right. That's one of the biggest mistakes I see happen. Just to save a few bucks is to go to someone who's inexpensive or go to a family member or try to do it yourself. I think it's very difficult because there's a certain sense that a headshot photographer has about lighting you, about your makeup, about knowing what translates on camera.  06:16 Yeah, I mean it's really everything, and it's the sensibility of making you look like you, not a glamorized version of you, but you on an awesome day.  06:27 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, back in the day, like the Sears or JCPenney.  06:30 - Lau Lapides (Host) Yeah, glamour shots. No that you would just go and they all had the same background.  06:33 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, I love those, but they were all very much like a similar style, right, and so I think what we need to do as creatives and entrepreneurs is, no matter who you are actually, I think the more you can showcase your personality through your headshots, the better and more effective they will be, and so, for me, when I was picking out my outfits, I was trying to figure out okay, who am I, what aspects of my personality do I want to showcase, and where am I going to use these headshots? And so I knew that I would use a lot of them for my website.  07:04 I knew that I was going to use a lot of them for social media advertisements about what I do, so of course, I needed props. Right, and props were. I brought every single pair of glasses, by the way, and on my Ann Genguza coaching page you'll see a video shot of me with about 12 different pairs of glasses, because that's just part of my personality, right I?  07:22 love it. And also I'm hoping that some eyewear company will say oh Ann, please be a brand ambassador for us because I love glasses. But I did. I brought like 10 different pairs of glasses.  07:32 It was something I literally had to plan when I was going for my shot and I had to make sure that she knew that I had at least eight different looks that I wanted to shoot and that usually they charge based upon how many looks and then they charge on how many digital.  07:47 Because she gave me all digital shots and because I've known her forever, I'm like just give me all the shots, right, and then I'll pay you to edit the ones that I think I'll use ultimately. And that is a time consuming process, but it was definitely well worth my time and I paid for makeup and hair on the day and I wanted to make sure I had three different hairstyles as well. So that is like okay, when am I going to take the straight hair shot? And then we have to have time to curl my hair and when am I going to take the curled hair headshot? And then what am I going to do? Am I going to keep it all in front of me? Am I going to maybe put half of it back. So there's all sorts of different looks that I was curating for those headshots.  08:25 - Lau Lapides (Host) Absolutely. I think those are all important points, and you're a pro and you've been doing this for years and years and years, and so you're at a point where you're doing really a pro shot. You're doing a pro shoot. That's really also full body shots, and that's something— I did full body shots as well. I think there's a couple steps that I think the early entry person needs to follow so they don't get overwhelmed, and the first one is finding a photographer and finding someone within a geographical distance that you're willing to travel, and finding someone within your budget. So you have to understand what your budget is and what the market rate will bear and put those people by your coaches so that they can okay it for you, so that you're not going to a charlatan or someone who really doesn't have a gallery of actual headshots, but really more of a wedding photographer. You have to be careful of that right. So it's really selecting the right photographer for you and also knowing am I doing headshots only or am I doing full body shots?  09:21 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) as well.  09:22 - Lau Lapides (Host) And that's another decision to make, which will cost you a lot more money to do that.  09:25 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It's more of an investment to do that and, for the most part, most professional photographers have a website where you can look at their portfolio and see the type of shots that they've taken before and get a cost estimate. And I will say that this is something that you have to prepare for. You have to actually say I am going to make an investment in my headshots because they are important for my business.  09:47 - Lau Lapides (Host) Right, they are important and don't avoid it, don't treat it like the plague, don't say oh.  09:51 I hate it, I don't want to do it. That's not a good start. You want to really discipline your mind to say I need this because I'm reaching out to my audience, I'm reaching out to potential clients and they need to see me, they need to see who I am. So once you select that photographer and you figure out what your budget is and decide am I doing headshot, which is typical, like a bust-up shot, or am I doing a full-body shot? Right, and you can discuss that with your coaching team easily. Now you have to kind of figure out what am I going to bring and I would say for a headshot.  10:23 What you said was not excessive. I say you bring the 5 to 10 tops.  10:28 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It took me three trips from my car to the studio with all of my stuff oh, it takes a lot of trips and shoes, because I knew I was doing full body shots. I had to do shoes. I had boots and then I had jewelry. I brought my entire jewelry like case. I had packed that because I wanted to switch out jewelry as well. Yes, exactly, and ultimately it was a long day. I was exhausted. However, it was amazing. And then I did another photo shoot with the same photographer. That was a different style. It wasn't four headshots for my website or my business. It was Jerry and I, and it was Jerry and I at the beach. I always wanted to do a shot at the pier with Jerry and so I said well, let's make it a full day. And again, I curated outfits and I actually took photos of myself in the outfits and then got people's opinions or looked at myself, because sometimes what you think looks great and when you take a photograph of it, sometimes it doesn't look the same way.  11:21 And so I highly recommend that, if you can, you can get like a really inexpensive like stand, a really inexpensive set of lights, which I do for a lot of my marketing for brands that I work with for clothing, and your iPhone right, I mean, that's how I do all of my shots for that and a really good editing software that you can have on your phone, which I have all of these things, by the way, linked on anganguzacom in my shop section, because I love them and I feel like for any voice actor it's good. Like the lighting that I have in the studio is important. Lighting is, oh my gosh, almost everything, and you also have to be considerate of where's the studio. Are you going to do it inside or outside? And inside do they do it with natural?  12:06 I think natural light is the very best lighting, and so if they have a studio that has a lot of windows, that you can be facing the windows, because that's your best light on your face, and so you can practice on yourself and take lots of different pictures and figure out what sort of positions, do I have a good side, do I have a bad side, do I have preferences that you can then communicate to your photographer and also, like I said, curate some outfits and take some pictures of yourself in those outfits to see how they look in a photo, and then maybe you can even send, like, here's a look that I was thinking of.  12:40 You can even send those to your photographer ahead of time to see what they think. That's just because I have a really good relationship with mine, but it does help a lot to get their professional opinion and she knows where to go with that camera to get the best picture of me, because she probably took, I think, on that day, maybe a thousand shots and I think I ended up with 500 of them, but I'm using maybe 50. So, but still, that's a lot of shots.  13:06 - Lau Lapides (Host) That's huge. That's a lot of shots, I would say, for folks listening in who are going for their first time, or maybe their second time, but their first time in. It's scary it is. It's a scary. You've got to get comfortable in front of the camera. It can be upsetting, psychologically demanding, to look at yourself and you want that photographer to work with you and show you what they are shooting, as they're shooting it.  13:33 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh, absolutely, and ask to see those photos as they're shooting them, deal with what you see, and that's something that you've got to do.  13:42 - Lau Lapides (Host) Whatever you need to do, meditate, drink water, see a therapist, whatever you need to do, do not unload on the photographer. They're just there to shoot you and make you look great. But the psychological hurdles that you're going to need to overcome with dealing with your age, your weight, your style I'm going to be honest. I'm going to be transparent. Mom is going to tell you the truth. It's going to be hard, it's not going to be easy.  14:08 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It's like looking in a mirror and it's hard. And if you hate yourself in the mirror?  14:13 - Lau Lapides (Host) Most people do not like it. They do not like the experience, they do not like looking at themselves. So it's just like listening to yourself, right, annie? You have to do it a lot and get used to it and know that that's kind of a necessary part of our industry. I would say start out simple, like, just start out with doing a headshot, having some great tops, layer it, bring in some jackets, some sweaters, right? Nothing busy. Don't make sure you don't have words, sequins, shiny things on your clothes. See what I'm wearing today. It's awesome, but not great for a headshot, because it's too busy looking, unless it's what we call a personality shot. Yes, so a personality shot is not a standard headshot. It is different.  14:54 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That's what I'm going to talk about. I think the personality shot almost always sometimes looks better.  14:59 - Intro (Announcement) I mean there's a place for each right.  15:01 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, the personality shot is like what is it that makes you you? What is it that makes you laugh? What is it that you're passionate about? Like, do you have a hobby that you're passionate about? I mean outside of voiceover. Right, for me it was, you know. I'm just trying to think what I did. I mean because I loved. Well, I did the whole family shot by the ocean, because we love the ocean. I loved horses.  15:20 So you know what I mean. I have different aspects. I have my cowboy boots. I always do a business shot.  15:26 - Lau Lapides (Host) I always do a corporate shot right. There's a mom shot. There's different roles you're thinking about, of what you give off, what you play, whether you're an actor or you're not an actor, like what's your perception of what you give off to the world, and you want to match that for sure. So, starting with the headshot, I think is great, annie, to just start sort of simply like that and thinking about how do I wear my, how do I want to wear my hair? Do I like it down? Do I?  15:49 - Intro (Announcement) like it up.  15:50 - Lau Lapides (Host) How do I like my makeup? You know, having that makeup artist in hair is so important, because you translate so differently on camera than you do in real life.  15:59 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Now, even for, let's say, guys who are not necessarily wearing makeup, or is that something that they should consider when taking headshots?  16:07 - Lau Lapides (Host) No, honestly, I don't recommend men to have makeup. I just say listen, have a good powder on hand, have some great chapstick.  16:14 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, because you don't want the shine.  16:15 - Lau Lapides (Host) Yeah, they can do it in.  16:16 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Photoshop. I will say something about glasses, because you have to be careful about the angle. So, like right now, you can see as I look up towards the light. You can see the reflection in my glasses. Right, right. So the photographer needs to know the angle right of the lighting that they have in there and that it's not reflecting off the glasses. There are a lot of times you can get frames without any lenses and sometimes this is the best solution Actually the photographer Fig.  16:42 - Lau Lapides (Host) Good, See, this is the difference, you guys Listen up, Between a wedding photographer, a child photographer and an actor photographer. One of my photographers was so pro, he gave me his own glasses, his props, and he popped out the lenses and he said here you go. And I said, really, you don't want the light. He's like no, no, I don't want any reflection, I just need the rims, Because they have to try to get rid of it in the end.  17:05 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And for me, I need my glasses. I cannot literally read or see without them, and so they are prescription and, the funny thing is, Lau. If you look really closely, you're going to see one of my eyes is bigger than the other, and that's because one of my eyes is much worse than the other and my lens is thicker, so it's magnifying my eye. Now for me.  17:24 - Lau Lapides (Host) I thought you were going to say you have a fake glass eye and you're going to plop it out For me. I was like, oh my God, I didn't know that.  17:30 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) For me, I call my other eye the droopy eye because it looks like it's drooping, like this one looks like it's drooping and now that I've just pointed it out for everybody. But when I do my Teachable Moments videos, I will have days when I'm tired right and my one eye really droops more, and also the angle of the camera has a lot to do with it. So if I'm looking like this, you're not going to notice that this eye is bigger, but if I look this way, you're going to notice this eye is much bigger than this eye. That's fun.  17:53 So it is a thing, and it's only because the lens is thicker, the magnification is thicker, and you know your angles too.  17:59 That's how much I've been on camera and you know you are very aware and that's something you can communicate to your photographer. But even If they're good, they're going to make you look good. They know the angle, they know where to come, they know where to place you within the light. They're going to make you feel good about yourself. So, if you can find Now, I have been all different weights, I've felt all different ways about myself and I've needed headshots, and so she has gone through my lifetime with me. I feel the last 10 years she's been with me through heavier times, thinner times, and always that affects how I feel about myself and how I feel about myself in front of the camera, and she has always. I've trusted her with my life because she's always been able to make me look good or feel good about myself. That, to me, is priceless right, that she is worth every penny because she knows me and she knows how to take a good picture of me.  18:50 - Lau Lapides (Host) So you know, Annie, what you're saying, I think, is so treasurable, because and you may only meet this person once and not see them again or not see them for a long time but how that photography team makes you feel about yourself is so important. You don't want them to be overly critical, you don't want them to be rushing, rushing, rushing, rushing. You don't want that factory approach, you want a personalized approach. So I would say listen, talk to them first. Get a quick Zoom meet, get a quick in-person meet, if you can.  19:20 - Intro (Announcement) Sure, absolutely To get engaged.  19:22 - Lau Lapides (Host) Do they want to spend a little time with you? Are they going to rush you in and out of the door and not care which? A lot of photographers like that too. Right, Annie, you've met them here's the thing right.  19:31 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I think there's a special skill in smiling right, in smiling for a camera, right, my husband for the life of him. Like every time I tell him to smile, he's like and it's like, really fake. Yeah, it's really fake. Like so many people don't understand how to smile for the camera. Now, it is not a natural thing. I think most people just feel like they have to put on this particular look.  19:51 Now a good photographer and or their assistants are going to be able to make you smile, a natural smile, Because sometimes they'll just say, okay, smile, and you'll be like you know, and that you're not going to like any of your photos because it's not real, so maybe they can tell you a joke and then take multiple pictures while you're laughing Right, and that's usually the good, almost candid shots that I think are always like the award-winning headshots, when you're just like you're like right in the middle of a natural emotion.  20:19 - Lau Lapides (Host) Great minds think alike. That conversation, you know this is so funny. There's so much bridge into what we do as voiceover talent. It's like are you authentically real, Are? You talking to the photographer as a person. Are you having conversations, are you?  20:34 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) talking about life. Can I just say this? This is absolutely parallel to when we tell people to smile when they're reading copy. Right, there's a difference between smiling like hi, I'm Ann and I'm going to read this copy with this fake smile Notice how I have a fake smile and it's a fake smile and it doesn't sound good because my mouth is like in a position that is not making me sound.  20:53 - Lau Lapides (Host) I can see it in your eyes too, your eyes.  20:55 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Exactly For me. I'm happy and bubbly anyway, so I can just think a smile. I don't always have to form my mouth in a smile, but if I tell some people to smile, it'll make them sound a little less serious. So notice how, if I'm just like oh my God, like Lau, you just made me laugh, right, that's such a better smile. So what we try to tell you in voiceover when we're saying I want you to smile, I want to hear that smile in the copy. I don't want to hear a fake smile, just as in photography. We don't want to see a fake smile. We want to see a real smile. We want to see real emotion. We want your personality, your heart to be shown and your happiness and your joy.  21:29 - Lau Lapides (Host) And I would use hacks like bring in a prop or have like I have my coffee in my hand right now, because my coffee is kind of like connected to me by the hip you know, I always have a water or a coffee in my hand.  21:40 It just makes me feel like a person. It makes me feel like I'm living life. It's just me, right? But what makes you feel that way? Maybe you'll have a little teddy bear in your hand, or you have a little stress squeezer. We're not going to see it on camera, yeah, just like we don't see it in your voiceover, but maybe I need that so that I can make myself laugh or talk to the photographer about you know, I'm kind of nervous, I'm kind of stressed.  22:03 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) A lot of people are, and a good photographer will be able to like either make you laugh or get you to be more natural or more relaxed and comfortable. I can't how many times did we go for those school photos?  22:16 - Lau Lapides (Host) Oh God, I was thinking about school photos. I can't believe you said that, annie. Do you remember the days where we had the little clip-on animals for our collars.  22:24 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) They were a thing.  22:25 - Lau Lapides (Host) So, like my fourth grade shot, I have a clip-on raccoon. It was like yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, we're still kind of doing that when we get in front of a camera. We're still kind of like deer in the headlights. You have to be careful about that.  22:40 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I would say even warm up, like my husband, who has the best smile ever when he gets in front of the camera. And, by the way, I will tell you my husband, I got him. He's now hired to work alongside me with one of my brands as an influencer. He's hysterical, he's really great on camera. But whenever I say when he wants to pose to do photos, right, I mean they're like okay, now smile and he'll go and it'll be like the most stiff. I'm like no.  23:02 - Intro (Announcement) Jerry, just like say something.  23:04 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Let me just tell you a joke, Jerry oh my God. Remember the other day when we did this, and then I'll get him in the middle of a smile and it completely changes the photo. Yeah, so it's something that how many times can we do a selfie? Right, we can take selfies, we can practice. You can see what you look like when you fake smile. So really, just practice as well, and it's not a bad idea to get yourself a tripod and a remote control little.  23:30 Blippi, that works via Bluetooth with your iPhone or Android so that you can click a picture when you're standing there right and do a pose and then just do multiple pictures and figure out. Oh okay, I like myself when I'm angled like this or when I smile, I can't lift my head up too high, or if I put my chin down just a little bit, right, you can really learn what works for you and I think there's some valuable information in spending 20 bucks and getting that tripod and getting that little clicker, which I think costs $20, if not less, and connecting up via Bluetooth with your phone and, boom, taking the picture, taking multiple pictures and getting lighting, by the way, which won't cost you more than I'm going to say. The lighting that I have won't cost you more than a hundred bucks.  24:12 - Lau Lapides (Host) Put those on tripods, you could even get just a ring light.  24:15 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Just get a ring light right, I don't love ring lights because I have glasses and I think the ring lights show like they're very obvious. So I have lighting, like I have in my studio, which are like kind of the soft pillowy LED lights that have the big what do they call those? The big puffy like white coverings over them.  24:33 - Lau Lapides (Host) Yeah, they're like a soft box kind of lighting. Yeah, that's it.  24:37 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I have a soft box, I have two soft box and I make sure that I'm standing in front of a window, because then you have the three areas of light which and I make sure that I'm standing in front of a window because then you have the three areas of light, which is critical for good lighting.  24:46 - Lau Lapides (Host) Now I get your secret, Annie. Now I know why you look like you're 18. That's your secret. It's good lighting. Why does she look like she's 18?  24:52 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) What is going on with her lighting? Yeah, Awesome. By the way, links. I'll link that in the show notes.  24:57 - Lau Lapides (Host) Love it Eyelines. That's something that know about on-camera actors. Vo talent don't know about that. It's important for you for when you do your photo shoot and that means where my eyes are focused. So in a headshot shoot, they are focused directly at the camera. But the caveat is especially for VO talent, who you're showcasing your business as well. I would suggest you bring to the studio your microphone, your headphones, because they're easy to throw in a bag, you don't have to worry about it and take some of those shots.  25:30 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Take a cable too. Don't forget the cable, because if you take a photo without the microphone, with a cable, it's very obvious to all of us.  25:37 - Lau Lapides (Host) Unless you're a podcaster and you're sitting down, so that's up to you. But yes, take a cable and be in action, and you may not be looking at the camera. You may be looking at your script, you may be in an action shot, which is really great, but your eyeline is going to give away. Are you directly involved in what you're doing or are you not involved with what you're doing? A headshot for an actor should be direct address to the camera, but for a voiceover talent, you'll have that, but then you'll have. You know, maybe I'm talking, maybe I'm doing this, maybe I'm doing that, and that's kind of cool for people to see you in action you know, Good photographer will be able to tell you where to look.  26:13 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And what's interesting is, remember we talked about my droopy eye. Okay, so because of my droopy eye, which became so much more noticeable as I needed a thicker lens, my photographer, she's like okay, normally you are looking right in the camera, but I think I need you to look above the camera slightly because you've got that eye and I'm like yeah, so you'll notice. Right now I'm looking at the camera, laura, right?  26:35 - Lau Lapides (Host) I never knew this. This is news to me.  26:36 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Watch me, now I'm looking at the camera Now I'm going to look slightly above the camera, and it makes a difference, right? Oh my God, that's crazy. Right, it makes a big difference See.  26:45 - Lau Lapides (Host) I have known you for how long? A couple years.  26:47 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And I never knew that. See, now everybody's going to be looking at my eye. They're going to say, oh, droopy eye, no no, it's because it's a choice.  27:04 - Lau Lapides (Host) It's all your choice. Oh, I love it. Talk about strategy.  27:08 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And guys, I mean here's the deal. Like I so much put myself in front of the camera every day when I was young and I had a very severe case of lazy eye where I was almost blind, so my eye was in the corner, this bad eye, the one eye that looks bigger, it was very much in the corner, and when I get tired, right still, my good eye does all the work, even with glasses. Oh, how interesting, because it's been trained since the year three yeah, the year three of my life, since I've worn glasses since I was three and so even with glasses, my good eye does all the work.  27:36 So when I get tired this eye, it will tend to kind of go a little bit in the corner, and I notice it all the time. A little bit in the corner and I notice it all the time. I mean, I used to get made fun of it and so you may think I'm completely confident in front of the camera. But I know, like I know okay, my eye will tend to drift if I'm tired or I might have to like really like pay attention to look a little brighter. That's right, but it's good to know yourself.  27:57 It's good to photograph yourself sake of vanity, but for the sake of knowing you and feeling good about yourself in front of the camera. That, I think, has done wonders for me over the years, because before I did a bunch of on camera teachable moments and those sorts of things, stuff that I put out in social media I wasn't on camera a lot and it was something that I had to practice, that to get much better at. And talking to the camera is something that is important for your headshots. Addressing the camera and it's kind of like really thinking about hi guys, you know I'm looking at the camera and like you're really speaking to somebody, just like we do behind the mic. Right, we think about speaking to someone as we're behind the mic. So think about speaking to someone behind the camera and that will engage your face, it will engage your personality, it will engage your heart and it will help you take a better photo. I am convinced of that.  28:48 - Lau Lapides (Host) God, what a great convo this is. I wish I had this convo for myself 30 years ago. One more thing I want to make mention. This is great how you figured out how to like cheat all the insecurities and all that stuff.  29:02 But I do want to say, I do want to say to all the folks that are like, yeah, I don't know how to do that, or I don't know if I'd get over it, or I have this or I have that, we love imperfection. Yeah, we love it. In fact, we look for it, we hire it and we work it. So if you have anything that you consider to be outside of a norm or outside of a convention, whether whatever it's a lazy eye or whether it's this or that, don't feel the need to hide it, don't feel the need to put it aside, shout it from the rooftops.  29:32 Now we're actually looking for people I have droopy eye who have all these so-called imperfections right which are real person stuff.  29:40 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, that can be a really great thing it is and hopefully that's relatable to some. I mean, maybe not everybody has droopy eye, but there's so many people are like you're always so together.  29:52 - Lau Lapides (Host) I'm like, really I got a droopy eye.  29:53 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) You know I try to be but I got a droopy eye, but that's okay. Yeah, but they don't care, they don't care, they're attached to it. Here's my imperfections, guys. I mean I don't want to. I don't want to be a picture of something that I can't ever achieve. That kind of thing you don't want. A goal that you can't ever achieve.  30:09 That's a good way of putting it Like let that photograph, let that headshot bring out the best in you, showcase the best in you, because every one of us has a beautiful, beautiful quality, every one of us is beautiful. And have that confidence, like remember you were talking about that?  30:23 Hollywood had a term for it Ugly beautiful people, the beautiful ugly and I don't even think I think everybody's beautiful, I don't even like the word ugly. I think everybody's beautiful. They all have a beautiful quality, everybody has a gorgeous voice. They have a unique quality that connects us together as human beings and connects our hearts together. And so, guys, you are beautiful and you are absolutely a face for photography and a face for a headshot and a face for VO, absolutely.  30:49 - Lau Lapides (Host) And there's many companies out there that really exploit that. They really celebrate that. I can think of an amazing agency in New York Funny Face Talent, real person talent. There's probably a bunch of them out there that they want you to think, oh, I have a weird face or I'm not beautiful looking. Oh well, we're going to get you a lot of work because a lot of people relate to you. Right, there was an actor, annie, who was this actor. He was very big In the early 2000s, he was a heavyset guy and he had this eye condition where his eyes fluttered up and down.  31:25 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh, I'm not sure.  31:26 - Intro (Announcement) And you saw him in a lot.  31:27 - Lau Lapides (Host) He was a regular on X-Files, huh, and he was a fantastic actor and his eyes fluttered up and down. It was amazing to watch him work in different roles and how he utilized that condition to go right into his roles and to sort of infuse the energy in his role. Some of his roles were scary. Some of his roles were demonous. Some of his roles were good. Some of his roles were like fatherly, but he always used it in his favor. He never tried to hide it.  31:57 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And I thought that was it. I mean, that was cool. Be out there and be confident, guys.  32:02 - Lau Lapides (Host) Just technically. One more thing I want to throw in, and that is when someone shoots you, a professional headshot photographer should be giving you everything they shoot. They'll go ahead and get rid of all the shots that are like the in-between shots, the blurry shots, the shots that really like you're not in position but they really like Annie was saying she's kept 500 shots, maybe they did 1,000 shots.  32:23 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I keep them.  32:30 - Lau Lapides (Host) I can do a little cropping myself. Yeah, one of the mistakes, annie, I see people make is they'll show me what their shoot looks like and I'll see watermark on everything. And I say be careful of that, because when they shoot you now it's changed they used to own those, they no longer own those. So when they shoot you and you get 200, 300 of your best shots, those are yours, those should be yours. Now, if they're going to edit you and you're going to pay to have them edit which a lot of people do then they're going to charge money for that, as they should at their time. But otherwise, those are your shots and you should be able to keep those shots Absolutely.  33:00 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Your property and they should be up in color. You don't do black and white anymore. Guys. Make sure you get all the shots if you want them, and they are yours. All right, excellent conversation, La. I loved it. Guys, I'm going to give a great big shout out to IPDTL. You too, can connect and share like bosses, and find out more at IPDTLcom. Have an amazing week, bosses, and go get your headshots, and we'll see you next week. Bye.  33:28 - Intro (Announcement) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, Anne Ganguzza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at vobosscom and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via IPDTL.   

In this episode, we sit down in Miami Beach with the legendary Larry Lepard to discuss his new book, The Big Print: What Happened to America and How Sound Money Will Fix It. We dive deep into how inflation is stealing wealth from everyday Americans, why fiat money is the root of the problem, the Federal Reserve's role in economic manipulation, and why Bitcoin is the only solution for a fair monetary system. Larry breaks down the debt doom loop, the history of monetary policy, and what comes next for the U.S. economy. He shares eye-opening insights about how the financial system has been rigged against the middle class, the consequences of endless money printing, and why Bitcoin is the best tool to restore economic fairness. If you're looking to understand why everything feels broken and how Bitcoin can fix it.Get "The Big Print" at https://www.amazon.com/Big-Print-Happened-America-Sound/dp/B0DVTCVX8J/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1UA44KHWPB7GG&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Ei1bAq04Y8DjjBKRYFj59AYpO4MMX3MxZGmINWScapG68zQYXOHpdKzmClrBPve8VkErMVpVkiPId0xykhHPVltkVXp1gL1J9NcUa7ykk6m2dC_Gxx8P9G40gzLeKnrNRMondM4jWUZsZ2lV8P9IdhNPJVsV1oObUzNHZ6iqcdi0mQupBbagPMj9AWv88iFPBmdlp3ftlq7tGCcqRsXXqtgbl24k9TFdUwokoysZrCI.68ycrGz2CFIvvGVzMomwL_2AqK4n_VmRxjSKQVYX0AU&dib_tag=se&keywords=the+big+print&qid=1741635390&sprefix=the+big+print%2Caps%2C131&sr=8-1Need liquidity without selling your Bitcoin? Ledn has been the trusted Bitcoin-backed lending platform for 6+ years. Access your BTC's value while HODLing. Learn more at https://ledn.io/borrowingSimply Bitcoin IRL is powered by:► https://learn.ledn.io/borrow► http://bitcoinwell.com/simplyCHAPTERS:00:00:00 - Introduction and Larry Lippard's New Book00:04:45 - Motivation Behind Writing the Book00:10:15 - The Core Issue: Unsound Money and Inflation00:15:50 - Historical Context of Inflation and the Gold Standard00:22:30 - The Federal Reserve: Structure and Function00:28:10 - The Impact of the Federal Reserve on Society00:34:00 - The Great Awakening and Cultural Shifts00:39:20 - The Role of Technology in Information Dissemination00:45:00 - The Connection Between Central Banking and War00:50:30 - The Fourth Turning Theory and Historical Perspective00:56:15 - The Implications of a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve01:02:00 - The Nature of Crony Capitalism01:08:45 - Wealth Inequality and Its Consequences01:14:30 - The Redistribution of Wealth Through Currency Debasement01:19:00 - The Historical Patterns of Revolution and Social Change01:24:15 - The Relationship Between Money Printing and Health01:30:00 - Conclusion and Final Thoughts on Sound Money

Bienvenue dans la traque. Cette semaine, (re)découvrez une cette saison. Une histoire, prête à vous entraîner dans l'exploration d'un parcours criminel, saisissant. Retraçons ensemble l'une des traques les plus sensationnelles de l'histoire, celle de Phoolan Devi. Évoluant dans le système des castes indiennes, Phoolan n'est pas une fille comme les autres. Elle ne veut pas être soumise aux hommes. Pour elle, ce n'est pas une option, et elle devient très vite la cible d'esprits mal intentionnés, déchaînant sur elle une violence inhumaine. Arriver à l'âge adulte, c'est là que Phoolan décide de mettre en place sa vengeance et de soutenir les classes populaires indiennes.  Voler aux riches pour donner aux pauvres  Pour les forces de l'ordre, la traque piétine. Les villageois qu'ils interrogent ne cessent de les mettre sur de fausses pistes. On les égare volontairement. À croire que tous les habitants de l'Uttar Pradesh travaillent pour Phoolan Devi ! Des rumeurs de plus en plus inquiétantes parviennent aux policiers : on raconte qu'à présent, la cheffe des bandits harangue les foules. Elle pousse les femmes à se révolter contre leurs maris violents. Pire encore : elle convainc aussi les hommes, en les incitant à se battre contre les propriétaires terriens. La légende de Phoolan Devi prend de l'ampleur.   Pour découvrir une autre traque, cliquez ci-dessous : [INEDIT] Michel Vaujour, le roi de l'évasion : petits vols de voitures (1/4) [INEDIT] Michel Vaujour, le roi de l'évasion : une série d'évasions (2/4) [INEDIT] Michel Vaujour, le roi de l'évasion : l'ennemi public n°1 (3/4) [INEDIT] Michel Vaujour, le roi de l'évasion : la liberté pour de bon (4/4) Crédits : Production : Bababam  Textes : Mehdi Bayad Voix : Anne Cosmao, Aurélien Gouas Montage : Mathew Roques En partenariat avec Upday Première diffusion le 31 juillet 2024. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

00:01 - Ad (Ad) Anne Ganguzza, you are a true gem. Okay, I am a voice actor, been in the business over 15 years, eight of those full time but, honest to goodness, until discovering the VO Boss Podcast this year, I feel like I've been getting away with murder. I don't even know how I've been as successful as I have been without all the strategies and perspectives and predictions that you make about our industry. I feel like I've been in VO College for like the past six, seven months listening to the VO Boss podcast. It's just incredible and I can't thank you enough. I love you, I love your co-hosts, I love your guests. It's just so full of information that I can put into action for my business and just please keep doing what you're doing, because I feel like I'm taking my business to the next level the boss level.  01:03 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey boss, talent Anne Ganguzza here with a quick shout out to those who are a little freaked out about marketing. VO BOSS Blast is your secret weapon, making your marketing manageable. Your voice deserves to be heard. Join us at vo boss.com and start your marketing campaign today is the Boss Level marketing campaign. Today, it's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level.  01:30 - Intro (Announcement) These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss a VO boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza.  01:44 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey everyone, Welcome to the VO Boss Podcast and the Boss Money Talk Series. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and I am so happy to be here again with our resident money gal, Danielle Famble. Hey Danielle, hey Anne, how are you?  02:00 - Danielle Famble (Guest) I'm good, I'm good. How are you?  02:02 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I am good. You know, it's been a busy week of auditioning, coaching, working, submitting auditions, and I happened to reach out to my agent and it made me think about our series about money and I thought it would be great to talk about the whole agent aspect managers, pay-to-plays, the whole agent aspect, managers, pay-to-plays and about financials when we work with said companies, people. I think there's a lot of myths out there for people that are just getting into the industry or even people who are in the industry. They have a lot of beliefs about managers and pay-to-plays and should I, shouldn't I? What's fair, what's not fair?  02:44 I thought it'd be a great time to talk about that today.  02:46 - Danielle Famble (Guest) Yeah, that's actually really important because these agents and managers are pay-to-plays they're all businesses, right? So they are working within the business model that they have set up for themselves and businesses have costs and so to work with a business, there is a cost there and you, as the VO boss running your own business, you have to think about the cost that you would be paying, the business expenses you'd be paying for having these relationships. So, yeah, it's really important.  03:14 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, let's start actually. Let's start with, let's say, somebody's just getting into the industry, and I know a lot of myths about people that just get into the industry. They believe that they need to be able to get an agent right away. And so we can start there to dispel some of those myths. And, by the way, I will say myself personally, I was working full time in the industry for about four years before I got my first agent.  03:36 Oh wow, yeah, mostly because I was doing a lot of non-broadcast work. And so agents, their business, as we were just discussing, right, and businesses are in business to make money. And so if we think about an agent, where is the money right for the agent? How does the agent make money? Well, they get a percentage right of the jobs that they cast and opportunities that they send to us. And if we book that job because they provided us with that opportunity and negotiated on our behalf, they then get a certain percentage of that money and their business model, like any business, right, we want to remain in business, so it behooves them to make money right, to get bookings and to get jobs. And so I guess, Danielle, first of all let me ask you, I mean, in dispelling the myth, I mean, did you get an agent right away when you first got into the business, or what was your entrance into the business?  04:35 - Danielle Famble (Guest) So my entrance I actually came from a musical theater background and I had representation sending me out on auditions for shows, for theater shows, and that person also did rep people who were doing voiceover, who were doing on camera. So I basically kind of moved within that organization from being on stage to being behind the microphone. So in that respect I did start out with representation and then actually moved to a different agent who specialized specifically in voiceover. So that was my trajectory. But to your point and I think this is actually really important, depending on what you're wanting to do, like what genres that you are going into and really like putting your focus in, you may or may not need an agent, especially like with non-broadcast, for example.  05:27 You can get a lot of that work on your own with your own marketing and things like that. So you may not need an agent and there may not be agents who are really focusing in that specific niche to go to and work with them. So I think the question then becomes for the individual VO boss what is your business model? Are you wanting to do more commercials? Are you wanting to do non-broadcast? Are you wanting to do animation? Really, depending on what genres you're really targeting, depends on if you need or it would work best for you to have an agent or representation. I think a lot of people when you hear that they want to work with an agent, it's probably because they want to do commercials mostly, or animation.  06:09 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Exactly, exactly. And I'm always stressing to my students that are just coming to me, that are new to the industry, that in reality, I mean you don't need an agent if you're not getting into broadcast right away. I mean you can acquire an agent later on or at a certain point, and most agents, I would say, are only really concerned with broadcast. Why? Because they get paid more.  06:32 It's as simple as that it's as simple as that right it's the money, because broadcast they can get paid based upon the job and where and how often it airs, because they'll get paid each and every time that happens. For non-broadcast it's kind of a one and done. Now all agents are not created equal. I mean there are some agents that are specializing in specific genres. Now I don't know of any agent that really specifies in an e-learning genre, but that's because why it's non-broadcast and it doesn't necessarily behoove them right to focus on that, because it's a one-and-done sort of thing. So the amount of money they're going to make on a non-broadcast job versus a broadcast where they're going to pay royalties, residuals, all that good stuff, is minimal.  07:17 And now I do have an agent that I book a lot of corporate work. I mean they're not going to say no, right, and I'm sure it's working with a company that also books broadcast style commercials and that sort of thing. So they also like, oh, I need a little internal training video or I need a corporate video that's going to be on my YouTube channel, and so I will get those jobs from my agent as well. But to be quite honest, I mean it's not as exciting as if I booked a national commercial. Sure.  07:46 - Danielle Famble (Guest) Yeah.  07:46 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) The money. There is obviously much better there. So that is with agents, right? Well, let's discuss pay-to-plays, right? Because there's a lot of people who are like, oh, we should just direct market, how do I get opportunities? And a lot of people, when they first start out, want to talk about pay-to-plays and so pay-to-plays and so pay-to-plays, as their name suggests. Right is, we are going to pay so that we can play or get jobs and auditions, and so we pay a fee and, depending on the pay-to-play site, they have different business models. So you pay one fee for a particular amount of auditions or a particular level. At this point it used to just be one fee where, oh, you're on the site and you get auditions, and now they've kind of really diversified and have different levels many of them and so, depending on the amount that you pay, you get a different amount of opportunities.  08:36 - Danielle Famble (Guest) Or you get the opportunities at like a staggered time depending. But yes, exactly Like for all of these different companies, as you're saying, they all have a different business model. So really the question becomes like are you willing to subscribe to that company's business model as they have it set forth? You don't have to. There are certain pay to play sites I'm not on because I don't agree or want to participate in that company's business model. It really then becomes a business decision for me and for my business how can I best position myself to win? And if it means that I'm going to be signed to a particular agent or on certain rosters or pay-to-play sites or those kind of things, it really becomes a question for me of like, how do I want to position myself to have my business do the best that it possibly can? And that's going to change. It might change that I change to a different tier at a pay-to-play site or I just no longer use that one at all.  09:36 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Business models change and that I have seen evolve through the years, because back in oh gosh, I want to say about 2006, that's when I joined my first pay-to-play, which was Voice 123. They have since evolved and grown and changed their business model to now have levels. But in the beginning it used to just be one level and you would set up your profile and based on that profile and the things that you selected in that profile, you would get opportunities for the auditions and you would get those jobs. There was no other than that one feed that they collected for the membership. They didn't collect any additional monies for that. And then I would say, maybe a couple of years later, another one. And well, I should say Voice123 was the first like official voiceover pay to play.  10:21 Prior to that there was like Freelancer you know, Odesk, and those were just freelance type jobs that everybody would just bid on. And actually at that point there was a particular fee which was called an escrow fee, right, that you would pay the company if you wanted to make sure that you got paid, because the biggest issue with freelance work or doing independent contract work, and especially when it's online, is not getting paid. And so as that evolved in the workplace or online, it became a big thing and so companies and this is even before Voice123 and Voicescom, but they started to offer a service called escrow service, where they would pay you and you would be assured that you would get paid and then you would pay them a fee for that and it was called an escrow fee. And so that was adopted early on by the freelance companies. And the thing about all the freelance companies is it became very popular right for freelancers to get work, and so this whole kind of what people today call the race to the bottom right underbidding that's how everybody got their work on a lot of those. And it just became this crazy kind of a model where you know you would bid on something and then somebody would come in and bid a lower price and get the job. And so it became this mindset where it was like, well, I guess if I bid lower I'll get the job. And I think that's what started with the pay-to-plays people talking about them as being bottom feeders right, because people would start to underbid. It was very similar to the model of freelance Odesk, all those models in the beginning.  11:59 And then I think, after a few years and actually it was a few years because for a while Voicescom and Voice123 were the only two in the game and they competed with one another and they both had one level, and I remember Voice123, because they were out first, were always, I think, what people considered to be the standard, and they had a lot more memberships. And then I think Voicescom started kind of playing around with how they would offer jobs, and so they, if I remember in the very beginning, were the first ones. I don't believe Voice123 ever offered anything like an escrow service, but Voicescom started to offer you could pay escrow so that you can make sure that you got paid, and then you would pay them a certain percentage of the fee, and that was prior to any of their managed jobs of today, and so that was always a choice, so you could choose to take your chances and accept the job. And they were hands off, like if you got paid, you got paid, if you didn't, you didn't. They weren't really responsible. And then they offered the escrow, in which case they said we'll pay you and you can be assured you'll get your money.  13:04 And then, ultimately, I think the competition started happening once more. Pay-to-plays came about, like Bodalgo, and there's a couple other ones, voice Over Planet, et cetera, et cetera, and then the whole thing began. And, of course, it's always a point of contention, with everybody out on the forums talking about is it fair, is it right for them to double dip or triple dip, especially with managed jobs? And, danielle, I'd love to hear your opinion on this Double dipping, triple dipping. What are your thoughts? Is it a thing, is it bad? Is it illegal? Is it good? What are your thoughts?  13:37 - Danielle Famble (Guest) I mean, it's definitely a thing. I go back to my stance of this is the business model of the company that you are or are not choosing to do business with. If you don't agree with it, you don't have to participate in it. Like, for example, for me I am on Voice123. I'm not on Voicescom because I don't agree with their business model, so it is a thing. I don't agree with their business model, so it is a thing.  14:02 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I don't know that it's illegal.  14:04 - Danielle Famble (Guest) I mean, where are the laws saying that they can't do it? But if you don't agree with it, then you can just take yourself and your dollars out of the equation. And anyone who does agree with it or wants to use that platform for their business model, they're free to do it. And I think also for me platform for their business model they're free to do it. And I think also for me when I look at agents or managers or pay-to-plays, it really is. Is my business financially able to recoup the costs that I'm putting into, for example, the pay-to-play? Am I making enough money that the amount of money I'm spending, the tier that I'm on on voice one, two, three, for example is that a good return on my investment? I think that's the same thing for being with an agent, same thing for being on a pay to play site.  14:49 Is this is a business expense? And does my business have the capacity to recoup the amount of money that I'm spending, because I look at all of these relationships as a cost of doing business? And what is the return on investment If I'm spending because I look at all of these relationships as a cost of doing business, and what is the return on investment. If I'm not booking enough and I'm not making enough money to cover the amount in commission that I'm paying, for example, then maybe I need to go and look at how do I get my business to a place where the ROI will be positive. So really you can agree with all these different businesses or not, but really the question is does your business have the ability to get a positive return on investment for the amount of money spent, because it is a business expense when you are working with these companies.  15:33 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Absolutely. And I think, bosses out there, the one thing to really think about is just mind your own business and make your own decisions on whether you want to work with other businesses, and you can certainly get online and contribute to all the all the discussion and all the hype. And is it double dipping? Is it triple dipping? Is it right? Is it wrong In reality? Like people get so like up in arms about the state of pay to plays but in reality, just okay, let them do their business. And you're right, I mean, I am not part of pay-to-plays because, well, some pay-to-plays because I don't agree with their business ethics. So when managed jobs came about with voices, that's when I think, really, everybody started to say that there was double and triple dipping. And I guess you can say that, but honestly, it's kind of like well, I'm not going to stress myself out over it, I'm just not going to use it if I don't agree with it.  16:31 And managed jobs if you think about it and I want to talk to you about management companies too managed jobs is similar. You know, if you think Voicescom, they're charging a fee for your membership and then, in addition to that, if you decide to take a managed job. They're going to handle all the negotiation of the pricing, they're going to handle all the communication with the client, they're going to handle all of that stuff on behalf of the client, and so there is a fee for that. And of course, one of the big things was well, how much is that fee? But in reality, is there regulation on that? There really isn't yet. And so I mean, if you wanted to get into technicalities, have they done anything illegal, right, by charging a certain percentage for a management fee? No, not really. It's a business model. So if they decided to charge 50% management fee, well, that's their business model. And of course, that's a business model as long as we know about it. We can agree or not agree to it, right?  17:18 And as long as we know about it, and I do believe that any company that I do business with and I'm pretty sure it's the same with you, danielle I want them to be transparent.  17:28 And if I feel that a company or an organization has not been transparent with me. That's when I back off and I say you know what? I have a choice here. I mean, goodness gracious, I didn't get out of the corporate world so that I could continue to do things that I didn't want to do or invest in things that I didn't want to invest. I mean, this is why I am my own business, right, I make my decisions that are best for my business, and I can say you know what? I don't need to subscribe to that, I don't need to be a part of that model or have them as my client, and so it's as simple as that.  17:58 I move on my merry way and I don't let it stress me out, but it's good to know from the get-go. If I feel like they're not being transparent, then there's not much they can do to win back my trust. I don't know, danielle, if you're the same way, but that's my personal take on things. If you lose my trust years ago, from the beginning, I don't know if you'll get me back.  18:20 - Danielle Famble (Guest) I think it's also just about like really making sure that you are an informed consumer, because you are then the consumer and they are a business partner in a way. Yeah, so making sure that you are informed. If you aren't asking the questions that you need to ask, or don't partner with these people until you know the answers, also try it. Try it out and see if it works for you and if there is a positive ROI for trying it out or not. But for me, there are certain business partnerships that I just haven't entered into because I don't agree with the business model. Now they can change. My business model has changed. They can change their business model. I mean, we saw, like, the different changes that have happened with pay-to-plays over the last several years. But if you don't agree to it, there are so many other options. That's a great thing is that there's so many other options?  19:10 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I'm so glad that you brought that up, that, yes, the business model can change, like our business models change too, and you're right. I'm glad you brought that up because it makes me think about when you talk about transparency in a company. Right, I had a personal relationship with certain members in the community that owned businesses that I did business with, and so I think you're absolutely right. When it comes business to business, that's completely separate from, let's say, a personal relationship and maybe that trust issue that I might have had like. Are they ethical? Are they running their company ethically? And do I believe that they're telling me?  19:42 There's a lot of businesses out there that you know they make promises, and it's one of those things that I think you have to really sit down and do believe.  19:51 We're going to do this, we're going to change our business model, and so is it something that you believe that the company has integrity, that they have morals and ethics and that, again, is probably another podcast episode, but that can have everything to do with. But the fact is is that many of the companies and the vendors that we work with have business models and we choose whether or not to partner with them. So that brings me to you know, speaking of managed jobs, right, what about managers? And I will tell you right now, I do not work with a manager right now, because the majority of my work is on the non-broadcast side and I've always been very adept at getting my own work, and so I've not really felt like I've needed or maybe ever thought a manager would be something that would help my business, although I certainly don't discount it. But I know that you work with a manager, so let's talk about the financial aspect of management.  20:44 - Danielle Famble (Guest) Yeah, so, like you said, I do work with a management company and it's a different business model than agents, like we talked about in the beginning of this episode. So, agents the job that they have booked you on and they negotiate on your behalf they're getting a percentage or a commission from that job With management companies and it really depends on which management company you're working with. But I'll just make a general statement. Really, what they're wanting, that business model is more like managing your career, and they are getting a percentage of your entire book of business, as in everything that you have booked, with or without them actually being the ones who have negotiated it or presented that opportunity to you. And there's a financial implication to that as well, because for me, I look at what is my book of business outside of this relationship with this management company.  21:35 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So anything that I get on my own anything that I get through my agents.  21:40 - Danielle Famble (Guest) What does that look like and am I willing to participate in the relationship with a management company and is the return on that investment high enough and positive so that I can continue doing what I'm doing and having the robust business that I'm hoping to have For me, having the robust business that I'm hoping to have For me? I look at that from a financial aspect every single month and I am detailed with it because this is it's a business relationship, and is it worth it to me to have the access to the opportunities from this management company, along with the other things that I'm getting with having the relationship with them, getting to speak to people who are incredibly knowledgeable, asking questions about things that I don't know Like? Is that relationship worth the amount of money spent on this commission of my entire book of business?  22:31 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Sure, I was just going to say I think there might be some confusion as to what the responsibilities of a management company are, right, do they take you by the hand you personally, danielle and say okay, here, we think you should work with this agency or we're going to get you job? I imagine that management companies, like overall, have a scope. Or does each management company operate differently, like, do you get personalized attention? Are they taking you by the hand and saying here, danielle, I think you should do this and we're going to give you all these opportunities in this genre, et cetera?  23:01 - Danielle Famble (Guest) I think for me my mindset with working with a management company, working with an agent at the end of the day I look at it sort of like a pyramid or tiered. I am running the business, I am minding the business that pays me, I am running this business, and so I look at this as relationships, not necessarily that I'm abdicating my responsibilities of running the business that pays me to somebody else and they can sort of take me by the hand and deal with it. Personally, I don't feel that that is the business model that I am trying to run for myself. So I think for me it's more about what are the relationships that can be made through the connection of being with this management company not here.  23:47 Just what are they?  23:48 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) doing for you? Yeah, exactly.  23:50 - Danielle Famble (Guest) Wherever you send me, I will go. It's a partnership and for me, I believe that the way that I can best create the business that I'm trying to create is to partner with people who are much more knowledgeable about certain genres or connections than I am. But I am a working participant in that relationship and not allowing someone to sort of take me wherever I need to go.  24:15 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It's kind of like outsourcing. There's so many ways in which it's similar. It's like outsourcing because you want to be afforded opportunities that you may or may not be able to get on your own.  24:24 And that's the fee that you are paying them. I know a lot of people are like but how are they different from an agency? Well, an agency is one agency that has relationships with clients, right? Or has relationships. Maybe not relationships, but they establish relationships with clients to get job opportunities to then pass on to you. Management companies don't necessarily get specific custom, I would say, opportunities just for you, but they also develop relationships and have opportunities. That would be, I would say, a more broad spectrum than just one agent, right, it could be multiple agents, it could be multiple business relationships and those are the opportunities you are, quote unquote, paying a service fee for.  25:11 - Danielle Famble (Guest) And hopefully the idea is that they can coexist and work together, so like the agent model can coexist and work with the management model, so that it's not necessarily a replication, it's almost the Venn diagram of it all, and so there really should be sort of not necessarily just overlap, but an expansion of well, this is what the agent does, and these are the jobs that I get through my agency, and this is what the management company does, and these are the type of jobs that I get through the management company, and also I'm my own business too, so these are the jobs that I'm negotiating for myself and finding through pay to plays or through SEO, or through just the auditions that I have, or my own marketing word of mouth, those kinds of things. And so the idea is that all of these things are working together and you are utilizing the business relationships for each business that you choose to partner with, and at that point then you've built, hopefully, this robust business that isn't dependent on just one business model or one relationship.  26:13 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I love that you just narrowed it down to just relationships, because in reality there's a lot of people that would say like, well, I did all the work in getting that job, why should I pay someone? Why should I do? And in reality it's really all about the relationship right. The better you can work with as a partner and the more income that you can bring to them, the more they're going to try to bring to you, and I think that relationship is a cycle One feeds the other, and I like that.  26:40 - Danielle Famble (Guest) You just said work with them, because a lot of people, I think sometimes, especially when you're wanting to get any sort of representation, agent, management what have you? It's like you're working for them, you're doing things for them, or they should do something for you, exactly. And this is a it's got to be a partnership. Do something for you, Exactly, and this is a it's got to be a partnership.  26:59 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, absolutely yeah. Whether you're talking manager, you're talking agent, maybe, I don't know, pay to plays I'm not sure. If you call that, I mean a partnership.  27:11 - Danielle Famble (Guest) really, I don't know if you call it a partnership exactly. I think it's a tool, it can be a resource, for sure.  27:14 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, yeah, but I would definitely consider agents and managers to be relationship partnership. Pay-to-plays are a slightly different model where I wouldn't say it's as customized. It's about as customized as it can get by the algorithm that gets you the opportunities.  27:28 - Danielle Famble (Guest) Yeah and again, all of this is really about the business expense of it all, because all of this costs money. So if your business is not in a place where this expense is bringing you a positive ROI, I would go back to training making sure your demos are up to date, making sure that you are the person who's going to be able to book those jobs, so that you would be able to pay these commissions and everything else. Because this really is about is the work coming? Are you able to book those jobs that you can make the money?  28:00 to pay the commission to all those things Exactly.  28:02 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And it's funny because I was thinking about that, as it's kind of the beginning of the month and I have to pay my VAs. You know, it's kind of like every month, boom, I pay them, I pay them, I pay them, and it's like this expense that I've gotten used to where it's like, oh okay, there's my outgoing expenses, I do it every month. And the funny thing is is like I think about myself, you know, 20, some odd years ago, when it would be like, oh my God, I can't afford to put this kind of money out every month for an assistant. And the funny thing is is I do it without blinking right now. You know I pay my assistants on a monthly basis and boom, and immediately it just and so I've got that. I don't know. I've got that cycle going where I'm getting a return on my investment and so I have the money to be able to use that as an expense every month.  28:44 - Danielle Famble (Guest) Absolutely. I was actually thinking the same thing because I very recently paid my assistant. It's like automation yeah exactly, and it's one of those things where I think about and I'm constantly I mean I'm so tuned into the financials of my business to the point that we're actually remaking our back-end system.  29:03 We use a completely separate back-end system like a CRM system, and one of the things that was most important to me is that the reporting was dialed in, because I want to know how much is coming in and all of that is coming from work that has been booked from me, my relationships with the agents, managers, my own clients, all of those things it has to have a positive ROI for me to be able to keep this business running, yeah yeah, good stuff.  29:29 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh my gosh, I feel like we could have five episodes on that. Yeah, all right. Well, thank you so much, danielle. I cannot wait to talk to you on our next podcast. In the meantime, big shout out for All right. Well, thank you so much, danielle. I cannot wait to talk to you on our next podcast. In the meantime, big shout out for our sponsor, ipdtl. You, too, can connect and make money like bosses like Danielle and myself. Find out more at IPDTLcom. You guys have an amazing week and look at that ROI, and we will see you next week.  29:55 - Danielle Famble (Guest) Have a good one everyone Bye, bye.  29:58 - Intro (Announcement) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, Anne Ganguzza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at vobosscom and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution with permission. Coast-to-coast connectivity via IPDTL.   

In this episode, Mark Blyth talks with two inequality experts to try and understand something that's been bugging him for years.It goes like this: inequality has profound effects on our economy, society, and lives. It has also been growing, and today is at historically high levels. Given all that, why does inequality never seem to be a topic around which we organize our politics? Too complicated? Too boring? Too unsolvable? The answers that Mark got made him rethink the question itself, and hopefully will make you see inequality in a new light, too. Guests on this episode:Charlotte Cavaille is an assistant professor of public policy at the University of Michigan's Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, and author of “Fair Enough? Support for Redistribution in the Age of Inequality”.Branko Milanovic is a senior scholar at the Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality at the CUNY Graduate Center.Learn more about the Watson Institute's other podcasts

Christy Harst, founder of Building Doors VO, joins BOSS Anne Ganguzza to share her journey from an aspiring journalist to a champion for gender diversity in voiceover. Her story highlights the importance of perseverance, self-belief, and the power of engaging in collaborations with industry talents. In a bold step to challenge industry norms, Christy leads Building Doors VO, a campaign to amplify female voices in traditionally male-dominated fields, such as sports promos. The BOSSes highlight the importance of community support and the ongoing fight for gender equality in voiceover.   https://www.voboss.com/special-guest-christy-harst 00:01 - Testimonial (Ad) Hey, Anne, just wanted to let you know that I got a chance to listen to the entire podcast with Pilar, part one and two Fantastic interview. Found her very interesting and really enjoyed the entire thing. Thanks so much for the Boss podcast.  00:17 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey bosses, are you new to VoiceOver and not sure where to start? Join the VOPeeps VIPeeps membership and get access to over 350 hours of pre-recorded classes, a 15% discount on all VO Peeps, guest workshops and free monthly workouts. This membership is perfect for those wanting to get started in the industry. Find out more at vopeepscom slash join-now.  00:47 - Intro (Ad) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss a VO boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza.  01:06 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey, hey everyone. Welcome to the VO Boss Podcast. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and today I am privileged and honored to have special guest voiceover actor and the creator of the Building Doors campaign, Christy Harst Yay.  01:22 - Christy Harst (Guest) Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate the opportunity.  01:26 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, Christy, I'm so excited. I feel like we're soul sisters here.  01:32 - Christy Harst (Guest) You have better makeup, but yes, Well.  01:35 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I'll tell you what. It is wonderful to have you on the show because you're doing amazing things and I want the bosses to know about them. So for those bosses that don't know who you are, let's kind of start at the beginning. Talk to us a little bit about your career. You've been in this industry for quite a while, so tell us a little bit about how you got started.  01:54 - Christy Harst (Guest) Sure, thank you. I appreciate that. I majored in broadcast communications and I was supposed to be the next Barbara Walters in case you didn't get the facts in the 80s, it turns out that after an internship at MTV, I saw what women had to do and who they had to be to be at the top and it wasn't something I was willing to do.  02:12 So I pivoted, if you will, and had a career a traditional nine to five career, if you will, in marketing, pr and event planning, la-di-da-di. And I always felt this pull and this tug when I would listen to the radio and I would hear these people and I would say, oh.  02:28 - Intro (Ad) God.  02:28 - Christy Harst (Guest) I can do it so much better than them. Oh my God, it's so painful. And so one year I made a New Year's resolution to get an agent and I did and I didn't get one audition. So the next year I said, well, forget them, I'm going to go get another one. And I got another one. And I was with that agent for 17 years. I booked national campaigns, I did a lot of on-camera.  02:49 That was BC before children, and once my husband and I decided to have kids, we decided to build a studio in the house in the basement and I booked national campaigns from there as well. And now I'm on the first level of the house with a studio brick, so I feel like I'm no longer a basement troll.  03:06 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) There's something to be said for those basement studios though. I mean I had one. I mean we don't have basements here in California and they make great studios they do, that's for sure.  03:15 - Christy Harst (Guest) No, they do, they do, and mine was very makeshift.  03:21 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) But hey, I did it. I mean, I'm just saying that was the only noise really when that went on.  03:26 - Christy Harst (Guest) I always used to have to run and manually turn off the HVAC, go and do work and then go run and my kids would be like it's so cold, it's so cold, I'm like I'm not done, recording I'm not done. And then, most recently I would say in the last five years actually, five years ago I went to my first voiceover conference and it was in Columbus, ohio, and it was something called the Mid-American or Mid-something and I knew no one. I knew absolutely no one and I ended up there meeting. Listen to all the heavyweights that were there and I had no clue. So Roy Yolkerson was there, joe Cipriano was there, mark Scott was there it was his first conference ever that he was teaching a class Rodney Salisbury was there, jmc was there, all these people and I had no idea. I had no idea who any of these people were.  04:16 So I was late getting to some of the breakout sessions and there weren't that many left to pick from and the only one that was left was Joe Cipriano's promo class. I didn't even know what promo was and I was like, oh gosh, fine, I'll go into this one. There was only me and like three other people and AJ McKay was in there running it and I went up and did it and I was hooked. I was like you mean, I can say five words and each word is like a different story. And I'm done, I'm done, that's it. I love it, because I don't do audiobooks. I'm not a marathon runner.  04:52 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I am a sprinter Right.  04:54 - Christy Harst (Guest) Yeah, absolutely. And so from that point forward I was kind of like, oh, I really think I could do this, and so I ended up working with Joe. We flew to New York. I'm in Cleveland, Ohio, but we flew to New York and recorded a demo for Network Promo and Joe is wonderful. Oh my gosh, he's amazing. He really is. He's so gracious. He's a wonderful teacher.  05:13 - Intro (Ad) And.  05:13 - Christy Harst (Guest) I learned a lot from him. Absolutely and it ended up being nominated for a SOVA and I was the only woman in the category. I lost to Dave Fennoy. But again, if you're going to lose to somebody, that's right Lose to Dave Fennoy, right?  05:27 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yes, absolutely.  05:34 - Christy Harst (Guest) Who is also an amazing human being. And then after that I started to try and explore promo and so on and so forth. And I am a former college athlete, I am a former head varsity coach, my kids are both terribly athletic and my bank account shows it, and we're a sporting family. We choose to go to sporting events for almost like our staycations. So I said why don't I do sports promo, like that's a perfect way to match my passion and my ability and my talent? And for a good three, four years I invested in training, I invested in workshops, I invested in demos and it wasn't getting me anywhere and I just was getting really frustrated.  06:10 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So why do you think you did all the things right? You did all the things right, you got your training, and you trained with some of the best. You got your demos, and so what do you think was the issue? What was not happening, and see, that's the fun part.  06:25 - Christy Harst (Guest) That's where Building Doors, a campaign that I started, really was birthed, because I didn't know. I was doing everything that everyone told me to do. Sure, I was doing out-of-box marketing. I was creating fan videos where I voiced them, I wrote them, I created them. I was doing all of the things that you're supposed to do Email marketing, cold calling, all of the things, and nothing was moving the needle. All of the hard things.  06:46 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) All of the hard things, yeah, but you know I enjoyed it. And yeah, I was going to say, and something tells me that you did it with full force. Oh yeah, Not even like 100%. I feel like you did 150 to 200%. I just get that about you.  07:00 - Christy Harst (Guest) Yeah, well, you know, when I sink my teeth into something, I don't let go.  07:03 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I'm right there with you. I feel that.  07:05 - Christy Harst (Guest) Why not Like? Why, If you're going?  07:06 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) to do it, do it all the way.  07:08 - Christy Harst (Guest) And so I had signed up for a promo workshop with a prominent promo LA agent, a woman, and during that workshop I did a read for her and she was like, yeah, book, it's great book.  07:19 And I was like you know what? Okay, stop, I'm not booked. I'm never booked and I'm not repped by one of the larger agencies, so the access to those opportunities are even smaller. So what are my chances? What are my chances in booking sports promo? And she was very honest. And she said not so much. And I said why it was interesting because my whole body just slumped and there were people in the room, in the Zoom room, were like Christy, no, don't slump, it's okay. No, no, no. And she said it's not for a lack of women trying to create opportunities for women in these niche spaces. These opportunities that are created by women climb and climb and climb up the ladder of decision making and when it reaches the C-suite to a middle-aged man, they say love the concept, not the voice. We're putting a man on it, sure, and she said I encourage you to make your own noise. And so I got off the workshop and I was like but I am making my own noise, I am doing out-of-the-box marketing, I am creating videos for specific teams, I want to voice for I am working my LinkedIn connection, I'm doing everything I possibly can.  08:36 Went to bed, woke up the next morning called Brandon Miller, who is the VO craftsman, and I just went off. Is the VO craftsman and I just went off. Brandon, can you believe what she said to me? What am I supposed to do? I'm so upset. What am I supposed to do? You mean to tell me that just because I'm a woman, that I'm not getting access to these opportunities on my own? That's nuts. So I went to walk the dog. I came back and I called him and I said here's what we're going to do. We are going to get women, other female voice actors and I'm going to partner with women around the world and we are going to revoice scripts originally voiced by men in male-centric genres like construction, like alcohol, like tech, like sports, like automobiles, and we are going to show through these reels that not only are women good at it, but also brands are not going to miss anything from it.  09:25 You know those C-suite men who are saying, oh no, well, why? Because women statistically have anywhere it depends on the globe or United States but anywhere between 60 and 80 percent of the purchasing power in their homes. They make the decisions about what money is spent and where, whether you get season tickets, whether you get swag when you go to a game. What kind of camps your kids go to, what kind everything right. So women have the purchasing power. Number one. Number two women don't want a wine night with pink logoed hats anymore at games. That's not what they want. Women are sports fans. Women are carpenters.  10:02 Women are tech driven, so why are we using men as the messaging? And the more and more and I dug into this, the more it spurred me to keep going. Because here's why, for example, the voice of Sondi I know Sondi, yeah, yeah, sondi, okay, gorgeous voice. She chose to do a spot for Lowe's. So in researching every spot, every reel, I want to have it based in data. So I was doing research and I stumbled upon a study that Lowe's had conducted because they wanted to differentiate themselves from Home Depot. What they knew was that Home Depot was a spot that contractors went to. Typically, men are the contractors. Home Depot is poorly lit, it's messy, there are limited displays and the aisles are super tight. So because Lowe's recognizes that women have the highest purchasing power, they decided to make their stores well-lit really wide aisles, everything is bright and colorful. And then they have these huge displays that show you how you can use the products and what you can create. Yet they rarely use a woman on their branded campaigns for TV and radio Rarely.  11:15 We're missing something here, right, if you had all that money to do a study and you put all that attention into gearing your stores towards women because you know that they have the highest purchasing power. Why aren't you using more women in front of and behind the camera? Sure?  11:30 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, it doesn't make sense, right, comes down to who are those decision makers, right? Who are the decision makers that are selecting the voices, which is, as you mentioned prior, a lot of times and this also happens when we audition, right? I mean, why is it that when we audition, we're told casting specs to be conversational and talking to your best friend and then, ultimately, when it airs, we possibly hear something that sounds like the old announcer-y thing? Well, could be that an older person that was doing the directing or that finally made that choice, made that choice.  12:04 And so I think it really depends on who's making the choice for the voice talent. And I get you in terms of being in male-dominated fields. I've kind of myself have been an engineer back in the late 80s, I worked in technology for about 20 years. I'm a female demo producer, and so I've been treading that line the whole time. So I really feel that a campaign that can bring awareness right, so it's not just maybe the one person making that decision, but they can bring awareness to the world or the companies. I think that that is a really wonderful way to get things going and actually building doors and breaking the glass ceiling for women.  12:47 - Christy Harst (Guest) Yeah, and you know that day after I walked my dog, I was like, well, everyone uses these terms like go kick down the door, go knock on the door, and what I realized is that there's no door for me to knock on. So I have to build it and I'm going to bring a bunch of other women with me. I love it.  13:04 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, let's talk about the Building Doors campaign. When did you start?  13:08 - Christy Harst (Guest) March 1st of 2024. So it's been 10 months.  13:12 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Okay, and what did you do to start building that? What was required for you to do that? A website, a domain.  13:20 - Christy Harst (Guest) No, no, I didn't even have. I had nothing. It was February 9th or 10th and I was like this is what's going to happen, I'm going to do it. And I remember there was a moment I was sitting on my couch and I said to myself if you're going to do it, you have to do it now, but if you're not going to do it, just don't, because it's going to take a lot of work and you have less than two and a half weeks to launch this on March 1st, for in honor of Women's History Month, and I was like, all right, fine, it's done.  13:44 And I started calling all the women that I knew. Then I started researching women online and on Instagram and at first I just used my social media, so I didn't have time to create a page Like it wouldn't have had the impact right. So I launched it on my Instagram, on YouTube, on Facebook, on LinkedIn and on TikTok and I was literally going to do one post. Then one post turned into a month. All right, fine, I'll do a month. And then something happened. People actually watched it, people actually commented and people actually shared, and they shared it to the point where a woman got a job from it, and I think that that shows the power of community when you all unite under a shared mission.  14:26 So Ashley Tirado is a voice actor who did a spot for Honda Sport. She voiced it and about three or four months later she called me and said she doesn't know who, but somebody forwarded or shared this reel. Someone saw it, forwarded it to an ad agency in Florida. That Florida agency reached out to Ashley and hired her to do a slew of Honda spots. Building doors at that point had created an opportunity that otherwise didn't exist for a woman in voiceover in a male-centric lane, and that was like recreational drugs for me. I was like, yes, I'm hooked.  14:59 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yes, I'm hooked. I also do automotive, but I'll tell you what it's been a hard climb in automotive as well. I do not get the amount of automotive that I know my male counterparts do, so it's kind of like I feel like when they want a novelty, when they want a novelty, they want something just a little bit different, they're going to hire the woman, but more than not. I'm hearing those campaigns either. The campaign that I had was taken over by a male voice. So, yeah, it is something that I feel like as a female wanting to have the same opportunities. It's hard, it really is, and you do have to build doors. And so now, after I would say 10 months, what happened after that? Because you bought the domain, do you have a website?  15:46 - Christy Harst (Guest) I do, and you know why? Because there was a woman. I have a lot of Zoom calls.  15:50 I spend a lot of my time trying to get to brands, talk to brands, talking to all these different people, and a lot of my time trying to get to brands, talk to brands, talking to all these different people, and a lot of the brands I've talked to I haven't publicly shared because I'm not ready to yet, but there was a woman who was the former head legal for a major, major major sports an American sports company, if you will, or brand and she said listen, I can totally hook you up with the top people because your message deserves to be heard there. However, I can't do it unless you have a website. And I had been dragging my feet and I was like, well, there's an investment there, yeah, so, yeah, I mean I get that.  16:26 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I have multiple websites, so I know, yeah, yeah, and that is probably coming out of your pocket. It did.  16:32 - Christy Harst (Guest) Yeah, it did, and that's when things started to get really serious. Because I invested in the website, I created it on my own in Wix over a weekend. Fronk his last name, I think, is Fronk he helped me yeah, Jim Jim Fronk.  16:44 Yep, he helped me work through some things. He was wonderful, and so now we have a website. And I mentioned, oh my gosh, the Veal Craftsman, Brandon Miller. He does all the videos for free for me, so he volunteered to do all of the reels for me for free, which is amazing, right? That's fabulous. Yeah, and so I've had some really great conversations with brands like Valvoline, the Cleveland Guardians, the Cleveland Cavs, and I will say that I didn't realize and I want to say this to everyone listening, that is, in voice, acting who's putting stuff out on social media. People, see you, they may never like it.  17:18 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) They may never, comment they may  17:20 - Christy Harst (Guest) never, share it, but they see you, they're watching you, because the person from the Cavs reached out to me. A middle-aged white man reached out to me and said I've been watching you, I've been watching the campaign and I want to put you in a room full of decision-makers across four different athletic associations Nice, so who would have ever guessed that? Right yeah?  17:42 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Who would have ever guessed that Now do you have a separate social media channel for Building Doors?  17:47 - Christy Harst (Guest) We just started it. It is at BuildingDoorsVO, on Instagram and LinkedIn. We are only doing Instagram and LinkedIn because, after a data analysis, I discovered that those are the platforms with the highest engagement and reach. On LinkedIn, our number one post is sitting at 90K impressions Nice and our highest post on Instagram has something crazy like 12 viewing hours and it's a 20-second clip.  18:11 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Now, what is it that you are promoting on the social channels? Are you creating videos with females voicing traditionally yeah, male promo roles. What are you presenting as content?  18:24 - Christy Harst (Guest) I'm so excited for 2025 because not only are we going to be featuring women one per month, they're the door builders that are going to be reading scripts previously voiced by men and male-centric genres but we're also going to be doing a lot of other cool stuff.  18:37 Like, we are going to do a LinkedIn Live and an Instagram Live series. I'd like to do one on LinkedIn a month and one on Instagram a month, but we'll see and they are going to imagine this. It's a panel discussion that is all based under the mission of Building Doors, which is equality, equal opportunity, but it'll include people who support the campaign. So, for example, let's say, the panel consists of a copywriter, a voiceover actor, a graphic designer and then maybe a casting director who knows right, and they're all talking about an issue that not only can be of service to the voiceover community they can learn from, but also highlights our supporters and highlights people who have a service that voice actors could potentially hire from. You know, forming community right now in 2025, is essential, I think, especially in our country, so that people know where to go to communicate, to connect and to know where to put their money so they can support like-minded people.  19:35 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Fabulous, that's fantastic, and so right now you have your socials all set.  19:40 - Christy Harst (Guest) So we've been live on social for about a month or two months, okay, and Instagram is slowly climbing. Our LinkedIn page needs some more followers, right? So at Building Doors VO, I am currently well, it's a holiday so I'm not posting as much but starting in January, yes, there is going to be more women reading reels. Hopefully, those LinkedIn and Instagram lives will be up and running in January. And also, you know, I'm going to be featuring supporters, so people who support us. I feature them in image and help share their story. For example, I have featured an award-winning UK digital marketing agency a.  20:14 Afro-Indigenous puppeteer and comedian, so I'll be featuring those people as well.  20:19 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I'm looking at buildingdoorsvo.com right now and you have an amazing roster of ladies there.  20:27 - Christy Harst (Guest) Well, I appreciate you saying that, because how do I get?  20:29 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) involved. Hey, this is fantastic. You've got quite a few. That's amazing, Like at least 32 that I'm counting right now.  20:38 - Christy Harst (Guest) Yeah, and there'll be 44 at the end of it.  20:40 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That's it.  20:40 - Christy Harst (Guest) I would like to point out that we are not a talent agency, we are not a brand manager, we are not a casting site. When I talk to a brand, one of the things I ask them is that would you be willing to the next time you need a female voice actor, would you be willing to consider a door builder? And they usually say yes and then they can go to the website and they go and reach out to that person directly. I'm not in it, right. So then they can take that to their agent and everybody wins, I think.  21:09 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And then if the door builder gets booked.  21:11 - Christy Harst (Guest) I ask if I can share it as a success story. And for example, natasha. Natasha just got booked from her reel. She did a reel where she was reading something for the Oscars. Someone saw it on LinkedIn, reached out and said hey, will you do my podcast intro and outro? And so she got that job. She did it, and getting work for people who are featured is a great cherry on top, but it's not necessarily what is meant for the campaign, right? Because we're not a casting site, we're not a talent agent right.  21:39 We want to show that women can do this. They should have the access to the opportunities to do it, and if you choose one of these women, great. But if not, at least we've planted the seed that, yeah, a woman can voice a UFC spot. Sure. A woman can do a wealth management spot or a tech spot.  21:55 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Now, how are you working on funding? Are you thinking, what are your thoughts about getting additional funding? Because I know, simply because I have multiple domains, this is not something out of your own pocket. Owning the domain, you've got to pay for that. You've got to pay for the website, you've got to pay for the hosting of the website. Ultimately, you've got a domain. Maybe you're going to send email from it, so then you're going to need an email server. I mean, there's just a bunch of stuff Having the social media channels and you're also a working voice actor, so you're donating a lot of your time and I know that you recently have some women that are now on board to help you in the Building Doors campaign. But what are you thinking about in terms of funding?  22:34 - Christy Harst (Guest) I need funding, yeah.  22:37 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Are you going to create, maybe, a scholarship or become like a nonprofit? What's going to happen so?  22:45 - Christy Harst (Guest) I think and this is probably not going to be a popular opinion, but I think that people or groups that advocate for a mission or a cause, they can earn money too. It's okay. It's okay. And no, we're not going to be a nonprofit. I have no desire to run a nonprofit. I worked for nonprofits for years in my nine to five career and I know what the mentality is. I know the paperwork. It's just not something I desire to. We are a for-profit. We are an LLC under CEH Productions, which is my LLC, and I am so blessed to have the ambassadors. These are women that did pay a certain amount to be in the campaign and they get access to make decisions about the campaign and while that money is great, it's not.  23:32 I'm not earning any money is what I'm saying, Like the funds that I've collected to date help cover the cost of the initial investment that I've made and help cover the cost of the website in the future, but I'm definitely not earning any money. So I've been applying for grants for female small business owners. I am open to other ideas and I'm going to be honest with you, anne, it's something that I'm really struggling with right now and trying to figure out, because if this mission is going to have the impact that I want it to have and if I want to do the ideas that I think are necessary for this brand, I need money, and you know I can't continue at the pace that I am, as just me, right, and I do have some help with some of the ambassadors Amy, selma and Sandi.  24:14 They've been so great to me and the ambassadors in general have been really great about picking up some of the stuff that I can't. But if I had it my way, I'd hire a social media manager today. I'd hire a personal assistant today, I'd hire someone to do the books today. And, for example, I've been fortunate enough. I'm going to be going to the WESPN conference in May in New York.  24:38 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I have been encouraged to go there to make face-to-face connections, Absolutely, I mean, that's a cost as well. I mean well.  24:42 - Christy Harst (Guest) I'd like to say that such a voice is paying for my ticket. Well, okay, they're paying for the ticket for me to go, but I still need to find funding for airfare and ground transportation. So that takes time. Right, finding sponsors to take you somewhere where you know you could make the biggest difference and the biggest impact that takes time.  25:01 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Absolutely, absolutely Well, you're certainly building doors, and I completely, completely get that. I mean, you're starting from the ground up, and so there's a lot of work involved, there's a lot of questions, there's a lot of navigating, trying things out. Back in the day, I like to say that I pioneered the hybrid workout, which was online and live at the same time. Back in the early days, when there was no streaming live on the internet before Zoom was a thing, I had some technological experience so I started doing that. So there's no clear path, and so to me, that defines a boss, and I love interviewing people who really exemplify and showcase bossness.  25:44 - Christy Harst (Guest) Wow.  25:44 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Thank you, yeah, so I mean really congratulations. What you've done is the start of something truly amazing. And if there's any way that VO Boss can help you out. We're here to help you spread the message far and wide. How can bosses get in touch with you, christy, if they want to know more, if they want to contribute?  26:01 - Christy Harst (Guest) Yes, so definitely follow us at at Building Doors VO on Instagram and LinkedIn. I also want to give a quick plug that I'm doing an impact study and those links are on those channels as well. If you could fill out the impact study, that would be great. And also, you're more than welcome to email me. You're more than welcome to message me on any of the social media platforms. If you are interested in offering services in exchange for something or if you'd like to donate, by all means, yeah, let me know. Christy at christyhearthcom.  26:28 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Absolutely, and we'll be putting all of your links on our show notes page. Bosses out there, Christy, I want to meet back up with you in six months in a year?  26:38 - Christy Harst (Guest) Oh, that would be amazing.  26:39 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Let's talk about how has it progressed, of course. I mean I'm going to be following you from now on and bosses out there, make sure that you follow Christy, and we will be in touch, and I'd like to have a follow-up interview with you for sure.  26:51 - Christy Harst (Guest) Oh, I'd love it.  26:52 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Because I see great things. I see great things happening. I got good vibes, so I always like to say that I'm a little bit intuitive here. So good stuff, christy. I'm so glad that we got the opportunity to talk and that VO Boss can help spread the word about the Building Doors campaign. You're amazing and thank you so much. Thank you.  27:09 - Christy Harst (Guest) Thank you for having me on, I appreciate it.  27:12 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Bosses, big shout out to our sponsor, IPDTL. You too can connect and network like bosses, like Christy and myself. Find out more at IPDTLcom. Bosses have an amazing week. Make sure you go and check out buildingdoorscom and check out Christy and follow her on socials and we will see you next week. Bye.  27:32 - Intro (Ad) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, Anne Ganguzza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at vobosscom and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via IPDTL.   

Send us a textWhat is Universal Basic Income (UBI) and why is it so popular among economists and freedom lovers relative to other types of poverty policy solutions? What does it even mean to “solve a problem” or to “learn” in the social sciences?  Join us today to explore the answers to these two questions and many more. Today, I am excited to welcome on Peter Van Doren to talk about the history of poverty policy and policy debates and the reality about universal basic income. We talk about some pretty conclusive economic studies which highlight the effect of UBI type policies and what to make of them!  Peter Van Doren is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the editor of Regulation, a quarterly magazine about applied microeconomics and economic policy issues.Want to explore more?Michael Munger on the Basic Income Guarantee, an EconTalk podcast.Thomas Koenig, Adam Smith, Francis Fukuyama, and the Indignity of the UBI, at Speaking of Smith.Bruce Meyer on Poverty, an EconTalk podcast.Scott Winship on Poverty and Welfare, a Great Antidote podcast.Clark Nardinelli, Industrial Revolution and the Standard of Living, in the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics.Jeremy Horpedahl on the Real Cost of Thriving Index, a Great Antidote Podcast.Support the showNever miss another AdamSmithWorks update.Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Kenny McGee is Founder & CEO of Component Sense, a company which focuses on the redistribution of excess and obsolete electronic components and whose motto is to "empower sustainability in electronic manufacturing." In this episode, we discuss the EU's circular economy plan and its relation to e-waste, as well as other EU policy areas such as WEEE and RoHS, the advice Kenny would give to consumers and companies looking to reduce their e-waste footprint, as well as what he feels are the most important changes that need to happen to make the electronics sector more sustainable.

In this insightful episode of the Real BOSSES series, Anne Ganguzza and Tom Dheere delve into the unpredictable landscape of social media and its implications for entrepreneurs. As platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok face increasing political and operational challenges and changes, The BOSSES discuss the importance of adapting business strategies to ensure continued success. They share actionable insights on how to diversify marketing efforts and build resilient communities, emphasizing the significance of maintaining control over one's audience through robust mailing lists and finding alternate platforms. 00:01 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Let's create your next demo together. As an award-winning demo producer, I'll work closely with you to craft a demo reel that showcases your unique talents and strengths. My personalized approach is going to ensure that your demo stands out from the crowd and gets you booked. Book a free 20-minute consult today and get started at anneganguzza.com.  00:28 - Intro (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss, a VO boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza. Hey, hey, everyone.  00:45 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Welcome to the VO Boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza. Hey, hey everyone. Welcome to the VO Boss podcast and the Real Boss series. I'm here with my good friend, Tom Dheere. Hey, Tom, how are you?  00:55 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) I am good, how are you?  00:58 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I'm doing good, but I'll tell you what. Social media is kind of a mess lately, isn't it?  01:04 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Oh my God, yeah it, oh my God, yeah. Oh my God, to say the least, it has been insane the past couple of weeks.  01:10 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh, TikTok shutting down people fleeing off platforms. It's been insane and I think something that, as business owners, we've used for years right to promote our businesses is now somewhat becoming unstable and unpredictable, and I think we should chat about this. What can we do to kind of counteract?  01:31 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) that that's a great question. Well, I will say that literally this morning on Facebook, I saw two friends of mine who run Facebook voiceover groups who basically posted the same exact post, which was we know a lot of you are leaving Facebook right now. It's gotten very politically charged, it's gotten very toxic. You've all mentioned that how your feeds are changing and it's just getting really, really weird. And they both did the same thing in that they said we will continue to be loving and supporting of all voice actors, regardless of your affiliation, regardless of what's going on in the outside world. And there was a chorus of support and concern at the same time.  02:08 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, I think the community that we feel that we've established on these platforms is, and now the platforms are unstable or toxic. And so now our community because we work independently and our community has been online for all these years and now, all of a sudden, it's just become a place where maybe not everybody wants to hang out anymore.  02:28 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Yeah, there's four platforms which everybody seems to be sharing the most concern about Facebook, instagram, because those are both owned by the same company Meta Twitter, now known as X, which has been a point of concern for a couple of years now, since it was purchased. As X, which has been a point of concern for a couple of years now since it was purchased, and, like you just said, tiktok, because of the concerns that have been expressed and the affiliation that it has and the fact that it went down for less than 24 hours and then it was rescued.  02:57 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It was like a mass hysteria. Well, you know what else? It wasn't just TikTok, it was anything owned by TikTok, which I was aware, but I kind of forgot. I use CapCut, which is the video editing program, and I spent a considerable amount of time like learning it and all of a sudden my CapCut was gone and I'm like, oh no, I guess I need a new video app.  03:15 It was kind of good in a way, so that we all could step back and say, all right, let's not put the proverbial all our eggs in one basket, like we've always been saying about pay-to-plays. Right, you don't want to put all of your eggs in one basket with pay-to-plays. That can't be your only way to make income, and social media may not be the only way that we can have community. So let's talk, tom, about how we might be able to incorporate community and also incorporate. Let's say how are we going to market to our potential clients? What can we do to create a sense of community? And I mean my first idea that comes to mind is let's go back to old school, right? Let's create a mailing list, right? That's something that we own. We're not dependent upon a social media platform that we don't own. We own our own lists.  03:59 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Yes, when it comes to that, both social media and curating lists of potential, current and past clients both fall in the bucket of self-marketing. Having a social media presence, creating a sense of community, trying to interact with clients potentially that's a form of indirect or passive marketing. And then curating lists of clients cold calls, cold emails, newsletters those are all forms of direct or active marketing strategies. So both of them have their merits. But to your point, if the four, at least the four social media platforms that we just talked about, are unstable on both a cultural view, political, socioeconomic, logistical and technological view, because one of them was taken down and then went back up and goodness knows how many millions of dollars was potentially lost by the TikTok users who monetize? Yeah, absolutely.  04:54 So, this is creating uncertainty in the market, so looking for more stable practices is a very good idea. So, if you have been able to cultivate any relationships with any potential or current or past clients through social media platforms and I'm not just talking about Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok, which are the four that seem to be the most worrisome or in flux right now- Well, they're the largest.  05:18 They are also, interestingly enough, the largest, and Facebook's been around since what? 2004? Tiktok's pretty new and Twitter's been around since around 2008,. 9, 10. And Instagram is a few years after that, so some of these have been around for quite some time.  05:33 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, let's not forget about our old friend YouTube, which right now doesn't appear to be affected so much.  05:37 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) YouTube seems to be relatively stable and actually YouTube has been growing quite steadily.  05:49 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Youtube is the number one streaming platform. I think that that can be an option for people who are looking for community or trying to establish a community. I mean, really, what do you need to establish a community? There's community number one, just community for ourselves, right, because I need my colleagues. I need to be able to communicate with my colleagues and just kind of like just say hey, how's it going, or what are you doing, or just that kind of like at the water cooler sort of thing. And then we also need the community of where can we put ourselves out there, where can we promote and market our materials, if the online community is now threatened?  06:17 I think, I mean, I know, for many years, you know, social media has always been quote unquote, free, right, always been free, and the Internet's been free. And now, all of a sudden, there's a potential to maybe it not being there or free, or we don't know really what's going to happen. So we need to come up with our plan B. I think it's always important that, as business owners, we have a plan B or we have an alternate plan, so that we're not throwing all our eggs in one basket, right? What can that be, tom?  06:45 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) All right, so I have many answers.  06:47 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I have many answers and ideas.  06:48 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Me too. Okay. So because there's a difference between fostering or being part of a community of fellow voice actors on a social media platform and looking to network with potential clients. Yes, despite all the weird that's been going on, linkedin is still the number one social media platform to be connecting with and developing relationships with clients.  07:10 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Except it's got spammy lately.  07:12 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) It's gotten very spammy and I've seen a lot more politics on my LinkedIn feed.  07:16 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yes, but still it's better.  07:19 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) It's better. It may be a short-term consequence, it may re-stabilize I'm not sure, but LinkedIn is the number one source for that Twitter was a pretty good source for that too.  07:29 Yes, because also everybody knows that LinkedIn is the professional social media platform, whereas Facebook is the social. It's literally called the social network. It's a social platform. You can be social on a professional platform and you can be professional on a social platform. But all of these different social media platforms were designed with a specific intent in mind. Instagram was all about photos, and now it turned into video as well to compete with everybody else, and then YouTube made shorts to compete with Instagram reels and they're all watered down and they can all do all of those things, but what the thrust of it is?  08:00 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Before I forget, I do want to like throw in another social media platform that can generate community on a more professional level and that would be Substack.  08:08 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Yes, that's definitely one.  08:09 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That's kind of like here. If you want to sign up and subscribe to my newsletter on a professional basis, there is Substack and I think that might be gaining popularity as well.  08:17 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Slack is another one that is gaining popularity. I have not ventured into Substack or Slack, but the one that I have been exploring lately when it comes to community is Discord.  08:29 Yep, absolutely what's interesting about Discord is what separates it from all of the other social media platforms is it doesn't have a feed. It doesn't have this torrential river of content that you can doom scroll through. For those of you who aren't familiar with Discord, discord has what are called servers. Think of them as like Facebook groups, except that they are generally invite only, though many of them have a public invite where they publicly promote a link or a QR code where you can scan and then you can potentially get admitted into that Discord server. There's usually a number of questions that you need to answer and a code of conduct that you need to adhere to before you'll be admitted into that individual server, and there are a ton of voiceover-related Discord servers. Many of the voiceover groups that you find on Facebook and all of the organizations that you're familiar with in voiceover groups that you find on Facebook and all of the organizations that you're familiar with in voiceover circles, have a Discord server, and within those servers are little threads or sub-servers.  09:33 Sub-threads yeah, Sub-threads where you can talk about whatever subject matter.  09:37 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Then it becomes like the old school Usenet. Oh my God, I'm showing my age. Do you know what I mean? Because people post about topics. It's like a forum yeah it becomes like a forum which Usenet? Do you know Usenet?  09:50 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Or am I even showing my age with you? Yeah, that was way back when I am showing my age with you.  09:53 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It's Usenet back in the day, oh my goodness, yeah. Topic-based.  09:56 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Discord definitely has a. It's also got a bunch of emojis and badges and avatars and all these things that you can do with it.  10:19 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So I would say for communities. If you're looking for a community, feel that the Facebook groups if you don't want to be on Facebook anymore at all or you're disliking things about Facebook, in particular, discord for community, I think is a really good way to go. And I think people are just kind of waiting it out a little bit at this moment in time, because Facebook really was for many, many, many years. It was a great community gatherer, and so I think that people are just kind of sitting back, waiting and seeing, or they're fleeing. Some people are going over to Blue Sky, but then again people will say that that is also politically motivated, and so really it just becomes like where are you going to go and where are you going to find the groups? And I think it's one of these things, tom, that we have to just kind of wait and see a little bit. But I would say, professionally, if you want to create that community, start gathering your own mailing list of your current clients and get something going on your website that invites people to subscribe to your email list, and that way you will always have a way to professionally market to that list or communicate with that list. And then, when it comes to community, like colleague and that type of group, I have a wait and see.  11:12 I've kind of have my accounts on all different platforms and I'm just going to join them all and see where I feel that people are kind of migrating to. I know that for me, I've done a lot of work creating groups. I have a VOPs group that has thousands of members. I have business pages on Facebook that have thousands of members and followers. In reality, I have to look at that and say, well, it's possible that my groups have been disbanded and in a way, this is a time where I feel like I can kind of clean up in a way and so things that have grown, maybe possibly stagnant over time, where maybe people are members but maybe they're not engaged members. You know, maybe it's time to really just sit back, take a look, see where things go and really try to engage a quality community right, not necessarily a quantity, remember before it was all like, oh my God, well, I have 90,000 people on my Facebook group, but are they all engaged?  12:03 - Intro (Announcement) Yeah.  12:04 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So I think now's the time to really start building that community that know, like and trust you, and I feel like that's not just for sales, that's also for people that you interact with on a day-to-day basis. Like Tom, you and I like you're my know, like and trust and I would be like Tom, I want to be where you are so that we can continue our relationship right. So I feel like that's an important criteria for any group that I migrate to or that I create, and then it becomes a build process again.  12:30 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Yeah, I agree. So, bosses, if you've been listening to what Anne's been saying, she's making two extremely important points. One is do not be dependent on any one social media platform for community or for establishing and maintaining relationships with clients. Those are two different things that you can do on all of these social media platforms and the advice of going through all of your social media platforms and keeping track of where all your potential, current and past clients are on all these social media platforms. Make sure that you have all their contact information and get them into your CRM, which is a VO boss conversation that we had very, very recently.  13:15 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That was the acronym. Party the acronym party. So check out that episode.  13:19 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Absolutely Use that CRM, because it's also a way to cultivate relationships with all of your clients. It's also a way to cultivate relationships with your fellow voice actors. There's nothing stopping you from sending out a newsletter to fellow voice actors, not to tell them about whatever voiceover you've done recently, which they may or may not be interested in, but just talk about concerns or topics of interest to you that may be of interest to them as well. You could also do that through blogging, because your blog posts can have different audiences. You can have blog posts where the audience is your voice seekers and you can have one where your audience is voice actors. To find another way to create a non-social media dependent community and culture.  14:00 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I think the vlog might be making a comeback. I mean, I think it was always a thing right. But I think a blog I mean I do a Teachable Moment every week and I do shorts every week those are videos that I put out to the community and that can also be part of my blog. There's a lot of those that are part of my blog as well, so people can subscribe to that blog and you can talk about whatever topic floats your boat, floats your passion, and I think that more of the social communities like TikTok and again, you know TikTok is up for now, but again, if you're using it to monetize or using it to try to really sell, just be careful that you're not putting all the eggs in one basket. And so I just say, if you've got good video content right, you can now maybe put that on multiple platforms, right, or the platforms that you feel are right to gain the audience that you want. So just know that your video it turns out to be stuff that you own.  14:51 Stuff that you create is stuff that you own. So if you create videos, put them in a place where you have control over them. Put them on your website, put them in a blog, put them on YouTube if you have a YouTube channel. But if YouTube were to blow up tomorrow, you've got your own server, you've got your own web server that you can put your videos on, and so creating that content that is distinctly something that is owned by you gives you more semblance of control in regards to promoting your services, promoting your voice, promoting your product out there and also fostering a sense of community, even though it may not be engaging, but you can have people like subscribe to your blog, create comments, have engaging comments back and forth.  15:29 And again, there's lots of different places. There's Zoom workspace, there's Slack. There's lots of places where you can have video meetups and create that community there as well, and that's something to think about is to have a Q&A or have a water cooler, like, basically, there's that Zoom water cooler, that's out there, and so how are you going to promote that community water cooler? Well, that can be through a list, a mailing list that you own, or you can continue to put posts out on social media, and again, it just don't depend on that social media to be your one and only way to communicate with your potential clients or your colleagues.  16:05 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) There's also, if you remember, clubhouse and how popular that was during COVID, that became a real great place where a great sense of community that may come back.  16:14 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) This is exactly why.  16:15 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) I'm bringing it up, anne is that Clubhouse may be a place to go back to, because there's no social media feed. There's really not much of a space for flaming trolling spamming.  16:27 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Interesting thought there, because I've done a Thursday VIP room Voices in Podcasting room and we actually were thinking about going away from it, doing Zoom live streaming, zoom on Facebook, which is just another way of doing it. But you're right, clubhouse could be making a comeback.  16:42 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Well, video, and I'm sure the reason was you know as well as I do is that video has more of a potential for engagement on a human level and on an algorithmic level than pure audio or just photos or just text.  16:55 So yeah, it makes a lot of sense to be on Zoom, but, like for voice actors, sure On Clubhouse. That seems like a really natural fit. There's one other social media platform that I wanted to mention, and that's Reddit. I've had a Reddit account for a few years now, but I just recently decided to start getting in there and seeing what's going on, and it has its level of weirdness, like any other.  17:20 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Again like a Usenet. Sorry, I'm showing my age again. It's like it's a forum.  17:24 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) It's got a forum Usenet kind of feel to it but like any subject matter, personal or professional, that you can think of is there and there's a group of dedicated and a lot of them very social and often supportive people that are talking about any given subject.  17:42 So I've been spending a lot of time on there and, just as a quick side note, just a couple of interesting things that have happened on. There is one there was a high school student who was required to interview a voice actor for a paper that they had to write. So I volunteered and they sent me the questions, answered the questions and they got an A.  18:00 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I love that you helped someone get an A Tom.  18:02 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) That's great, yeah Now is that going to help my voiceover career? No, no, but that's a good thing, but it's being a part of the community. The other quick example is and I can't say much is that a journalist went on a subreddit who needed to interview certain kind of people to write an article about a particular subject, and I was right for it. So I messaged them and, as a result and DA much.  18:23 And as a result, we had it was a Zoom or a Google Meet meeting for about a half hour, asked me a bunch of questions and in the past week or so they followed up with a bunch of follow-up questions. They wanted to flesh out parts of the conversation and confirm some details and stuff like that, and I think the article comes out next week, so I'll be happy to talk about it then and promote it, because it's a very very, let's just say.  18:50 it's a topic that's extremely relevant to the voiceover community and has been for a couple of years and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. But I wouldn't have gotten that without being on a social media platform and availing myself to what could just come my way, and it's going to turn into a nationally published article from a reputable news organization.  19:08 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Excellent. Now the other thing is yes, we're talking about the social media chaos and what we can do about it. Now the other thing, too, is, if you're finding that social media has become to the point where, if you're doom scrolling and it is doom scrolling and it is becoming mentally difficult right to read things on it, then I would say, for your own mental health, step back, take a break. It's not a critical part of you know. You have your circle of friends. I have, like Tom, I can get in touch with you in lots of other ways other than social media if I have to. So, really, guys, when it comes to your health and the health of your business, if you need to step back absolutely. It's not the be all end all.  19:49 Social media is not the be all end all to your business. It is a method that we have used for many years to promote ourselves. And I remember gosh, back in the day when social media was just becoming popular and there was Instagram and Facebook, and then it was like, oh my God, we can actually like, advertise our businesses on here. And that wasn't so long ago, or maybe it just seems like time has flown by, but I remember back in 2004 or five or six, and doing like a class on, like social media and how to advertise your business. And so 20 years has gone by, it's evolved, it's turned into a very different animal, and so I think, think again, very similar to how technologies evolve and things happen. We need to evolve with the time. So if you need to step back, absolutely for your health, absolutely step back.  20:38 I honestly don't think that it's going to be the destruction of your business unless you have monetized on a platform that is closing down or is one of those platforms that is now you, you know, in chaos, and so really try to diversify.  20:50 Think about how you can keep in contact with your current clients, how you can reach out to other clients, and again, I'm going to just say the good old school, like create a list for yourself. There's not one website software out there that doesn't have a way where you can invite people to become part of your list and you just have a checkbox that says I agree to allow you to send emails and people give you permission, and that becomes, I think, one of the best tools that you have, right for, let's say, maybe a professional way of marketing yourself and also a way of becoming closer to your community of professionals so that your business can stay afloat and with colleagues right. Gather those colleagues close to you. Already now there's multiple. I mean, we all do have phones, we all do have homes, we might live near each other, we all have ways to text and stay in communities together and, I think, don't rely on anyone. Get yourself prepared to not depend on any one method of acquiring clients or communicating with your colleagues at large.  21:58 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) That makes so much sense. I'll leave everybody with one thing Think about why you're on social media. Because it just kind of showed up and everybody just started using it. And nobody took a class or read a manual, they just started messing around on there. So if you're on social media for community and the communities are failing you in one social media platform, go to a different one. If you're going there to look for clients and develop relationships with them, if the social media platforms that you've been on aren't conducive for that they never were or they aren't anymore go to a different social media platform. If you are on social media for purely non-voiceover reasons you're just there to be entertained, amused or inspired or educated, and those aren't working anymore go to different ones. If you're doing it, you just find yourself going like this on your phone and none of those motivations are there. That means the really awful psychology, algorithmic things have got their clutches in you. Yeah, get off. Read a book, take a walk, go have coffee with a friend.  22:58 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, I love that. That's a great way to end that, tom. Thank you so much. Yeah, bosses, be safe and be healthy with social media. All right, great conversation, tom. I'm going to give a great big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl. Find out more at IPDTLcom. You guys have a great week and connect up with us in multiple ways. Tom and I are available and we have email addresses. You can even email us and you can, for sure, just keep listening to our podcast. So you guys have an amazing week and we will see you next week. Bye.  23:31 - Intro (Announcement) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, Anne Ganguzza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at voboss.com and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution with permission. 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Anne Ganguzza welcomes live-action Dubbing Casting Director Jessica Blue this week! Jessica Blue shares her captivating journey from a cartoon-loving kid in the San Francisco Bay Area to becoming a sought-after talent and director in Los Angeles. The BOSSES take you behind the scenes of voice dubbing, where Jessica reveals the art of directing and casting for this unique form of acting. She explains how directors play a crucial role in ensuring performances are authentic and compelling. The conversation touches on the challenges of adapting scripts for different languages, the essential role of adapters, and the dynamic, fast-paced nature of dubbing. The BOSSES expertise and experiences provide a valuable roadmap for aspiring voice actors navigating this exciting field. Anne and Jessica also preview the upcoming VO Peeps class where participants can experience a live-action dubbing session. 00:01 - Joe (Ad) Hi, this is Joe and I just wanted to say that, in addition to being a marketing guru in her own right, Anne Ganguzza goes deep and she has a vast knowledge and a huge breadth of experience in all and everything VO voice, acting, online communication and she offers a plethora of valuable information and golden nuggets, a fountain of first-hand knowledge, which is VOBoss. I myself had the privilege of participating in a super fun bilingual contest and one of the treats I won, alongside my colleagues, was to be interviewed by Anne and Pilar Uribe A chance to share, learn and get inspired on so many different fronts. I promise you Y, si quieres, te lo cuento en español, pero mientras tanto, búscate un episodio en VO Boss. You might easily find an amazing podcast to get instantly inspired in your work. Whatever that is.  01:01 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey, what's up bosses? Join our VIPs today and gain access to over 350 hours of pre-recorded workshops designed to enhance your voiceover skills. From industry insights to practical techniques, our workshops cover a wide range of topics. As a VIPs member, you'll also receive a 15% discount on current workshops and free monthly workshops to keep your skills sharp. Don't miss out on this opportunity. Sign up for VIP's membership now at vopeepscom.  01:36 - Intro (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss a VO boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza.  01:55 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey, hey everyone. Welcome to the VO Boss Podcast. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and today I am so very excited to have special guest Jessica Blue with us this morning. Yay, hello.  02:06 - Jessica Blue (Guest) Thank you for having me.  02:08 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hi, jessica, hi For those bosses who don't know Jessica. Jessica has been a voice actress for 20 years and is an English dubbing voice and casting director on oh, some small projects like Netflix, disney+, hbo, hulu, amazon and more and of course, that was sarcastic. I want you to be able to read that acting Jessica. You can give me some tips if I have to dub over it. Okay, but as a VO talent, some of her clients include small names like Google, microsoft, macy's, wells Fargo, and the list goes on and on and on. She's also provided voices for several dubbed films and series, and some of her dubbing projects that she's directed include no Gain, no Love on Amazon, crooks from Netflix, moving, hulu and Burning Betrayal Netflix. Jessica, it is a pleasure to have you here this morning. Thanks for having me.  02:58 - Jessica Blue (Guest) I'm super excited to talk with you.  03:00 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yay, yeah. So I want to say it's just been so wonderful like knowing you for the past few years and I wish I had known you like 10, 20 years ago. Same yeah, absolutely. I mean, I've had you as a guest director for our VO Peeps a couple of times and I'm going to have you coming up this year as well for dubbing. And I guess I want to start with the bosses that are not necessarily familiar with who you are. Let's talk about your voice acting career first and how it all got started. Cool.  03:28 - Jessica Blue (Guest) Well, I'm originally from the San Francisco Bay Area and I grew up watching cartoons like a lot of kids. Bugs Bunny was my favorite and I just loved being in that world of imagination and where anything could happen. And I thought wouldn't it be cool to be a cartoon someday, Not knowing that that was voiceover. And it wasn't until many, many years later. When my ex-husband, of all things, heard this woman talking on the radio about voiceover, I'm like what is that? And he thought I would like that.  03:56 And so I went, took a intro class and I completely fell in love, dove headfirst and took all the classes, learned as much as I could and then eventually got an agent up there and started working in video games and commercials a little bit of animation for games and stuff, a lot of narration as well and then slowly migrated down to LA, because there was a collective of us in that group that really wanted to do animation and so we created our own show and pitched it around and down here in LA and I'd come back and everybody had kind of already migrated and moved down here, and I was the last one because I still had a whole life up there. I had a full time job. Up there I was taking care of my parents and one day my dad just said sounds like you need to be down there. Why don't you just go? I'm like I have to take care of you. I have to do all this stuff.  04:43 There's no way Best day of my life because he basically gave me the permission. It's like you need to live your life. Stop doing this for us. Do what you need to do, follow your passion. I'm like I love you, dad. So it took me a couple more years to get my ducks in a row and finally leave the corporate life which was the best decision of my life ever and made the move down to Los Angeles in 2013 and didn't have a plan B, didn't have a job, didn't have an agent down here, nothing, but I was all focused on voiceover and I had already come down here, like the year prior, to sort of get the lay of the land network, take classes with directors here, just to sort of get the lay of the land network, take classes with directors here, just to sort of immerse myself in the LA culture, in the LA VO community.  05:30 And then it just kind of took off and got an agent, started working, getting more jobs and met awesome people like you and Jeff Howell and all these other amazing folks, and just been doing it ever since. And then Jeff Howell is actually the one who got me into dubbing because he had a project come up and he says I need your help, I need you to help me organize all this stuff.  05:50 I'm like, okay, and we kind of started doing dubbing together and did about six movies together. I want to say and he says, okay, you should be directing, you need to be directing. And I had expressed an interest in directing and so it just kind of shifted into I was still doing acting. I love that, but I love directing so much and it was so great. And so.  06:15 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I've sort of shifted.  06:15 - Jessica Blue (Guest) Now I still do a little bit of acting here and there, Super picky and choosy about what auditions I do, who I read for all that good stuff, because I really have a focus more on directing and stuff. So that's where my passion now lies and that's kind of it.  06:30 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I love that. I love that because you kind of follow your passion and it all just followed you Do, you know what. I mean, you've manifested it for yourself, which is something that I absolutely love, and I love directing myself, but not necessarily dubbing, but in terms of demos and that whole creative process of being able to take it from the ground up to something beautiful. And so let me ask you. So 20 years has passed or so, and so how has the industry evolved and changed since you first?  07:02 - Jessica Blue (Guest) were in it. Oh my God, night and day Back in the day when I was first started and first of all, I felt like I was coming into this super late because I was already in my 30s, I want to say when I started getting into this. And most people you know get in their 20s. They're doing this or even earlier, so I felt like a super late bird, but that's been the story of my life. I'm a late bloomer and everything.  07:25 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That's funny. I was actually in my thirties too. Well, I was in corporate. I was actually in education. I came from corporate to education and before you go on, I did want to say what did you do in corporate, Because that's always interesting to me You're going to laugh.  07:37 - Jessica Blue (Guest) I was a paralegal manager for the electric company in their law department.  07:41 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh, my gosh Okay.  07:42 - Jessica Blue (Guest) Yeah.  07:43 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, no, nothing surprises me actually.  07:46 - Jessica Blue (Guest) So, like legal jargon, medical jargon, I've got that locked, unlocked yeah.  07:53 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It's crazy.  07:54 - Jessica Blue (Guest) It's always interesting to find out what corporate places people come from you know it's such a different world, but it's definitely helped my business as far as you know. Knowing how to communicate, being responsive and just general email etiquette, that kind of thing. It goes a long way. But back when I first started you needed to be where your agent was. You had to go in person to audition and it started to slowly switch to where you could record at home and then send it in an MP3.  08:26 But for the most part, like it was super hard to get an LA agent if you were not in LA or even in New York or wherever you had to be there, locally, physically, because they had so many other talent that was right there, hop, skip and a jump that they could grab. So that has completely changed, especially since COVID, because now everything's remote or phoned in or whatever. That's probably the biggest thing. Also, because of that, it's exploded the amount of voiceovers, because there's been such a spotlight on it, especially with all the new animated movies. I mean, back in the day, you know, I had Cinderella and Bambi, you know those movies which were classics, snow White. But now we have a new one coming out, several coming out every year, and they've got these celebrities attached to it.  09:13 So people, the general audience, are seeing these celebs do these voices and they're like, oh, I want to do that voice or I could do that voice, and they think it's like, oh, it's super easy, that'd be fun.  09:22 And they think it's like, oh, it's super easy, that'd be fun, let me go do some voiceover, not realizing it's a process you have to learn, you have to know how to act first of all. It's not just about your voice and take the training, learn the craft. So I think that has sort of opened the door for way more people. So it's super competitive now, and you're not just competing with people in your local area or in your state or now even in your country, right In other countries now, because everybody can now just kind of send stuff in electronically. So technology has definitely improved, as well as having a booth Again, it used to be like I just have a crappy little setup in my closet and now people have these amazing beautiful booths with lighting and all this stuff, and I mean, technology has come so far, so that's a whole nother thing too. So a lot has changed.  10:12 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) A lot has changed, but you have evolved along with that. And now you mentioned something about acting.  10:17 I always like to talk about acting, when you kind of made the shift, kind of also in parallel working with dubbing. You're talking about acting on the fly, I mean. I think that that becomes like front and center in terms of what are the qualifications that you need as an actor or as a voice actor to really get into this industry. And maybe I can just have you explain dubbing kind of from the beginning for the bosses who are not necessarily as familiar with the dubbing industry.  10:45 - Jessica Blue (Guest) So basically for if you don't know what dubbing is, it's essentially taking a movie or a TV show from another language and putting it into English so you don't have to watch with subtitles. You can actually hear the English spoken while you're watching the video, and our goal is to make sure that the lip flaps match as close as possible so that it doesn't take you out of that and you forget that you're watching a dub. It's a long process, a lot goes into it, it's very detailed, which I'm not going to go into all the gory details of it. But the main thing that I'm looking for when I'm hiring and casting someone to do a dub is that they can act, that I believe that their voice is coming out of the face that I'm seeing on screen and that they're able to give all the nuances of that performance. And it's actually really cool, in my opinion, because it's so much closer to being on stage or being on set and diving into a character and get all that juicy goodness, versus reading a three second tag or a 30 second copy for medical whatever. So there's a lot more that goes into it and it's definitely a skill that has to be learned by doing it.  11:54 It rinse and repeat kind of thing. It does take practice because it can be very challenging and overwhelming at first because there's a lot going on. Because not only are you walking in blind, you have no idea when are you walking in blind, you have no idea when you book a job. You have no idea if you're the lead, if you're an incidental, how many characters you're doing, what the show's about, how long you know all this stuff. You have no clue. So it's the director's job to fill that in for you explain the show who your character is, what they're about, what's going on in the scene, and then you watch the scene and you're seeing this rhythm of band go by with the dialogues screaming by like karaoke and you're trying to read, you're trying to watch the video, you're kind of your eyes are sort of doing this back and forth to try and understand everything and you're seeing it for the first time.  12:38 I've seen it maybe two or three times at this point, right but you're seeing it for the first time, so I'll give you a freebie of but you're seeing it for the first time, so I'll give you a freebie of like you're watching it for the first time just to know what the heck is going on and who are these people and what's happening. And then we'll watch it a second time. So now you understand the scene, you understand what's going on, and now you can start maybe looking closer at the faces on screen and see what their reaction is, the projection of how loud they are soft and then we'll do a take, and then we'll do another take and put it all together and review it. And I'm looking at the dialogue to make sure that you're saying all the right words and you're not mispronouncing anything.  13:15 And all of that good stuff and it's a lot and it takes about, I'd say, for a newbie about 15 to 20 minutes to get into the groove of it, if it's like their first time. But even experienced debbers you know they'll come in and they'll watch it and takes them a little bit of time to get warmed up too, and that's just the nature of it. But it's like everything's firing all at once. It can be very overwhelming, but it's so much fun once you get the hang of it and you get in the groove and you're just. Then you're just like, oh, all right, we're going, and it's so much fun.  13:43 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So, in terms of directing, let's say, if you were directing just a script that was not on the screen and you're just directing a commercial for someone, versus directing a dub scene, it seems like you have to know, I don't know, the directing is different. I mean, I feel like you have to know so much more quicker when you're doing the dubbing, because, because you have to also impart, like the actual scene, what's happening to the actor, and if the actor's not getting it or just not embodying the character in the right way, then you've got to figure out, well, how am I going to get them so that it makes a believable scene? And then, if not, what do you do? I mean, have you had actors that just didn't work out and then you had to essentially say I'm sorry and then recast I can't imagine so explain some of the differences because, like my, directing for a demo is completely different, because we're taking the words and we're creating the scene.  14:34 We're making it up, this. You have the scene already and you've got to try to communicate that to the actor.  14:39 - Jessica Blue (Guest) More, I would imagine yeah, I mean, on the one side it's kind of nice because you already have this template of what you need to do. You basically have to try to match that, match their energy, match their tone, match it. So it looks like what you're doing out of here is coming out of what you see. So in that sense it's a little bit simpler, because you can see what's happening with a commercial or even when you're auditioning for a dub.  15:07 You don't have the luxury of the video to see what's going on or see what's happening in the scene. So you have to make that up in your mind and you have to find those nuggets in the script, in the dialogue, that might clue you into where are they, what's happening, why did they say this line? What does that mean? What is the intention behind that, what might be happening? And you have to somehow create that in your head, make a choice and go with it. Very much like when you're doing a commercial script. It's a lot of script analysis when you're looking at that stuff and so it's kind of cool.  15:37 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Actually, you don't ever get the scene, you don't ever get the video, do you Very, very rarely?  15:42 - Jessica Blue (Guest) You might if we are doing in-person auditions, do you when you're auditioning? Very, very rarely you might. If we are doing in-person auditions, we do VTKs, which is a video test kit and that will have the actor come in. They'll do an audition in person, to the video, to the scene, so they'll see what's happening, they'll see the actors and everything and they'll get directed. So it's a directed audition. That's about the only time Very rarely will we send out a clip.  16:06 It'll just be the sides and they'll just have that to go on and wing it a prayer and figure it out and make a strong choice. Read through that analysis, look through everything, pick out whatever you can. Make a strong choice, go with it, because again, I'm listening for your acting chops as well as, if I believe, the voice coming out of the face. But even if I'm hearing someone do a commercial, I'm still in that visual sense of who are you talking to? Are you connected? Are you just phoning this in? Are you just reading this? It's very similar because there's a lot of times, too, where I'll have clients like they sound like they're reading. It's like, well, they kind of are because they're reading this girl going by, but you have to make it sound like you're not reading, just like you would a commercial or a video game or anything. You have to make it conversational. That's the name of the game in dubbing is conversational. We want real, grounded, authentic voices, authentic acting. Not, hi, how are you? I am Jessica Mm-hmm.  17:05 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Mm-hmm.  17:05 - Jessica Blue (Guest) Yeah absolutely.  17:07 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So what tips would you say then? Could you give a voice actor that wants to get into dubbing, like, what can they do to prepare themselves? Maybe, and maybe practice or coach with you? Yeah, absolutely, I do do coaching, yeah, besides coaching with you, but I'm just so, yeah, what can they do if they're interested in dubbing? What's your best tips? Watch some dubs.  17:27 - Jessica Blue (Guest) Go on Netflix, go on Hulu, Disney, Amazon, whatever. Watch some dubs that are good and watch how their acting is, or listen to how their acting is in relation to what's happening in the scene. A way to practice is kind of cool, Not exact, but it will help you with that sight reading of looking up to the video and looking down to the dialogue is put on subtitles. Grab your favorite show or movie, put on the subtitles, watch it with the sound on with the subtitles.  17:57 read the subtitles and get used to switching back your eyesight from the video to the subtitles, switching back your eyesight from the video to the subtitles and then rewind it, mute it and then say it with the subtitles and see how close you can match to their mouths, or whatever. I mean. It's not going to be exact, but that will help you with that skill of sight reading, of going back and forth from the video to the dialogue.  18:18 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well then, I should be amazing Jessica, because I'm old and I have the subtitles on all the time because I can't hear, so I've got the eyesight going and I don't necessarily practice along with that. But yeah, no, that's a great tip. And to actually watch dubs, I think is great, and I myself have watched dubs and I've watched people do it because I've watched you direct people. Do you think it's something that all voice actors would love to do? Or do you feel like it's a niche where I feel, like people that do audiobooks, they love their audiobooks, people that dub love dubbing, like? Or do you think it's just something like oh, it's another genre, it's just oh, I can. What's your experience with talent? I think it's a little of both.  18:57 - Jessica Blue (Guest) I think it is sort of a niche. I have my core group of actors that you know. It's like the standard dubbers or whatever, but I'm always finding new talent, always bringing new people into the fold. And so and I've never really had someone go, oh, I don't like this or this isn't for me Maybe they did and I didn't know about it.  19:18 But usually, even though they might be scared and nervous getting into it because they're not sure about anything new, any change, once they do it they're like oh my God, this is kind of fun, I really like this. So then they like tell me more, how do I get into it? How do I do what? How do I need to get more of this type of work? And so it kind of fuels their fire to do it or be more interested in it. So I think it's definitely grown a lot in the last couple of years, for sure, and I don't think it's going away anytime soon because there's so much content. There's so much content out there from other countries that are being brought into the United States and getting dubbed into English. So I don't think the work is going anywhere anytime soon. So I think we're okay.  19:58 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So here's the elephant in the room right Synthetic voices AI. How does that work into dubbing, or does it not? Or what are your thoughts? Is it a threat?  20:07 - Jessica Blue (Guest) I don't think it's a threat now, and if it is, it's going to be minor. I don't think it's going to take over lead voices because, it cannot reproduce these performances, the nuances that humans can, and I think we've got that covered and okay. And also I've heard stories about companies trying to use AI to dub a lead character and the audience isn't buying it.  20:31 They're like that looks weird, that sounds weird, it doesn't match or whatever, and so I think for the main characters, lead characters and everything, we're good, we're okay. It's not going to go the AI route. It might change to where they might end up using some type of AI situation that is ethically sourced. Ai.  20:50 voices for Walla for the background noise, like you know, in airports and restaurants and things like that, because that's just this murmur, this hum bed of voices that you hear in the background, and not necessarily actual dialogue that you can make out and hear what they're saying, but they already have a lot of those like sound beds. You know that we've recorded over many years and they can just plop that in. So it's kind of already done, so I don't know why they would actually need an AI for that.  21:16 So I don't necessarily see I mean, if anything, I think AI might come in on more of the production side, the backside of it, not the performance side, you know, more of the organization of files and management and things like that, or QCing stuff like that I don't know that it's going to really impact the performance side of things for dubbing yet, and I mean who knows Anything's possible but also to get all of these companies on the same page. You know, if somehow this fantastic software came out that you know is able to match the voice to the original actor or change whatever to get everybody on board with that, I mean that's a huge feat in and of itself and I don't see that happening anytime soon. So I think we're okay.  21:58 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So if you talk about when we dub, we're dubbing from one language to another. Typically for us we would be the English, and so how much of a disconnect is there because of the language differences, you know, in terms of like lip flap and believability is there from certain languages, and are some languages easier to dub than others? Oh yeah, two things.  22:17 - Jessica Blue (Guest) Some languages their lips barely move, so they're talking like this and it's like what do you say? There's no labial movements, oh my God. And then there's some like Spanish and French, where they are motor mouths and they're like and what takes in Spanish? It takes them 10 words to say what we can say in five in English. But there's like all these, like you know, like happy birthday hon. You know, it's like so different, but yet we would then have to add on extra words stretch it out, add on words, because there's still all that mouth flap that we have to cover, so we would have to add on words.  22:57 Or, in the opposite of French, they can say something very short, like two words, and it takes us seven words to say. So how do we? Ah, like they say nothing?  23:07 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So who does that editing? That's interesting. Who does that editing? Is that you, or it sometimes is me. It's the adapter.  23:13 - Jessica Blue (Guest) So, which I also do Adaptation is probably the most important and critical step in the whole dubbing process. That's basically where the studio will send it to a translator. They'll translate the Spanish into English. Then that goes to the adapter. The adapter then takes that English translation, rewrites it to make it sound conversational, make it match the lip flaps, adding words, subtracting words, making jokes work that might not make sense to us it does in their language but it doesn't jive with us and then also syncing it all up.  23:46 So the lines are matched up to start, of the mouth opening to the mouth closing, as well as adding in all of the vocal efforts. So laughs, sneezes, coughing, crying, breathing, fight scenes, getting punched, coughing, throat clearing, anything like that is always going to be in brackets so that we have those vocal efforts, because it's going to look funny if you're just talking and all of a sudden you do this and like you don't hear anything. Yeah, yeah, what was that? Right, right, it was a sigh. Ok, got it. So we had to put sighs in brackets so that the actor knows that they have to sigh when they see that chest movement.  24:22 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So it's a lot OK. So business wise it seems like a lot of work right. So I have a film right. And where does the money come from? The distribution, the licensing of the film in different languages?  24:33 - Jessica Blue (Guest) I think so, yeah, because it'll be like a Netflix will go out and they'll buy the property, the distribution rights for a show from the original person, which is probably yeah, where the money comes from and then that pays for it, because it seems like an awful lot of work, sometimes right, it is a huge  24:49 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) amount of work If you want a huge amount of work to get to a product that you don't know if it's going to. I mean it's like any movie that comes out right. I mean you put a lot of investment into it, so I imagine that, yeah, it's just got to be the purchase of the rights to the movie. That is where the money is, because is is because is the money. Does the voice actor get money? I mean, I'm sure they get paid. Do you know what I mean? But I mean, let's talk about how well does the voice actor get paid or the dubber get paid for this. Is this an industry that is lucrative? It can be.  25:19 - Jessica Blue (Guest) If you book a lead role, it can be very lucrative because that means multiple sessions, especially if it's a TV show, because that's multiple episodes. So you could be a six episode show, a 12 episode show, a 20 episode show. So if you're a lead character, you're in all those episodes. You're getting paid for every single time. You go into the booth for a session and we cover as much as we possibly can in a session until we exhaust all of the lines for that character.  25:46 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) But you get paid per session right.  25:48 - Jessica Blue (Guest) Per session.  25:48 - Intro (Announcement) You don't get paid per airing of you know like a nice national commercial.  25:52 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) There's no royalties, there's no kickbacks.  25:55 - Jessica Blue (Guest) There's no nothing it would be so nice.  25:57 Especially if it like took off or whatever, oh my God. But no, it's per session. If it's a union project, it's under the union contract, the dubbing union contract, which I think now it's like $190 something per hour with a two-hour minimum, and so if you're hired for a four-hour session, that's $195 times four, and if we finish with you in three hours, you still get paid for the four hours. If we have a pickup, you still get paid for that two-hour minimum. Even if you're in there for 15 minutes, you still get paid. So pickups are kind of nice too.  26:32 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Now, do you now negotiate in contracts like the AI writer, because, let's say, you need a pickup and the actor isn't available? Right, can they utilize the voice to create an AI voice to then maybe do a pickup?  26:45 - Jessica Blue (Guest) I've not had that come up yet, and I think myself I don't deal with the contracts with the actors. That's the studio that handles all of that. So I think some of them might have an AI writer, some of them might not. So if you're an actor into dubbing and you want to check that out, make sure you read your contracts and see if it's in there and if it's not ask them and see if they'll do it, because a lot of them will, but at this point I don't think we've had that issue.  27:09 We always find workarounds honestly like even if we missed a line, maybe we have a backup or we can frankenstein something together, or if we missed a breath or a laugh here, I'll just steal it from somewhere else and plug it in there so I don't have to have anything to save that money for the client, so that we don't have to worry about that pickup. And even for incidental. Sometimes I'll jump in the booth and if I just need a line or something to cover whatever, I'll just jump in there. I'm like, let me just do it, it'll be really fast, it's fine, I'll just do it.  27:37 So, but yeah, it can be lucrative if you're a lead, because that means multiple sessions. If you're an incidental, it's just fun practice and maybe it's one session, one and done and you're in and out and that's still fun. But also, I think, when actors do get on the radar of these studios and directors then and they do it one time, two times, and they do well, we like working with cool people, good people, good actors, so we're gonna have you back and you'll get in that roster, in that pool of people, and you just kind of start working, working, work and it's kind of cool that way.  28:09 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, yeah. Well, that's nice. So then, the first thing, if voice actors want to get into dubbing is, I would say bump up your acting skills, yeah absolutely. Do you have good recommendations for acting classes, like in-person acting classes, online acting classes or working with a coach? Perhaps All of it?  28:30 - Jessica Blue (Guest) Honestly, I feel like if you can do in-person, that's great because obviously you're feeding off the energy of everybody. I prefer being in person with people versus Zoom, but Zoom is obviously much more efficient and effective, especially if you aren't able to travel to do in-person. One-on-ones are also great if you're working with a coach or a teacher, because all the focus is on you and you can really hone in on what needs you need to work on and improve on.  28:59 But also the group session is great because you can learn from others and what I like to say, steal with love and take a little bit of that and that and put it in my pocket I'm going to use that, yeah, I mean it's life, isn't it?  29:11 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I think that's how we do it. I think all of us, when we teach voice acting, we want to get to the same end result. We want authentic, believable performances, and so, however we say it to get the actor to get there, we're all trying to get to the same end result. So, yeah, absolutely, and that, I believe, also is going to translate well to they can do dubbing and they can do voice acting, because acting is just going to help you all the way around, and acting will even help you in medical and corporate. And I say that just because you know that's me, and that's my geeky that's my geeky place.  29:41 I think it can help you even more because that stuff is typically very dry and boring and you've got to make that. You've got to make that come alive in some way to make it interesting to people so that they want to listen to it. I mean, right now I'm going through some online courses and I'm telling you like it is tough. I know I need to know this information and I am just like, oh God, I got to do four more hours of this, and so it really helps when you've got the skills to be engaging and to like connect with the listener on the other end. Yeah, absolutely so, if I am hearing you correctly. Of course, acting would be number one. Acting would be number one to help get you into dubbing, and then, of course, watching dubbed TV shows and really getting in on that. And then what about networking? How can they network with the places that might hire them?  30:23 - Jessica Blue (Guest) Absolutely Research. Google is your best friend. Look up and search dubbing houses, dubbing recording studios in your neck of the woods, See who's out there. And also I will say another trick is when you're watching these shows and movies online that are dubs, at the very end sometimes they'll have the credits for the dubs of who the actors are, who the studio is, who the director and the casting, the producer are, so you can actually see what studios are doing the dubs that way.  30:54 And then you can look those up and see. If you can't find an, email. And a lot of those studios have their own rosters that they're actively looking for talent. So you could reach out to one of them and like, hey, are you open for taking on new talent? I'm interested in dubbing, or I have. I've done a dub here and there. I'd love to be considered for a future dub and just throw whatever you can at the wall and see what sticks.  31:15 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Would you say that the majority of it is done in LA and in the big cities where, yeah, a chunk of it is.  31:20 - Jessica Blue (Guest) But I know Dallas I want to say Dallas, but one of the big cities in Texas they do a lot of anime with Crunchyroll I think. But there's other dub houses. There's one in Florida called the Kitchen in Miami. There's obviously several overseas, in Europe and elsewhere. So again, it's just you know Google, google is your best friend. Find where they are and search them out and do some research on that to figure out who's doing what and where, and you'll find it. And yeah, I would say networking is to find those people and seek them out and hit them up. But be human and personal about it. Don't just be like needy, like hi, I'm so, and so here's my demo. Listen to me.  31:59 No, make it make a connection yeah, make a connection to be memorable. So that because I, I get. Sometimes I'll get those emails that just say here, here's my demo. I'd love to work with you sometime Like great. I don't know you. From who are you next? You?  32:13 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) know, yeah, so I've been dying to ask you this because, of course, this goes along with. I feel like we're networking and there's a lot of talk about when you're running your business, because you can be the best actor in the world, but if nobody knows about it, it's hard for you, kind of. Over the years, have established a brand for myself, and a lot of people that know me for the VO Boss brand know that I have the red headphones, or I have the red lipstick because I talk about it all the time, and my Anne Ganguzza brand is blue and guess what? Jessica Blue. If anybody doesn't know Jessica or has never met Jessica, you can find her easily because she's got very signature branding.  32:50 - Jessica Blue (Guest) So let's talk about that for a little bit, if you don't mind, of course you can't really see it well in this lighting, but I do have blue hair and I have really blue eyes. You do, yes, you do Pops when the blue starts to fade and get lighter, and my logo is blue. I always have blue nails.  33:09 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I'm wearing blue nails. My car is my favorite color.  33:12 - Jessica Blue (Guest) I've loved it since I was a kid when I actually, when I was a kid and I was sharing a room with my sister, we had bunk beds and everything, and then my mom cleaned out this other room and we got to switch and I got my own room, finally, and I got to decorate it however I wanted I had it was blue carpet. Blue paint on one wall, blue wallpaper everywhere.  33:30 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I had blue stripes. I mean, blue is one of my absolute favorites. I had blue stripes, I painted on one. I had an accent wall in my bedroom. I'm an 80s girl, right 70s, 80s. It was literally like two different shades of blue and it was like a big, like V. It was hysterical. That's awesome and I loved it, but I will say that your branding works so well for you. Did you do that because not only your favorite color is blue, but because you wanted to become memorable in your business? Is that another angle?  33:54 - Jessica Blue (Guest) that that part never even hit. I'll tell you how so. Loose flash blue is not my real name, it's my stage name. What? Um? Yeah, I know secrets galore. No, it actually came up. So I've been rocking the blue hair since 2001. Okay, and I think it was around 2000.  34:17 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Before it was a thing, right, I mean really. I mean I would say, when I grew up it was only if you were a punk. And then you had you know, what I mean. I feel like I started, like yeah, I feel like I sort of started this trend like it was acceptable, because also working in a law firm corporate with blue hair.  34:32 - Jessica Blue (Guest) Yes, exactly, and acceptable because also working in a law firm corporate with blue hair yes, exactly, and I'm like, if they don't like it, they can go pound sand because I know how to do my job.  34:37 I'm doing my job and this has nothing to do with what I can do. So but I was in a workout group with some fellow actors and one of my friends, I think I had come in with a blue stripe in my hair. I was testing the waters out to see if I liked it or not and I had just one little blue strand. And she says, oh, you should change your name to Jessica Blue. And I'm like, oh, I like that. I think I'm going to do that. From that point on, I became Jessica Blue in all things voiceover and acting and I've never looked back.  35:06 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It is so attached to you and I think it's brilliant.  35:12 I mean, whether you intended that to be or not, like I will always know how to spot you in a crowd number one, but I also remember your name and so I'm always telling my students that until people know who you are, I mean you have to establish a brand. I mean, and so I'm like, well, make yourself a great actor and associate yourself with maybe another brand in your demo that people can say oh, I love that Ford spot that you did, or I love that movie you did, or whatever. If you can make yourself memorable in that kind of a way where you're attaching yourself to a brand or a show, right, then I think that that starts to get the ball rolling, because I think success begets success. Ball rolling because I think success begets success. And, like you said, once you start and you get into kind of the circles where you're dubbing and people like you, then it's nice because you get that kind of repeat work and I think that's important in terms of if you want to build your business.  36:04 So thank you for the explanation of your brand. I love it Absolutely.  36:08 - Jessica Blue (Guest) But it also it's not. It's not who you know, it's who knows you, because that's how you're going to become memorable and hired over and over again. So it is very important. I agree with you, but thank you.  36:21 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Thank you, I appreciate that. So if you make it easy, if you make it easy to stand out and be unique and you've done it brilliantly. So, Jessica, this is so much fun yes, it has. Thank you so much for joining me today. Yeah, my pleasure, and so I do know that you did say that a random listener is going to receive something special with you. Did you say a one-hour coaching?  36:42 - Jessica Blue (Guest) session One-hour free coaching session for dubbing, yes.  36:47 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So what I'm going to do is I'm going to randomly choose one listener, and so, in order for me to randomly choose a listener, you guys have to submit a testimonial, maybe on this episode, saying that you like this episode, and so I absolutely. On the VO Boss website, at vobosscom, you can submit your testimonial. If you do that for this episode with Jessica and you mention Jessica, we will then randomly select a winner within a week of the episode release to get a free one-hour dubbing coaching session. Yay, that's awesome. Thank you, jessica.  37:17 - Intro (Announcement) Of course that's so generous.  37:19 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) My pleasure, all right. Well, again, thanks so much. This has been wonderful and bosses, keep a lookout for the VO Peeps workout. Which gosh, is it May, june? I'm trying to think.  37:28 - Intro (Announcement) I think it's February. When do we have? When do we have? Oh my gosh February.  37:32 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh my gosh, next month. Oh, that's right, it is next month. Next month we have you for VOP. So guys go get that ticket, because Jessica sells out very, very quickly. Thanks again, thank you, I really, really appreciate it. I'm going to give a great big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl. You too, find out more at IPDTLcom Bosses, have an amazing week and we'll see you next week.  37:56 - Intro (Announcement) 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 VOBosscom and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via IPDTL.   

C'est la question qui dérange et qui n'est pas politiquement correcte. En Belgique, l'industrie de la Défense est surtout localisée en Wallonie. Avec le lâchage des Américains, la Wallonie devrait profiter des investissements à réaliser en matière de défense. Oui, sauf que le ministre de La Défense est Théo Francken, un nationaliste flamand qui tient le chéquier. Il y a quelques années encore, parler d'industrie de la défense, c'était comme parler d'armement nucléaire dans une réunion Greenpeace : malaise général. Aujourd'hui, c'est open bar. On filme au sein des usines de la Défense, on applaudit et on serre des mains au vu et au su de tout le monde. La guerre en Ukraine a transformé ce secteur en star du business. En réalité, l'invasion de l'Ukraine a été une sorte de plan marketing gratuit pour toute l'industrie de la défense en Europe. Et devinez qui se frotte les mains ? La Wallonie, parce que si on parle d'armement en Belgique, on parle de FN, Herstal, de John Cockerill et bien d'autres entreprises. Un secteur qui pèse lourd et qui jusqu'ici est encore largement dominé par le sud du pays. Quant à la Flandre, elle est plus discrète sur le sujet. Enfin, pour l'instant. Je dis pour l'instant parce que coup de théâtre, si je puis dire, c'est maintenant un ministre N-VA, Theo Francken, qui pilote la Défense. Et là, certains commencent à s'inquiéter. Pourquoi ? Mots-Clés : projet d'investissement, équivalent, exemple, port de Bruges, années 60, état, milliards, francs belges, Wallons, barre chocolatée, compenser, menu gastronomique, PIB, Américains, part du gâteau, ministère de la Défense, guerre en Ukraine, ministère, industrie, erreur, séparatisme, Belgique, euros, iconoclaste, renforcer, région, autonome, usines, savoir faire, carnets de commandes, mission, réécrire, règles, imposer, sites d'exploitation, budgets, bras de fer politique, répartition, portefeuilles ministériels, gouvernement Arizona, francophones. --- La chronique économique d'Amid Faljaoui, tous les jours à 8h30 et à 17h30. Merci pour votre écoute Pour écouter Classic 21 à tout moment i: https://www.rtbf.be/radio/liveradio/classic21 ou sur l'app Radioplayer Belgique Retrouvez tous les épisodes de La chronique économique sur notre plateforme Auvio.be :https://auvio.rtbf.be/emission/802 Et si vous avez apprécié ce podcast, n'hésitez pas à nous donner des étoiles ou des commentaires, cela nous aide à le faire connaître plus largement. Découvrez nos autres podcasts : Le journal du Rock : https://audmns.com/VCRYfsPComic Street (BD) https://audmns.com/oIcpwibLa chronique économique : https://audmns.com/NXWNCrAHey Teacher : https://audmns.com/CIeSInQHistoires sombres du rock : https://audmns.com/ebcGgvkCollection 21 : https://audmns.com/AUdgDqHMystères et Rock'n Roll : https://audmns.com/pCrZihuLa mauvaise oreille de Freddy Tougaux : https://audmns.com/PlXQOEJRock&Sciences : https://audmns.com/lQLdKWRCook as You Are: https://audmns.com/MrmqALPNobody Knows : https://audmns.com/pnuJUlDPlein Ecran : https://audmns.com/gEmXiKzRadio Caroline : https://audmns.com/WccemSkAinsi que nos séries :Rock Icons : https://audmns.com/pcmKXZHRock'n Roll Heroes: https://audmns.com/bXtHJucFever (Erotique) : https://audmns.com/MEWEOLpEt découvrez nos animateurs dans cette série Close to You : https://audmns.com/QfFankx

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The life of Michael Parenti is truly extraordinary, as he witnessed two significant cultural movements that changed the word. Growing up in Malibu, he went to school with the likes of Sean Penn and Charlie Sheen, met a young Madonna before she was an international star, hung out in Bob Dylan's house, and saw live acts like Nirvana and Red Hot Chilli Peppers long before MTV made them famous. As an internet entrepreneur, he became involved with the Bitcoin Foundation and also saw the early days of Ethereum. He attended hundreds of events, spoke with some of the people who are completely unapproachable today, and found himself in the middle of something magical, naive, and revolutionary. In this episode, we talk about the backstage politics that Michael Parenti witnessed and what it was like to believe in the cyhpherpunk dream more than a decade ago. Time stamps: Intro (00:00:48) Why Michael Is Exiled (00:01:54) Mainstream Adoption (00:02:11) Price Manipulation? (00:07:02) Debate on Bitcoin's Future (00:10:03) Ethereum as a Layer for Bitcoin (00:11:22) Bitcoin's Limitations (00:14:30) Government Surveillance and Compliance (00:16:21) Michael's Personal Experience with the Government (00:19:22) Reality of Government Power (00:21:21) Citrea (00:22:44) Room Mates at Pizza Day (00:24:34) Networking at Paralelni Polis (00:26:02) Ethereum as a Sidechain with WBTC (00:28:16) Bitcoin Foundation Experiences (00:32:06) Concerns Over Bitcoin's Direction (00:35:17) New York Agreement (00:37:28) Lightning Network & Disappointment (00:41:10) Bitcoin's Value and Community (00:45:13) Layer Two Labs and Bitcoin Maximalism (00:47:23) Challenges of Rootstock (00:52:17) Blockstream & Fear of Change (00:54:23) Incentives and Bitcoin's Stagnation (00:57:31) Self-Custody Challenges (01:00:38) Satoshi's Naivety (01:05:19) Zcash Is Satoshi's Vision (01:07:28) Historical Context of Bitcoin (01:12:10) Mt. Gox and Early Exchanges (01:14:55) Vitalik Buterin's Contributions (01:16:36) Toxicity in Bitcoin Development (01:18:35) Legal Uncertainty in Bitcoin (01:22:00) Ethereum's Development Model (01:24:19) Bitcoin's Future and Upgrades (01:29:09) SideShift (01:30:35) NoOnes (01:32:28) Dysfunction of Bitcoin Communities (01:34:06) Bitcoin Foundation: The Good, The Bad, The Corruption (01:35:36) Social Media's Role in Bitcoin's Evolution (02:01:10) Wikileaks and Bitcoin Intersection (02:02:09) Early Bitcoin Community Dynamics (02:04:20) Cypherpunks Mailing List Involvement (02:05:03) Wikileaks and Decentralized Media (02:06:45) Bitcoin as a Response to Financial Blockades (02:12:34) Transition to Bitcoin Foundation (02:15:55) Reflections on Bitcoin's Growth (02:18:08) Community Dynamics Across Cryptocurrencies (02:20:42) Samson Mow (02:23:28) Inflation and Daily Costs (02:27:00) Crisis of Conscience (02:28:56) Leaving Paralelni Polis and Event Fatigue (02:29:49) Celebrity Encounters in Malibu (02:30:36) Transition from Bitcoin to Ethereum (02:39:02) Music Journalism, Television & Editing (02:43:24) Crypto's Emergence (02:48:54) The Evolution of Crypto Communities (02:52:27) Government and Capital Accumulation (02:53:28) Bitcoin's Role in the Future (02:56:58) Critique of Stablecoins (03:02:37) The Need for Multiple Cryptocurrencies (03:03:57) The Absurdity of Bitcoin Narratives (03:05:02) The Toxicity of Crypto Tribes (03:09:25) Disillusionment with Cryptocurrency (03:20:43) The Future of Bitcoin (03:24:05) The Death of the American Empire, Climate Change & Economic Realities (03:25:19) Disruption and Change (03:31:05) Discussion on Realpolitik (03:34:00) Julian Assange's Impact (03:34:56) Podconf (03:36:10) Future of Bitcoin Forks (03:38:10) Redistribution of Satoshi's Coins (03:39:53) Privacy Magazine (03:43:17) Is Peter Todd Satoshi Nakamoto? (03:43:50) Identifying Satoshi (03:46:22) Early Bitcoin Experience (04:03:09) MultiBit Wallet (04:04:41) Advice to Younger Self (04:05:25) Bitcoin Foundation Today (04:06:00) Memes and Education (04:12:24) Influence on Ethereum Community (04:15:50) Regrets About NFTs (04:18:09) Personal Aspirations vs. Wealth (04:23:18) Trust Fund Kids in Los Angeles (04:24:50) Nabila Yacht DJing (04:27:51) Classic Cars vs. Luxury Vehicles (04:28:49) Selling Family Heirlooms (04:34:07) Being Neighbors with Mick Fleetwood and Chris Carter (04:34:40) Disinterest in AI (04:36:43) Focus on Privacy Tech (04:39:39) Concerns About Universal Basic Income (04:41:55) Geopolitical Implications of Technology (04:44:23) Fascination with Physics (04:51:00) Optimism for the Future & Aging (04:54:00) Cultural Nostalgia (04:58:00) Opportunities in the Internet Age (05:05:05) Historical Perspective on Human Advancement & Optimism (05:10:20) Current State of Layer Two Solutions (05:16:30) Concerns about Bitcoin's Transaction Fees (05:19:27) Future of Decentralized Exchanges (05:22:39) Incentives for Bitcoin Holders (05:24:49) Bringing Use Cases to Bitcoin (05:27:17) Impact of Other Blockchains on Bitcoin (05:29:43) Gold vs. Bitcoin Narrative (05:31:16) Physical Gold Demand (05:34:00) Lexus or Supra? (05:36:37) Bitcoin Flipping Gold? (05:37:30) Privacy Conference Planning (05:44:02) Live Viewership Metrics (06:09:09) Bob Dylan (06:12:45) Tom Petty Anecdote (06:19:09) Nirvana in Vienna (06:26:37) Desert Sessions (06:28:17) Early ZZ Top Albums (06:29:06) Stevie Ray Vaughan (06:31:11) Chess Records and Iconic Artists (06:31:44) Meeting Little Richard (06:32:50) Video Production Beginnings (06:32:50) Gary Busey's Music (06:35:04) Malibu Music Scene (06:36:23) The Doors Film Project (06:37:42) Meeting Robin Williams in Acting Class (06:41:00) Oingo Boingo and Danny Elfman (06:43:17) Decline of Western Civilization (06:45:52) Managing the Surf Punks (06:46:16) Fear and Punk Scene (06:47:09) Ramones Concert Experience (06:50:27) Talking Heads and Ramones (06:51:03) David Bowie's Influence (06:52:40) A Teenage Adventure with Led Zeppelin (06:54:07) David Lee Roth in Hollywood (07:04:39) Pink Floyd Tour Experience (07:10:47) Record-Breaking Podcast (07:12:02) First Big Concert Experience (07:14:47) Introduction to Hip Hop (07:17:08) Family's Music Background (07:22:21) Meeting Donald Fagen of Steely Dan (07:26:38) David Bowie Records (07:30:46) Critique of Modern Music (07:38:13) Music Journalism Experience (07:41:19) Bitcoin Takeover Podcast Theme Song (07:41:59) Girlfriend's Comment (07:43:11) Regret Over 1965 Fender Twin Reverb (07:43:28) Mesa Boogie Story (07:44:31) Promotions (07:49:24) Proof of Work Summit (07:50:05) Difficult Questions at Conferences (08:00:06) Experience in Music Journalism (08:01:29) Cultural Judgment and Values (08:02:00) Observations on Events (08:02:35) Podcast Purpose (08:03:02) American Exceptionalism (08:03:52) Interpersonal Interactions (08:04:06) Personal Growth and Change (08:04:40) Tribalism and Online Culture (08:05:04) Decentralization and Freedom (08:06:56) Critique of Monero Community (08:08:00) Record Podcast Duration (08:09:44)

Kenny McGee is Founder & CEO of Component Sense, a company which focuses on the redistribution of excess and obsolete electronic components and whose motto is to "empower sustainability in electronic manufacturing." In this episode, we discuss the current state of the e-waste market, Component Sense's 'Electronic Waste Manifesto' and what he thinks stakeholders need to do to scale up e-waste solutions.

Join Anne Ganguzza and Danielle Famble for the next BOSS Money Talks episode, as they share tips on how to manage both business and personal finances. From choosing the ideal business credit card to managing your everyday spending, The BOSSES provide the tools you need to enhance your financial efficiency. Anne and Danielle delve into the practical aspects of leveraging credit cards for business gains, highlighting the potential to earn cashback and travel points while simplifying your bookkeeping tasks. They discuss the art of planning large expenses and paying off balances to avoid interest traps, alongside sharing personal stories of their credit journeys. 00:04 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) At Anne Ganguzza productions. I focus on personal growth and artistic expression and can help you unlock the full potential of your voice. It's a journey of discovery and strategy and I'm here to help guide you every step of the way. Your story deserves to be heard. Find out more at anneganguzza.com.  00:35 - Intro (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss a VO boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza.  00:48 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey everyone, welcome to the VO Boss Podcast and the Boss Money Talk Series. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and I am so ecstatic to be back again with Danielle Famble. Hey.  01:01 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Anne, I am glad to be back, happy to talk money and finances and being a boss with you.  01:07 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I love it. I love it, except Danielle. I just had to pay my American Express bill. Yeah, and I will tell you and the bosses I have a business credit card, which I think is the best thing since sliced bread and the reason why I love my business credit card maybe not so much for all the money that I have to pay on it this month, but mostly because I get money back. I mean, I try to strategically use that credit card to my advantage, for my business.  01:34 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Yeah.  01:34 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So I know I have a credit card and a couple of other tricks up my sleeve, but I have a feeling you have a couple of tricks up your sleeve that I would love to know about.  01:44 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Oh, man, If you want to get me to nerd out on anything ever, you chose the right topic Credit cards. Credit card points and miles is my jam. I'm wearing my nerdy glasses today, Just so excited to talk about credit card points.  02:01 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So fill us in on how we can take advantage, Because I mean, why not? Right? I'm excited, I'm excited. So I'll just tell you, my American Express gives me money back and I picked it specifically because of that. It gives me money back every month the more I spend with it and I thought, well, that's great. That just encourages me to always use that card to spend. And for me, I only have the one for my. Actually, I have a couple for my business, because I do have a bank account which then gives me a credit card by default. Okay, I've got a debit card, I've got a business debit card, but I also have a credit card with them which I don't use right now. But they are always touting oh, you can save 3% if you buy gas, that kind of thing. But I end up using the one card only because for me, my brain, it makes things simple right now to deal with, but I'm sure that I could be taking more advantage of other things.  02:53 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Oh, yeah, you talk about your credit card. I actually just opened up a new credit card for my business and when I open that credit card you get a certain number of bonus points if you spend a certain amount of money in the first couple of months of opening the card.  03:08 Mostly, really to— yes, yes, similar to my bank. Yeah, to incentivize you to use this card. Well, this particular card would give me I think it was 250,000 points to travel, and I was so excited about it because I have travel coming up to go to conferences and things like that and instead of using cash to spend the money to travel, I can use these points as another currency as a way to get to a conference or two or three, or travel or stay at hotels. So it's a way of utilizing the money that I'm spending anyway and having a different currency to be able to use it. And that's a way of utilizing the money that I'm spending anyway and having a different currency to be able to use it. And that's just sort of the beginning. You're talking about money back into your business, but I just I love talking about like points and miles because you're spending the money anyway for your business, right, and so you're getting this currency back to be able to do other things with it.  04:02 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So then let me ask you a question Are you looking always for deals, current deals with new credit cards, or is it just if it happens to come up when you make a purchase, sometimes like well, let's say, I go clothing shopping, sorry, and they'll be like well, you can save 20% on your order today if you open up a credit card with us. And there'll be a lot of times that I'll do that just because I want to save the 20%, and then I really don't have any intention of using it again. If it's a store I don't shop frequently, but I will absolutely do that. But now I also know that that does affect my credit score. It's not always a negative impact on the credit score, because I happen to have I'm very proud of the fact that I have a really good, almost perfect, credit score.  04:39 - Intro (Announcement) Oh, great yeah.  04:40 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) After many, many years.  04:41 - Intro (Announcement) And.  04:41 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I'm like. Well, I don't know, is that going to affect if I open up a credit card? How do you handle the credit cards?  04:46 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) So again, we've talked about this. For me I'm dealing with personal, totally separate than business. So, for example, with my business credit card that I just opened, I knew that I was going to have a lot of really big expenses coming up for the business and because I was planning that, I was looking for a credit card to be able to capitalize on the amount of money I was already planning on spending and had already planned and put that money aside to pay this.  05:14 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Okay, so let me ask you so, for example, not that I'm going to delve that deeply, but I'm thinking was this for travel for a voiceover conference, or maybe new equipment or something new for your studio, or maybe demos right, things that you would invest in, right for your voiceover business?  05:28 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) So, big ticket items like a demo or a voiceover conference would be a good opportunity to maybe look into this Potentially yes, I always give a caveat first with using credit cards at all, and you're talking about your great credit score and I'm proud to have really worked to build my credit score as well. To have a great credit score is making sure that you can pay the credit card off in full at the end of the month.  05:52 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh, thank you for saying that. Yes, I absolutely make it a point to do that every single month, exactly.  05:56 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Because if you don't, then you're actually kind of not really getting all the perks and having the benefits of having this credit card, because then you're paying this huge fee for interest and things like that. So for me, when I'm looking at credit cards be it for personal or for the business I want to make sure that I have the ability to pay it off. It's almost like using the cash that I already had on hand to pay off this bill and I'm getting this huge point value, or I'm getting points along the way.  06:26 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I love that you said that, because I will always, when we talked about our business accounts, our bank accounts, I am so thankful and grateful for that business savings account. Because that business savings account says to me I've got a big ticket item coming, I have the money that I can pay it all off at the end of the month, which I think absolutely is so important. And I'll be the first to admit I mean I have let my credit cards go.  06:48 I mean when I was younger and foolish, I let my credit cards go and have a balance and at one point there was a big balance on it and you end up spending so much money on interest that it's not necessarily an ideal situation, that's for sure, and especially if this is your business and I'm not saying that you have to wait to buy everything until you can pay it off at the end of the month. However, it certainly makes things a whole lot easier.  07:12 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Yeah, it makes things a lot easier and also you're able to plan for what's coming up. So you're being proactive about what you're doing for your business. Talk about, like big-ticket items buying a new booth or a microphone or demos Lord knows, they're not inexpensive and so these are things that you need to plan for, and by planning for it and having the financial resources able to pay for it, then really you're able to utilize other tools to get you a little bit more for the money that you are already planning on spending. You are already planning on spending. This is actually something I learned from a personal finance situation when I was trying to really understand like money and finances and learn about, like, how money works.  07:52 I learned in my own personal life that if I didn't have the cash to spend on something, I was putting myself deeper in a hole by spending additional money on interest because I really didn't have the money to buy that thing in the first place. Now I understand. You know, not everyone has the money to like pay everything off in full. I was at my grocery store and, ann, I will tell you they have pay over time at my grocery store. Oh man.  08:18 It's unreal and I get it. Times are tough and money can be really, really tight. Get it, times are tough and money can be really really tight. But I do think this is an opportunity for planning for certain big expenses that you can utilize, opening up a credit card or using your credit card to be able to get you things like protections for that device. You know, if you use a certain credit card, they may cover it instead of needing to get the extra insurance.  08:43 That's actually a really good point. Yeah, there are so many different things that you can utilize by using a credit card for let's talk about business for the business purchases that you're doing.  08:52 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So warranty like additional warranty or protection, so I wouldn't have even thought that actually, if you buy it with your credit card, does it give you additional protection?  09:00 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Yeah, yeah, and also my boyfriend was telling me that his debit card, his number, got like taken or hacked or something like that, and so they were trying to take money out of his account. But if that happens with a credit card, you're dealing with the bank's money, not your own personal money, so it's a little bit easier to get that money recovered if something would happen with it.  09:20 So there are so many different protections that can happen. And even you said you have one credit card for your business for bookkeeping we talked about bookkeepers and things like that.  09:30 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It's one ledger to be able to cross-reference and say, okay, this is what I spent over the course of time, and I mean I'm getting so excited right when I went to a conference.  09:42 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) I went to J Michael's Euro Retreat. Actually, when you and I met in person to Amsterdam, you know I flew there on points. My flight was totally covered by points and it was accumulation of points that I had spent by utilizing my credit card for all of the business expenses that I pay monthly. My Source Connect, my Zoom accounts, my all of this stuff. It's paid through a credit card. And then I had accumulated enough points to be able to fly for free Business class.  10:11 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It was nice. I love using my credit card to pay for all my monthly subscriptions because, again, my one subscription that I have for personal right, which is I have a subscription, peloton which is like $44 a month, which is some crazy amount, but I use it. So for me it's worth it and it's funny because the amount that I'm getting paid back on that credit card pretty much pays for about half of that. So it's kind of cool. I broke my monthly price down from $44 to like $24. And so it really works out. It's $24 a month. So for me that works. And so, if you can look for those creative ways. But like, how much time do you spend looking for deals or checking on the deals? Because a lot of times I think credit cards will have a deal and then it only lasts for a certain amount of time, right, and then maybe interest rate will go back up or maybe it won't get 3% or 4% on gas purchases. You won't get it anymore. So how on top of it do you have to be?  11:08 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) I think you would need to be on top of it. If that's something On a monthly, probably on a monthly basis. If that's something that you are planning on, for example, opening up a new card, for example, for me, I was ready to open a new card, and so I spent a couple of hours on Google YouTube like just checking around to see what was out there.  11:28 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So what do you Google? So, if you're searching for a new credit card, what do you Google? What's a smart thing to search for?  11:34 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) For this one, I was looking for business credit cards because again, personal and business. So there are some business credit cards you can get. You can just Google best business credit card in the year. And then, for the most part in Google, it'll tell you, like what options are available and it'll even give you potentially some hints if you were to go into incognito mode. When you're looking for new credit cards, the bonus points may be higher than when you just search for it normally.  12:04 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh, that's so interesting because you're right, because your information is in Google anyways. There's the tip of the day, Guys, we can go home now Because I think that's a great tip. Like you would I never would have thought of that to go in incognito mode, because then they're not necessarily going on information that they already have on you for that credit card and you might get better deals.  12:22 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Yeah, exactly.  12:23 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Because more than likely, they know that I have an American Express credit card that I've used online 100 billion times before.  12:29 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) So they're not trying to bring you in as a new customer because they don't know that you are or are not a current customer.  12:35 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So do your searching in incognito mode.  12:38 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) I love that, yeah, and that's actually exactly what happened to me. I was looking for this particular credit card and my first Google search said okay, great, 150,000 points. Wonderful when incognito mode, 250,000 points, same card, same everything. And I was like oh, what can I do with 250,000?  13:02 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) points. I would just say, personally, this doesn't matter. I mean, you could be shopping for studio equipment, right, which I always say. Vioboss has a great studio equipment list that you can certainly click on and buy. But when you are searching for equipment online, I mean you can even like do that in incognito mode, or if you're signing up on a website for the first time, a lot of times they'll give you an offer for, say, 15% on your first order, right, or whatever it might be, and so I might be going back to the same company that I already purchased something and I'll sign up with a different email address so that.  13:35 I can get that discount and that will actually help me to make that decision. Well, all right, I can save 15%. So, yeah, that's good, that's good for me, I'll buy it. So same thing with a credit card, right. So when you're shopping, pretend like you are a new person shopping for that, and I think you'll get a really good deal, yeah, and just look around and shop around Again.  13:54 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) When you're ready to make these big purchases is a good time to start looking to see I'm going to spend the money anyway, what can I get for the amount of money that I'm planning on spending? So that's a really great opportunity. But also there are ways to get deals or to get stuff for the points that you're already accumulating. In some ways it can be just cash back. In other ways it could be travel, which I absolutely love that because I like to travel anyway, and I'm going to be traveling for some of these conferences or staying at hotels.  14:27 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And hotels too, like, if you are, we're a Marriott vacation owner and so we try to stay at Marriott's whenever possible because we can get points with Marriott's, and so then when I go to a voiceover conference, I can use those points theoretically to either have a room if I'm not provided a room already, but if I'm provided a room, I can use the membership that I have to upgrade that room, yeah, and then get maybe a free breakfast or get access, get free water. Gosh knows that we need water all the time.  14:55 So, I'm always looking for that free water deal. I'm like, okay, I am a gold card member or I'm a Marriott club member and so I need my free water today. Right, yeah, so every time I go to VO Atlanta, they don't put water in the rooms anymore. And now they're doing a thing. Well, they do. I'm sorry, Excuse me.  15:15 There was one place that I went where they don't put water in the rooms they now have, like a place where you can fill like a refillable sort of thing, which I think is a great idea so that you don't have to waste the plastic bottles anymore. But at Vio Atlanta, at that hotel I had credit at the store so I would go down and get like the big because I drink a lot of water. I get one of the big bottles of water every day for my coffee machine. I don't love Starbucks coffee, so I'd make my own coffee. But yeah, there's so many cool things you can do with hotels and airfare.  15:40 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) And even having access to like, for example, you said, american Express. You have an American Express card. There is the American Express card that has access to what's called fine hotels and resorts. So you can book through that relationship and I was actually looking at that for a trip that I was taking and you get like free breakfast and early check-in and check-out and you get like an experience credit at that hotel. So you get more just by having the virtue of having this relationship, which then can possibly make your stay a little bit more comfortable.  16:15 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So you're saying the relationship with money can help you get more things?  16:22 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Yes, and have a different quality of life.  16:24 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yes, you can have a good relationship with your credit card, and I think that's a good thing. Have good relationships with your credit card, not bad ones.  16:32 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Exactly, and that actually is a really, really good point, because I grew up and I'll just have a little bit of a transparency moment I grew up hearing credit is bad, credit cards are bad, do not use it, and I actually didn't even get my first credit card until I was in my mid-20s because I was told that I didn't need it because it was bad and nothing good could come from it. But really it's a tool that can be used to enhance your quality of life, to give you more protections, if used properly.  17:03 If used properly, that's the caveat and understanding how it works and what the tool is to be used. That interest, if you're carrying interest, is a tool that can work against you so quickly because that interest rate for credit cards specifically, is so high. And you'll know what it is because you can actually log into your account and see what the interest rate is. This is not secret stuff and see what the interest rate is. It's not, this is not secret stuff. So if you go and you take a look at it and you see, okay, I'm spending 20, 25% interest Every single month, it's working against you. But then we talked about the savings accounts, right, and how much you can make in having interest when you have your money with some of these accounts.  17:48 So it can work for you but also interest, can work against you. If not, this tool is not being used and utilized responsibly and properly for what is needed for.  17:58 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, and it's so hard sometimes when you lose that control. I think it has to do with well, I don't know, maybe we talk about like we're talking about, you know credit cards and all that, and so I think, with all due respect, we do have to say we have to have a respect for it, for the credit card, a respect for the money so that it is being used responsibly, Because when it does get out of control and I will tell you, as a young girl, mine got out of control and I ended up having a huge balance and then spending this atrocious amount of interest on it and I, like you, was told that credit is bad. You should really just pay for everything. You should have the money right. If you don't have the money for it, don't buy it Right, which I agree with right.  18:37 I know where that philosophy is coming from. It was meant for protecting me. However, you still, I think, need to have the money before you buy it, but now you can use the credit card as a tool to get more right and to maybe get more value for that. So I think the idea, the premise, is still the same Make sure you have the money before you buy it. I mean, in an ideal situation you should have the money to buy it, Otherwise maybe not buy it and then use a credit card as a tool that has benefits and perks and all those other things so that you can get more value out of it.  19:11 Absolutely, yeah, yeah. So what sorts of things, danielle, do we have to watch out for when maybe we're using credit cards for our business or shopping for credit cards in our business? Are there any red flags out there? What do you?  19:21 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) recommend? I recommend having a business credit card, specifically one that is for business. You can get like what would be a personal credit card in your business's name, but that goes back to sort of mixing the business and personal. There are business credit cards for a reason. I would utilize a business credit card when you're looking to open up a credit card for your business, and it does need to be in your business's name.  19:50 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yes, I agree, I have both a business and a personal. Yeah, american Express and Costco. By the way, I have both a business Costco card and a personal Costco card.  19:58 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Yeah, so just whatever is business and personal, they are completely separate entities. Your business, if you run your business in a certain way with like a LLC, for example, it has its own federal identification number. Yeah, so like it's really a separate entity. So if you're going to be looking for a credit card for your business, look for business credit cards, and I have found that business credit cards will offer certain protections for things that we utilize, things for business for. I even saw American Express Platinum has like a credit for the Adobe Creative Cloud, and so if you utilize, you know, adobe Audition, for example, then maybe that's something you know you want to use it for. So, looking for things for a business, looking for a business credit card, is the first thing that I would take a look at.  20:46 Second of all, be prepared to get a new credit card if you do have like large purchases that you're already planning for, going back to essentially having the cash on hand to justify the amount that you're going to be spending, so that you do not start paying interest on this card that you were trying to get you know value from?  21:05 And the other things that I would look at are is there an annual fee for the card Because you are spending money to have this card, and are you able to justify that annual fee with the benefits or the credits or the perks that you're getting by having this card? And there are plenty of cards out there that do not have an annual fee, and that's something to think about.  21:24 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I was just going to say. It used to be a thing where almost all the cards had an annual fee and then they started. And again, I think it's all a sell right, it's all a sell mechanism right. They started most of the ones. I won't even entertain the idea of one that has a fee, unless, of course, the benefits outweigh, and I haven't had a card with a fee for many years. I don't know what about you.  21:45 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) I have several cards that have fees.  21:48 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So then that means that the benefits, though, the benefits though are outweighing those fees that you pay every year. Okay, and especially, I think you're going to find that in a business credit card sense right the fees versus a personal card, because I think a lot of times personal cards people are looking for no fees right, they're looking to get the best deal possible. But for businesses, I think companies want to say, all right, for this fee we'll offer additional protection for blah, blah, blah. And it's very interesting because I never actually looked into. I have an American Express business credit card and just because of the simple fact that I got money back every month was enough for me, and I never really looked at beyond that what it offers. And so now I'm going to go back and look at the fine print and see what protections it offers and warranties and maybe additional deals that I'm not taking advantage of Exactly.  22:37 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) I mean one of my business credit cards offers protections on rental cars, so it offers that like you don't have to buy that insurance Exactly.  22:45 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So really which is a huge fee these days Exactly. Oh my gosh.  22:49 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) So, taking a look, it kind of becomes a little bit of a matrix of like okay, this covers this and this card will cover these things and everything else. And, like I said at the beginning of this episode, I get really nerdy about these things. So you know, I have a spreadsheet about all the different things that my different credit cards can provide for me in terms of bonuses and value.  23:10 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And now do you have more than one business card?  23:12 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) I now have a second business card. I just this week opened my second business credit card. Like you, I prefer to have everything streamlined on one card.  23:22 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Sure, but I couldn't say no to 250,000 points, I mean yeah, no, I get you and those points will apply. And then you know what? Here's the deal If you do open up an extra card and then you find out that it's no longer serving you with that value, then you're done with it. There's typically no penalty for not using it.  23:38 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) What I would say to that and for me this is always my calculus, personal or business opening up a new card is is there a downgrade path? So you don't necessarily want to close the account because that may work against you. But is there a way to go from a paid card to downgrade to a no-fee card, and so I always think about that when I'm looking at getting a new credit card. Is there a downgrade path to a no-fee card that I can open up instead?  24:07 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Now you just made me think of something different. Now, when I bought a car again, I was fortunate enough to have money in the bank and I could have paid cash for that car. However, I opted to put half down and pay the rest of the half on the finance plan, because the finance plan was 1%. I had 1% and it was like literally, I think, over the course of seven years, I paid $500 or something, I don't know. It was like a total of $500 to do that, and the reason why I did that was to gain better credit, because if you don't have any credit, you don't have any credit.  24:44 You know what I mean you can't get good credit if you don't have any credit. And so when my husband and I got married, we were trying to consolidate credit cards and pay off debt and get that out of under the way, but we realized that you do need to have some credit cards in order to keep good credit and for people to entertain business loans to you. So having good credit is an important thing for your business and, as a matter of fact, I happen to know that when we were buying a home and myself being self-employed right, they looked at my credit card. They looked at my business credit card because they wanted to see what do I pay on a monthly basis? How much money am I putting out? That was part of my certification that I could be part of that mortgage that we were going to get for this house, and so having good credit actually was working against me.  25:45 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) So what I was told and what I understood to be true about just avoiding credit was not going to serve me for the things that I wanted, in the long run, to buy a house or to get a really nice apartment or qualify for certain things, it requires having credit, and not having any at all was not helping me, and so utilizing credit cards as a tool and respecting it and paying off the credit cards in full or paying on time those kinds of things really do help. So not having credit at all really can hurt you, but utilizing it improperly can hurt you even more.  26:16 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So, bosses, use your credit wisely to invest in your business and to get extra value. So great discussion. Danielle, thank you so much for joining me today and again, I look forward to our sessions all the time. I look forward to talking with you about money bosses out there. Great big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl. You too can connect and network like bosses. Find out more at IPDTLcom. You guys have an amazing week and we will both see you next week. Bye.  26:48 - Intro (Announcement) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, Anne Ganguza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at vobosscom and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via IPDTL.   

SummaryCarolina and Vidhya reflect on individualism and interrogate how it shows up in our personal lives and is built into our work—including NPIC and evaluation's training, practice, and literature as well as existing field-building and change efforts.⁠⁠Episode 7 TRANSCRIPTNotes02:17 “Utopia” asperceived or portrayed by dominating forces11:55 Concentric circles still center the individual and nuclear family, unlike the more web-like nature of many kinship structures around the world, including South Asia and West Africa.21:45 Others may counter that democratic governance structures had existed among peoples in Africa, the Americas, and Asia before the European Enlightenment. See more⁠here⁠.29:22 The programs that Roosevelt and Johnson instituted were systematically eroded throughout the 1980s as “personal responsibility” replaced “rugged individualism.” See morehere.38:36 The setup is that colonial and capitalist destruction of our lands, economies, and social structures leads us to seek opportunities to fulfill our dreams—or simply survive—elsewhere. See morehere.41:37 The artist did not want to ruin her child's innocence—it was an act of resistance and demonstration of sovereignty to have her child grow up in a way that was not defined by colonization and racism. See morehere.ResourcesThe Origins of “Pull Yourself Up By Your Bootstraps”The Dust BowlHuck's Ironic CircleIndividualism and Opposition to Redistribution in the USThere's No Such Thing as a “Self-Made Man”BootstrappedThe Role of Complexity Studies in the Emerging “Processual” WorldviewA Processual Approach to Political ViolenceTime and ProcessHistorical Determinism RevisitedSocial, Political and Cultural Dimensions of HealthUnderstanding the Connection Between Political and Social Determinants of HealthBronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems TheorySystems Thinking and RaceKinship pathways: Nurturing and Sustaining Resilient, Responsible, and Respected Indigenous EvaluatorsThe Moral Philosophy of IndividualismIndividualism, Innovation, and Long-Run GrowthIndividualism: A Deeply American PhilosophyPolitical PhilosophyIdeologies of the IndividualDefining SocialismCommunist ManifestoThe Interstate agePlessy's LegacyLand Acquisition and DispossessionThe Short‑Lived Promise of ‘40 Acres and a Mule'Natural RightsIndividualism vs CollectivismAge of ReasonThe Declaration of IndependenceJohn Stuart MillUnderstanding Power through Advocacy, Organizing, and ActivismLabor MovementThe 5 Basic Steps to Organizing a UnionDirect Action OrganizingThe Right to StrikeHistory of Successful BoycottsWhat Makes a Successful Protest?The Fight for RightsHerbert Hoover SpeechStock Market Crash of 1929From Rugged Individualism to Rugged CooperationRoosevelt and the New DealThe Rise of Antislavery ThoughtsYears of Adventure 1874-1914The rise and fall of Andrew MellonHow Three Families Shielded their Fortunes from Taxes for GenerationsWhy Social Security was the Cornerstone of FDR's New DealGreat Society Programs, Definition & LBJThe Unusual Ways Western Parents Raise ChildrenNorth American Culture: Undermining BreastfeedingThis is the Closest Thing We've Ever Had to a Hillary Clinton Political ManifestoMargaret ThatcherHealth Promotion and the Knowledge-Attitude-Behavior ContinuumSocial ContractExploring African Relational Ethic of UbuntuMarv AlkinEvaluation RootsEvaluation Roots: An International PerspectiveManifest DestinyEvaluation Roots: A Wider Perspective of Theorists' Views and InfluencesKinnectEmbedding the Graduate Education Diversity Internship Program Within a Larger SystemMusic“Inspired” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) ⁠⁠Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0⁠⁠Contact:⁠⁠https://themay13group.net⁠⁠⁠Carolina:https://www.linkedin.com/in/carodela⁠⁠⁠Vidhya:https://www.linkedin.com/in/vidhyashanker⁠⁠Donate!https://the-may-13-group.raiselysite.com

Discover the art of developing self-awareness and confronting the illusions we create both personally and professionally. Join Anne and Lau as they tackle the challenge of overcoming self-doubt, emphasizing resilience over inherent talent. By embracing our realities and addressing the falsehoods we tell ourselves, you'll learn how profound self-awareness can shape our lives. The BOSSES discuss how trusted companions and self-reflection can shine a light on our paths, leading to greater authenticity and success. Explore practical techniques to turn setbacks into opportunities for growth. We discuss the delicate balance between trusting external advice and listening to personal intuition. 00:00 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) You know your voice has the power to move, to persuade, to inspire. Imagine taking that power to its fullest potential. With guidance and expert production, I can help elevate your voice to new heights, making every voice script resonate with your audience. Let's empower your voice together, one session at a time. Find out more at anneganguzza.com.  00:26 - Intro (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss a VO boss. Now let's welcome your host, anganguza. A VO Boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza.  00:45 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey everyone, welcome to the VO Boss podcast and the Boss Superpower Series. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and I'm here with my amazing, wonderful friend and co-host, ms Lau Lapides.  00:59 - Lau Lapides (Guest) Thank, you so much, I'm already getting verklempt. Incredible to be here, as always, love it Law.  01:06 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I love chatting with you and I have a very interesting topic, I think, today.  01:12 Because, I love me some Peloton.  01:14 So when I'm not Pilate-ing, I am Peloton-ing, or I am pre-coring, but I'm Peloton-ing a lot and I have a favorite instructor. I have a couple of favorite instructors, but one of them for those Peloton people who know, cody I love Cody. I was spinning away and Cody said you know, my therapist asked me how do you know when you're lying to yourself, or do you know that you're lying to yourself? And I thought, wow, what a great question. First of all because it really makes you kind of stop in your tracks and think Honestly, laura, throughout my life there are many times that you kind of know, right, you kind of know when you're lying to yourself. Maybe you're in some form of denial, but you're lying to yourself. And I think that we need to delve deep into this Lau today and ask our bosses do you know when you're lying to yourself and what are the stakes in that and how can you get past that? Because I think that to be productive and to really be successful in this business, you need to stop lying to yourself.  02:20 - Lau Lapides (Guest) Yeah, and I think that there has to be at least a brief bullet hit list of how do you deal with that, Like, how do you even know? How do you start to know what are some of the dead giveaways that you may be lying to yourself? The first one that comes to my mind is do you have or are you aware of? I think you have it, but are you aware of your inner voice? Are you aware of it, do you?  02:43 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) hear it? Oh, I hear mine all the time. That's a very interesting question, because I actually thought everybody hears their inner voice.  02:51 - Intro (Announcement) No.  02:51 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) But I actually have read that scientific studies say that not everybody has an inner voice. My inner voice talks to me all the time. Oh my gosh, all the time. What about?  02:59 - Lau Lapides (Guest) you. Yeah, mine is very strong and very loud and I already know all the justifications and lies I tell myself when I hear the voice in order to do something. And that's the next question I have is once you spot that inner voice, what are the common hyperbolic statements or lies, or fibs? That you're coming up with that. Feel really good to you to say in order to void out that voice.  03:27 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, first of all, what if you're someone who doesn't have an inner voice? Is that something that you can assess? Can you make an inner voice come out? Maybe people don't define it as an inner voice. Maybe they define it as a belief system, right? Maybe?  03:40 - Lau Lapides (Guest) they hide it, Maybe they bury it, Maybe they've been shamed to listen to it. There's a lot of reasons why I think people don't discover or find their inner voice. I think one of the things that I've always done I always chalked it up to just being a creative ensemble type of person but I think it is helpful in a sounding board of understanding what is the objective truth for you and your circumstance if you can't discover it on your own through your inner voice.  04:08 One of the things that I find helpful is surrounding yourself with really incredible people, brilliant people that you know and trust and feel good about sharing certain things with that you can soundboard with and see is it matching what you may be saying internally or not? Because there is a community truth about how people see you, hear you and, especially if they know you, they know your thought process right so they can sort of catch you when you're going off track.  04:37 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, yeah, it depends on life situations, right, I'm going to say the first inner voice is the truth, right? The inner voice, really, I think, is your truth, and do you listen to your inner voice, meaning, do you know when you're lying, do you know when you're lying to yourself, that kind of thing? So I think that's when you're denying that inner voice from having any say in kind of the truth, or you're in a denial of the truth, or you're in a denial of acknowledging that the truth is going. We're getting really deep here, but you're acknowledging.  05:08 - Lau Lapides (Guest) Go right there, I'm right with you.  05:10 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) You're acknowledging that you're not ready for the truth right now. Right, you're not ready for it, because to get through that truth or to listen to that truth may require an effort that is like gargantuan and superhuman to get beyond that truth. And this could be anything. It could be personal, professional. I mean, of course, personal affects professional. But I'm going to kind of focus on the professional, having had an inner voice that I denied through personal issues because I wasn't ready to face them. And so for me it's kind of like you get really good at telling yourself lies, you get really good at justifying why you're not listening to that inner voice. Yes, because it keeps you safe. Right, it keeps you safe in a lot of ways, or it keeps you from I don't know why. Is it that you don't want to look or do the work that's required to get through the truth and to align with the truth?  06:03 - Lau Lapides (Guest) Well, there could be I mean for psychological reasons, lots of reasons, but I think one deeply psychological common reason that I see in a lot of actors, artists, voiceovers and women is the sabotaging effect of arguing with yourself that you cannot be good enough.  06:22 It's not possible for you to get this successfully done because of X, y, z, you're not worthy, right, you're not worthy. So therein lies your inner voice. But is the inner voice being honest and truthful, or is the inner voice a sabotage voice? Yeah, yeah, absolutely that. You've created as like an alter ego to help you disqualify, get out of situations you know, qualify things and get you off the hook. I think artists do that. An awful lot is to say all the reasons why they cannot do something versus why they can do something, and after a while of telling yourself those lies, you actually believe them.  07:00 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah yeah, I'm not getting work because, right yeah, talk professionally, right Okay, I'm not'm not getting work because, right, you'll talk professionally, right Okay.  07:05 I'm not a successful voice actor because right, no one's going to hire me because, right, I'm not talented enough, my voice is not good enough, I don't have the right equipment, right, and so therefore, does that allow you to? I've spent all this money and I've gotten nowhere, right? So are you going to quit? Because you're listening right to those lies that you're telling yourself, or the inner voices, your inner self is you right? So we're talking to ourselves. So inner self is you, and inner self could be telling lies that you fabricated.  07:40 - Lau Lapides (Guest) Or it's the voices that have been with you over your lifetime that are the cacophony of voices that are not accurate or true. Yeah, that you've believed. You've gone down that road and sort of believed that that's who.  07:53 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That's the role that you are. They've turned into your inner voice, right.  07:59 - Lau Lapides (Guest) And they've turned into your inner voice, where you pick up the things that you believe that people think or feel about you maybe from your home life or your friendship life or whatever that aren't necessarily an objective truth in the larger world, in the larger context of things, and that, I think, is very, very common Also, especially with women. I think just wanting to please, just being a pleaser, is a big driving force in not listening to your inner voice.  08:27 Yeah, You're saying, oh I'll just, yeah, they want me to do it this way, I'll just do it this way. Or they're asking me for this, I'll just give it to them and putting your common sense, putting that to the side for the higher purpose of pleasing, yeah, absolutely.  08:43 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I mean, that is so, so tough, and I'll tell you what, and I'm not getting into a political discussion, but I will say that external factors also play a part in that inner voice, right.  08:56 I feel like the nation is tired. Female right and we've had discussions on being a female in this industry or being a female in male-dominated industries. I'm tired. I've been fighting for a long time. I've been fighting for a long time and the inner voice wants to say, right, I fight because I believe certain things to be true and that is my truth. Right, but then the other people feeding into the inner voice you're not good enough or you know what? We're never going to make a difference. Now do I feel like? Am I going back to step zero? And what is it that I need to resolve internally, with my internal voice? That's going to help me to deal right with the external factors that are flying at me in every second of the day, and that's important.  09:45 - Lau Lapides (Guest) That's an important factor. It is every second of the day and that's important. That's an important factor because when you think about either your parents or whoever raised you when you were young, you're like a little recorder. You're like a sponge. You're picking up language and sound and cadence and everything. You're picking that up from the people around you and that's implanted in you. It's very hard to get that out and stop thinking that and doing that. So it's really again compartmentalizing. Okay, what my lived and learned experience was and still is good, bad and ugly, which everyone experiences. And then where am I as a professional in what I'm choosing to experience and who I'm creating?  10:24 Someone was telling an anecdote about this and I thought it was brilliant and he said I get annoyed. He's like in his 40s. He's a professional, whatever it was, like a psychiatrist or something. He said I go home and my parents treat me exactly like I'm 12 again, they talk to me as if I'm 12. Mine do Right and you got to love that right. But it annoys him to death because he says I have a family, I have children, I have a successful career. It's like they haven't graduated to that level. But that's where I'm saying you have to compartmentalize all these players in your life that speak to you in a certain way, sure, that code that linguistically code shift right, that say it's okay, they knew me at different times in my life good times, bad times, young, older. Now I have to amalgamate. What does that all mean in my voice? In my voice as to who I am and what I want to be? That's hard. That's the next step. Yeah, that's the next step.  11:21 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I mean it's interesting because, as we are talking about the inner voice, is the inner voice really what you think or is it what others think, right? Or is it a combination of both of them? And also, is your inner voice something that you're doing to escape responsibility or escape owning up to a fact that maybe you haven't done everything you can to be successful in voice acting? And then, if that's the case, right, you have to try to ask yourself why, right, why am I afraid of success? And that's a big thing, I mean, look, you can be just as afraid of success, if not more, as a failure, right? Are you afraid to fail? Are you afraid of success? And I'll tell you what. Are you afraid of hard work? Yeah, and once you're there, whatever you've deemed to be your success, right. What's stopping you from growing more than that? Or are you complacent?  12:09 For me, my personality is I cannot be stagnant. I cannot. I need to continue to grow my business. I need to continually evolve. If I don't, I feel like I'm failing, and for me, that's the motivation I need to push myself. Now, am I afraid of hard work? Me, no, I am not.  12:25 But some people might be, some people might think, well, I just want, I just I'm tired, I've got a lot of other things happening and voice acting should not have been this hard for me, right In the beginning. I'm the first person to admit voice acting was hard for me, and it was one of those things where I said to myself God, like, maybe I shouldn't be doing it. If it's this hard, right, shouldn't it just come naturally? Shouldn't I just have a God-given talent? Shouldn't this just flow for me? And over years of continually saying, well, I'm not used to failing For me myself. My personality is like to just keep going until I don't fail, figuring out as I go, I ultimately decided, yeah, damn it, it's hard, voice acting is hard. I think it's very rare that you have anybody that has just an innate talent for reading words off a page and making them like sound amazing.  13:09 - Lau Lapides (Guest) I got to be honest. I don't think anyone in any of our entertainment profession has it easy.  13:15 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I don't. I don't either. I really don't. Just because you and I have been in the industry for many, many, many years right and we've been deemed successful, doesn't mean that we feel successful all the time right, doesn't mean that we feel successful all the time right or that we consider ourselves successful at any given moment.  13:29 - Lau Lapides (Guest) No, that's like an illusion that people want to think is a truism, is a truth. When it's not a human truth, it's not a human thing. Maybe it's a robot thing, but it's not a human thing Because we're always going through situations in our life that we're reacting to, as well as human beings in the world that we're reacting to as well as human beings in the world that we're reacting to as well.  13:50 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And things change.  13:51 - Lau Lapides (Guest) And things change. But I always say, like, what's the difference? What's the main difference between someone who's young and amateur early stage and someone who is a vetted professional? What's the main difference? And it's not talent, it's the fact that we all get down. We all fall down. We all's not talent, it's the fact that we all get down, we all fall down, we all get in trouble, but we're able to get up, brush ourself off and move on.  14:12 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Get back on the horse and make use of that.  14:13 - Lau Lapides (Guest) Yeah, really make use of that, whereas many are not able to do that. It's holding them down, it's holding them back. There's that stone right on top of them that they're not able to move. So that voice is like as heavy as any equipment that could be out there. It's heavier. It can be either a burden or it can be enlightenment.  14:33 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It's up to you. I love what you're saying about the failure Again, like if you failed and you've allowed that inner voice to say I am a failure, right, without taking benefit from the fail, I'd say get back up on the horse, turn the fail around and spin that into positive things. What positive things can you take from that right?  14:53 So, if there is the dialogue happening where I'm not good enough right, I failed, I didn't get that gig right, I was not chosen right, they didn't pick my voice, I didn't nail the audition. Take that failure and I need you to reframe it right and restructure it so that it becomes a learning moment that can be turned into success. I mean, I think that's really like how do you know when you're lying to yourself? Acknowledge it first. I think that's first and foremost.  15:19 Once you acknowledge it right. You then have the power to take that truth and take that knowledge and reframe it, and then reframe it to successful.  15:30 - Lau Lapides (Guest) Reframe it and how do you use, how do you utilize that reframing to be helpful in your life and in others' lives? So it becomes wisdom. It doesn't just sit in a place where it's a bad experience or it's an experience that was a great experience. It becomes a nugget of wisdom for you.  15:49 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That becomes your proverb of how you live your life and how you utilize that in your life and we're speaking, so I think, so ethereal, and I want to kind of bring this down to like okay, I might have a student who's come to me and said well, I spent thousands and thousands of dollars on this demo and now everybody tells me it's a piece of garbage and I guess I just didn't know or I failed or that's it, that's why I'm not successful. So I always try to tell people look, life is a learning journey, right, and what sort of energy is positive or helpful? If you're going to sit there and berate yourself for getting a demo that maybe some people don't like, right, or that you don't like or doesn't serve you, that energy is wasted on yourself, like nobody else really cares. To, be quite honest, right, turn that, reframe it around, say I've made an investment, I have now learned and know that maybe I wasn't ready to make that demo.  16:38 - Lau Lapides (Guest) Maybe it's learning money for you. Maybe you had to learn that Exactly that's your investment money for your business.  16:43 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Absolutely. So you turn that around and you learn, right, you go get yourself a different coach. You learn until you feel because I believe, right, I believe we all know and then say, well, I trusted my coach. Well, I think there's also that inner voice, right, that says I may be not ready, but I'm going to put my trust in my coach and I get it. Guys, I get it. But also I think there's an inner voice in you that says maybe I wasn't ready for that right, but my coach says I am. And so you didn't listen to that voice? Right, you don't know that you're lying to yourself, right, when you're saying something doesn't feel, right, I don't feel ready.  17:17 - Lau Lapides (Guest) That's the lie comes in, that's the pleasing, because you want to please your coach, you want to please your whoever, and say are you happy with me, are you proud of me? Did I do what you wanted me to do? Yeah, right. And that's where you have to start saying okay, they're my trusted advisor. I pay them for that, absolutely. But I can't put them all in one basket?  17:38 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yes, exactly, instead of being completely angry and saying it's all their fault, right, In reality. Right, you need to listen to that voice that, hopefully, I mean maybe you did completely put all your trust in them, but then again, now that you've learned right, now that you've learned from it, now you know, maybe I won't put all my trust in my coaches and I will take that little voice in my head that said maybe you're not ready. Right, they said I was, but I don't feel ready and I didn't tell them about it so that they could reason with me and say no, really you are, or maybe you're not right. That's just the demo readiness. Right, like, what about the audition? What about the person that auditioned and didn't get the gig?  18:21 - Lau Lapides (Guest) There's so many lies that we can tell ourselves about this right. Oh, we somehow always believe that voice.  18:24 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) We always listen to that voice and believe that voice, Right? Oh well, all right.  18:31 - Intro (Announcement) I voice. We always listen to that voice and believe that voice, right?  18:31 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh well, all right, I did the audition and I must have sucked, right, I sucked, so I didn't get the job. There's the lie. There's the lie that you tell yourself Now. You don't know, right, you don't know that you sucked.  18:34 I mean, maybe you do, maybe internally, you kind of know, oh, I haven't really coached a lot, maybe I should get somebody else's opinion to see, because I haven't developed an ear yet. So maybe it's something that somebody else can help me with. Maybe I don't suck, maybe I just need somebody else to give me some tips, or I need some additional coaching, right, or I nailed it, and then I heard the commercial and God, I can't believe they got hired Right. So there's the lie. How did they get hired? You know what I mean, and so how are you resolving that?  19:06 - Lau Lapides (Guest) Right, Right, I think the discipline to say, okay, I want to always pay attention to the inner voice inside. But a very famous neurosurgeon said this and I thought it was so brilliant I believe it was David Amen, he's like on the speaking circuit as a neurosurgeon. He said believe it or not, you don't have to believe everything you think. And I was like whoa, astonishing, Because we somehow think if we think it then it must be true. Yeah, agreed, but we're forgetting all the immense biases, experiences, sort of mental slurs that we go through in our life that help formulate those thoughts. So that's not to say that you don't understand an inner truth or have an inner voice that can't lead you in the right direction. It's just to say you don't have to believe everything you're thinking.  19:57 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, you can manifest. I'm a big believer in manif. Yeah, you can manifest. I'm a big believer in manifesting. You can create. You can create with your thoughts. You can re-envision, you can reinvent, you can redirect. I absolutely believe that, with your thoughts Right, like they are so, so powerful, and of course, that audition that you didn't get right, and then you're like, oh, I must be no good, don't believe that. Right, you're telling yourself aloud and think here are all the possibilities that Ann and Lau have said a hundred times in an audition demolition. There's many, many reasons why people get the job or don't get the job right, and not all of them are directly under your control. I mean absolutely. So maybe you didn't suck, you are good and that's okay, and it's okay that you didn't get the job right. So you audition, you forget it, right, and ultimately you don't believe the lie, that you're telling yourself that you're not good enough for it and whatever you do, you must discipline yourself to not shed and forecast everything you're thinking.  20:55 - Lau Lapides (Guest) They call it oversharing, but it really is forecasting what exactly is in your mind and you're doing that to purge yourself of guilt. Oh yeah, oh, let's collect 500 for this hour. I'm telling you, this is like good stuff. Don't purge on other people. Don't go through that catharsis. That's a private journey for you, Because guess what the casting director or the business person in front of you is thinking why did you just say that? I don't see that at all. What's happening? Are you okay? Like literally they're thinking, are you okay? Because you're forecasting something onto me that I don't even know what you're talking about Right Now? You and I are coaches. We catch that stuff and we try to remedy that. But you do it on the wrong people. You can never go back and make that impression again on them because they'll always. I remember Barbara Corcoran. I look up to her a lot as a mentor in business and she's a more mature woman.  21:51 on Shark Tank if you ever watch Shark Tank, yeah absolutely she says I always Rolodex in my mind, whether you agree with this or not. I just thought it was very interesting the way she put this. Whenever someone, especially a woman, breaks down crying in front of me when they're pitching their product, I always kind of roll a dex that in my mind that that's not someone I can work with. Now, that's not to say that you can't cry. It's not to say you can't feel emotion. You should feel real emotion and not hide that. However, when you forecast and overshare those emotions with people you don't have relationships with yet, they Rolodex you, they compartmentalize you in a place where they say I don't know what they're telling themselves.  22:30 I don't know what they're thinking and feeling, but it's not my experience of them, so from a business standpoint it can be very harmful.  22:37 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, that translates right into social media Just saying right your responses, right Whether people respond like share or not, right your response. Is somebody's going to Rolodex that response in their brain and say I don't think I can work with that person based upon what they just said. Happens every day, every moment of the day.  22:58 - Intro (Announcement) Yeah, all the time, all the time.  22:59 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And so understand that as well. Right, and so if you are oversharing, right Again, in a professional setting, especially, like you said, I think the key is with people that you do not have relationships with yet, right, People that do not know do not know your perspective where that's coming from, right. And even if they do know where that's coming from, where that's coming from right, and even if they do know where that's coming from, they may Rolodex it and say I don't think I can work with that person. Right, and I get that, and we get that too as coaches oh yeah, oh, I can't work with that person.  23:28 - Lau Lapides (Guest) No, I can't work with that. And that's like you trying to find the jury. That's the jury, that's the audience, that's the of people that will agree with you on what you're saying. That's not the place to do it Right, and it's not even an objective truth in any way. It's just a whole bunch of people who may be agreeing with you on whatever you're saying. So you have to be careful. You have to like be careful in who you trust with your inner voice and with your inner self.  23:56 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So I'm going to make this educated guess that when I ask the question, how do you know when you're lying to yourself? Right, I think you have to start with. How do you know when you're lying to yourself, when something is not necessarily going the way that you want it to right? I think that's one telltale way to start really looking inward and asking okay, so why are things not happening? Why am I not getting the gig? Why am I not getting the gig? Why am I not getting any business? Why am I not successful? Or why do I feel like I'm not successful? Asking yourself those questions and just sitting quiet in the moment and really thinking about what are the steps to achieve success? Why are you not getting that gig?  24:33 Well, to get the gig, certain factors have to take place. You have to have talent right, but not always right. You have to have talent right, but not always right. You have to have talent, you have to be in the right demographic, you have to be in the head of the casting director, which none of us are. So there's certain factors that are beyond our control. And when that happens, we have to also put in our head that there are certain factors beyond our control. So maybe we didn't get the gig because we have no control.  24:55 The daughter of a close friend. They gave the job to her, versus they changed directions and went with a male instead of female, or whatever. It is right. Understand that there are things beyond your control and that's okay, rather than I am not good enough, right, right, and taking things. Why am I not getting more work, right? Why am I not getting more work?  25:14 Well, sit down and take a look at. How much coaching have you had, right? How much training have you had? Are you as skilled as you can be? Are you marketing yourself as much as you can be? Why, if not, are you not marketing yourself, right? Well, you don't have the know-how, you don't have the money to invest in a marketer. You don't have the money, right. Why are these things happening? And really sit down and just I would say, write it down. Right, write it down. What are the things that you're not achieving, that you want to achieve, and what are the steps that you need to get there, or what are the conditions in which, when they're met, you will have success in that or not success? And then really sit down and ask yourself to be truthful right. How much of this is under your control? How much of this is other people saying this is the way it is and influencing your inner voice, or how much of it is your own self-sabotage?  26:04 - Lau Lapides (Guest) Yeah, and what you're really talking about here, which is, I think, the nugget here. The bottom line takeaway is hold yourself accountable to finding your voice, listening to it and understanding it right. So, for instance, if there's danger for you, if there's an instinctive acknowledgement that you're making, don't just ignore it and do it anyway. Don't just ignore it and overlook it anyway. You oftentimes will go wrong when you do that right, or when someone gives you feedback and you have to actively listen and absorb that feedback, and they say 5, 6, 10, 15 times. I don't know why you just said that. To me. It's not true or accurate. You should stop doing that. Stop doing it Like you've got to stop the behaviors.  26:50 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yes, now you go to external sources. Right, when you've listened to your inner voice and your inner voice is not helpful, right, that's when you turn to your accountability buddies, your trusted colleagues.  27:01 - Intro (Announcement) Or sabotaging.  27:02 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) yes, Right, your trusted colleagues, and you bounce that off of them, and then that is what's going to help, hopefully, reframe right. You're lying to yourself, right, and your inner voice that can be lying to you or sabotaging you, whatever that is, wow. That was deep. By the way, vaughn and I are not we are not in the business of mental health, however. This is just based on our own experiences, so, please, take what we say with a grain of salt.  27:28 We're sharing our experiences to hopefully help you with yours, because we are not therapists, so please keep that in mind, and we're just here to share.  27:39 - Lau Lapides (Guest) It's very true. And I have to say, if you're in business and studying this kind of work over years and years and years, you'll find that the more quality the script, the more quality the copy, the more they have something in common with great writers, great thinkers, great philosophers, great psychologists right? So we don't need to be like a clinical psychologist to understand the analysis of a line from Shakespeare. Like we can figure that out at a certain point and say how does that connect to my life, my lived experience, how does that connect to me uniquely as a person? Is that part of my voice and I mean my inner voice and my mechanical voice as well? Yeah Right, and that's what we call finding our voice. Voice and my mechanical voice as well? Yeah Right, and that's what we call finding our voice. Like finding your authentic voice means like doing that work, doing that homework.  28:25 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Good stuff. Oh my gosh, Woo Woo. I'm tired now. My inner voice needs a break. We need a latte after that, or something I know. All right. Well, before my latte, I'm going to give a great big shout out to our sponsor, IPDTL. You too can connect and network like bosses. Find out more at IPDTLcom Lau. I love you. It's been amazing.  28:46 - Lau Lapides (Guest) I love you.  28:47 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And my inner voice says I love Lau, I love Annie and I love Lau and I love myself and I love my inner voice, even when it misbehaves.  28:56 - Lau Lapides (Guest) And we love all of you listening, and that's why we share these inner thoughts.  28:59 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yes, Thank you guys. You have an amazing week and we will see you next week. Bye.  29:06 - Intro (Announcement) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, Anne Ganguza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at vobosscom and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via IPDTL.   

Ce mardi 4 février, le soulagement des patrons à l'annonce du budget malgré plus d'imposition que d'économies, a été abordé par Rafik Smati, président directeur général du Groupe Aventers, Xavier Timbeau, directeur principal de l'OFCE, et Stéphanie Delestre, fondatrice de Volubile, dans l'émission Les Experts, présentée par Nicolas Doze sur BFM Business. Retrouvez l'émission du lundi au vendredi et réécoutez la en podcast.

It's Tuesday, January 28th, A.D. 2025. This is The Worldview in 5 Minutes heard on 125 radio stations and at www.TheWorldview.com.  I'm Adam McManus. (Adam@TheWorldview.com) By Kevin Swanson Brazil's Leftist president a liability Brazil's Left-wing president is not doing well in the polls. Luiz Inácio da Silva's ratings have dipped to 47%. Lula's deficits are running 9.5% of the Brazilian Gross Domestic Product which is the measure of the total value of goods and services produced in a country over a year. The Brazil Real, which is worth 16 cents in America, has dropped 16% in reference to the U.S. dollar since he took office. The Real took the dubious award for the worst-performing major currency in 2024, reports The Economist.  Brazil's debt to GDP also increased from 71% to 78% in 2024 Milei's conservative policies boosted Argentina's economy Meanwhile, just south of Brazil, Argentina's government under President Javier Milei has successfully reduced the nation's Debt to GDP ratio in 2024 from 155% to 112%. Milei's fiscally conservative policies also improved the nation's Gross Domestic Product slightly, year over year. South Africa seizing private property without compensation And, last week, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa signed a bill into law that would allow the national government to seize private property without having to pay compensation. The confiscations will be allowed where it is “just and equitable and in the public interest.” The radical measure has fired up disunity among parties in the new South African government. Power shifted a bit in South African government after last year's election. The African National Congress and the South African Communist Party dropped from 68% to 49.7% control over the nation's government. Redistribution of the land has not yielded good results thus far for the South African people.  Business Day reported that “On-farm beneficiaries earn little-to-no income, and the majority of beneficiaries seek employment on surrounding commercial farms instead of actively farming their own land. Where land reform farms are in operation, they operate below their full commercial potential and have a strong bias towards subsistence agriculture. Across sampled sites, crop production had decreased by 79% since conversion to land reform.” God's law states plainly, “Thou shalt not steal.” (Exodus 20:15) Trump's administration arrested 2,500 illegals since Thursday The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has already arrested 2,500 illegal immigrants since last Thursday, 956 on Sunday, reports One America News. This isn't the first time the United States has deported illegal immigrants. The previous administration averaged about 311 deportations per day, according to ICE reports.  About one-third of deportations in 2023 were individuals facing serious charges or convictions of crime as well as 237 known terrorists.  Democrats oppose protecting baby survivors of botched abortions The U.S. Congress still has proven itself incapable of taking the most basic pro-life position against the greatest evil in American society today. Republican Senator James Lankford's  Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act failed again last Thursday, as 47  Democrats voted against allowing the bill to proceed in the Senate. Listen to what Republican Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota said about the Democrat opposition. THUNE: “We should all be able to agree that a baby born alive after an attempted abortion must be protected. And yet, I fully expect that later today, my Democrat colleagues will vote no on this legislation. “They will vote against protection for a living, breathing newborn baby simply because that child has been born alive after an attempted abortion. Why are they going to vote like that, Mr. President?  After all, I think most Democrats would still claim to oppose infanticide, even if the moral line at times appears to be slipping. And yet, Democrats are going to vote against legislation to provide appropriate medical care to living, breathing, newborn children.” Be sure of this: “Though they join forces, the wicked will not go unpunished; But the posterity of the righteous will be delivered.” (Proverbs 11:21) Rubio halts all foreign spending except for Israel, Egypt, & emergency food assistance Politico reports that Secretary of State Marco Rubio has halted all foreign aid spending for 90 days, including distributions to Ukraine. However, the order exempts foreign military financing for Egypt and Israel, and allows for emergency food assistance and “legitimate expenses incurred prior to the date of this” guidance “under existing awards.” 11% now delinquent on mortgage Commercial Mortgage-Backed Security reports the highest delinquency rate on mortgages in recorded history going back into the 1990s — now at 11%. That's up from 2% in 2023. Coresight, which tracks store closures, recorded a total of 7,325 retail stores shuttered up last year — a 67% increase over 2023. Family Dollar and CVS were the big losers. Amazon, Walmart, and Costco had big years. Coresight estimates 15,000 closures this year to include Party City, Big Lots, and Walgreens, reports CNBC. 75% of Christian men & 40% of Christian women use porn Barna Group and Pure Desire Ministries issued their 2024 “Beyond the Porn Phenomenon” report  concluding that pornography use has increased 11% over the last eight years. Seventy-five percent of Christian men and 40 percent of Christian women report that they are viewing pornography at least occasionally, and 60% are addicted. About half of practicing Christians say they are comfortable with the habit. Also, the younger generation (or Gen Zers) were the least likely to express comfort with how much porn they use. Gen Zers were almost twice as likely to say they wished they didn't use pornography at all, as compared to older generations. John Piper cites 2 Biblical motivations not to use porn Pastor John Piper addressed the porn problem in his recent “Ask Pastor John” podcast.   PIPER: “The biblical principle of motivation for purity, for not pursuing or indulging in sexual pleasure where it ought not to be found, is that the Bible uses fear and hope to draw us away from impurity. You hear both of these, for example, in Romans 8:13. “‘If you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if, by the Spirit, you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.'  So, if you spend your life giving into lust, the lust of the flesh, you perish. Now, that's meant to make us afraid. It's meant to strike fear into our hearts so that we turn away, flee from temptations of the flesh. “But then he says, ‘If by the Spirit, you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.' And that's meant to awaken hope. In the power of the hope, pursue this purity and not sin. So, the Bible uses both fear and hope, threat and promise.” He points to the Gospel motive from 1 Peter 2:24. It says, “He Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness—by whose stripes you were healed.”   Pastor Piper emphasized that “Christ purchased the power not to sin.” Pray for Pastor John MacArthur's recovery after heart surgery And finally, Pastor John MacArthur, the host of the radio program Grace to You, remains in the hospital following heart valve surgery, dealing with ongoing issues with his heart, lungs and kidney. Grace Community Church Elder Phil Johnson took to X to correct rumors that the pastor was dying. Johnson is urging fellow believers to “keep him in your prayers.”  Please pray for his recovery and send a get well card to Pastor John MacArthur, Grace Community Church, 13248 Roscoe Blvd, Sun Valley, CA 91352. I hope you will be one of hundreds of Worldview listeners to take the time to do so. Close And that's The Worldview on this Tuesday, January 28th, in the year of our Lord 2025. Subscribe by Amazon Music or by iTunes or email to our unique Christian newscast at www.TheWorldview.com. Or get the Generations app through Google Play or The App Store. I'm Adam McManus (Adam@TheWorldview.com). Seize the day for Jesus Christ.

2025 is the year to become "acronimble" by familiarizing yourself with one of the most important acronyms in the industry: CRM, which stands for Customer Relationship Management. The BOSSES discuss how the right CRM tool can streamline how you engage with clients, leading to better organization, and more business opportunities. Learn how to maintain meaningful connections without constantly reinventing the wheel, and discover the strategies that help you organize client interactions to promote continued work. Through personal stories and practical advice, The BOSSES highlight the evolution from old-school Rolodexes to cutting-edge digital solutions, empowering you to manage your client interactions like a BOSS. 00:01 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey, amazing voiceover talents. Do you ever wish boss marketing was as fun as it was being behind the mic? Well, check out my VO Boss Blast. It's designed to automate and make your marketing simpler. You'll benefit from your very own target marketed list, tailored to meet your goals and your brand. The VoBoss Blast Find out more at V. The VO Boss Blast Find out more at voboss.com.  00:27 - Intro (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss, a VO Boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza.  00:46 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey everyone, welcome to the VO Boss Podcast and the Real Bosses series. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and I am the BOSS with the VOS. That's the voiceover strategist, Mr Tom Dheere. Hello.  00:59 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Tom Hello. So that's boss VOS.  01:02 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Boss, VOS.  01:03 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) The BOSS VOSS, boss VOSS.  01:04 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) The BOSS BOSS with the V-O-S.  01:06 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) BOSS with the V-O-S.  01:08 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And you know, tom, let's continue the acronym party, shall we? Yes, please, Because I'll tell you what it's the beginning of the year, I'm going to manifest multiple new contacts and you know what I need to be able to keep track of those contacts in a BOSS CRM.  01:26 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Whoa, whoa Boss, boss CRM. What do you?  01:29 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) think Boss, boss CRM I like that. And you know, people ask me about what CRM do I use? What CRM do I use? And so let's talk about 2025 CRM.  01:40 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Fantastic idea, anne. First off, just to make sure everybody knows what we're talking about, CRM is Customer Relationship Manager. It is a fancy way of saying some form of system where you store your client information potential clients, current clients, past clients' information which you can use as a home base for your marketing strategies. So you use the CRM to develop relationships with customers. So just make sure everybody's on the same page.  02:13 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Then you could be CRM BOSS, you could be a CRM boss.  02:17 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) You could be a crim boss. No, we'll stick with CRM.  02:22 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) But CRM reminds me of crumble cookies. Oh wait, now I'm going off.  02:28 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) I diverge into a tangent of cookies. I was thinking crumb, like the god that Conan the Barbarian worships. All right, we're really getting off the rails here.  02:34 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I can see where my brain is versus yours.  02:36 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) You must be hungrier than I am.  02:40 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I love cookies, me too. So, speaking of CRMs, so, tom, let's talk about why, first of all, is it good to have a CRM? Why do we need one? For a boss business?  02:51 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) It is critical for voice actors to have a CRM, because I tell my students that my definition of marketing is the art and science of developing meaningful relationships. That's what it is. You want meaningful relationships with clients. Now, we all know why you want meaningful relationships with clients. Now we all know why we want meaningful relationships with clients and they know too is because we want them to give us money to talk Like. We understand that, they understand that. And at the same time, it's complicated and there's a lot of moving parts to all of this stuff.  03:24 Having a CRM well, why you want to have it is because you don't want to have to reinvent the wheel every time. You want to get voiceover work. Also, it's a relationship manager, since you are trying to develop relationships. Relationships have beginnings. They start in a certain way Hi, my name is so-and-so Nice to meet you Handshake, firm handshake and all that stuff. And then it's the getting to know you stuff develop an understanding of each other, what you can offer each other, what you both need from each other, and developing trust. Trust is one of the most important components of any relationship, be it personal or professional. So why have a CRM? You do it to develop trust and nurture relationships with clients.  04:15 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And Tom, can I just say I love that. Can I just say, as a girl with about a million and a half and I kid you not a million and a half unread emails in my Gmail, if I don't have a place that I can go to see where are my customers, right, if I'm not doing something to organize that, basically emails just fly through my inbox and so I might forget that I was in contact with my client maybe a month ago and I needed to follow up with them for a particular reason. Maybe they were saying let me get back to you on this and I need to follow up. And so if I just relied on my trusty email system which, by the way, has a million and a half unread email messages and guys in my defense, right, I got a Gmail account in 1990-something Okay, how many years is that? Thirty-some-odd years, a long time.  05:04 When it began, I was one of the first like few hundred people that had a Gmail account and, because Google is a search engine, I just never deleted anything. So I have records, by the way, from my clients, if I want to. I have records going back to like 1992 or 96. I can't remember which year but yeah, that's amazing.  05:21 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) I know it's crazy.  05:22 That's amazing, but fun stuff Another thing to keep in mind is that, for a moment, take out the word relationship and replace it with the term sales funnel. Yeah, a good CRM helps get voice seekers into the sales funnel and pushes them through the sales funnel. There's different permutations and levels for different people, but for me, my sales funnel terms are brand awareness, consideration, decision, advocacy. Brand awareness you send the cold email Hi, so-and-so explainer video company. My name's Tom Dheere. I'm an explainer video narrator.  05:57 Now they know that you exist, which means if they open the email, clicked on the link to your website, listened to your demos, downloaded them and replied hey, thanks for sending this, we'll keep you in mind for future consideration. They are now keeping you hopefully top of mind the next time a voiceover gig comes along that you're right for. So that's part of using the CRM to keep moving them through the consideration part of the sales funnel to the decision where they actually have a voiceover that you'd be right for and they remember you and they have your demos and they have your contact information and they actually reply to you. Hey, we think we've got something for you. Could you please read this script and let us know how much you'd charge for this? You do that and then you get the booking and then it goes into the advocacy part of the sales funnel where you did such a great job that they will remember you the next time a project comes along, because you did such a great job on the last project that you worked on.  07:01 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I love how you just explained the sales funnel because I was going to say, like most voice actors are not necessarily aware, you went through the technical aspects of a traditional, like marketing sales funnel. Here I always have to go to my lipstick.  07:13 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Okay, let's go to your lipstick.  07:14 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It's not in Ganguzza, unless I got my—okay. First of all, I have to have a need. I have to have a need, right, and so I may or may not be aware of different brands of lipstick, right, but because I've used this lipstick before, I'm going to start with my Chanel. Right, I have my Chanel lipstick and they're top of mind because literally they sit right here on my desk, because when I do my podcast video, I've got to make sure I have my matching lipstick.  07:40 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Oh, your lipstick matches your headphones.  07:43 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, brand awareness. That's one thing. What's the next step in the funnel there, Tom?  07:47 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Consideration.  07:48 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Consideration. Now, what are the factors that are going to have me consider? Now, just equate this to your voiceover business guys. Basically, this is the layman's terms of like okay, so what is it? The considerations of? Why am I going to buy this brand? Right?  08:01 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Yeah, what are the advertising and marketing techniques that that company is going to use to remind you how awesome their lipstick is?  08:09 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Right, exactly. And also, what is my experience with the lipstick? Right? So I'm on their mailing list, right? And does Chanel go on sale? Well, no, but that's also brand awareness too. So we know that certain things don't go on sale. Chanel doesn't usually go on sale, but anyways, I keep up with them with their mailings and that's how they keep top of mind with me, but pretty much I also use it all the time and it sits there, so I visually see it. So it's either in my inbox or it's sitting here in my desk, right? What's the next step after consideration?  08:37 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Decision.  08:38 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Decision Okay, do I have the money at this time? Do I have the need? Do I have the money to buy this? Right. And I make that decision. I click on the email Right Because they say, oh, new colors are out and I'm like, oh, I could use a new color red Right. So I make that decision. I click, go to the website and then what's after?  08:57 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) the decision I buy it, right. Advocacy, you buy it and then advocacy.  08:59 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So if I buy it and I love the color, oh my God, oh guys, have you seen? All right, all my friends, I'm going to say did you see this color? Isn't this color amazing? Right, and I might even throw up like a social media. You know, like, ooh, branding awareness. Anne Ganguzza Voice Talent, right, branding awareness. I love this new color red, because you got to feel confident in the booth so that you can voice confidently. And so there we go, I'm going to advocate for the brand. So not only am I advocating for my brand, but I'm advocating for this brand as well. So that kind of just took you through the sales funnel with, like, just a traditional lipstick. Sorry, tom, you could maybe use a flannel shirt as an example.  09:35 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Well, I'm a Maybelline man myself.  09:37 Oh, okay, there you go, so I want to take exactly what you said and now let's look at it from the lipstick maker company's perspective.  09:46 They've got people that they want to buy their lipstick and they want them to love their lipstick and come back for more. So they have their own CRM and through their television advertising, through their radio advertising, through their digital and streaming advertising, through their print advertising on the side of a bus or in a magazine of some sort, they are trying to get people to be aware of them, brand awareness, and keep them top of mind, which is why there's always kinds of print and digital and other forms of advertising. And if they get you on that mailing list, they can send out emails at regular intervals based on people who haven't bought their lipstick yet and people who possibly have bought their lipstick yet. They also look at did they open this email, Did they use a promo code to try the lipstick or get a discount, even though they don't do discounts, which is very interesting because a lot of brands position themselves we are so valuable and we are so coveted, we don't need to discount. We don't need to do that.  10:50 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I did that for many years. It's very interesting for Chanel to do that. It's an interesting psychology behind it.  10:55 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) There is a psychology.  10:56 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) There are a lot of times where, if something is so cheap, I'll be like oh, I'm not so sure about the quality of that. I'd actually rather pay a little bit more money because I feel like I'm getting better quality. And that's the whole like. Know your worth, guys. Right, what should you be charging? Charge what you're worth versus going cheap, right.  11:12 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) More expensive equals superior from a branding and psychological point of view. So Chanel, chanel, right. Chanel sees all of us, potential customers, brand awareness, consideration, actual customers, decision and advocacy, and they use CRMs to get lipstick buyers into the sales funnel and push them through. Exactly Translating that to voice actors. We want to do the same exact thing, right, and a good, robust, interactive CRM can help us get voice seekers into the sales funnel and push them through.  11:45 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Absolutely, and you'll be able to know at what point in the funnel they are at Exactly. A good CRM will tell you exactly where they are in the sales funnel so you'll know what to do for the next steps. Maybe they need an additional email, maybe they need a phone call, maybe you'll put out some more social media advertisements, that sort of a thing. So really depending on where they are in the CRM is when you make that determination and decision on what to do. So now, tom, the question is we know why we need a CRM right and we understand the sales funnel and all voice actors need to understand that sales funnel, because we are selling our products, we're selling our voices.  12:17 Let's talk about actual CRMs. I mean, there's many of them out there. I know people constantly ask me which ones I use and I think the answer may surprise you unless you've listened to a podcast of mine before but I don't use any one. I use a multitude of CRMs in combination with one another because myself personally, I don't find one that does everything for me that I need. What about you, tom?  12:38 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Yes, different CRMs fulfill different needs. Now, what we are talking about, and what most voice actors ask us about, is the software or app.  12:57 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) If you have a Rolodex from the 70s or 80s or 90s.  12:58 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) That's a CRM. Yep, yep, yep, A spreadsheet, A spreadsheet. Exactly that was the very next thing I was going to say A spreadsheet is a form of CRM.  13:04 Yeah, I had an index card box. So in 1995, when I got my first voiceover demo and my coach told me to cold call because that's back then pre-social media, pre-pay-to-play, free home recording that was pretty much the only thing you could do. I would use a CRM of index cards and I had those little you know with the little tabs that would separate them into production companies, recording studios, advertising agencies, so on and so forth. That was a CRM and then that evolved into spreadsheets. I do still use spreadsheets regularly, but I also use an actual software app CRM.  13:43 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Myself as well.  13:44 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Now, neither Anne nor I are getting paid to sponsor or affiliate or promote any particular CRM, so we are going to be talking to you about this purely through what our experience has been without hawking, and then we get a little kickback.  14:00 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So I'm going to tell you, my first CRM well before voiceover was a Rolodex, and then, ultimately, it turned into a spreadsheet so that I could keep track of my customers, and that was based off of. You know, I started doing all my accounting online right through my accounting software, and so it was my customer base, right, that was thrown into a spreadsheet and then I would track things that way. So, you guys, crms don't have to be expensive. They can be very simple and it can be whatever you're most comfortable with, and that's what I started with. And then it ended up being my Gmail, right? My Gmail, where I would separate things into folders for different clients and then keep track of them that way, and then a couple of plugins for the Chrome browser that worked within Gmail to help me keep top of mind with them, and then, tom, I'm sure we'll get into the other ones that we use. What?  14:48 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) about you.  14:49 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) You started as a spreadsheet right.  14:50 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) My start is the index card box, which then turned into spreadsheets, and then 2003,. I started using Act. You remember Act by Sage? I used that one for almost 10 years, so yeah, around 2013. And I think it either got discontinued or something weird happened with it, or I didn't like the features, or they started charging too much. I don't remember what it was. Then I did move to Gmail as well.  15:17 I'd been using Gmail as an email account for a while, but then I started to use it as an actual CRM. One thing that's nice is that you can use what? Is it G-Sync or Google Sync? So I synchronize my Gmail with my Outlook folders, so I have Outlook which is how I manage all my email.  15:38 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh, I have Gmail folders.  15:40 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Right, and this is the great thing about it. I have Gmail folders, but they automatically sync with Outlook every time. So if you look at Gmail, and you look at the Outlook folders. The folders are exactly the same. So if I move one to one thing in one, it moves it to the one thing in the other, which means if I'm at my desktop, on my laptop, on my tablet or on my phone.  16:01 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Outlook is amazing.  16:02 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Outlook is amazing. Anything I do with Gmail or Outlook, it automatically synchronizes with all of my devices.  16:08 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) In my defense, I would have Outlook as my most favorite email client ever and when I was working in the corporate world I had an Outlook account. And when I left the corporate world to go into voiceover full-time, I no longer had an Outlook server right to go to and Gmail at the time wasn't syncing up with Outlook nicely, or Outlook wasn't syncing up with Gmail nicely, so I literally got used to using just Gmail. Okay, but it's funny because my husband does use Gmail with Outlook and he just filters everything into his Outlook because Outlook is just wonderful visually, it's just a nice way to organize things in folders. But I've gotten so used to my Gmail in folders that I'm really used to and filtering. I have automatic filtering and that sort of thing, but I totally love Outlook.  16:51 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Right, I'm looking at the bottom of my desktop. For me it's Google Workplace Sync, because I have a paid Google Workspace account. And Google Workspace is great.  16:59 It does all kinds of fun things.  17:00 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I can do it now.  17:02 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Yeah, and I never even thought about Gmail as a CRM that I'm using now because I have a folder for every client in Gmail, because every time I have any kind of correspondence with any client, once the correspondence is over, I drag that email into that client folder. Now do I use that specifically to market out of? No, but it is a robust, legit CRM because, like, for example I'll give you a perfect example 2019, a potential client reached out to me and said hey, I'm developing this app, I'm getting a grant, I've got the level one grant for it, so I've got enough money to pay you to do this with the app and then, once we get that done, then we're going to apply for a level two grant. So I did the work in 2019 and 2020. We had an email exchange in 2021. And then a few weeks ago, three years later, the client said hey.  17:53 I got the level two grant. We're ready to keep going.  17:55 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yep love that. And at first I'm like who?  17:57 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) the hell is this? Because it's been three years? But then I'm like. I looked at the email and then I'm like but you can go back. I went back and I looked in Gmail slash Outlook and I saw the folder with that client and all of our correspondences dating back to 2019 were there.  18:10 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I know it's wonderful. This is also really good, and files, yeah, and everything.  18:17 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) What's also good is often like I'll have a client and years will go by just like that and they'll say hey, I've got another explainer for you Charge same as last time. And I'll be like I don't remember, but my CRM does, because I look in, I see the email and last time we charged this, and then I can make a decision yeah, that's good.  18:38 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Or it's been a few years. So now I search engine and again, I'm an authority on that because I have a million and a half unread email messages. And, by the way, they're unread because what I do is I subscribe. Just for those people that are wondering, I subscribe to every corporate list, every corporate list, because I want to learn as much about how companies that I want to voice for market to their customers, and so I sign up for a lot of mailing lists and I just let it filter through so I can see how they market. And that's honestly how I learned marketing Tom really through just everybody else and looking at everybody else. So I don't have a problem with not having an empty inbox I know some people do but again, I must have probably, I want to say, a good 300 folders within my Gmail.  19:17 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Oh yeah, Me too I have hundreds.  19:19 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, at least, and I have rules that filter emails coming in.  19:24 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Absolutely. Looking at my inbox, right now I have 14 emails in my professional inbox the Tom and Tom Dheere inbox.  19:31 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I have more than that and that's cool.  19:32 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) But, like I said, when I'm done with the conversation I drag it into the client's folder and I've got this archive. For what did we do? How much did we charge, like all this stuff. But I think, anne, people want to know which app software-y type CRMs do we recommend. So what do you use these days?  19:49 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Okay. So in addition to my Gmail, I use multiple because it depends on what I'm working with. So right now I have a Wix website and I have the VO Peeps website. I have the VO Boss website. Obviously, I've got Anne Ganguzza.  20:00 So I've got three main brands where I have websites, and so for each of those I have the Wix CRM. So I have people who subscribe to Anne Ganguzza, people who subscribe to VO Peeps, people that subscribe to VO Boss. Each one of them on the Wix website has its CRM utilized by Wix. Because people subscribe, they get placed in the CRM there, which is great because then I can send emails to those lists. I can also check and see if I've sent an email out to a list, I can see how many people have opened it, who've clicked on it and who've actually purchased, and it really has a nice series of accounts for that. And also I can just work from my contact list to send emails and categorize them as clients, categorize them as, let's say, coaching students or however I want to do it. So Wix is my first.  20:48 I have three really for each domain and then I also use ActiveCampaign because I use the VO Boss Blast that I sell as well to direct market to companies. I have a list of over 90,000 creative companies, advertising agencies, rosters, production companies, and so that is part of that marketing package. And so I have ActiveCampaign that I use to house the contacts. Now, most software and you'll agree, tom will charge based on how many contacts you have in there. So, at least for ActiveCampaign, I have like 200,000 contacts in ActiveCampaign and so I pay a hefty price for that and they charge per contact. But I'm doing that because I've got a list of 90,000 and I've splitting that list up and doing marketing for other VO bosses and so I spend a lot of money on that product. So between the two Wix, well, three on that product. So between the two Wix, well three, gmail, wix and ActiveCampaign. I've got three CRMs that I'm utilizing for different needs Cool.  21:48 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Like we've already established, I use Gmail and I do use spreadsheets for very niche-y genres like political, because I like to see in one space who they are, what their contact is, when did I reach out? Did they open the email, did they reply, did I get on their roster, did I book? And then that stuff eventually makes its way into my CRM. Like Anne, tomdeercom and VOStrategistcom are both Wix-based sites, so I have two separate CRMs. The TomDeer CRM is obviously for voiceover clients, the VO Strategist CRM is for students and I have different tactics and strategies and I have different sales funnels and workflows for each of those and they both work great. For many years I also I remembered I used to use MailChimp and before that I used Vertical Response and they were both great they were both great.  22:41 But the one Vertical Response and they were both great. They were both great, but the one the CRM that I was using religiously before I fully migrated to Wix was Cloze. C-l-o-z-e.  22:51 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) This is a fantastic CRM. I know the name.  22:52 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Just vision this you wake up in the morning, you get an email in your inbox saying, hey, these are the people you haven't reached out to in three months, and then you can click on that name and then it takes you to cloze and it'll say oh, would you like to use one of the email templates that you created? You click on the template and you look at based on what genre of voiceover they cast, where they are in the sales funnel, and it already it populates it with their name. You can obviously do a little extra personalization as you see fit. Click send. Then you'll get a notification if they open the email. You'll get a notification if they clicked on any links in the email and it has a project manager. So if you, for example, narrate long-form e-learning or an audio book, you can set up benchmarks for like audio book record and deliver the first 15 minutes, get approval for the first 15 minutes, record chapter one, record chapter two, record chapter 20, send them an invoice, do corrections, market that this book is now on sale, and so on and so forth. It's fantastic. It's only like 200 something a month.  23:56 And and did not know this before I say it is I just realized that you can rent my video Clothes for Voice Actors at voestrategistcom. Right now it's a rentable video, so you can stream it for $5 for 72 hours. You can just rent it. Most of my videos are 20 bucks, but that's one of the videos that I'm promoting for five bucks and Ann didn't even know that and I didn't even think about that when we were like what are we going to talk about this month? So when we were like what are we going to talk about this month? So yeah, so if you go to veostrategistcom, go to the video section, you can rent it for $5.  24:24 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Now one thing I just want to say, tom, is like, no matter what CRM you use, it does take some time to set up. I mean, there is some work involved in setting up a CRM and getting your contacts in there. I had tried Nimble for a while, but Nim based their pricing on the size of your mailbox and, of course, with over 1 million unread emails, it was prohibitively expensive. Now you said, tom, for the low price of only $200 a month, which may or may not be something that people have in their budget. But I will say that that's really nice. That Cloze will say hey, look, you haven't contacted these people in three months. I think that's wonderful.  24:57 Right now I have like a boomerang app that's on my Chrome browser and, I think, gmail. Now you can schedule emails and if you need to respond, you'll notice it'll come back, say, hey, you haven't responded to this person in five days. So there's kind of that built into it. But just know that a CRM, no matter what you do, if you get one, that you're going to pay a monthly fee. I think Nimble was like 20 bucks and then they're like no, with your blah, blah, blah, it's going to cost you a hundred and I'm like I'm not going to pay a hundred dollars, I've already got most of what I need anyways.  25:26 You really need to just assess what your needs are and then figure out what works for you, because you don't have to pay anything. I don't pay anything right now. Well, I do. I should say that I pay for Wix and I pay for ActiveCampaign, but depending on what is comfortable for you and what will help you to stay top of mind and keep yourself top of mind, because sometimes I'll forget. Oh gosh, I should have responded, or I should reach out to this client, because gosh knows you could be losing work if you forget to. I've got clients who say, yes, I'm going to buy this, or I want to come back to this, and then, if you follow up, sometimes it's just that little nudge that is top of mind, reminding that we'll get you that sale.  26:00 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Yep, and one thing I will say clothes is about 200 something dollars a month, but if you think about it, if you use that CRM and you book one explainer video for $300, you made your money back and everything else after that is profit.  26:14 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, absolutely, absolutely Good conversation, guys. I don't know if we'll ever like get the question stopping about the CRMs, but you know what guys Do, what comes naturally to you, what's comfortable for you. As far as Tom and I making recommendations, I mean, we have a combination of CRMs that work for us and we've named a few of them. But really do your research, guys, and know that it will take you some work to set it up. But I think if you've got a CRM that's running, I mean I'll tell you what that CRM saves my butt every month, and more than that, by being able to communicate easily with people that are subscribed to me and people that I want to reach out to. So it's absolutely worthy investment for bosses. So thanks again, tom, for your words of wisdom.  26:59 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) You're amazing. Thank you, as always, for having me.  27:01 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, bosses. Big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl. You too can connect and network like bosses, like Tom and myself, real bosses. Find out more at IPDTLcom. Guys, have an amazing week and we'll see you next week. Bye.  27:15 - Intro (Announcement) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, anne Ganguzza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at vobosscom and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution with permission. Coast-to-coast connectivity via IPDTL.   

The date is likely inaccurate. A rebroadcast, and the audience is made up of troops who are returning from action. Bertie joins Kaye to joke about fishing. The band plays,…

In this episode, Anne Ganguzza is joined by Danielle Famble to explore the impact of money mindset on entrepreneurial success. Delve into the ways societal norms and gender roles shape our financial perspectives, and discover the power of open conversations about money. Anne and Danielle emphasize the link between mindset and financial prosperity, especially for voice actors, and share strategies for shifting from a scarcity to an abundance mindset. By addressing subconscious beliefs about money, entrepreneurs can unlock creative opportunities, fuel innovation, and ensure enduring business success. This episode invites listeners to challenge traditional beliefs, embrace a more inclusive approach to money management, and cultivate a sustainable future through proactive and creative financial strategies. Join the conversation to empower your entrepreneurial journey and transform your financial mindset. 00:00 - Advertisement (Ad) I've just finished listening to Creative Brilliance with Improv, Anne and Lau, and all I can say is yes, ladies, improv is absolutely one of my favorite activities, and the life of the pre-life is real. Remembering that the run-in line or your lead-in line does not only exist at the beginning of your read, but throughout, it's a critical activity. The running conversation that has to happen in your head truly makes a difference. So, ladies, thank you so much. I greatly appreciate it.  00:40 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey boss listeners, are you ready to turn your voice over career goals into achievements? With my personalized coaching and demo production, I'm here to help you reach new milestones. You know you're already part of a boss community that strives for the very best. Let's elevate that. Your success is my next project.  01:15 - Advertisement (Ad) Find out more at  anne ganguzza dot com. It's time to take your business to the next level. Find out more at Anne Ganguzza.  01:25 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey, hey everyone. Welcome to the VO Boss podcast and the Boss Money Talks series. I'm your host, anne Ganguza, and I am thrilled to be back again with one of my favorite girls to talk about money Danielle Famble. Hey Danielle, hey Anne, good to be back, danielle. I have a secret to tell you.  01:52 What I love money, and I don't think that's a secret oh gosh, is it just me or is it that some people don't like to discuss their relationship with money, and I think that's a very important thing, obviously for us running businesses is our relationship with money.  02:06 I mean money matters, and I think we have to really talk about what our relationship with money is like. Because, I'll tell you, when I was growing up as a female, it wasn't a thing to make money. Like my parents, my dad went out and it was the breadwinner and it was always kind of like ingrained in my brain that I was supposed to do other things, and not necessarily it wasn't. My critical role was to make money.  02:31 But, in my business, I certainly don't have another purpose than to be able to make money to help survive.  02:39 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Yeah, it's almost like the purpose of a business is to make a profit and that profit is making money, money. Yeah, I totally agree. I think it's a sociological thing. I think it's also we're sort of taught that talking about money is too risque and it's not polite yeah don't be greedy. We're running businesses and businesses need to make money, so we should talk about it Absolutely.  03:09 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And I'll tell you what I'm not really shy at least on this podcast about talking, and that's why I'm so happy that you're here to talk about money, and this whole money talk series is just like makes me a happy, happy girl. I just I like talking about it because I think it's something that, as business entrepreneurs, we don't discuss enough of right we don't discuss, and especially for myself and my values and things that were taught to me when I was growing up were completely different than what I need to implement in order to have and run a successful business. Again, one very primary one was that women were not breadwinners. They were meant to have families and do other things, and so I really was kind of at a standstill when I was growing up because I was seeing things that were demonstrated to me that I didn't necessarily think should be true.  03:52 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) And I think there's also this like belief about money that maybe that it's hard to make money or you have to struggle to get it and I really believe that money can come easily to you if you learn about it and understand it and know how it works. But yeah, I mean for me too. I mean I grew up with parents who are entrepreneurs and seeing my mom and dad work together and my grandparents even working together to make money. It wasn't necessarily that imbalance in a way of the man goes out and is the breadwinner, and that actually was totally happening in my home. But in terms of business, I was seeing, in my life anyway, sort of more of an equal partnership when it came to money, but we never really talked about it.  04:41 It wasn't something that we discussed. I just happened to pick up on what I saw and then I made assumptions based on what I saw that may or may not have been true.  04:51 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I love that you said that because you're right. Money was like one of those things. My grandmother I'm from that age where children should be seen and not heard.  05:00 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) But, money.  05:01 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) You don't talk about money. It's not polite, right? It's just not. You don't discuss money, and you're right. I saw things, I witnessed things and so I made my own assumptions. I'm so glad that you mentioned that because you're right. Some of these assumptions maybe were incorrect on my part and I grew up thinking a certain way and it affected how I thought about money, right, and how I thought about well, I guess I need to go out and get a job. It didn't occur to me that I could make my own money and be my own boss, and I think, had I maybe had a different relationship with money or maybe learned about money at an earlier age? Gosh, I will be the first person up on my platform my soapbox saying that if you're in grade school, you should be taught about money Like from a young age, you should be taught about money, financial, financial responsibility, relationships with money, because I think you need to have a healthy relationship with money.  05:55 I don't think it should consume you. However, I think you should have a healthy relationship with money. That means that you're not afraid of it, you're not afraid to talk about it, you're not afraid to learn about it, and I think one of the best things you can do is educate yourself about anything really, and money is no different. Educate yourself about money, because it truly is something that we do need to survive. Oh for sure?  06:16 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Yeah, absolutely. I think you touched on it a little bit. But there is an inherent fear and money can cause a fear response a little bit, especially if you don't have it or you need more of it to get to where you're trying to go in life or in business. I'll tell you a personal story. For me, my education, learning about money and how I needed to interact with money, really came from a trauma response, because I got sick and I needed to take some time away from work, and I was working as a waitress. If you don't go to work, you don't get paid, and if you don't get paid, then you're not going to be able to, like, pay your bills.  06:56 So for me, I was working a job that, like, required my daily attendance, and if I was not able to do that for whatever reason for me that was a health reason then it affected my money and I didn't have the savings in place to be, able to catch me if I needed to take some time away from my income generating source my job, I thought, and I got a random illness that just kind of took me out, and even for a short period of time actually, and I realized that I did not have the infrastructure in place to make sure that I would be okay even if I couldn't go to my job.  07:47 Sure, yeah, educate myself about money and how money worked and how I can be a participating factor and how I can have, like, my own security when it came to money. And for me, having money became a security blanket and that drove me into almost a fear-based or trauma-based response that if I didn't have money I was not secure. And that belief system really got me in a negative place around money and work where I could not stop working because I needed that security.  08:10 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Right or money will get you happy.  08:12 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Right, and that didn't happen either.  08:14 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So there's that fine line between we need money, we need to have that healthy relationship with money. However, money may or may not make the majority of us happy. However, it is needed for our businesses to survive, right, and it's needed for personally, for us to be able to pay the bills and to survive, and so different people have different relationships with money, and also financial arguments are probably one of the top sources of divorce, right.  08:44 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Yeah.  08:44 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) For many people, and so it's such a delicate balance. I mean, how can we have a healthy relationship with our money, danielle, how do you secure your healthy relationship with money?  08:56 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) I think. First, it requires you to take inventory of where you currently are right. So if you think about and that can be a scary thing that can be a very scary thing because you're having to really assess your own beliefs and belief systems and get down to.  09:15 I had to. I dealt with this in therapy because it took more than just me to get that out. But really, I mean, when you think about money like for you, anne, when you think about money and like making money or having money, do you feel like cringe and does it make you feel small, or are you like oh money, I'm so excited.  09:36 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I feel like I already know that's kind of my go-to. That's your thing, oh money.  09:43 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) And really having. If money and the idea about money makes you feel small or repel, then imagine that energy is not going to be coming to you or stressed, or stressed, it's not coming to you.  09:53 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Which is a lot. Yeah, you're right. And so there becomes that abundant mindset, right, I mean? And there are some people who just don't subscribe to that theory of abundance, but I very much am like well, I'd rather be more in a positive abundant mindset than a negative mindset, because just my personality is one where I don't like to be sad or unhappy or stressed and money can absolutely be a source of stress and especially gosh knows in our businesses that we are our own entrepreneurs.  10:22 That is probably the number one reason that most people don't make it in the voiceover industry, right, is they're not making the money they need to survive, of course, for their businesses to survive or them to survive personally, and that becomes then a great source of stress. So how do we deal with it in a way that doesn't bring us so much stress, right, that it is detrimental to our business?  10:45 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) There's so much more to your business than just money, although in this series we've obviously talked so much about money and financial principles and everything else. But there's so many other things to your business and if there is a way that you can have fun in your business and bring that levity and light and joy to your business, the money I have found does come. I used to be a musical theater actor before I became behind the mic and I found that when I was happy and joyful for my friends who were booking work, I actually started booking more work. There was almost like this reciprocity of joy and light and acceptance and abundance to oh there's enough and I see there's enough.  11:33 I celebrate my friend for booking work. That means that there is a job that can come to me as well. So I think it feels, and it seems a little bit woo woo and is there an actionable thing that you can do with it? Maybe just celebrating and being joyful for the work that's coming for other people who are booking work, if they're sharing it, like on social media, for example, but also being grateful for every single opportunity. Every audition is an opportunity to work. It may not be paid work, because maybe you're not getting paid for that audition, but it's an opportunity to work and to do something that you hopefully love to do, and do it joyfully.  12:08 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, yeah, I talk a lot about being joyful and following our paths and really because I mean I'd rather be joyful than not joyful when I have to work, and so if you take that mindset right and apply that to money, right, Be joyful about money.  12:25 Be, joyful about the fact that it can come to you, right, and that, when it comes to you, it affords you the opportunity, maybe not to buy the fanciest new car or the fanciest new mic, but it affords you the opportunity to continue in this creative process that brings you joy on a day-to-day basis, right, the more hours of joy that I can have in a day, the better.  12:48 Right.  12:49 And if I can do that while making money and I can allow the money and have that mindset of abundance, that, yes, I'm happy for anyone that can survive in this industry, and especially now with all this craziness, with people being fearful of AI taking their jobs away and the race to the bottom.  13:06 Right, when you worry and stress out about the race to the bottom and people and things taking your job away, you are taking all that energy and putting it into a place that is not going to help you get more jobs. And so, in reality, if you focus your energy on being the best that you can be and finding the joy in the work, the jobs will follow and I believe that the money will follow. Now, how much money these days, has the market changed? I mean, I think, again, education plays a big role in this and education in regards to the market right and in education in regards to your business sensibilities and your relationship with money. Well, if the market is not necessarily there like it used to be, then what can you do in regards to your financial situation to either rectify that, change that evolve, that, do something different, while still maintaining that joyful, abundant mindset?  14:02 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Oh yeah, I also like knowing all the different resources that are out there to help us learn, knowing that there's the GBAA rate guide that can help inform how you quote jobs, or what is an industry standard rate, what is a guide that I can use to help me or even other voice actors and just saying, hey, listen, I'm thinking about this particular rate, how does that line up? Or what do you think? Having coaches or mentors line and not being, as you're calling it, that race to the bottom, and then that can be very joyous, because it's a collaborative effort that we're all making sure that the money is staying within livable standards of living rates so that we can all win. That's really helpful and that helps maintain for me, it helps maintain the joy. Also, I just feel like you have to think about where your mentality about money is coming in, because if you are not addressing that, it will come out when you negotiate your own rates for example Sure when you least expect it, Exactly In your daily actions and you don't realize yeah.  15:19 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) You're right. I love that you're talking about negotiation because you're right, that attitude, those thoughts that you have about money will absolutely come out in negotiations, with money and even I would say, in your auditioning and your confidence in your product.  15:32 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Yeah.  15:33 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Right, I mean it can. Absolutely. Well, I am not worth you know what someone else might be worth, because I'm just starting out, I'm new, and again that relationship directly parallels, I think, with your relationship with money, because as voice actors we are all worth, we are all investing money in this business and we are all worth a particular amount and we should never consider that worth being lower or low, just in general, Kind of like in money. Is money bad? No, Money should be thought of as a means to good and positivity.  16:08 It's a resource, a tool to help us achieve our dreams and our joys and to do something that can propel us further right. Money will help me to take my career further, take my business further right. I can make more investments. I can find another genre that brings me even more joy, that kind of thing. So, really, that relationship I think that you have with money go back to if you're stressed out, if you're nervous, if you're all about like, oh gosh, I'm not going to make it because AI is going to take over or it's a race to the bottom these days. And in reality, I think that if you take that energy and focus it on, how can I resonate abundance, right, how can I resonate abundance in my business? And that, of course, I think again, when you talk about business, I think you can't not talk about money.  17:04 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) It's impossible.  17:05 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I think it's impossible, because you can't run a business without money and you can't sustain a business without money and you can't grow your business without money. Yeah.  17:12 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Because, again, I've said this several times the purpose of a business is to create a profit and you have to be making more than you spend to run the business. You, in order to do that, you have to be making more money and growing your business as time goes on. And if you have a fear or your belief system about money is limiting your ability to grow your business and scale your business, then it's going to be a very uncomfortable time running your business. And if you want to have a business for years and years and years, imagine living your life that way for years and years and years it's just not fun. Yeah, yeah.  17:49 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I mean, I like to think of it in terms of money, mindset and mindset in general. Right, you have a choice. You have a choice in how you think and how you think about things, and for me, I'd much rather think about things from a positive perspective, just because I don't like to be unhappy and I don't choose to be unhappy, and so I try to think of everything in the more positive light, even if let's say, oh, it's been slow this month, right, and maybe it's been slow for a couple of months, right. So how do I take that worry, that potential financial worry? It's like, oh gosh, how am I going to make the payments this month? How am I going to pay my employees this month, and really kind of take the time that you would spend worrying about that in terms of, all right, sitting down, and these would be positive aspects of how all right. So now maybe we are slow this month, so what can we do to rectify that?  18:40 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) What can we do?  18:41 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) How can I how?  18:43 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) can I do this, how can I rectify that, so that I won't have this worry, this cloud hanging over my head? What can I do? Can I market more? Maybe once in a while you might have to accept a job that is maybe below what you initially quoted, right, and maybe that's something that you will concede to and not think negatively about that right Totally, in terms of thinking of it as a financial stepping stone, right, and having that relationship where you're not angry that you're making less right For this one time. Right.  19:15 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) But there's joy in making something at all. There's joy in making money.  19:19 What I love about what you just said is think about how much more creative freedom you've just given yourself by turning that fear, that worry on its head of how can I pay the bills this month, into what do I need to do, how can I make some additional money or income or do something different. Then you have the option to say, okay, wow, as a creative, as a person who is a creative, an actor, a person who makes things from other people's words, and I turn that through my body, into this thing that I've created and added value to the businesses and the organizations and the companies and the brands that I voice for. Sure, absolutely. When you think about it like that, oh, my goodness, imagine like the joy and the levity that comes from that. Yeah, because then you can become more creative. Okay, yeah, maybe I will negotiate this particular job and I don't get the amount that I wanted to.  20:14 But look, I made some money. Or look, I'm auditioning different style or genre or work with someone, like there's so many possibilities there. When you open up your mindset to how can I, what can I do, what are the opportunities out there? Because I look at all the auditions that are out there let's say, on a pay-to-play site, if you can see like all the auditions are out there. They're looking for human beings. They're looking for people to do that work, and so, if you look at these as opportunities, the opportunities are all around you. You've opened your mind to it.  20:51 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And I think if you allow and we talk about like, allow the money to flow like a river you know, if you allow that money, if you think abundance, if you think joy, if you think about allowing the possibility of money rather than, oh God, I I can't do this, or I can't charge, or that client is trying to jip me out of. You know that kind of negativity where, oh, they're trying to jip me out of what I'm worth. So it's good to know what you're worth, but it's also good to know that when a company states they have a budget and they can't meet the budget that you initially want, that you turn that on its head and you say, okay, well, it's an opportunity for me to make, maybe not what I originally intended, but also it's an opportunity that I can then take and turn into other opportunities.  21:37 So, rather than being angry and complaining and going to social media about it or that kind of thing, from an educational perspective, right, really trying to take a different look at it in terms of okay, that wasn't what I initially would have wanted, but you know what, this opportunity to work with this company, maybe I'll get another opportunity and it will turn into something that is more positive than negative.  21:58 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Or saying no to that opportunity also gives you the opportunity to work with somebody else, because your time is a limited resource and you can't get more of it. So if you're spending your time with something that is not the right fit for you, you're not making the type of money that you're wanting to make, or you just you're mad because you said yes to this thing because you really needed the money.  22:19 you may not be able to take on something else that is a better fit, so understanding the cost benefit of saying yes or saying no to something might be what brings more into your business, more money to you. It's all flowing to you, you know, like a river. It's called currency for a reason, because it's got to move.  22:37 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh, I love that, love that analogy. It's called currency for a reason. Yeah, absolutely. Just trying to take things that maybe are not productive for either your workflow or your mental state regarding money and finances, especially when it comes to this business. And this is not easy, guys, we know this. I mean I've been in this business, gosh, close to 18 years and, danielle, you've been in the business for enough years to know it's a marathon, not a sprint. Yeah, business for enough years to know it's a marathon not a sprint and, honestly, the attitude and the positivity with which you approach your business and money opportunities has a direct correlation with your success.  23:18 I really believe that? Yeah, I do too. It's just one of those things. So, really, I think, sit back and look at your relationship with money and your stress levels around money and maybe just sit down and write down. We can turn this into a goal setting podcast as well, because I do believe that setting financial goals and we have a podcast on that as well can really help to benefit how you can see your relationship with money and help you identify where you might need to work on things right.  23:48 So if you're looking at your financials. You're taking a hard look at what your financials are coming in and going out and then assessing, okay, where are the opportunities? And, instead of being angry or depressed or frustrated or thinking you're not enough, figuring out what did work and then figuring out what other things do you think could work. And I'll tell you, there's nothing wrong with in your business while you're growing it, to get other sources of income from other careers. I mean you don't have to be completely all in voiceover. You can do computer consulting or technology consulting or web design or any other thing. I mean work at a restaurant. There's nothing wrong with that in terms of financial opportunities and looking that as a positive to continue on a good relationship with money that can allow you to expand your business.  24:38 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Yeah, absolutely.  24:39 And another thing I can tell you for me, when I was working on my belief systems around money and how I could, you know, improve that was finding a sense of gratitude for the money that I had.  24:51 One of the things just on a personal level, one of the things when I was really struggling with this is when I would open up my bank account and look at the amount of money, I immediately felt shame and scared and sad and just a lot of these negative feelings. Looking at the money that I had, it is simply just a fact of what is there right now, but it also is proof that I have the ability to make money. So one of the things that I did and it could be something that the listeners do as well is develop a practice of just simply greeting your money and saying hello to your money every day. I love that. So what I would do is I would open up my account, look at the money, feel whatever feeling I was feeling and then just say, hey, money, good morning you know there will be more or less or what have you, but like hey, and just looking at it, for what?  25:42 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) it was let's get more friends.  25:43 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Let's go make friends. Let's go make friends.  25:44 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Let's go make friends, let's go bring on some more people here.  25:46 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Yes, exactly, and really just looking at the account and letting whatever feelings come. But those feelings are not real, they are simply feelings. Those feelings can actually help or hurt you in trying to bring more friends to the money that you already have.  26:02 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Exactly, I love that. So, yeah, you're right, looking and saying hello and addressing your money and facing it right on a day-to-day basis. It's kind of like, gosh, my weight loss journey, right. I didn't want to look at the scale, I didn't want to look at the numbers, I didn't want to. I was scared and every time I would look at the numbers it would bring this feeling of shame and horror and sadness and so the more you do it, the easier it gets right, so that you can try to take that mindset and turn it into one of gratefulness, one of positivity. And the same thing with your money.  26:35 Look at your money scale. I'm going to say, on a day-to-day basis, greet it and then say what can I do? And for this, what can I do to maybe gain more money, weight right and be grateful for what you have on the scale at that time and really assess what is it that you can do to change this in a more positive way? I mean, gosh, what a great conversation. I mean money is a mindset. It really is. And you're right, it really is the way that you feel about it. It's just that they're just feelings, right.  27:06 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) I've been told and I heard this saying feelings are not facts. Right your feelings while they are completely like real to you, it may not be the end result. It's just the feeling that comes up and you can, just like you train your body, just like you train your mind, you can train your feelings and really, it just takes.  27:25 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) You can choose joy. These are choices that can be made and you can choose joy. You can choose joy at any given moment of the day.  27:28 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) These are choices that can be made, and then, when you choose joy, imagine how much more abundance will be coming your way.  27:34 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Right. Choose joy. Choose money. Choose to look at your money and then choose to turn that into gratefulness and positivity, and that will allow the currency to flow.  27:45 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) the river to flow.  27:46 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I love it. Oh my gosh, what a great episode. Danielle, thank you so much as always for sharing your gems with us in this series. I really, really am loving it and I can't wait till our next one. Bosses, I'm going to give a great big shout-out to our sponsor, ipdtl. That allows our currency to flow and our voices to flow over the line. You can find out more at ipdtlcom. Guys, thanks so much for joining us and we'll see you next week. Bye, bye, everyone.  28:15 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, Anne Ganguzza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at vobosscom and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via IPDTL.     

In this profound episode of Mindfulness Exercises with Sean Fargo, we are joined by Dr. Pamela Ayo Yutende, JD, PhD—author, pastoral counselor, and co-editor of Black and Buddhist. Ayo shares her unique insights on integrating mindfulness with ethical leadership and social justice. Drawing from her Buddhist practice and professional experiences, Ayo dispels myths about mindfulness being separate from activism, showing how mindfulness-based ethics can empower individuals to foster equality, compassion, and healing. Together, Sean and Ayo explore how mindfulness practitioners can engage in justice-oriented practices while staying true to the principles of awareness and social balance. This episode is an invitation to cultivate an ethical posture that embraces both personal growth and collective healing. Timestamps [00:01:00] Introduction [00:03:00] The Journey to Advocacy: How Ayo's experiences with the Brethren Volunteer Service and anti-apartheid activism shaped her justice orientation. [00:10:00] Mindfulness as an Ethical Practice: Exploring the roots of mindfulness in Buddhist ethics and its application in modern leadership. [00:15:00] Justice Through Compassion: Why mindfulness encourages compassion for all sentient beings, human and non-human. [00:20:00] Lessons from Leadership Ethics: A Buddhist perspective on compassionate governance, avoiding greed, and addressing poverty. [00:30:00] Redistribution and Generosity: The role of generosity in ethical leadership and social transformation. [00:40:00] The Power of Awareness: How mindfulness counters narratives of separation and conflict to build unity and truth. Connect with Pamela Ayo Yetunde Website: Buddhist Justice Reporter Books: Casting Indra's Net, Black and Buddhist

00:01 - Rick MacIvor (Ad) Hi, this is Rick MacIver with the VO Video Village YouTube channel. You know, when I started doing voiceover, I listened to the VO Boss podcast religiously. It was my go-to source of information about the industry and I still listen to it to this day. Every week there's an amazing new guest and Anne is able to really get some great information. I just love it. So thank you so much, Anne, looking forward to next week's episode.  00:33 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey guys, it's that season again. Are you feeling that tickle in your throat? Don't let a cold or flu slow you down. Combat your symptoms early with Vocal Immunity Blast, a simple and natural remedy designed to get you back to 100% fast. With certified therapeutic-grade oils like lemon to support respiratory function, oregano for immune-boosting power and a protective blend that shields against environmental threats, your vocal health is in good hands. Take charge of your health with Vocal Immunity Blast. Visit annganguzacom to shop.  01:09 - Intro (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss a VO boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguza.  01:28 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey, hey, everyone. Welcome to the VO Boss Podcast and the Boss Superpower Series. I'm your host, nn Ganguza, and I'm here with the one and only Lala Pitas.  01:40 - Lau Lapides (Guest) Hey, annie, back again. Happy 2025, and yet another year. Here we are.  01:46 How, many years, how many?  01:48 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) years Lau. It's been years.  01:49 - Lau Lapides (Guest) A decade, I don't know 20?. I feel like you know, we came out of the womb and we knew each other.  01:55 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I don't know.  01:56 - Lau Lapides (Guest) It feels like forever, but it is over two years now.  01:59 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I think it's two and a half, at least, almost Two, and a half At least, almost, if not more, if not three Lau.  02:03 I'm telling you, I am manifesting that 2025 is going to be my best year ever, and I say that because we've come off of a tough year, not just a tough year necessarily for your business, but just a tough year, I think, in general for everyone, mentally, physically. I mean. It's just been a tough, tough, tough year of 2024. So I am ready for 2025, despite whatever may happen in the world, I feel like with this political climate, I want this to be the best year ever for my business, and so I had a couple of podcast episodes and we do this all the time right End of year assessment how are we going to make this year the best? But I really want to stretch Lau and talk about how we can go beyond the typical. Well, let's write our goals down right and let's do this for the year.  02:52 Let's talk about how we can really, I think, manifest success and stretch ourselves out to be the absolute best that we can be, and to be mindfully and skillfully healthy for 2025.  03:04 - Lau Lapides (Guest) Stretching. That's my thing. I love stretching, and when I say stretching I mean really kind of motivating our folks to just move in directions that are uncomfortable, that you may not have experienced before. Those are the best, where you have no idea what the outcome is. Because the truth is, you know, in our profession we get seasoned. After a while we kind of know what to expect. We know kind of the behaviors of clients. We get to know that right. But we always want to refresh, we want to feng shui the spirit. How do we do it? Put ourselves in an environment that we're not used to. That's going to help us grow, and as a talent, as a person, as a business entrepreneur, what could that mean? Well, some examples I like to give. Why not take a fencing class? Why not get into a class where you're doing mime and you're not talking at all? I love that?  03:58 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) How do?  03:58 - Lau Lapides (Guest) you communicate through your body, through your mind, through your spirit, without the aid of the copy of the script. This is all going to be tools in the toolkit that you're going to pull when you get back in your booth and say, wow, how did I feel when I was locked into my body, how do I?  04:16 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) unlock. You know what. I think I love that, but I think, before we figure out how we're going to stretch right, let's sage the space, so to speak right. Let's sage the space, so to speak. Right. Let's sage the space, let's clear the space right. And what are some things we can do to kind of clear away all the? I like to say clear away what was last year and now? How are we going to start fresh? How are we going to start new? How are we going to sage our space, and I mean physically? You could I love sage, I'm a big sage burner. I like to sage it to create new energy. But that saging right could be. Maybe you decide to take up a little bit of meditation, a little bit of breathing exercises. I know that, stretching yourself mindfully, but also physically as well. I started taking Pilates last year and I'll tell you what I feel great, and I do it early in the morning.  05:08 - Intro (Announcement) So, as a matter of fact, this morning I was at 6.30 am class.  05:09 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Wow, Discipline. I love that so I can start my day right. I do a 6.30 and a 7.30 back to back and I absolutely love the way it makes me feel in the mornings. There's a lot of just default. There's breathing in there, right, and we talk as voice actors how important breathing is. And breathing is amazing. I mean, first of all, we breathe every day, but like focused, right, conscious, like breathing exercises which by default happened in my Pilates class, really helped me to expel the negative energy and take in the new energy and really helped me to feel more balanced, more focused, brings down my blood pressure and you know, what's so funny is I've learned to breathe so well that literally it becomes this challenge. Well, you know that I still go see my doctor, my oncologist, all the time and they're always taking my blood pressure right, so for a while there my blood pressure was high and they prescribed medicine for me, right.  05:56 And so ever since I was you know, I got myself a little bit healthier. Thankfully, my blood pressure is actually a little bit on the lower side, but I also take my blood pressure every single day right Just to make sure I'm on top. I have learned how to breathe so that I can lower my blood pressure. Like it's insane. And in my little Peloton classes too, you can actually see your heart rate and so if you do active breathing right, you can see how it brings down your heart rate. You can see how it brings down your heart rate. So I think staging the space, so to speak, or physically do it, but also stage the space. Take some time in the morning for meditation and breathing to get you in the right head space and physical space for a great day ahead and a great year ahead. Oh, I love all of that.  06:38 - Lau Lapides (Guest) And you know we've got to get out of that fight or flight, breathing yeah, which, the truth is, all of us do it. I mean because we're running around, we're running all over the map and we'll go into the what we call the upper thoracic breath, the clavicular breath. That's our throat, our chest, whatever Can we live, of course? Can we have a great life, definitely. Is it effective for speaking? Nope, it isn't. And that's our gift, that's our craft, that's our job is to speak for a living.  07:06 So we want to move that down into the diaphragm and everything you're doing, annie, is just a gift to be able to do that. And it harkens back to me when I was a young kid in college studying theater, that some of my professors would use this, saying They'd say leave your trash at the door when you walk in the studio. Leave it there, don't bring it in with you. That's your emotional stuff that you're bringing in. I'll give you new stuff to deal with and don't worry, don't worry, when you leave, it'll be there for you to pick up and take with you. I'll give you new stuff, I'll give you new stuff.  07:37 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Don't worry, I'll give you new stuff to deal with right Unless you're using it right for the scene ahead right. I mean, take it through the door if you need it. But a lot of times that baggage right it's not always. I'm going to say 99% of the time I'm going to say maybe that's not necessary for voice acting, unless you're playing a role that calls for that.  07:57 - Lau Lapides (Guest) Right, right. I think that if you're going to use it as a reservoir of emotion, to call upon, it has to be compartmentalized, it has to be disciplined and dealt with. It can't just be dumping, it can't be unloading your day or unloading your life in the space because it's number one, it's not professional or appropriate, but, number two, it doesn't feel good, it doesn't make you a cleansed breath performer, which is where we want to go. We want to go to a full sort of centered, grounded place of where the breath is coming from. So I love that. I love that. No one loves sage more than me. I actually named my son Sage, oh yeah, well, there you go I adore sage.  08:38 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I think it's really important to just sage out your space Totally, totally cleansing.  08:44 - Lau Lapides (Guest) Are we ready for some how-tos yet, annie? Yeah, sure, let's go, let's do it. I'm going to lay one on the friends. That is really unexpected, but from an actor's point of view it's very elevated technique. And look into it and go online and look it up. It's called Rasa Boxes, something you're never going to hear in voiceover. It's an elevated boxes on the floor made of tape, literal boxes. The actor steps into the box and becomes an emotion in that box and it's very specific and it's very much a deep dive and intense and when they step out of the box they immediately lose that tone, immediately 100% cleanse themselves of that emotion. Think about that. The crossover to me is when you're doing like audiobook or you're doing character work, you're playing 10 different characters. You don't want any bleed of sound, right, absolutely Well, we don't want any bleed of spirit. Sure, we want to know that if you're enraged, you're the witch that's enraged, that you step into the box where you're the peaceful fairy and there's no bleed from one box to another.  09:59 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) But can you evolve that emotion? Can you be the fairy that is maybe angry to begin with and then becomes cleansed of that anger? Somehow Can you have one foot in one box and one foot in another and play that way. You know why.  10:15 - Lau Lapides (Guest) I love you so much Because you're brilliant and you're always 10 steps ahead. You just single-handedly skipped over two years of MFA graduate work because skip a year or two and you're going to start melding and shaping and mixing the boxes together. But the point is it's intentional. Yes, yes, it mixing the boxes together. But the point is it's intentional, it's a choice. It doesn't just happen because I can't control myself and my output. I love that.  10:41 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I love that because when I'm teaching acting for narration one of my classes that I've taught in multiple places I talk about how your emotion can evolve from the start of the sentence into the end of the sentence, and that requires control and it requires, it does require focus, a lot of focus, in order to intentionally go from one emotion to another, to add that interest and that texture and that storyline.  11:05 - Lau Lapides (Guest) That's great, yes, and this is a physical, if you will, a physical incarnation of that not just internal but it's actually physical, so you can like.  11:14 We used to do as little kids play. What do we call it? Hopscotch? We used to go from box to box. You're literally going box to box and we're doing that in our life too. We're going from script to script, character to character, intention to intention, but it defines it. I think that's where the stretch comes. How do I stretch the ability of going 100% deep dive immediately and then pulling out of that immediately? It reminds me of a professional ball player. So if you're like a baseball player, someone who's sitting on the bench but they are not warming up, they are 100% ready to jump in the game and go. Is there a script Lau or is it just it's improv? Well, I mean, the experiment of it is all improv, and then you can install that into your scripts so that you know exactly what the boxes are. So there's no sitting on the bench kind of saying, oh, I'm going to warm myself up into it, I'm going to figure it out as I go. It's either you're 100% committed to it or you're 100% out of it. I love it.  12:15 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I think right now I look at, I'm looking at boxes right now. I think we can play this not just physically, but I love the physical aspect of it.  12:21 - Lau Lapides (Guest) It's a cool thing. We can play it On Zoom.  12:23 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) We can do it we can play it on Zoom too, because maybe Anne is the angry box right, and maybe Lau is the love box Right, if you think about it, and then we could just like okay, improv right, there we go. And so I'm not angry right now. But see, that would be tough for me, right? I've got to like work. I'm gonna have to work on that, because I don't like to be angry in my real life.  12:40 - Lau Lapides (Guest) But here's the thing you learn as an actor. You're not just as a voiceover talent, you're not just being that or becoming that. You're playing an action based on a situation, yeah Right. So it's your job to figure out what's the situation.  12:57 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh yeah, as we say, who are you talking to, right? What's going on? That is so important again, because we talk about, like, how are we evolving as successful businesses with digital disruption and AI and increasing like size of the industry, and how do we compete while we become the actor right that can evolve and meld with whatever we're being asked to do, and a lot of times, I'll ask people to create that scene in which the words on the page will make sense and will allow you to connect with those words in a meaningful way. And so that's where a lot of times, my students will be like but wait, they're like oh, now I'm asking them to think and it's like but this is hard and I'm like it is Like you know, if it were easy we'd all be voice actors making millions of dollars.  13:40 But even then that would be kind of cool.  13:42 - Lau Lapides (Guest) But yes, it's also the commitment in the relationship. So I think that's what makes it hard is like you don't realize you're making a commitment to a relationship immediately, without the intellect or analysis that we want to take to be safe. Right, kids are great at that. If kids played Rasa Boxes as a game, they'd jump right in and be the evil queen. They'd jump right in and be the fairy princess, because they understand it from an emotional EQ, emotional quotient way.  14:12 Yeah yeah, yeah. And so we're so intellectual these days, which is fabulous. We want to be able to analyze our script, of course, but we miss the part where we're connecting our mind to our feet, to our center, to our heart, to the ground. Right, it's actually quite Native American in a lot of ways. When you look at it, it's very soulful, it's very spiritual, it's very grounded to not only the spirits above us, the gods above us, but also the nature, the ground, the trees, the roots.  14:43 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Love it. I love it. I think we should have like a Zoom class on that. I think we should.  14:47 - Lau Lapides (Guest) We should have a Zoom class maybe during our audition demolition. That could be fun. That could be a ton of fun.  14:53 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It is fun, it's hard in a good way, yeah.  14:56 - Lau Lapides (Guest) And so what's the name of that again for our bosses out there that want to jot that down yeah, the name of the technique is called RASA R-A-S-A boxes, rasa boxes you should really look it up, and it's a sort of international kind of methodology that's used by actors of all cultural backgrounds to reach their characters deeply and quickly.  15:19 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Right, yeah, Deeply and quickly. Now that's the thing, because I've got a lot of students who they're like but this takes so much time and I said honestly, like, if you think about it, like how much time did that really take? Ten minutes, Did I just work with you for ten minutes on it? I mean, it's just one of those things where I asked you, okay, what's that moment before, right? And so, what is that scene? Why are you even saying these words? What's the purpose? All right, so I love that. So we've got we're saging, right, we're saging, we're cleansing and we're meditating, we're breathing, and now we've got something that's helping us to stretch outside of our boxes, or in the boxes, so to speak, for the acting technique that we just talked about. What else is there Lau out there that can help us?  15:57 - Lau Lapides (Guest) Well, I think you and I practice this all the time, subconsciously we do, and that is the grounding, and there's many techniques for grounding. But you need to ground yourself In the acting world. We call it sinking in. We can tell if you're not sinking in because you're floating.  16:13 you're somewhere floating, we can hear you processing the material still yes yes, you're not grounded, you're not centered, you're not sinking in, and there's different ways to do that. Sometimes people will want a stone, a crystal, a liquid, something that's warm, that is with them and touching them and around them. That helps them ground their spirit. Sometimes it's just a mental focus, like athletes may do. They may visualize and say I'm grounding myself to the ground.  16:44 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Now, that's a physical, that's what I like, that I'm getting, that this is physical and I use this. Actually, laura, I did steal this from you and my students because I say grab your heart right. Yes, touch your heart because then it's going to help to connect you with those words in a meaningful way, right.  17:01 Yes and I believe that that will help to ground you as well, like literally. I mean, of course I've got objects in my studio that I can touch, I can feel I can connect to, but of course, since I'm looking at the script right, I have to be careful because I don't want to look away from the script, because I might drop a word or two. But I love like just grab yourself that kind of like just kind of connection.  17:22 - Lau Lapides (Guest) Yeah, it's also prep. You can stop your session and do it at any time, but it should be a prep for you, so that you're not going into it cold and expecting yourself to warm up as you go.  17:34 but really grounding yourself and centering yourself as you're there. And you know, I actually have found that to be very disturbing to many students over the years and it probably was to me when I was younger in that we forget that we have a muscle that's the biggest one. We have the heart. We forget what that is, yeah, and so it reminds us of not only love and warmth and connection, but death. Yeah, because it reminds you there's mortality as well as life, and that's something that actors have to come to over aging and over time, because it just is a maturity thing. I think that when you feel your heart and you know, this is my lifeline to living it's also my lifeline to dying as well, and there's a beauty in that not to be morose, but there's a beauty in understanding that you're vulnerable at all moments in life. You're not in control of anything.  18:32 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I think the vulnerability, that's a great word. If I had a word to put in my studio to help me to connect right and to get past the words of it all and the sound of it all, I think it would be empathy.  18:42 - Lau Lapides (Guest) Yeah, yeah, well, the mortality, I like to think is also connected to humility. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, modesty and humility and understanding. We're not that great, that big, that important that we can't be gone at any moment, so what that provides for us is the understanding of what others are going through, yeah, what others are traveling through in that journey and that takes away from, oh, the ego of it all right the ego, you know I have something I say a few times in my classes about being a great e-learning narrator is to be a great teacher right yes, and if ego rules your classroom, get out of the classroom, right.  19:15 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) If ego rules your acting in reality, right, it's really not about you, it's about serving your audience, your scene, and really doing that justice Now. So we've got our sage, we've got our stretching to get out of the box and to get back in the box and to get back in the box.  19:35 What are some things that are not necessarily voiceover related that we can do to expand right our creativeness and our creative brain. And I like to say things that aren't necessarily like voiceover related, and I'll start it off by saying aren't necessarily like voiceover related and I'll start it off by saying for me, if you can do it financially, travel Traveling to another country can give you a wonderful perspective.  19:56 Anything that can get your creative juices flowing, that and a good movie right. So I watched a couple of great movies on the plane going out to Europe and then I was in Europe, experiencing different people, different cultures, and just watching and listening and talking and that allows me to grow spiritually, mentally, and it helps me in my performance. I mean it helps me to draw upon different experiences.  20:19 - Lau Lapides (Guest) Huge, huge, it's everything, or even this is what I've been doing recently going to different areas and towns in my state that I've never been to before or have never heard of, and just kind of driving around looking at properties, looking at businesses, looking at to expand my universe as to what surrounds me that I have not paid attention to yet, and how does that make me feel? How do I relate to that? I think that that's important in me being able to bring it into my knowledge base, my mindset, and to that EQ. Think that that's important in me being able to bring it into my knowledge base, my mindset, and to that EQ, that emotional quotient of understanding how others are living, how others are connected to the universe, to the world, to the, whatever, wherever they live. I think that's so important. I mean it doesn't have to be expensive.  21:04 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I mean, you could go to the mall and people watch One of my most favorite things I like to do when I went to New York was just hang out, sit down and watch people, because you can learn so much by absorbing the energy. It's not even about necessarily like, do you have to go to a class to learn something? I mean you just be absorbing the energy and for me, I like to be around positive energy, but sometimes being around negative energy also tells you like, oh okay, then that's also a learning experience.  21:29 - Lau Lapides (Guest) It reminds you too, like how do you do that when you have to do that? Because you and I are pretty positive energies and we try to stay hopeful in life and smile, but how do you do that when you have to do that? Maybe you're in a very somber or serious script, maybe you're in a character that is deeply defeated or unhappy. How do I reach that? Again, rasa boxes, how do I get into it? Very quickly and deep dive it? By understanding how people live, how they function, how they are in the world. That EQ, I think, is so—I would even venture to say, even though we're super intellectual beings, at least where we come from, culturally, eq is almost more important because it is really taking into consideration the other, the other person in a really important way, in a deep way, that many people just don't do.  22:19 They don't think to do, that it's so about not you.  22:24 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I mean ultimately, yeah, ultimately it's not about you.  22:27 - Lau Lapides (Guest) Ultimately, it's not about you.  22:28 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It's not, but it is about you serving others or serving a purpose that can help you in the end. Right, I think it's not like you're not going to benefit if it's not about you. The fact is that it can benefit everyone, I think, if it becomes about the person.  22:43 - Lau Lapides (Guest) Okay, so listen, I feel a quote coming up and I must allow it because I'm working on Shakespeare right now in one of my classes. As for a mirror held up to nature. So that is the human spirit by Shakespeare held up to its audience. In other words, I'm the actor, I'm the performer, I'm just mirroring you, the society, the need, the value. I'm showing you your own humanity. Yeah, absolutely.  23:12 - Intro (Announcement) Or at least I'm attempting to.  23:13 - Lau Lapides (Guest) I'm attempting to do that. So in the mimicry, if you will, in the mirroring, there is a profound psychological effect with your audience. It's not only like this business-like ability which comes. That is important, but it's trust. It's a nugget of heart value that lasts people a whole lifetime. That I know you do and I strive for that. It's sure we want to make money, sure we want to be successful, sure we want to do all that, but we want to make long, meaningful relationships with our audiences so that we can have that legacy.  23:47 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Absolutely, I mean I always was that person who had a positive legacy. Absolutely I mean, right, I always was that person who had a positive outlook on life. I mean, it was always like, you know, you and I are kind of bubbly personalities and so I that kind of has run my life, and when things happen that are not expected, like that were not in my control, I had health issues, right that, where all of a sudden I faced mortality, right, it amplified. It amplified that it wasn't about me In amplified that it wasn't about me. In reality it wasn't about me.  24:10 And what do I want to leave? What is my legacy? How do I want to be remembered? Right, right, and it really is about like, well, when you work 70, 80 hours a week, nobody like misses their work. When they pass on, right, it's not like, oh damn, I should have worked more. It's a funny thought though, Right, I should have worked more, but really it's, I should have lived more. And I think that really kind of planning and making time for that is important. So my husband, the other day he you know now where he works, you can take a mental health day he took a mental health day.  24:41 You know where he went? Disney. He went to Disney. And Disney is a great refresher for creativity. I'll tell you that. There you go, because you can just go and relax and have fun and allow yourself to feel right, yes, and not necessarily beaten down by the stresses of your work life.  24:58 - Lau Lapides (Guest) Just be present. Yeah, be present in the moment, having enjoyment, having fun, having an honest enthusiasm right Right Now. Who said this? Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.  25:11 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, I have to look up who that was, but it's so true it's funny because everybody's like he went alone, he went by himself and I'm like, yeah, I said look, Jerry looks at Disney, the way I look at shopping, Like I can go shopping for hours. I mean hours, I mean when.  25:23 - Lau Lapides (Guest) Jerry travels.  25:25 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I go like on a Sunday or a Saturday I'll go to the mall for like four or five hours, six hours, believe it or not. Sure, have some dinner. Sure, just walk around and observe. That's what I do. I observe, that's a lot of what I do. I'm like, yeah, I shop too, but I observe and I literally could do that all day long. So I'm like, yeah, no, I let him do that.  25:44 - Lau Lapides (Guest) Okay, does that fall in? Just to circle back Now is that now falling into the rejuvenation factor, the regenerating? Does that fall into that stretch factor of like? What are you doing to rejuvenate and regenerate that helps you stretch, helps you grow, helps you?  26:02 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) learn all these things? How does shopping help Anne grow? Well, you know, believe it or not, in a creative sense, right, we know that I'm a fashion buff. Right, we know that I'm a fashion buff, right, I'm not necessarily buying everything up in the stores, but I'm curating, I'm looking, I'm combining, I'm doing that creative, like whatever it is that creative assemblage in my head and building outfits, whether I actually purchase anything or not. And then I'm looking at people. I'm saying, oh, I like that, I like. Oh, look at that, would look good with that. And so I'm exercising Believe it or not, it's a creative exercise for me. And Jerry's like, oh, you're out shopping. No, I'm creatively exercising.  26:38 - Intro (Announcement) I'm stretching. This is going to help my business.  26:40 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I'm stretching this is going to help my business, but it is something like that, and you know I always say watching a great movie, something that can move you, move you to an emotion, to tears to happiness, to joy that is invigorating and that to me, is like okay, I want to make someone feel like that or I want to have an impact like that.  26:59 And how can I achieve that? How can I do that? Through my day-to-day voice acting Right, cause I mean we all know cause, we're all in it Right, but it's not to be minimalized.  27:08 - Lau Lapides (Guest) I mean, it's not just, oh, it's just voice acting Hell no, I mean that's something that someone says from the outside, not from the inside right when you're inside of it. Everything's a challenge.  27:18 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, and I'm like oh yeah, meryl Streep makes it look easy, right, she's an amazing actress, right. But that did. It did not happen overnight, and I think that, of course, there are people who have gifts, but I'm not to say that those gifts don't require work, you know, to develop and grow.  27:35 - Lau Lapides (Guest) That's the actor challenge, though. When you see great actors, it looks easy, it looks like it's natural, they're born doing it. They don't need coaching, they don't need classes, they just do it. No, you haven't seen the whole back end of that and they just do it. No, you haven't seen the whole back end of that. And they continue learning growing.  27:56 Yeah, johnny Depp is famous for going right into the culture and the mindset in the background and living it for a couple months before he shoots a film. You know what I mean. It's like hard work. There's a lot of hard work involved in building authenticity. Yeah, absolutely, Absolutely Right. Is there not like a bit of a what's the word? Paradox in working so hard to building authenticity that has a technical kind of fake structure to it and that is, you know, being on a microphone, right, but you have to be able to do that. You have to be able to do that and balance both.  28:25 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, oh, I love this conversation. This is such a great beginning of the year conversation because it's so different from just write your goals down, and, of course, I still think you should write your goals down. But hey, before you do that, right, take stock, sage out, get yourself out of the box, go through these steps and then stretch right and then do something that will stretch your creativity even further so that you can have the absolute best 2025 ever, ever.  28:52 - Lau Lapides (Guest) Unbelievable. I feel like we should have for that segment. We should have shaved our heads, been on a mountaintop in Tibet and drinking really delicious tea, like. I feel like we missed that part of it, but it was extraordinary, as always.  29:05 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Next episode, Lau and I will be coming to you from, yeah, drinking our tea. Oh my goodness, bosses.  29:12 - Intro (Announcement) Delicious.  29:12 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It's been amazing. Thank you, Lau. As always, it's just a pleasure and I look forward to our next episode together. Bosses, you too can connect and network like bosses, boss superpowers, and find out more at IPDTLcom. Big shout out to our sponsor. You guys have an amazing year week, year day, all that good stuff, and we'll see you next week. Bye.  29:35 - Intro (Announcement) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, anne Ganguzza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at vobosscom and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution with permission. Coast-to-coast connectivity via IPDTL.   

00:00 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey bosses, real Boss, Tom Dheere and myself have a very special deal for you guys. Tom, tell them what it is.  00:08 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) All right, anne. If you use the promo code BOSSVOSS that's B-O-S-S as in V-O-BOSS and V-O-S as in V-O-STRATEGIST, and the number 24, so that's BOSSVOS24, you get 10% off my 30-minute check-in, my one-hour strategy session and my one-hour diagnostic.  00:27 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And you'll get 10% off all coaching packages and demos on the Anne Ganguzza website. So, guys, black Friday starts now and runs till the end of the year. So everybody, get yourselves on that site and get yourself a discount. BOSS, VOS, BOSS, VOS 24.  00:43 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) BOSS, VOS 24. BOSS. VOS, BOSS, VOS, 24. BOSS, VOS, 24. 00:47 - Intro (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss, a VO boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza.  01:07 - Tom Dheere (Host) Hey everyone, welcome to the VO Boss Podcast and the Real Boss Series. I am Anne Ganguzza and I'm here with amazing real boss Tom Dheere. Hey, Tom Dheere.  01:18 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hello Anne Ganguzza.  01:19 - Tom Dheere (Host) How are you?  01:20 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I'm doing good. How are you? Happy holidays.  01:23 - Tom Dheere (Host) I'm doing awesome. Happy holidays to you. Thank you, tom. Last week we had an amazing discussion about how to take stock and take a look at how your year has gone so far, and I think that it's very appropriate at the end of the year here to have another discussion about how we can best prepare for 2025 so that we can have the best year ever.  01:45 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Absolutely Now. I've done videos like this or taught classes that discuss this every year for probably the past 13 years or so since I started instructing, I want to do something a little different than the normal thing that I do. We'll get to that, but before we, started recording.  02:03 I was listening to a podcast that was doing a post-presidential election Monday morning quarterback reverse engineer breakdown of like what happened. We're not going to talk about politics on any level, but there was something very specific that the guests talked about. They were talking about identity politics, as in how do you identify and how does that influence what you think, what you feel and, of course, obviously, how you vote, and of course, there's gender and race and all of those types of things. But they gave a very specific example of like, for example, west Virginia coal miners. They said, okay, west Virginia coal miners, we know better than you because coal is naughty, so we're going to take away your jobs, but we're going to get you a job coding, and to some people that's like oh, what a wonderful idea. But to the coal miners that may be a horrible idea.  02:57 And this is why I talk about politics, because people identify in certain specific ways. And I'm also talking about this not from a class level but a vocation level, because coal miner is an identity. Farmer is an identity, zooming out more. I work with the land, I work with my hands, I like to work outside. This is who I am, this is what speaks to me and feeds my soul as a person, as well as puts food on the table.  03:28 The reason I'm bringing up this, anne, is because and I never even thought about this before I identify as a voice actor, and I know that may sound weird. I identify as a coal miner, I identify as a farmer, I identify as a voice actor. But I decided I wanted to be a voice actor when I was 23 years old, like I was a kid, you know, I just dropped out of grad school and I decided this is what I want to do and it's the only thing I've. I mean, I've had a part-time job doing this and that I've had full-time jobs to make money, but it was all the means to an end of being a voice actor. So I have identified as a voice actor my entire adult life. How does this relate to how to get ready for the new year? I think all you bosses should think about how do you identify? And I'm going to break that down into two very specific categories.  04:20 Yeah, as an artist or as a business Now, Anne as the wonderful performance coach that she is helps you realize the artist within you. I, as the VO strategist, help you realize the business that is within you. Right, this is what's really important is that if you identify 100% as an artist and spreadsheets and keeping track of invoices, be damned, you're in trouble. You're not going to be the artist that you want to be and eat. If you're 100% business, I want to do the genres that make the most money and keep all this artsy, fartsy stuff off my lawn. You're in trouble because now you're refusing to identify with the artistry. That is voiceover. That requires emotional journeys, expression. You know there's psychology and inward reflection and all of that stuff.  05:17 - Tom Dheere (Host) So you need to identify then with both. Correct then? Is that what you're saying?  05:21 - Intro (Announcement) Because I was just going to ask you can I identify as an educator.  05:25 - Tom Dheere (Host) I always think that. I say it multiple times. I feel like I've been an educator all my life because I used to teach my dolls flashcards from the very beginning. I mean, that's what brings me joy. And, yes, voice acting, of course. Voice acting because that's the creative aspect of it, right, but probably a little bit more. I enjoy being an educator and sharing things with others and hopefully inspiring and motivating, but also I really love entrepreneurship. So I feel like that teaching with entrepreneurship that's how I identify and it's funny because, tom, that you say that because all my life, through my career, before I was in education in some form or fashion, all along I also was placed in these management positions where I would be the liaison between the art department and the technology department. So I feel like I've got the creative and the business or the technical side within me, and so I think I've always identified with two, really two different aspects of it and I love that you just said that because you just I feel good now. I feel like I feel seen.  06:27 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, absolutely, and part of having an identity or how you identify is you also demand, or you should demand. I would like to say that people see you as who you are and I had this problem with friends, people that I thought were friends in my 30s because I identified as a voice actor, and they didn't take that identity seriously. They didn't respect my identity. And, to your point, the fact that you could work in this corporate environment and liaise with the business people and the marketing people. It means you speak business, you speak marketing, you speak entrepreneur, you speak art and you also speak educator.  07:06 I identify as an educator Also, you identify as an educator. You can identify as more than one thing, but with the artist and the business part, which are two critical components to be effective as a voice actor, you need to be in touch with both of those things, have a level of self-awareness, because some people come in from a theater background, a very heavily artistic background. Some people come from a radio background, which is an art form in itself, but it's very announcer-y as opposed to storyteller-y Storyteller-y, I guess that's a word now.  07:40 - Tom Dheere (Host) That's a good word, Tom.  07:42 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Storyteller-y. You don't have to identify as a marketer to enjoy or tolerate marketing as a voice actor. It's a part of what you need to do, but at its core you need to identify as an artist. I would say at your core, because this is about expression and engagement and getting people to feel certain ways and obviously do different things. Go buy this car call now. Operators are standing by, but identify that. The business too.  08:08 - Tom Dheere (Host) Well, here's what I like about this and this is what I like to tell my students is I always step back when people are like I don't really relate, I don't resonate with this genre or I don't resonate with or I don't like marketing and I don't like certain parts of this running this business. And so, in reality, I always try to tell them to step back and say what is it that you love? Because I would say creative and entrepreneur. Right, creative entrepreneur? You know that kind of thing. I identify with multiple levels, I mean, and under that, creative is voice actor, but I also love, like voicing corporate, and I love voicing e-learning, of course, because I identify as an educator, but I love corporate as well because it's a challenge To me.  08:47 I say step back and look at the things that you don't like and embrace the challenge, because that speaks to your creative part, like solving a problem. And so, for me, I've always told people, if you really truly hate and you're trying hard to find inspiration to get into that character, embrace the challenge. If you don't know like what kind of an actor or what kind of a character to be when you're teaching and e-learning, you need to embrace the challenge of how are you going to teach this lesson in an engaging manner. So step back. If you don't like corporate copy, step back and say there's a story in there somewhere. Where is it?  09:19 The challenge is to find that, and the challenge for me as an entrepreneur, is to solve the problem of how am I going to make money with my product, right? And so it's always that challenge, that intellectual challenge and that creative challenge, that speak to both or three things that I identify as which is creative, entrepreneur and educator. So it speaks to all of those things running a business, and so those things that you don't enjoy, that you hate, try to step back and look at the challenge that they present for you and embrace the challenge and embrace how are you going to solve this problem. And that's what I feel like helps me to love all aspects of it and, of course, the stuff that I really don't love. We've talked about this before, tom. We say go ahead, outsource it to the experts in the field.  10:02 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Right, it is difficult to reconcile all of these hats that you have to wear to be an effective voice actor and remember that, yes, you only have one head, so they kind of stack up like Dr Seuss's Bartholomew in the Thousand and One Hats. It's not easy. This is not an easy thing to do. So, with all that in mind, I brought up the how do you identify as a voice actor, or how do you identify as an educator or a marketer or a business person, because that should inform what you need to do and what you need to be and what you need to have to set yourself up for success in 2025.  10:45 Because, yes, a goal, I want to make this amount of money, I want to get this kind of representation, I want to produce this demo, I want to get on this social media platform. All of those are valid, all of those are important, but you can only be effective if you know who you are and understand who you need to be to be effective. Whether you like it or not, if there's one thing I tell all my students is the voiceover industry does not care. If you don't like social media, the voiceover industry does not care. If you don't like spreadsheets, the voiceover industry does not care if you don't like auditioning. It does not care. It has no sympathy. Either you do it or you're out.  11:26 - Tom Dheere (Host) People hiring your voice don't care. People hiring your voice don't care. They just want the voice.  11:31 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) They just want the product, they want the voice, they want the invoice, you know.  11:38 - Tom Dheere (Host) And I do want to say to your point of making sure you know who you identify with, but also know that you can evolve and change right, so your identity can change and evolve. Because if you want to diversify that business, right, Setting new goals for next year If you want to diversify into another genre I mean the broad spectrum part of it is I identify as a voice actor. Is there a specific type of voice actor that you truly identify with? Oh, I really consider myself, you know, an audiobook narrator, right, and so you can evolve and change right that identity or narrow down that identity or broaden out that identity based upon your goals for the following year. Because I know that myself, in order to diversify my business, I've had to do that, and it doesn't happen overnight sometimes. Sometimes you've got to sit with it and think it and let it come, because it's a creative challenge.  12:26 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Absolutely. I'm so glad that you said audiobook narrator is the first example, because there's a handful of genres that people will say I'm this genre before they even say that they're a voice actor. What do you do for a living? I'm an audiobook narrator. That's one of what I call the lifestyle genres, as in you can be a full-time audiobook narrator.  12:49 You can be narrating audiobooks five days a week every year and have a pipeline, and do it at the exclusion of all other genres of voiceover and make a good living doing it. So a lot of people identify as their genre before they identify as a voice actor. In general, I'm the opposite I'm a voice actor, and the reason why I say that is because, well one, I love storytelling and I love storytelling in all its forms whether it's a 15-second commercial or it's a 30-hour audio book.  13:19 It's all storytelling. I'll tell any story you want and any style that you want and any medium that you want for any audience that you want. And then some people say I am an e-learning narrator or I'm a cartoon narrator, and that's good and I think it's healthy too, because the firmer of an identity that you have when it comes to setting goals for the new year, which is what this conversation is all about it's easier because I tell my students vague goals will get you vague results. Specific goals will get you specific results and that feeds into vague efforts.  13:51 - Tom Dheere (Host) Exactly. And if you narrow down that you want to get into, let's say, audiobook narrating, then you'll have a specific set of goals that will help you to get there. If you want to be an e-learning narrator, you have specific sets of goals that will get you there. So, yeah, I think if, at the broad level, you say I am a voice actor, I am an artist, I'm a business person, I'm a serial entrepreneur I like to call myself that Because I love the challenge of like how can I make money from this? And it makes me feel like I don't want you guys to think I'm all about money, but it's not really that. It's about the challenge of taking something and building it from the ground up and then that kind of exhilaration and satisfaction when it works is amazing. When it doesn't work.  14:32 You know what I learned from that as well.  14:34 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh, you know what I want to do now, Anne. I want to use this as an example for you. So for you bosses who are watching this, you want to set goals for 2025. Maybe try it through the prism of identity. Let's use this example In 2025, I wish to identify as an e-learning narrator. That's your goal, okay, so what do you need to do to be able to achieve that goal of identifying as an e-learning narrator? Well, the first thing is training and, of course, I use e-learning as an example, because you should go to Anne Ganguzza to get your e-learning training. But can? You should go to Anne Ganguzza to get your e-learning training.  15:08 - Tom Dheere (Host) But can we ask one question? Yes, can we ask one question before we say I want to go into e-learning. Why, why do you want to be?  15:14 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) There you go. Why do you want to identify as an e-learning narrator? I think that's important, right, and that's a fantastic question, because for some of you it may be I've been a school teacher for 25 years and I'm retiring and that's what you want to do. Or you just may be an academic, you may be a scholar and you just love learning. So you want to share your love of learning as opposed to being a teacher, and you want to share your love of teaching. So figuring out the why is a great way to start. And then, once you figure out that, why? Because e-learning, as Anne can tell you, takes on many different forms. Medical narration is a form of e-learning, narrating textbooks, narrating human resources, resource guides or, you know, forklift, certification for construction workers, or executive summaries or any or a number of things, and some of that you may identify with more strongly and others you may not identify with as much. But once you figure out that why, then you go to the how.  16:15 Why do I want to identify? Why could I identify as an e-learning narrator? And then, how can I do that? Get training with Anne, make a great demo. Then you need to figure out the marketing part of that you also need to build, possibly, a landing page on your website. Maybe you need to build a list of e-learning clients that you could direct market to. Maybe you need to join some online casting sites that have a lot of e-learning casting opportunities and so on and so on and so forth. So you can kind of plot that out. If, by December 31st 2025, you have said I now identify as an e-learning narrator, both inside and outside, and, like Anne said, figure out the why that's the inside part and then training, demo, website marketing, casting sites, direct emails, which turns into e-learning jobs, now you can realize that goal of identifying as an e-learning narrator.  17:11 - Tom Dheere (Host) Now also, if I could just interject and say that, when you're figuring out what it is, what are your goals for the following year? And I think also researching the industry. Tom and I have spoken about the industry and how it's evolved in past episodes and how it's evolved in past episodes, and I want you to know and we also just came back from a conference where we were discussing how are these genres being affected by disruptive technologies such as synthetic voice or AI? And, just to let you know, e-learning is alive and well, as well as corporate. I personally, I talk about looking at the market space, right 33.2 million registered companies. How many of them are going to use synthetic voices? Probably the ones that don't care about engagement or storytelling, right? And that's the same amount of people, I believe, that didn't care that the narrator could tell a story either, and maybe they just had a nice-sounding reading voice, and so they might hire somebody for that, and so the same people that are going to hire for that are going to still hire for that, and they may go to AI.  18:12 But I believe that there's a huge, huge market. It is the largest market out there, really, of all the genres, when you're talking about percentage of opportunities out there. So, guys, just because you might be hearing stories about how all e-learning is going to AI, I stand up and object to that, not because I don't want it to, but, honestly, when you look at the realistic numbers of the market space, yeah, some of it's going to go there, but some of it's going to go there for every genre, right. You still have a really large market to work with here that I don't see going away anytime soon. Tom, I don't know what about you.  18:46 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I still believe that there's plenty of work for everybody that knows what they're doing.  18:51 And the question is do you bosses know what you're doing? I would say just the fact that you're having this conversation with us and listening to us means you are much farther ahead of the game than a lot of other people, because you're taking it upon yourself to educate yourself about the voiceover industry through the VO Boss podcast. With all that in mind, yes, the industry is changing. Yes, ai is here. It has been here. It is causing the overall voiceover industry to contract. That is unquestionable, and some people are asking it from the perspective of genre, and Anne heard me say this when I moderated the AI panel very recently at the Mid-Atlantic VoiceOver Conference, that I think it's a bottom-up thing, that the lowest budget content will be the stuff that gets eaten up by AI. First and this is why I'm going to talk to you about this part bosses, about setting your goals for 2025.  19:45 Another mission, because there's goals and then there's missions. A mission to identify as an e-learning narrator I think is a very noble mission and we kind of walked through that. But another mission can be to be a better storyteller than AI, and you have to be that because more and more of the work is going to get eaten up on a low performance low budget level, which is, for the most part, entry-level work for lack of a better term for a lot of people who are entering the voiceover industry. So that means you need to make sure that you have quality performance training storytelling training, on-camera theater, opera, improv, stand-up comedy. Get that training to complement Aang Ganguzza's e-learning training and all the other wonderful coaches out there so you can hit the ground running and already be relevant and already be more of an effective performer than AI.  20:40 - Tom Dheere (Host) And you know what else, tom, worst case scenario and I don't want to like worst case scenario for next year, but worst case scenario there is no voiceover industry anymore. Right, if you've gained all these skills, right, building a business Hello, building a business right. Understanding how to have a product, market it and sell it right, you have a business. And also performance wise right, as an actor. Gosh, these performance skills can be put into so many everyday opportunities for work. If, for whatever reason Now I'm not going to say the voice industry is going to fall out, but I think as business people, we have to always be prepared, right. So those skills that you develop right in becoming the best actor that you can be, are going to help you down the road for anything that you do, if you're presenting, if you are trying to sell yourself in an interview, I mean, all of these things really are beneficial, I think, to your personal and professional growth and development. So it's not a waste of investment ever.  21:34 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I don't think it's funny because, as you were saying that, I thought of two professions. There are people who train lawyers to speak in court. That requires an acting coach of some sort. And there's another voice actor I know who trains actors to be professional patients at medical schools so they can exhibit certain symptoms, so the medical students can diagnose their ailments.  21:58 - Tom Dheere (Host) So this is not about exit strategies for when?  22:00 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) AI eats voiceover. But Anne's point is very sound.  22:05 - Tom Dheere (Host) Yeah, no, it's just investment, yeah.  22:08 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, investing in yourself. Here's another thing that I'm starting to notice. Yeah, search engine results. If you're using Google or Bing or Yahoo, whatever, I've noticed that, at least with the voiceover-related searches, which is most of what I do for various reasons, ai companies are starting to show up more in the sponsored results.  22:32 - Tom Dheere (Host) Have you noticed this, anne. Well, I know that the AI answer is always coming up first, and so I don't know if I've noticed AI companies specifically advertising their services. But AI answers and responses.  22:39 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, this is what I'm saying. Absolutely, it's both, because, like I use a Chrome browser.  22:44 I tend to use Google the most often and I'll get that AI answer before I get other answers, but it'll be the AI answer. It'll be these AI-sponsored companies, as, pertaining to voiceover and then all the normal Google results, I'm wondering that a lot of these AI companies have been recruiting and contracting with voice actors like us, and now that they've gotten enough of a voice roster of human voices that they're cloning speech to speech or text to speech, and they've gotten all their software ducks in a row and they've gotten all their marketing ducks in a row, that they may be going for it possibly this year. And I say that, bosses, to light a fire under your butts. It's time to stop being professional students. It's time to get out there and start working. Keep getting your coaching with Ann, keep producing your demos, keep developing your skills, but get off the fence. Get on top of it.  23:38 - Tom Dheere (Host) So you can go and advertise your product. All right, so we've got step one. Right is how do you identify right, your, why?  23:46 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) right.  23:47 - Tom Dheere (Host) Understanding, I would say, educating the industry and what it is that you identify with. And if you want to move into or add additional genres or whatever you want to do for your business, to really investigate, educate yourself on that. And now we kind of have the goal that we're setting and then we're working backwards right, we're like reverse engineering the goal. So what will it take to achieve that goal? What other tips do you have, tom? We're writing this down, I assume, because that's what I tell people. It always helps to write down.  24:16 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I certainly hope our bosses are writing this down.  24:18 - Tom Dheere (Host) I don't know if I have much writing skills anymore, but you know I do have paper and pen and there's lots of great planners out there.  24:24 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, I will give some quick tips that I usually talk to my students about, now that we're talking about identity, which also is a form of how do you define success? So that's a part of it. How do you identify? Figuring out which genres, like we said, you want to identify as an e-learning narrator in 2025. But then the third one is what are the portals? Your bosses have heard me talk about this before the three portals of voiceover that connect voice actors to voiceover casting opportunities, which are representation, online casting sites, self-marketing strategies. So, for example, if you want to identify as an e-learning narrator in 2025, most agents don't cast e-learning.  25:04 - Tom Dheere (Host) Correct.  25:05 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Which means you don't need to seek representation in 2025, most agents don't cast e-learning Correct, which means you don't need to seek representation in 2025. However, there are tons of casting sites that have lots of e-learning opportunities and, of course, you can engage in direct and indirect marketing strategies to build lists of potential clients, cold email them more follow-up emails to stay top of mind, so you can see how. Now you can kind of plot it out into I need to be this, why do I want to be this, how am I going to do this and who am I going to connect with to get the casting opportunities that I want?  25:34 - Tom Dheere (Host) And, by the way, part of that direct marketing where you're doing the cold emailing and generating the lists and stuff that Tom helps you to do as well the VO Boss brand has a product for direct marketing as well that could be of interest. That will also help you with all different genres e-learning, corporate and that is using a vetted list that exists and you can find out more obviously at vobosscom and set up an appointment to talk to me about that as well if you're interested. That's another valid marketing. In addition to the marketing that Tom talks to you about, I think you need everything you can get. To be quite honest, get yourself out there, I agree.  26:11 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I agree.  26:12 - Tom Dheere (Host) Well, tom, this has been a great conversation. So, bosses, we are manifesting for you and with you, the most successful 2025 ever for all of you. So make sure that you are taking stock in how your year has gone and let's go ahead and set those goals. And, guys, we're here for you. We want to hear feedback how is it going, how are your goals being set, and what do you guys want to do for 2025? So, tom, it's been a pleasure, as always. Thank you so much for all of your words of wisdom, and I'm going to give a great big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl. You, too, can connect and network like real bosses. Find out more at IPDTLcom. All right, guys, have an amazing week and we'll see you next year. Bye.  27:01 - Intro (Announcement) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, Anne Ganguzza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at vobosscom and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via IPDTL.   

Delve into year-end evaluations and developing a robust plan for next year's voiceover success. THE BOSSES share expert advice on setting clear objectives, utilizing effective marketing techniques, and maintaining enthusiasm in the unpredictable realm of freelance work. They give invaluable advice on maintaining passion, setting precise goals, and implementing effective marketing strategies. THE BOSSES also share strategies for balancing financial and time investments to align emotional satisfaction with professional objectives.  00:00 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey bosses, real Boss, Tom Dheere and myself have a very special deal for you guys. Tom, tell them what it is.  00:08 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) All right, nne. If you use the promo code BOSSVOSS that's B-O-S-S as in V-O-BOSS and V-O-S as in V-O-STRATEGIST, and the number 24, so that's BOSSVOS24, you get 10% off my 30-minute check-in, my one-hour strategy session and my one-hour diagnostic.  00:27 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And you'll get 10% off all coaching packages and demos on the Anne Ganguzza website. So, guys, black Friday starts now and runs till the end of the year. So everybody, get yourselves on that site and get yourself a discount. BOSS, VOS, BOSS, VOS 24.  00:43 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) BOSS, VOS 24. Boss. VOS, BOSS, VOS, 24. BOSS, VOS, 24. 00:47 - Intro (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss, a VO Boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza.  01:06 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey, hey everyone. Welcome to the VO Boss Podcast and the Real Boss Series. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and of course, I am here with the one and only amazing Mr Tom Dheere.  01:18 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Hello Anne, hello bosses.  01:20 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hi Tom Dheere. Hi Tom, it's getting close to the end of the year, getting cold, getting ready for the holidays. At the end of the year, I always try to kind of step back and take a look at how did my year go, and I know that this is what you do. This is kind of like this is like your thing as the VO strategist. So I'd love to hear how you evaluate your year, because I want some tips actually, and I'm sure the bosses out there can always use some good end of year tips for evaluating how your business is going.  01:57 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) And I'll be happy to share those. I do the feels. You know. There's the emotional part of it. Just how did I feel about the year? Did I feel energized? Did I feel motivated? Did I feel satisfied? The emotional part of it Just how did I feel about the year? Did I feel energized? Did I feel motivated? Did I feel satisfied with the art of it? Was I able to express myself in the ways that I wanted or needed to express myself as both a voiceover artist, but also as a human being, Because there's a psychological aspect to what we do, Everybody has a different reason for why they want to be a voice actor.  02:26 You know, like Tom Dheere loves to tell stories. I love to talk, I'm a big talker, I'm a fast talker, but I just love telling stories. I love going on journeys and guiding people through journeys. And it's funny because ever since I did my very first paid voiceover in 1996, I've always had the question you know, how'd I do as an artist? You know, and every year the answer is a little bit better because I learn a little bit more.  02:49 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I love how you evaluated, first of all, the why. Right, because I think we always need to step back and say remember your why. Why are we doing it in the first place? Right, because if it gets to the point where it's stressing you out too much or you're I'm like my corporate job did that.  03:04 So I mean honestly like one of the reasons why I did this was to go into business for myself was because I found joy in running a business. I found joy in being creative and telling stories, such as yourself. And I love how you opened with that, because when I asked you, I was thinking, gosh, you're going to bring out your spreadsheet and you're going to be like all right, the business analyst is here and we're going to talk about how our year went, which I'm sure you're going to talk about anyways. But I love how you opened it with what is your why and how did you feel about it? Because I think you have to have the feels first right in order to want to continue and have the passion and the drive to keep moving forward.  03:41 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Well, if there's no feels, then why are you doing it? And if you're doing it just for a paycheck, voiceover is the worst way to try to make money. It's so hard.  03:51 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It's so hard. Wait, I feel like on the count of three, Tom, it's so hard.  03:59 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) And it takes forever to find out if you can make money and how long it's going to take you to make money, that's going to feel like it validates you at all, and if you wanted to get to part-time or if you want it to be something that's going to cover all your expenses and help save for retirement. Like you know, if there's a hundred jobs out there, there's 99 out there that are better to make money and have a paycheck than this one. So if you are doing this, it better have the feels right Now.  04:29 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) why do you say that, though I do want to ask you why do you say that there's a hundred jobs better at making the money? Why do we say that and the two of us are like oh my God, it's hard, but give a little more background to that, to that. Why?  04:40 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) I'm talking in the context of something that gives you personal fulfillment. Now, in all fairness, if your passion is photography and you want to be a photographer, the principle is the same You're a freelancer. You have to figure out how to make your own work, how to market yourself, how to brand yourself, how to manage your finances. So the principles are all the same. So the self-employed things like voiceover or photography I want to be a singer, dancer, actor, model, musician, freelance graphic artist, I want to open my own yoga business or whatever. But for everything else banking, legal healthcare and healthcare and all of these things can be emotionally and psychologically rewarding, but those tend to be far more stable forms of income, you know. So my point is is that if you're going to get into something as difficult to pursue like photography or voiceover or being a musician, if it doesn't have the feels, then why are you doing it? You're just some kind of masochist who just likes to make your life as difficult as humanly possible, you know.  05:42 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I read an interesting blog about when you're in freelance and you're doing stuff like we're voice actors. I mean, it's all about certainty. Right, we've given up our certainty, because if we've worked for people in the corporate world like I did, I mean I was certain I was getting that paycheck every two weeks, I mean as long as I was employed. This. Now you've entered into the era, or into a vortex, of uncertainty, and that is, I think, where Tom and I are like it's hard, it's hard and yeah. So if it doesn't give you the feels, then yeah, you have to make a lot of sacrifices for that.  06:15 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Voiceover the vortex of uncertainty, the vortex of uncertainty.  06:20 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I'll tell you. Not that we don't love it. I mean, gosh, we've both been in this over 15 years, right, tim? So it's like, really, I mean I would not have stayed with it. I don't think I could ever work for someone again, unless it's like an in-out get paid for the job and we're done.  06:33 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Oh no, I can't work for anybody again.  06:34 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) All my jobs? Yeah, I enjoy my, and the first step is to assess the feels right. So do we still have the same feeling about voiceover. Do we still find the same joy in it as we did when we started? Okay, all right, that's good, that's step number one. Then what, tom?  07:05 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Well then, it's time to break that down, because everybody has dreams in voiceover and people like Ann Ganguza, who is a masterful genre coach and demo producer.  07:09 That's part of the journey of helping to make your dreams come true. Get quality training, get a demo that you can use as a marketing tool to get the casting opportunities that you want to help make your dreams come true. But I tell all my students, vague goals will get you vague results. Specific goals will get you specific results. Yes, I also say that vague efforts will get you vague results. Specific goals will get you specific results. Yes, I also say that vague efforts will get you vague results. Specific efforts will get you specific results. So, when it comes to analyzing your business and reconciling the feels with what do I need to do and be and have to fulfill me? Narrate cartoons or video games or military history, audio books or college textbooks or whatever it is that blows your hair back to get the feels that you desire? You need to be able to put in the time and money and energy and effort on a business and marketing sense to be able to get the casting opportunities that you want so you can get the feels right.  08:00 Yes, absolutely, and this is why, I tell my students the more specific you are about what you want, the better of a chance you're going to have to get what you want, and your goals can change from year to year.  08:11 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So then, is this the step that's next in terms of like figuring out goals that you want for the next year, or are we still in the assessment phase of how, this year, went.  08:21 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) It directly flows into the goals that you want, because your goals also are going to change from year to year. So like, for example, this is 2024. One of my main voiceover goals was to book political voiceover work. I'm doing my research and taking classes and listening to experts in the area. I knew this was going to be a big opportunity to be a political voice actor for a lot of people.  08:46 My worry was that my sound, which is not the vote for this person and if you don't, the other one will eat your children. Like, I can't do that. My vocal folds are just not thick enough to be able to pull off that, or at least I just sound like I'm trying too hard. So it's like is there a place for me with my personality, my skill sets, the thickness of my vocal folds, to be able to get voiceover work? So I set a number for myself of how many political jobs I wanted to do this year and what are the things I need to do to be able to achieve those goals. So training yes, check. Little JMC, little Brandon Perry Okay, check. Demo yes, got the spots. Also added and embellished the demo with previous political work that I'd done in 2022 and 2023, because that's when I decided I wanted to give this a shot. And then marketing acumen Get representation that specializes in booking political voiceover work, going on casting sites and keeping an eye out for political work, as well as optimizing my profile to feed the algorithms to get political voiceover work. And use direct marketing strategies to be able to develop relationships with production companies that specialize in political work and develop relationships with them and get work.  10:05 And I did all three of those things and, to a greater or lesser extent, it worked in all three of those ways. So I did hit the number of political spots that I wanted to book this year. How do I know that? Well, I can count, but how does one keep track of this stuff? So I use my cash flow sheet, which is a free download at vo strategistcom, and it tracks every penny that goes into my voiceover business and every penny that goes out of my voiceover business.  10:34 So obviously I track all of the voiceover work that I did, what kind of genre it was, how much money I made, who did I work with, how I got the booking this is where being able to look back on your year and figuring out how you did, because having the feels, like I said, is critical. It's the most important thing. But you need to find out how much money did you spend this year? Where did you put your money Training, demo production, marketing, other things? Where did you put your time and energy? Cold calling versus auditioning, versus blogging, versus social media, versus workshops, versus conferences, versus local events versus national events? And how did all of that stuff pan out? What efforts did you put into 2024 that turned into what you want, which is the voiceover bookings, to get you the feels, to get that fulfillment of yes, I am realizing myself as a voice actor.  11:30 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And that free downloadable has all of those aspects on there, like social media, like this is how you got the job social, oh wow, that's fabulous.  11:38 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Yeah, so I'll talk everybody through. It is that the first column just has a little code. It's VO for voiceover, VOS for VO strategist. Because I track all my coaching stuff on there too, and then it's either the expense like you know, paperclips or whatever I bought, or a class that I took, or whatever that I attended, or whatever the voiceover is, and then I so I track what the voiceover is Do you buy paperclips, Tom?  12:00 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I haven't bought paperclips in years.  12:02 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) I have so many paperclips from you know my analog days that I'll never need to buy another paperclip again, so maybe that wasn't the best example.  12:09 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I know, no, but I love it. I just was thinking about it. God, do we use paperclips anymore? Anyway, sorry.  12:16 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Barely, barely. I barely use paperclips. I use my stapler all the time, but I don't use my paperclip anymore.  12:21 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Right, I do too. I still use my stapler.  12:23 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Yeah.  12:25 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Okay, Staples.  12:25 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Anyway, at Staples, yes, one of my favorite places. It's like Disneyland for me that and the container store, if you've ever been to a container store.  12:33 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh, yes, I love the container store.  12:35 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Love those.  12:36 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) There's one not far from me Stupidly expensive containers, but boy do I love them. But boy do I love them. They're worth every penny.  12:49 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) I just love walking around in there. They are, it's like Willy Wonka Good stuff Anyway. Oh, my mileage. I tracked my tolls, you know, because I drove from Manhattan to Virginia, specifically, and back. I tracked all the tolls in and out of the Lincoln Tunnel across the Delaware Bridge.  13:04 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Can I tell you, please Can?  13:05 I tell you, I tracked my $6 butter that I bought from the bar so that I could put it on my Royal Cousin bagel Because I'm a girl who loves butter on her bagels. And so it was like late at night and I went to the bar and I said can I buy some butter? And he's like butter. And I said, well, I have a bagel. I said, have you ever had a bagel from New Jersey? And he's like okay, and the first he comes back with two or three. Like I'm like no, no, no, no, that's not going to work for me.  13:35 He's just two or three little pats of that container, like I need like two or three per like square inch of a bagel for that. And ultimately he says I'm going to have to charge you and I said, okay, sure, so how much is that going to cost me? He goes and I'm like I thought about it it was late at night and I really wanted that bagel and I said, all right, put it on my tab. So that's been tracked.  13:56 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Just wanted to clear the air on that. Just wanted to clear the air of that $6 butter. It's a tax deduction because it's a food expense at a professional event.  14:05 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Thank you, roy. Thank you, roy for my bagel.  14:10 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) I allowed myself to eat a bagel. This time. I had half a pumpernickel myself when I was down there I ate an entire bagel.  14:13 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I might have eaten one and a half, tom, because you know.  14:16 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) I gotta have a lot of butter. Yeah well, I understand you had to make it worth the $6 that you put out.  14:20 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Thank you, Uncle.  14:21 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Roy. Thank you, roy. I track all the traveling expenses and obviously, every meal, I amount of money that I made. I enter the invoice that I generated for every voiceover that I did, the form of payment check, direct deposit, paypal, credit card, wise, formerly known as TransferWise. Oh, I also currency, because I get a lot of European clients, so I get paid in euros as well as dollars and British pounds.  14:51 But this is how to look at your voiceover business marketing-wise is that I have a section which I either type in AB for audition booking or DB for direct booking, because I like to know did I get this through a one-to-one audition I auditioned once I booked one gig or is it a regular client or a legacy client that just said oh Tom, here's another explainer video and you don't have to do an audition? So this year, 2024, my direct bookings were roughly 80% of my voiceover work and the audition one-to-one auditions were roughly 20% of my voiceover work. And the question is you get these numbers, but what do they mean? What that means for me, tom Dheere, is that I have legacy clients dating back to 1997 that I don't audition for anymore. So that's clearly an accumulation of building regular clients over an extremely long period of time.  15:45 And that's great, but I also need to know how relevant I am in the voiceover industry, because if you book an audition this year. That means that your voice, your sound, your performance is in demand and you're keeping up with casting trends.  15:59 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Love that and 20% is pretty good.  16:02 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) The other thing I do is I track the portal. How did I get this casting opportunity? The three portals in the voiceover industry are representation, online casting sites, self-marketing strategies. So, looking at my spreadsheet, so we're not quite at the end of the year yet, but we're pretty close. Right now it's only 8% of my work came through representation, 42% came through online casting. That's both free sites and pay-to-play sites. 26% came through direct marketing, 23% came through indirect marketing.  16:33 So what do those numbers mean? Well, it means a couple of things. One, you line up the genres of voiceover that you want to do with the portals that you need to use to get them. So, for example, agents don't cast audiobooks or explainers. So if I did a lot of audiobook work this year, that means I probably got it through ACX or Findaway, voices or Ahab or any of the other audiobook-centric casting sites. Or and this also happens a lot is that you develop direct relationships with audiobook production companies Hachette, podium Publishing, Oasis, a whole bunch of other places and so I can look and go oh okay, well, I got a lot of work through that too. So it's reconciling the genre of voiceover, the type of bookings that I got, with how I got them. So, for example, political so far has been my best genre. 23.9% of my voiceover revenue was political. Second best was e-learning. I do a ton of e-learning. I've had clients dating back to the 90s, so that makes sense.  17:35 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yes, does your spreadsheet calculate the percentage? Do you have like formulas built into that spreadsheet? That's awesome.  17:41 I do, I'm going to just ask, because I know there's a lot of bosses out there thinking this oh good Lord, it's a spreadsheet, and their eyes are already like rolling back in their heads because it's like overwhelming. Right, but tell me, how much time does it take for them to account for this? Because, if you think about it, this is nothing more than an expense report, really, and a little bit more right If you were to travel for your job, right? And so I feel like you always have to fill out an expense report in order to get paid for it. So this is kind of like your expense report slash income statement, inflow, outflow yeah, report for your business. And so how long should you expect to sit down at the end of a day, at the end of a week, and fill that out?  18:20 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) A couple minutes.  18:21 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Okay. So see that, guys. It's only a couple of minutes, yeah it's only a couple of minutes.  18:27 And so even as overwhelming, like Tom is coming up with all these numbers and these statistics from his own job and his own year, but yet he's only spent a few minutes a day jotting this stuff down, and I think it's just something like muscle memory. As much as you go and practice character development or practice your scripts, it is time invested that you have to put into your studio, and I just want to say that. I think I want to clarify, tom, that there's a number of people that get into this industry because they find joy in reading books or they find joy in creating characters. However, not everybody finds joy in the work that's required, right, to actually create and delve in deeper to that character or delve in deeper to growing a business. As much joy as these things bring you, there is work involved and I just want to acknowledge and, tom, we've said it before multiple times it's hard, right. I mean not every single aspect of your business is going to be like, I mean, until you're probably established right, eight hours in the booth doing joyful, light character work.  19:27 If that's what you want to do, there is the other work that it takes to get you to that place to feel joyful, as you were explaining right so you can derive the feels right.  19:38 And so this assessment, this end of your assessment, can give you such valuable insight into where you've gone and where you want to go in the future and how much time you're going to have to dedicate to different aspects of it. And so it's worth the couple of minutes and I say that it's worth a couple of minutes, like to my students that are in performance. I say it's worth a couple of minutes to do that copy analysis, to do that character development, to do that scene writing, because in the end, that's what's going to pay off and get you the gig. Because in the end, that's what's going to pay off and get you the gig. Because ultimately, you can go in and create characters all you want, but until you make a profit doing that right, that's just all you're doing is going in your studio and creating characters, and if it's something that needs to pay the bills, that may not happen. Until you put in a little more work, that may not be as pleasant.  20:25 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Right. I mean I've been developing this spreadsheet for 20 years, and I have been developing this spreadsheet for 20 years and I have all sorts of little formulas and things in there, yeah.  20:34 - Intro (Announcement) You get the benefit and you can have it for free.  20:36 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Tom, is this for free? Oh my God, for free. That's so awesome, right? You don't have to put the work in that Tom. You're getting the benefit of Tom. This is why we call him the VO strategist, right? And if you need help, there he is, tom. I'm sure people can come see you and work with you, that you can help streamline this so that it becomes something that isn't so tedious or isn't something that you're questioning Well, why am I not booking work, or why is this not happening in my business? So, if you need an accountability partner and I'll tell you what I'm the first person to say that in my business, I will invest in something that will keep me on track, something that will keep me going. I have a business coach I invest in on a monthly basis, an accountability partner. Tom is like one of the best out there and he's done all this work for you. Sorry, I'm just. I'm gushing right now, tom.  21:27 But, bosses that know me like I don't bullshit sorry, I just don't I. But bosses that know me like I don't—bullshit sorry, I just don't. I'm honest to probably a fault, but I would not talk about Tom, nor would I have Tom on my podcast so many times if I didn't believe in what he's doing and I didn't believe that you're going to gain such value. And again, this won't be an month for Peloton so that I can get on that bike and be inspired and motivated by the Peloton instructor.  21:57 This is kind of no different right. It's worth it to me because the benefits, right that I get health-wise and joy-wise from getting on the bike and exercising and being inspired and motivated are very well worth the investment. And being inspired and motivated are very well worth the investment. And so, if this is something that you are not going to be disciplined enough to do, I believe that it's well worth your investment to really start seeing where your business has gone so that you can understand where to take it in the future right and guide it towards success. I stepped down from my podium.  22:29 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Thank you, that was very kind of you. Thank you for all that.  22:32 - Intro (Announcement) I have an accountability too. I stepped down from my podium, thank you.  22:35 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) That was very kind of you. Thank you for all that I have an accountability too. I'm being truthful, I appreciate that, and I have a business coach too, and I have people in my village that hold me accountable because I have my days of self-doubt and self-loathing and laziness and stuff, and I have people that keep me on track.  22:48 But I, with my mentorship program, you're basically paying for an accountability and a business coach all in one, because folks I know bosses this stuff is hard. It's challenging on a logistical, financial, emotional, spiritual, psychological level and I am here for you. But you're grownups. You need to be able to invest in yourself and be consistent, be kind to yourself when you need to be kind, be firm to yourself when you need to be firm, and I frankly, don't care if you don't like the grownup stuff. I don't care, because the voiceover industry doesn't care either. You want to do this for money. You want to make all your goofy voices in the booth and play all day. Great, you got to put in a ton of work, a ton of work, and it never gets any easier. It just turns into different kinds of hard.  23:38 Anne has been doing this for a long time. Right, she has her own challenges, internal and external, that are just different from the ones that bosses who are earlier in their journey have. Same thing with me. But if you really want to know who you are, what your business is, what your relationship to the voiceover industry is, beyond just your talent, and how great coaches like Ann can help you realize your talent. You need to hunker down and use my damn spreadsheet and analyze your business and take a hard look, hunker down, Hunker down and use the spreadsheet. I'm wearing flannel today for you podcasters, so I'm feeling very, very very rural, use the damn spreadsheet.  24:17 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh my God, I feel like hunker down and Use the damn spreadsheet. Oh my God, I feel like hug her down and use the damn spreadsheet. See, like even Tom and I have fun with character development. So I mean honestly like it just makes sense.  24:26 And I'll be completely honest with you, we run our businesses for a purpose and we're doing this for a purpose, right? And I want to support the joy that I have in doing what I do and, yeah, there are days when, gosh, it's painful. But I also outsource some of this stuff as well to an accountant, and I've said that multiple times. I have an accountant who takes care of all my inflows and outflows and categorizations and that's a big help right then, and there she doesn't track my auditions or how I got the job, but I mean honestly, like that's just a couple of extra steps. Now there's another piece of software out there there's I think it's voice overview that does that as well. Voice overview with Danny States. Is that correct, right?  25:07 They have kind of a CRM and people will say, well, can I do this? Can I track this with my CRM? Yeah, you probably can, right? I mean, you won't have the benefit of the mentor, a monthly kind of meeting with Tom, and even if you're using voice overview, I don't think there's like a mentorship built into that. But you know, it depends on what level you need and what level you're requiring.  25:27 The thing that I like about your spreadsheet, tom, is that it's local, right. I'm very leery of a database that I'm necessarily putting confidential information in, like what I'm getting paid per job, unless I know that that system has like security that nobody's going to hack in and like steal my contacts. That goes for a CRM system too, right, I want to make sure that that is secured and that there's no possibility that somebody is going to go in and get financial data on me that maybe I didn't warrant anybody taking or seeing, or my client base. And so I like yours, because yours is local. You can just download it and you copy it to your computer and there it is and that's as secure as your computer is, and then you can meet with your mentor right On a monthly basis, weekly basis, however, that works and that, to me, I feel good about and I'm leery about CRM software anyway, just because a lot of CRM software doesn't do exactly what I want it to do and people are always asking me what CRM to use.  26:26 I use multiple CRMs depending on what I need. I'm not necessarily putting in financial data. I have my trust in my accountant and I have trust in the software that handles that accounting data and that is where that data goes. Everything else is my computer and my business partner. That's it. Nothing that's sitting out there on a server. And you know I'm not trying to disparage anybody who might be subscribing to those other services, but that's just my personal feeling. I don't know, tom, how you feel about that.  26:55 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Yeah, you got to work within your comfort level, your comfort zone.  26:58 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And like.  26:58 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Anne said you can download the spreadsheet. It's on your desktop and then you can back it up to your external hard drive and it never sees the internet and you're totally safe and you got to work within your comfort level of your CRM.  27:18 If you feel that you just need to have another spreadsheet backed up to your hard drive that has a breakdown of all of your contacts, that's all fine too, just as long as you're able to be able to interact with it effectively, so you know when it's time to market to which potential, current or past clients and how you do it, based on this work that you've done with them or the genres that they cast.  27:31 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I don't want bosses to misunderstand to say that I don't trust CRMs. I have CRMs and I put my data on them, but I would need to know the specifics of the CRM. You know if they're a major company, I mean if they're not securing their data. You know what I mean and the reason why I'm like this is because I used to work in technology. I used to be the person that needed to secure the data so that nobody could hack in and get it, because I worked for a school with under the age of 18 children, so I needed to make sure that that data was safe. So I'm particularly anal about it. That's where my thoughts come from, so I don't want to like disparage any product out there. Just this is the way I feel about it.  28:09 Anyway what a wonderful way to assess how your year went, because how do you know, like, where you're going if you don't know where you've been, kind of thing. Right. It's nice to be able to assess how your year went, because how do you know where you're going if you don't know where you've been? It's nice to be able to assess how your year went so that you can really assess that, make improvements for the following year, because I know for a fact that I want to grow my business every year after year after year and, like you said, even though we've been in this business for so long, it doesn't get any easier even for us. I still have to strategize.  28:36 How am I going to grow my business next year? How am I going to evolve and change with a shift in the industry? Or, if there's shifts in the industry, how am I changing? Am I getting different performance coaching? How am I marketing myself differently? How am I planning my business? And I can't tell those things unless I've really assessed how the year has gone. So, tom, I so appreciate and we'll be putting the link for that download on our show notes page. And, of course, tom Dheere is always available to chat with. I'm sure you've got like one of those free consults that people can sign up for if they're interested in finding out more.  29:12 We have that also in the show notes. And with that I will say bosses, I hope you had an amazing year. I had a great year compared to like everything that's been going on this year. It's been a crazy year, but you know what? It's been a positive year and I always like a positive year in my business. So, Tom, thank you so much for all of your wisdom and, as always, for being a real boss.  29:35 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Oh, thanks as always for having me, Anne.  29:39 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, All right, Bosses. Big shout out to our sponsor, IPDTL. You too can connect and network like bosses. Find out more at IPDTLcom. Bosses have an amazing year coming up. I hope you had an amazing year. Make sure you assess it using Tom Dheere's downloadable PDF, and we will see you next week. Awesome Bye, guys.  29:59 - Intro (Announcement) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, Anne Ganguza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at vobosscom and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via IPDTL.   

Ce lundi, sur Europe 1, Olivier Babeau revient sur l'État qui ne fait pas de cadeau pour Noël.

This episode is a deep dive into character acting with the esteemed Anna Garduño, a voiceover artist and coach. The BOSSES share their invaluable insights on mastering the art of engagement in voice acting. Anne and Anna emphasize the importance of enthusiasm and authenticity, and use examples from industry legends to discuss how to breathe life into every line by using script analysis and character creation. The BOSSES also dispel the myth that success in animation voice acting is about being a celebrity, emphasizing that unique and authentic acting choices are what leads to booking success. 00:02 - Jen Keefe (Ad) Hi Anne, this is Jen Keefe from Real Women's Work Podcast. I just wanted to come on and say thank you, thank you, thank you for the series you're doing on AI and voice. I've listened to VO Boss Podcast for a few years now and it's always been informative and helpful, and not only is this series not an exception to that, but it is just the cherry on top. It has been so comforting and helpful to learn about this industry and I just thank you for taking all of the time you must have taken to research and understand, to know what questions to ask so that we're all better informed. It is just awesome, awesome, awesome. I feel excited and confident going forward into the future in the VO industry, all because of this series that you're doing. So, thank you, into the future in the VO industry, all because of this series that you're doing.  00:46 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So thank you, hey, how's it going? Bosses Anne Ganguzza here. Elevate your voiceover game with our VIPeeps membership. With VIP membership, you can access our extensive library of over 350 hours of pre-recorded workshops. Whether you're interested in commercials, promos, character animation, audioos, character animation audiobooks, video games, corporate narration, audio description or dubbing, our workshops cover it all. Plus, as a VIPeeps member, you'll enjoy a 15% discount on current workshops and complimentary free monthly workshops to further develop your skills. Join VIPeeps today at vopeepscom and take your voiceover career to new heights.  01:31 - Intro (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss, a VO Boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza.  01:50 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey everyone, welcome to the VO Boss podcast. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and I am here today with very special guest. I'm so excited, Anna Garduno. Anna, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you.  02:04 - Anna Garduno (Guest) I was completely thrilled when you asked me because the truth is it's been a bit of a goal, a little career goal. To please get me on with the boss.  02:12 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh, I love it, oh my gosh. Well, bosses out there. For those of you that are not familiar with Anna, Anna is a boss. I was just saying this before you came out of the womb.  02:20 A boss, Hilarious you came out of the womb a boss, but recorded her first radio spot when you were 15 years old, shot your first TV job at 17, and currently teaches classes for VO, commercials, animation, promos, narrations and games, and has been nominated Best Voice Over Teacher two years in a row by the readers of Backstagecom. And I wore my Teach, love and Inspire shirt just for you today, Anna. I love it Again. I love the cougar aspect it's a little bit of that sexy?  02:52 - Anna Garduno (Guest) come on, make it happen.  02:54 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) fabulous, you got to add that little bit of flair to it. But, gosh, anybody that knows me knows how much I love teaching. It's so important. It is who I think. I was born to be a teacher and I love talking to other teachers, such as yourself and bosses. So the combination teacher boss love it, absolutely love it. So thanks, first of all, for being here. I know you've got a busy schedule and you know what's interesting. Another fact that you wrote in your bio is that your students have booked over a million dollars in jobs and continue to thrive, which is such a great. I love that you have a number.  03:29 - Anna Garduno (Guest) Well, I imagine that yours have too, and absolutely because I'm sure your students every week say hey, I booked this. Hey, I booked this.  03:38 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey, I booked this. They do, thankfully. Yes, I'm grateful for that. And when?  03:40 - Anna Garduno (Guest) you really think about it when you've been teaching for years, as you and I both have, because I started keeping track, really, and I was actually like, oh well, this is exciting and encouraging. I know you're such an encouraging teacher and there's so many cynics out there and I like to be encouraging. Come from joy, Come from possibility.  03:58 I believe in that too, you know it's so important and I think when people see that they go. Oh, because once in a while I hear people say does anyone really make money in voiceover? And I try not to laugh. Yeah, there's a reason, it's a global industry. So, yes, get that negative interject out of your head Absolutely and go forward.  04:18 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) You know what's so very interesting. Now I'm going to tell you. I was in Pilates this morning and there was a substitute that came in and she was teaching. I'm all about teaching, she was teaching, but she was teaching with a very like kind of monotone sort of and this, and then next we'll put our left toe over our right ear while simultaneously rotating our hip. The whole class, I mean, we're talking 45 minutes of no emotion, and I understand that she was trying to maybe put us in a Zen mode, right, but it was.  04:46 - Anna Garduno (Guest) Pilates Maybe sleepy, not meditation.  04:49 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And she was really good. Like technically she was really good. But she was shouting out all these instructions and I was listening so hard because her voice was so like even keel, with no like real I would call it elevating the teaching moments. So I was listening so hard, I was exhausted, mentally, okay, and physically. But at the very end, right after this, I had decided, like literally 10 minutes into it, I don't like this class, I don't like this teacher. She's not like. I don't feel an emotion, I don't feel encouragement, I don't feel anything. And when she was done she said oh my God, you guys did so good. And then I immediately loved her and I thought why. You know what I mean. So it really made me reflect on being a teacher for my students and also for the whole e-learning genre. And anybody knows I'm like a broken record, like you have to be everyone's favorite teacher.  05:36 You do, you just do Not just if you teach, but if you're doing e-learning, and so you've got to bring that emotion and that point of view, which I consider and let's have a discussion on this I consider that to be the frosting on the cake, that's the top element when you are there as an actor, right, that is what you're bringing to the copy, no matter what genre you're in.  05:55 - Anna Garduno (Guest) Oh, absolutely. And you bring up such an important point because this I know exactly what you mean. I've had teachers exercise teachers like that also, and I think one of the most challenging things in our industry right now, in whatever genre and I'm sure you've come across this, but correct me if I'm wrong where people say we want it natural, we want it real, yeah, yeah. And actors unfortunately misinterpret that and think, oh, passive, yes, oh, my god, that's casual, so it sounds like you have this passive teacher right now, nobody's passive in life.  06:24 We speak for a reason. We have a lot of musicality in our voice. Even if we're calm and relaxing, there's an intention behind it, even if it's the poppy reed.  06:32 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I'm just saying I'm just saying the poppy reed has dynamics to it. Oh my God, so much If you were to score that reed and really try to copy it.  06:40 - Anna Garduno (Guest) She goes up, she goes down, she takes pauses. There's all of this musicality. It's not a sleep, and so you bring up a really good point. You have to be engaged with who you're talking to and then it's engaging and it brings people along. Voice work is communication, obviously, but I find too that people get so quiet Sometimes they're disconnected from their breath and not to be too focused about it. But your breath is literally like your life force. So I'm not saying yell, but be connected, and that's why my little company is called Voice Forward, like send your voice forward. You want to connect through the microphone, through whatever, to that other person. You don't want your energy to go here and hi.  07:19 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I'm halfway to you.  07:20 - Anna Garduno (Guest) And then you stop. You don't want that.  07:21 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And it's so interesting. I think about it as an older, more mature woman, about communication, right. I mean today everybody's texting right, and it's the communication is changing. But I also feel that for us as voice actors right, our voice is so, so important, and especially in this world of technology and digital everything and synthetic voices right, technology and digital everything and synthetic voices right I think it's more important than ever that our voices really keep that engagement, keep that human aspect of emotion and point of view, because that's what makes us interesting.  07:54 And, honestly, when I choose what I'm going to listen to on a day-to-day basis, honestly it has to be interesting to me and, I think, right for your listener. When you're being engaging and you're behind the mic reading a commercial whatever you're doing a commercial, e-learning corporate you have to connect with that listener to get their attention. Otherwise, I mean, it's always self-serving. Because why do I listen to somebody? Well, I listen to somebody because they've got something that I need right. Either they're educating me or they're entertaining me, right, and hopefully both at the same time. Those are the best teachers and that would be great. So I need to have a reason to listen. And so if you're coming at it from behind the mic where you're like, no, listen to my beautiful voice, you're not connecting.  08:38 And I think that today more than ever, we need to connect and we need to be the actor, and I know that you put in your notes that this is something that you wanted to discuss today about. How can we, as voice actors, get there? I have my methods. I stand on my soapbox all the time and say it's so important, more important than ever, to really bring that connection. Let's talk about how you have your students. How do you elevate your students to be able to do that?  09:03 - Anna Garduno (Guest) Okay, sure, well, I have. There's a couple of things you know. We all come to this as actors. My training, my background, everything is an actor, particularly a theater actor.  09:11 I've been blessed to work with incredible teachers through the years, primarily with Larry Moss and Patsy Rodenberg, who's you know, the premier voice Shakespeare teacher in the world and Stella Adler, who's all about script analysis right For teaching or plays and theater and film, and that's what we do, right, we get a script and then how do we communicate best? And there's two basic things that she talks about that are very rudimentary, that I like to give my students a place to start, which is when you look at text, what is your point of view about people, places, objects and events that you're talking about? Right? So that's how you start, because so often people can do sort of like hi, I'm a generic, happy read sort of like this or I'm a very generic seductive read you know whatever it is.  09:53 So you don't want to be generic, right? So the easiest example is something like about the people I'm talking about. Let's say you have a thing where you say and it's the best ice cream from Ben and Jerry's. So many people do. And I say, well, pretend that Jerry's your absolute best friend and he's a bit of a goofball. So from Ben and Jerry, you know what?  10:09 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I mean, you know Jerry.  10:11 - Anna Garduno (Guest) Just that. Or say you have a thing where you say so my husband came home with a new computer. Now, if the ad is about the right computer, right, then you're going to say husband, he did a great thing. Now say but the wrong, the anti-commercial, so my husband came home with a new computer.  10:28 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) What is your point of view?  10:29 - Anna Garduno (Guest) about the husband and about the new computer. I mean, it's so basic. And then also, where you are is who you are is a big way to connect to a script too. And are you a CEO talking to another CEO about finance? Or are you that reassuring financial advisor for someone who's really nervous making their first investment?  10:48 Because you can have the exact same text but depending on who you're talking to and I'd like to think like what are you wearing? Really helps me personally. There's a million ways in, but I know if I'm playing a character on TV or something or movie that's like in a full-on business suit, I'm going to stand differently, I'm going to present differently.  11:06 My tone of voice is going to be different, whereas if I'm playing, like you know, the hippie chick from Laurel Canyon which I mentioned, who I am, it's going to be a whole different vibe, a whole different thing. So these are two very simple things that you can look at text right away and circle oh wait, here's the event, here's the object. Or in an animation example, I have a piece of copy I like to work on where someone's putting together a potion you know like to get revenge on somebody, and one of the lines is my potion will be ready and one of the lines is one more lizard leg and my potion will be ready. And so often people will go one more lizard leg and my potion will be ready, right? So I would say, you know, the people who wrote this copy, whatever it is, are often the people hiring you, right? Which wasn't always the case so often, right? So if you can make their text pop out just a little bit, because they could have said anything, they could have said one more batling, one more toad head, they could have said anything, but they said lizard leg.  11:57 And I always joke with my students. They got that approved. You know, disney approved lizard leg. They think they're going to get a bonus at the end of the year for coming up with lizard leg and plus, it's funny, with the two L's, you know lizard leg and the G. So instead of just saying one more lizard leg and my thing is ready, how about you take the number one and it's like you're thinking about it, right, and you go one more and you're looking at your stuff in your mind.  12:22 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Lizard leg. Lizard leg.  12:23 - Anna Garduno (Guest) Exactly so. It's specifically a lizard leg. So it's really simple and it's what we do in life when we talk about you know, I got these new glasses that I love. I got these new glasses. You know what is your point of view, and so that's the basic thing that I do with people all the time how do you feel about what you're talking about? Not moody, how do you feel, but literally.  12:44 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I love that. How do you feel it's so important? And how you feel changes and can evolve from the start of your sentence to the end of your sentence can absolutely evolve and it can evolve throughout the script. So I feel like what you're really talking about is, first of all, we need to assess the script, right. We need to assess what's the purpose. The script, right, we need to assess what's the purpose. Why are we saying these words? Right? Who are we saying them to? And again, changing who we're saying them to can make all the difference in the world.  13:11 And what I like to also say is that, like, especially in corporate like, no, you're not talking to your best friend. I need you to be engaging, but Sally could give a crap about SAP. Sally doesn't even know what SAP does or who they are or what they make, right, right? So don't talk to Sally because it's not relevant to Sally, right? And so that whole conversational talk to your best friend. Yes, they may put that in specs, but in reality, you need to talk to the person that's going to benefit from listening to the context of the script, right? So what's the purpose? Are you trying to sell a product? Are you trying to explain how it works, you know, and who is it that needs to listen to that?  13:47 And I had a discussion with La the other day, la Lapidez and we were talking about there's always stakes, right, there's always stakes in the script, and so you've got to know what those stakes are as an actor, right, I mean, we are actors. It is not enough to just read that. And I love how you did the melody in the head about the lizard One more lizard. And it's funny because in our head that's the melody we all hear and I swear we're all on the same wavelength, right. One more. Where does that come from? I don't know, because we read the words and we feel like, oh, initially this is where the emphasis has to go Right, but in the real world we're thinking about things. Well, every sentence is a new idea.  14:25 - Anna Garduno (Guest) Exactly Every sentence is a new idea, and when you're reading or anything like that, and so that's another thing I say is it's a new idea and also a good example of you bring up such a good point about talking to a friend Like what does that mean? Or conversational, what does that mean? And I always say to people going back to you have different kinds of conversations.  14:38 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Every day.  14:38 - Anna Garduno (Guest) We have conversations every day Exactly, and I tell my students, like, say, you get an audition for Lexus and Subaru the same day and the specs are going to be pretty similar, conversational, real, talking to a friend blah, blah, blah. But Lexus, as we know are usually kind of seductive and a little bit like this and all that. And so I'll say to one student what do you call that? Like, I always have my students come up with titles or names for different types of reads.  15:01 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Right, what's that?  15:02 - Anna Garduno (Guest) read yeah, and one of my students had the best thing ever. He said I call that my I've earned it guy. Is that great?  15:08 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh, I like it.  15:09 - Anna Garduno (Guest) Yeah, Now the I've earned it guy is right next door to what I like to call the. I know you want it, so it's the same volume, the same note of your voice right the same sound, but there's a slightly different intention. And then the Subaru, which is getting a little more rugged now, but Subaru, as you know, they always end with that love. It's what makes a Subaru.  15:30 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's the family. Family You've got like dogs and kids, exactly, you know, on a picnic Soccer equipment.  15:37 - Anna Garduno (Guest) Yeah, sauger equipment, exactly so I always call that one like the kind of the save the planet mom, yeah, yeah. And what I tell students is those styles cross different brands. So the person who does the Subaru, the save the planet, mom is going to do Kashi, seven whole grains on a mission, and Patagonia and all that. You see they're both having conversations. So I know you know this, but I find to be able to come up with names for the different types is helpful.  16:03 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, and characters You've given a character to it, which is great, rather than I want this sexy read or this seductive read. You've given it a character which I think gives it more definition.  16:13 And I think when you're analyzing, too many of us run into our studios and like, oh, I got it and they play to that melody in their head. Right, they play the melody in the head that probably 90% of everybody that is going in their studios doing the same darn thing. And we've all talked about what do casting directors want? They want to be able to hear something different than 200 of the same kind of melodies right, and so if you're coming up with a different melody or a different story, that's immediately oh cause for, yeah, I'm shortlisting.  16:44 I can tell you me as a casting director, every time I hear somebody that enters into a script and I can tell they've got a story, I'm like shortlist Because there's an actor, there's an actor, there's an actor.  16:53 - Anna Garduno (Guest) And it's about having that point where you bring up a really good point, too, about how do you make your reads stand out, and At that point you bring up a really good point too, about how do you make your reads stand out. And I'm very big on playing with pace, particularly in the first sentence.  17:02 Yeah, yeah, yeah, Almost any first sentence you can play with pace, because often a sentence as you were saying, looking at the text has two ideas in it. So like to use an animation example. I have a piece of copy I love to work with. The first sentence is hey, you know what's the best thing, about being a jellyfish, so that's it right.  17:18 So everyone kind of usually does it that way, like enthusiastic surfer jellyfish. Now, if you just play with pace and you go, you know what's the best thing about being a jellyfish yeah, yeah, yeah, like all of a sudden he's mischievous, or the other way you do it fast.  17:34 You know what's the best thing about being a jellyfish. So already that first sentence is engaging yes, so little things like that. No, I wanted to ask you, anne, I found and you probably come across this too a couple months ago I started working with students on animation who were getting this spec which I thought was hilarious where they would say we want it like you're in a movie, but louder. And my poor students would be like what does that mean? We want in a movie? And I like, when casting people not you, of course, but some people you know don't act, just do it like you're in a movie.  18:06 - Jen Keefe (Ad) Okay.  18:06 - Anna Garduno (Guest) You're. You're acting in a movie, just so you know. So I was sitting there, I go. What do they mean? And I it was what we talked about earlier it means to not be passive, you're told do less, so they've been getting reads. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're told do less. So they've been getting reads, obviously, from people being very quiet, very hello. I have a mic right here.  18:21 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yes hi, yes hi.  18:22 - Anna Garduno (Guest) I'm going to read like this yeah, exactly, and it's like I'm in a movie and I don't have to do anything.  18:27 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And it's so boring, or you're in a movie theater where you have to be quiet.  18:32 - Anna Garduno (Guest) Yes, exactly. So what they mean is Point of view, don't be passive. Yeah, so they were getting all these under, these de-energized voices, and of course, it's not engaging at all.  18:44 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And you can be quiet and have a ton of energy. I mean, it's so much about the energy, but it really has nothing to do with volume, right? The energy of the Well, I use a term.  18:52 - Anna Garduno (Guest) I say to people you need more vocal vitality. I don't mean louder, I mean vocal vitality, and it's exactly what we're talking about. You need to have presence in that you're engaged with whoever you're talking to on the other side of that copy, because you're never just talking to yourself, ever Exactly.  19:07 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I mean, let's talk storytelling. I mean, how important is storytelling? I mean I say it all the time, like I think exhaustively, yeah, but there's storytelling in every like, everything, everything everything right?  19:20 - Anna Garduno (Guest) Yes, absolutely. And also, you're always in the middle of a conversation, too, even if it's e-learning. You've already been talking to somebody about something and now we just happen to pick up the conversation in the middle.  19:29 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh, I love that. I'm always telling people you don't start a script with once upon a time because, right, like cause, that means you just, oh, I thought of it and I'm going to go into a monologue, right, Right. And that means you're not going to engage.  19:41 If you're going to go in you're like that friend that doesn't shut up. You're like, hi, it's all about me, me, me, me, me, me, and I'm just going to talk and I'm not going to allow you to interact at all with me. And I didn't even hear what you said.  19:55 - Anna Garduno (Guest) It was tiring for the listener.  19:58 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Exactly, exactly, and so you do have to start in the middle, and that's why I'm always saying that moment before right.  20:04 - Anna Garduno (Guest) It's so important, which is your basic acting thing. Right, like what happened before you came in the door, the scene, what happened, like how was the drive over?  20:11 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yes, and I'm like no, no, no, no, no. I hear the events that are happening. Tell me what the other person said and then how you responded. And I don't want you to respond with the first word. I want you to respond with maybe something that's rolling into the first word of the script.  20:30 Yeah, give yourself a lead in, because then it doesn't sound like the note like once and we all start on that same pitch. Right, I broke it down technically into musical notes, but still, you don't need to start like, hi, I'm just starting to talk.  20:45 - Anna Garduno (Guest) Yeah, you know no, of course not, but see, the moment before is really important. I imagine you do this with your students too. One of the benefits of doing these auditions at home and working at home is you can try a lot of things, which is and you can also give yourself a lead in, sometimes so that you are literally starting in. You say absolutely.  21:04 Don't stress about that credit card. Let me look. Let me look at the credit card. Like I have a piece of copy that starts out Wait, did you book the bartender? $200 last week. Like that's a good sentence, actually, but how much better is it if you imagine that your friend's upset crying. They're freaking out, Exactly. Listen, let me see you grab it. You go, okay, let me look at this for a minute. Wait, did you? $200? Which really means like, how drunk were you, Dear God?  21:30 - Jen Keefe (Ad) what was that about?  21:32 - Anna Garduno (Guest) And it's just taking that extra moment to put yourself in this situation Absolutely. And then, because you do it at home, you can do that lead in and cut it out. And that's one of the benefits, I think, of doing these auditions at home Because, as you know, in the in-person auditions which are starting up again thank God a little bit you usually get one shot and you can't do that lead in ahead of time.  21:51 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, exactly so. We've talked about the moment before, which, again, I think is so important. We've talked about storytelling. What other things would you say are important for a voice actor to know today in order to get noticed and stand out?  22:06 - Anna Garduno (Guest) Okay, well, this is such a basic thing. It's going to sound so silly, but it's very important to do some homework. We'll just talk right now about two areas, about commercial and animation, but this is true for everything. Actually, listen to what is actually on the air to hear what the styles are, what the tones are and everything. I have students and I'm sure you do too Some, you know, women students who've gone off and raised children and they're coming back 20 years later, right, and everything is like it's in the eighties or the nineties. It's so amped up. I'm like, okay, have you actually heard a commercial? And I'm shocked at how people say, well, no, I stream.  22:43 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I don't watch TV. Yeah, I don't watch TV. What?  22:46 - Anna Garduno (Guest) What does it matter with you? And what's so nice is you can that's research, yes, and also watch some different animation too, because, as we know, that natural voice, right, which is sort of the BoJack Horseman model, and then there's, you know, slightly more character-y things like in Spongebob, and then there's super cartoony, right. I am shocked at how many people do not actually pay attention to cartoons and they'll say, well, there's so many. How do I start? I go okay, watch movie trailers.  23:12 Watch the movie trailer, for inside out it's three minutes. There's five women and five men. Watch that and take notes. Don't just watch it passively. Write down what are the archetypes, what are the things, and then you put a check mark. So I'm very surprised at how people don't do their research. And I also tell my students it doesn't take long. If you spend half an hour a week listening to commercials in a very specific way and half an hour a week to different animation, listen to 10 minutes of three different shows and take notes on them, you do that for a month solid. Oh my God.  23:43 You have such a better foundation than everybody else. Oh my gosh, it's a very basic thing It'd be hard to audition for a play if you'd never seen a play Right. It would be hard to audition for an hour-long TV show if you hadn't watched hour-long TV in 20 years. You had no idea what those shows are like, because they're different than what they used to be.  24:01 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And before you run into audition for no Matter what, can you take five to ten minutes to just look up the brand yes and look and see what's their website look? Like what is the product that you're talking about actually do. Do you know the product? Are you familiar with it? What is their demographic? Who are they trying to sell to? I mean, there's so much backstory.  24:22 Again, it's almost like you're doing character study right, but you're doing it about the brand because the brand is looking for a voice. Even if there are casting specs, right, you can always go to a brand and find out, like, who are they selling to and how are they trying to do that by just literally a Google search. Absolutely, and I don't see why people don't take the time to do that. I mean it could take literally five to ten minutes before you rush in and everybody's like I've got to get the audition in. I've got to get the audition in, but do the homework first. Spend five or ten minutes. I don't think that you're going to miss the timing. I mean, I know people are like I've got to get it in first.  24:52 - Anna Garduno (Guest) Also, it's going to be much more efficient. Right, you take five, ten minutes, so like, oh, what is this new? Obviously, I don't know anything about tech stuff. So what is this new tech thing about? I need to find out what it is, and then you can do almost anything in three to four. Takes Almost you know after that.  25:06 So it's not going to take you that long. But I think one of the things I recommend my students do is so that you're not always in a rush right, trying to do the audition and get all this stuff in is set aside a specific time, wednesday morning from 10 to 1030. I'm going to look at ispottv and I'm going to watch 10 car ads in a row and I'm going to write down the differences between them. So if you just set a specific time, then it's part of your ongoing kind of homework and then when you get that audition for Lexus or Jeep you've already seen it and you know what it is.  25:40 And you're like oh, or you can say oh, this is like the absolute vodka ad I just watched. Okay, and that's what that is. So you're not playing catch up. Yeah, and it's the only area of acting I've ever come across and where you can get better at it really fast, because if you have a good ear, you can hear, like students where I've done this myself right, I think I'm sounding very sexy, yeah yeah, and I just sound sad, sad and depressed.  26:07 I'm like, okay, that's bad. Or I'm trying to be enthusiastic and I sound crazy, like I've had 15 cups of coffee, so you can hear it and you can adjust it immediately and that's so satisfying. I mean, I love to do dialects, as I know you do, and you know dialects takes years to really be super great at them. And this is another area about the voiceover world is you can move forward very quickly if you are just consistent, consistent with your study consistent with your class?  26:40 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yes, absolutely.  26:42 - Anna Garduno (Guest) Consistent instead of stopping and starting all the time.  26:44 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I love that. I love that and I try to tell my students you know, look, it's better for you to do one or two scripts a day because I give homework right. And I say it's better for you to do one or two scripts a day because I give homework right. Yeah, and I say it's better for you to do one or two scripts a day, then wait until the night before and then do all the scripts at the same time, because then you're in the same performance mode, right.  26:58 - Jen Keefe (Ad) You're just like, oh God, I've got to get my homework done.  27:00 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I've got to get my homework done and so I'm going to listen to you. And so one of the reasons why I give homework is to hear, for me I'm vocally branding my students as well, so that we're prepping for the demo. Right, I want to hear them talking about Toyota or I want to hear them talking about Subaru or some other brand and I want to say, okay, I hear that, you know, and for me it's just a creative thing where I'm like, yes, I can hear that she sounds great with that brand, and so now we're going to focus on a spot on our demo for that brand. And so I give lots of homework because, number one, you should be able to practice what we're doing in between our sessions. Otherwise, like you want me to just live direct you once a week, that just, I mean, I don't feel that you're going to progress quickly.  27:45 - Anna Garduno (Guest) Well, what you're talking about, anne, is giving them the structure and the tools to become their own best director. Exactly that's what you're talking about, and that is a gift to give to students.  27:55 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Thank you for calling homework being a gift. I love that. Oh, it is a gift. Yeah, I love that, and also I always say to people it's optional okay. I don't want to stress you out, yeah me too.  28:03 - Anna Garduno (Guest) I don't want to stress you out, but you're giving them. It was a new student, they go. Well, I just need to be. You know, if I have a director or a cast member, they tell me what to do. And I said to them okay, well, what might they say? And she said, well, they would tell me to be more conversational. I said, okay, and then what would you do? Blank face, yeah, and everyone's different. Like for me to be more conversational. In general, I have to slow down and I have to bring my voice down just a little bit.  28:31 Other people have to go faster.  28:38 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Typically people pitch up when they're reading. That's just a, I think, human nature kind of thing, but you're right. And then sometimes they just go fast through everything or they go too slow through everything and then they sound too consistent. Consistency is like. I think I can't be stagnant in my business. That's the death of my business, and I think consistency might be the death of a voice actor. Because you can't be consistent in any sound right, because then it sounds robotic, it sounds with no point of view, there's no right, it's rhythm, and point of view is everything.  29:05 - Anna Garduno (Guest) I think Point of view drives the rhythm and sometimes the rhythm is like there's one style that sort of is kind of the opposite of all we're talking about a little bit is I call it a cello read Is that Eternity by Calvin Klein?  29:16 - Jen Keefe (Ad) Right when they just say do less, do less, do less.  29:18 - Anna Garduno (Guest) Right, hi, yes Hi, I'm not going up or down, but that's its own rhythm.  29:22 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So that's why I call it a cello.  29:24 - Anna Garduno (Guest) So if somebody plays one note on a cell, that's what it is. Yeah, it's like that. So even that is a very specific point of view.  29:32 - Jen Keefe (Ad) Yeah, absolutely.  29:35 - Anna Garduno (Guest) And it makes it dynamic because you're right, if you're just consistent all the way through the same way, it's so boring, yeah, you just stop. It loses any kind of dynamic.  29:42 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It loses point of view too Correct, it really does.  29:44 - Jen Keefe (Ad) Oh, absolutely yeah.  29:53 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It's interesting how musical it can be and then yet I don't want my students to approach it necessarily musically. I want them to approach it like an actor, because if you can do that, then ultimately things just fall into place. When you're responding to something, you're acting is reacting. When you're reacting right and you're reacting with the lines in the script, it falls together naturally. It really does.  30:08 And so the rhythm and the melody just fall together, and the emphasis on the words. It just falls together Like it's an easy thing for me to say. However, somehow, when people get words in front of their face, yes, because I was taught to read aloud, you know, in grade school, and I was like yes, me, I love to read, I'm a good reader, and let me hello, I'm going to read my text now, and so you have no time to put a point of view on when you're just reading from left to right, you don't know what the story is. There's no history there, there's no. Who are you talking to? Well, I'm just reading to the air, right?  30:40 - Anna Garduno (Guest) Well, I think you bring up also a really good point too. The approach isn't after the voice will follow the musicality, all that will follow. And something that's a particular challenge is since when we're reading or working, a lot of times we have headphones, so we're hearing ourselves while we're talking and there's a big temptation to be the director, the producer, all at once while you're literally saying your words absolutely you have to not do that.  31:02 So I'm a big advocate just put one headphone on, because you don't ever hear what you actually sound like through your head or your headphones. It's close because you're listening through the speaker of your head, right? So that's that's. The other thing, too, is I tell students don't judge your read like. Listen to it back first before you start making adjustments, or you stop in the middle or you change it or something.  31:21 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, that's good, I like that. Wait until you're done. I have the advice, which is interesting I get the one ear on, one ear off. For some people yeah, for some people, because for me, when I was initially starting, I had a lot of like noises coming out and I was evaluating my booth and so I couldn't tell if there was noise and also being directed right. So when you're directed, you kind of have to have your headphones on.  31:42 - Anna Garduno (Guest) Oh no, absolutely Right, You've got to be able to hear the direction.  31:44 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So I always say your headphones are amplifying your sound, yes, and so if you get used to not listening to your sound and you're into the storytelling, it won't matter if you have headphones on or not. But that's a hard thing for people to do sometimes, because I know when I first started hi, oh, I love this. It's amplifying my voice, you know that kind of thing and it just gets to be a little egocentrical there for a minute. But I don't think any voice acting really should be egocentrical at all. It's something you are gifting right to the person who is listening to you and that is a gift you give to them. It's not about you listening to yourself.  32:20 - Anna Garduno (Guest) Well, even though you're just doing one side of the conversation. You're in fact interacting. Yeah, you are always interacting, and that's when they say talking to a friend. That's what they're trying to say is you're talking about this paper towel is going to soak up that spilled wine. Because you just came to your friend and said, oh my God, I spilled red wine all over my couch, I don't know what to do. You say, oh well, actually this thing is going to help you. You're interacting. Right, it's not about you at all. And it is a challenge sometimes not to fall either, to fall in love with your own voice or to decide.  32:49 You hate everything about it which is also not helpful.  32:52 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That's so true. So you have to not judge.  32:54 - Anna Garduno (Guest) You have to wait and listen back and then see do I sound like I'm engaging with someone? Because you're always talking, like you say, for a reason. You know, even in animation stuff. You know I was talking to someone the other day about BoJack Horseman because that's such a common spec.  33:10 You know they say we want to like bojack horsemen, not rugrats and things like that. And I had somebody once I think was at sad foundation, wasn't a regular student said, and they said, well, you know, will arnett, they just hired him because you know he's just will arnett all the time. And you know what I said. I said, okay, I see why you're saying that, but my guess is a lot of people would like to play bojack. I bet chris rock would have loved it, paul rudd would have loved it.  33:28 Paul Rudd would have loved it. Owen Wilson would have loved it. There's a lot of comedic Seth Rogen, there's a lot of guys, and Willa and I get it, not because of the sound of his voice, but because he created a character that was engaging. So don't self-sabotage by saying, oh, it's a star. That's all they do. Don't diminish their work and don't diminish your possibility to do work as good, absolutely.  33:52 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So I think that that's really interesting. Oh, I love that. I love that. Gosh, Anna, I could talk all day to you.  33:58 - Jen Keefe (Ad) Well, that's why we're going to get together and have cocktails and dinner.  34:00 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) There we go Well, there we go Well. I have to say thank you. So so much. Thank you so much and I know that it's been a pleasure having you on. Now you've got a special offer for boss listeners. I do Special offer.  34:12 - Anna Garduno (Guest) Talk to us about that a little bit so for boss listeners. You get 10% off any classes, 10% off any private coaching or things like that, and also 10% off any demos you may want to work on or refresh or anything like that. Just say that you're a fan of the boss lady. The queen herself Love it and I'm very happy to do that. And you can reach me through.  34:33 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) My direct email is AnnaVoiceForward at gmailcom, and just say hey, heard you on the boss, and we'll put that link in the show notes as well to get to your website. And so thank you so much, anna, for being with us today, and I look forward to working with you more in the future. For sure I want to have you as a VO Peeps guest director too, so coming up, so I'll be sending you that schedule. Yay, I would love that. So perfect. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, and so a big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl. You too can connect and network like bosses. Find out more at IPDTLcom. Bosses. Have an amazing week and we'll see you next week. See you next week, bye, thank you.  35:20 - Intro (Announcement) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, anne Ganguza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at VOBosscom and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution, with permission. Coast-to-coast connectivity via IPD TL.   

In our next episode. of the BOSS Money Talks series, the BOSSES talk about how to set and achieve financial goals like a pro by transforming daunting yearly objectives into achievable, bite-sized milestones. Anne and Danielle guide you through the process of reverse engineering your target income, allowing you to create efficient tracking systems for auditions, marketing, and follow-ups. This ultimately can help you to manage the unpredictable nature of freelance work with confidence. The BOSSES share personal stories and insights on analyzing past successes, pinpointing what truly works, and making informed adjustments to your approach, fostering a mindset of steady, systematic growth. 00:01 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hello amazing bosses and voiceover talents out there. Hey, amazing voiceover talents. Do you ever wish boss marketing was as fun as it was being behind the mic? Well, check out my Vio Boss Blast. It's designed to automate and make your marketing simpler. You'll benefit from your very own target marketed list, tailored to meet your goals and your brand the VO Boss Blast. Find out more at voboss com.  00:32 - Intro (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss a VO boss. Now let's welcome your host, nne Ganguza.  00:51 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey hey everyone, Welcome to the VO Boss Podcast and the Boss Money Talk Series. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and I am so excited to bring back to the show Danielle Famble. Danielle, yay, hey, thanks for having me back. How are you? I'm so excited to talk money with you this morning.  01:09 - Danielle Famble (Host) I'm good. I'm always up for a money conversation, so very happy to be here Cool.  01:14 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And you know why? Because I actually just started taking and you know I've taken these courses before. But you know I always love to take goal setting classes because even though you kind of know, like I've set goals before, I do it every year, I do it periodically. I think that it's important to just kind of get your motivation and inspiration going and I thought it would be a great time to talk about setting financial goals and how we can successfully reach them as entrepreneurs.  01:41 - Danielle Famble (Host) Yeah, I think that's really important because in business you always talk about goals like business goals, or the point of a business is to make a profit, and so financial goals are kind of tied into that. So it is good to be intentional about your goals, even if you don't hit that goal. Absolutely being able to track where your progress is is really important, so I love that you're doing that. It's something I try to do every year. I think it usually happens for most people around like the end of the year sort of a New Year's resolution, but doing it in the middle of the year is really pretty great. I love that.  02:14 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, I think one thing that I'm learning that is important is to set realistic goals. I mean, it's all well and good to want a million dollars, but I want to be able to set a realistic financial goal for myself and I think how important is that actual number, like I know you just said, if you don't make it? But what if we create a more realistic goal? And then, I don't know, maybe reverse engineer, is that a thing?  02:39 - Danielle Famble (Host) Is that something that you do? Yeah, totally. I read this book, the 12 Week Year, a couple of months ago. It's a really good book and it really is about like breaking your year down into almost like quarters, really breaking them down into 12-week years themselves so that the goal doesn't take the length of time like a full year for example.  02:58 And then you're able to break it down further from those 12 weeks to individual weeks. So that is sort of reverse engineering your goals. So, for example, if your goal was to make, let's say, $10,000 in the 12 week time, then you can go and say, okay, well, what do I need to do incrementally to get myself there? Is it going to be marketing more? Is it going to be increasing the number of auditions that you do? Is it going to be figuring out which genre that you want to go into, because maybe a certain genre may get you to that 10,000 quicker? I think actually, reverse engineering your goal makes it so that the goal itself is not so big and all you're working toward they're little sprints. So you're working toward the next milestone in that bigger goal sphere.  03:42 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, I think there's something to be said for breaking it down into smaller parts, because I think number one of the fact that our business is so volatile, right, we don't know where our next job is coming from. And that is a completely different mindset and pathway to making money than maybe some people are used to if they come out of the corporate world. Right, because there's a set amount of money we're getting paid every so often. Now, all of a sudden, we've got to be everybody and everything and we have to go out, generate the leads, follow up on those leads, get the job, do the job and then charge the money and then collect the money. So there's all these steps and we don't necessarily know where the second job is coming or the next job is coming.  04:26 - Danielle Famble (Host) Yeah.  04:27 And I think also, you can think about creating systems, right. So a lot of the things that you just said are repeatable processes. So if you can create a system where it's I'm going to audition for X number of jobs, that's not guaranteeing that you will book all of those jobs, but it's sort of a numbers game, right? Sometimes, especially with commercials, for example, it's sort of a numbers game. So if you can increase the inputs, then the output may be more bookings. Perhaps. Same thing with like leads If you are sending out maybe a few more emails or phone calls, then that potentially could mean that you're going to possibly book more jobs.  05:07 So how can you create systems or templates for each individual section of that process that you're reverse engineering for your goal? So then you don't have to get stuck in the weeds when it's time to go to the next step. And the next step Did I follow up this person? Did I do this? Did I send out this contract? Did I sign this thing? Making sure that you have a template or a system for it really can help.  05:28 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I love that and I think that it's important to make sure that you're dedicating the time for those steps to happen, because it's all well and good when you're like I've got the job right and the money's coming in and that's something I can account for. But yet now there's all these unknowns in the equation, and especially when we're talking numbers like I like numbers to be concrete right, I like to say I've got this coming in, you know, I've got this going out. But then there's that uncertainty of like okay, I don't have that job yet, so I need to put that system in place in order to try to make the goal that I want to achieve. And again, I think it's important for bosses out there to again set realistic goals. But again, there's nothing wrong with saying, hey, I'm currently making X amount of dollars per month, or I like to look at it on a monthly basis as opposed to, I mean, yearly too.  06:19 I'm like, yes, it's great to have a six-figure, seven-figure, whatever income you're looking for, but then break that down into months and then those months back into weeks, because one week maybe I won't make any money, right? And I have to make sure that that doesn't necessarily stop me from trying to reach my goal or create a mental point where I'm just like, oh well, I can't do this right. I think goal setting a lot of what I'm learning, as well well as writing it down, putting it concrete on the paper here's what I want. And then you're talking about setting up the template and the steps to get there, going back and reviewing those steps and making sure that if you didn't achieve a step, that's okay, because maybe next week you can achieve that step even more so, so that you're not getting upset or depressed and then just giving up on that goal.  07:04 - Danielle Famble (Host) Yeah, I also really love what you said about like dedicating the time to it. One of the things that I implemented in my own life, in my own business, about a year or two ago and, admittedly, I've sort of slipped in it it's something this conversation is reminding me to go back and do is implementing office hours or implementing the time dedicated to make the system run.  07:25 So if it's implementing an hour every single day, or Monday, wednesday, friday, for example, to make sure that you've got your auditions, or to follow up with clients that have not paid, or to do whatever it is in your system that needs to be done. Really setting the time aside to actually do it will ensure that your system does actually work, because it If you kind of sometimes arbitrarily go through the process of trying to hit your financial goals then you may not actually be consistent in hitting those goals.  07:55 Another thing that, when you were talking about it, I was thinking about is, yes, thinking about things in a monthly 30-day window. I think that's great because it's that short sprint like we were talking about earlier.  08:06 One thing is, maybe consider a percentage Like maybe I want to increase my revenue by 1% or 2%, so you can actually check and see did I do that? Is there a way to say I did hit this goal or I didn't hit this goal? Because a lot of times with goals they can be vague, it feels good but you can't really check and see did I actually hit it or not?  08:27 That's the thing about numbers. Is it this number or no? You know if you hit it or not. That's the thing about numbers, is it this number or no.  08:32 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) You know if you hit it or you didn't. Right, right, it's very black and white. You're right, I love that checking and being accountable and that also has an effect again, and it's so funny because there's hardcore numbers, right, there's here's what I made last month, here's what I made the month before, and what did it take to get to those numbers? Going back and being accountable and seeing, was there a system that worked? And again, if something's not working or you're having a slow month, again I want to reiterate that manifestation of abundance and faith, right, faith that you can achieve the goal right. And so if you can kind of manifest and see that, have that vision, see it's written down and then see the systems that were put in place that help to make that work, when you maybe have a week where nothing happened or a couple of weeks and you start to doubt yourself, go back and take a look at those accomplishments.  09:21 Go look at what you've achieved and the systems you use to achieve them and see if maybe you didn't implement that in quite the same way or maybe there's a way to take what you did that was successful and increase it. Maybe I would say, reach out to that repeat client, right? Or go ahead and maybe increase if you did a hundred auditions and you're not really seeing anything, well, maybe. What type of auditions did you do? Were they all commercial auditions, were they corporate auditions, were they e-learning auditions and find out which one's booked. And then maybe, if you're like I seem to be booking a lot of e-learning lately, then maybe increase your percentage of e-learning auditions.  10:01 - Danielle Famble (Host) Yeah, and the only way to know everything, what you just said is to make sure that you're tracking.  10:06 If you're not tracking that information, the dollars are in the data and if you are not tracking your data, you may not be able to track your dollars as specifically, to be able to get to the next step, that next 1%, because if you increase your revenue by 1% every month over the course of the year, it's exponential growth of your business. And then you can go back and look and say, okay, look at what I did, how can I repeat those steps to get even greater returns the next year? Or to do that in a different genre that maybe you don't work in, because you know that what you did works. How can you take what you know and move it to a different genre?  10:44 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I love that. You said if you increase your revenue 1%, right every month, which gives you 12% over a course of a year. And I just want to bring that back to bosses by saying most jobs don't give a 12% increase like at all anymore. As a matter of my husband just got like an 8%, which was incredible. I mean that took years and I remember back in the day when I was working in education I got a 3% every year and that was great. So, 1%, bosses don't think, oh, that's nothing. And I can tell Danielle that you are a money girl because you know, oh, just 1% and that's realistic, right. And so that's something like oh, I want to increase my revenue 100% or 50% or even 20% is I'm not saying it can't be done, I'm just saying that you want to take a look at how can I like literally systematically increase that income by 1%, 2%, and that's incredible.  11:36 - Danielle Famble (Host) And then, year after year after year, the compounding of that incremental increase is really where, like, it'll make your eyes pop because it is amazing and it can be life changing.  11:47 - Intro (Announcement) Oh yeah. And so when you say like reverse engineering your goal.  11:51 - Danielle Famble (Host) That's really where it is. It's not in these big leaps and bounds. It's how can you grow? Just a little bit more, and a little bit more, and a little bit more. And then when you look back over time because this takes time when you look back over time you can say, oh, wow, like look what this did, look what I grew, look what we've made. It's really amazing. It's like any financial investment. It's really amazing.  12:09 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It's like any financial investment. It's funny because you know, back in the day when I did work for a company, I remember I invested some spare change that I had like $500 in a stock in the company that I worked for, and then I just didn't look at it.  12:24 I just let it sit there for about 20 years. And I'll tell you what over time, when you look at a stock, if it's a decent stock and it's not like a company that's in and out and out of business, a company that's been around for a long time, I mean that grew over time even though, like, one month it went way down, another month it went way up, and then it was like, and if you looked at those numbers and you got crazy about it, it would make you insane, and so I just left it alone. I said you know what that was? Money, that it's kind of like.  12:47 I feel like if I go to Vegas and I'm going to spend money on gambling which I'm not a big gambler, but I always say, well, that's my spare change, right, and then I just don't worry about it. When it's done, it's done. So I invested that money and then I didn't look at it until 20 years later, when I went to buy a house, and then all of a sudden I cashed in on it and well, over the years and of course I didn't like completely ignored it I did look at it like on a yearly basis, but it wasn't like every day. I was not looking at it and freaking out if I wasn't getting a return on my investment. And so I think maybe if you kind of look at your business like that right, step back from it and look a little more long term and you can't do that unless you've been tracking it right and see how you grow, like that tiny little growth spurt over time makes a humongous difference.  13:38 - Danielle Famble (Host) Absolutely.  13:39 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So then let me ask you how, like in terms of I know we talked about this a little bit in other podcast episodes so in terms of tracking this right, what's the best resource for tracking this? I mean, I know we talked about, like I use QuickBooks so I can do a profit and loss statement. I can generate any length of time. I could say give me a monthly profit and loss statement. What other things would you suggest to track? Because that's just the financial part of it. How are we tracking like marketing, how are we tracking those types of things?  14:09 - Danielle Famble (Host) I think that can be done in several different ways. When I first started my business, I was tracking everything in an Excel spreadsheet down to every job that I booked, the details about that job, how much I was paid, how much do I need to set aside for taxes, and keeping that set aside separated by month. That's one way to do it Currently. Now I have a Notion database where I actually will put in every single audition that I did and it turns into a pipeline. So it's. Did the audition turn into a booking? Did I get an avail check for that even though I didn't book it? I want to know the details about that. What were the specs in that audition? So it's like a whole sales funnel.  14:46 - Intro (Announcement) It's an entire sales funnel, I love that An entire sales funnel.  14:49 - Danielle Famble (Host) That's what I'm doing, that's amazing.  14:51 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I'm again sort of a nerd. Yeah, no, no, no, I'm right there with you.  14:54 - Danielle Famble (Host) That's wonderful, but I want to know everything about the jobs that are coming my way and then the jobs that turn into actual bookings, because there's information in that data for me and it's important for me to take a look and see. I even want to see maybe I auditioned for something a year ago and the rate was X.  15:13 - Intro (Announcement) What is it today?  15:14 - Danielle Famble (Host) I want to know what is the market overall doing? So there are ways to look at it, like that, crms that you can take a look at and put your data in.  15:23 However you do it, do it and that's where your data is and then have a way to go back and take a look at and put your data in. However you do, it, do it and that's where your data is and then have a way to go back and take a look and take the time to go back and look at the data and see comprehensively, maybe by quarter how did I do? At the end of the year how was this year and what did we learn and what can we do a little differently? I love that.  15:45 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, I think tracking your goals not just here's what I want to make right but tracking your business and tracking the progress of your business will really help you to get a great view of your business over time, and so it will help you to make more educated decisions as well. Right? So not only are we setting financial goals and we're manifesting right, and we're having faith in the fact that we can achieve these goals right, and we're creating small little pieces, small little segments of those goals that are achievable right, and then we can look back on our success and be encouraged and gain confidence from that success. And again, when you do that, that can just exponentially grow your business and grow your success. And to me, you've got to take the time to track that. So how much time. For me sometimes it's like, oh God, I've been auditioning all day, I've been coaching all day, I've been doing this. I don't have time to track this. What is your method of tracking? Do you track on a day-to-day basis or weekly? Or what do you do?  16:40 - Danielle Famble (Host) I track, like I said, with the inputs in my sales funnel or my system. I do that every single day, really like inputting it as it's happening and how much time does that take?  16:51 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Do you know what I mean? Are you spending like 10 minutes, half an hour, an hour?  16:54 - Danielle Famble (Host) Every input is maybe a minute or two, so it adds up to a few minutes a day, maybe an hour a day.  17:00 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Wow, think of that boss. It's just not even an hour a day right, yeah, not even I day.  17:05 Wow, think of that boss. It's just not even an hour a day, right? Yeah, not even. I say that for my students too, who want to pursue this as a career is that you need to spend, you need to dedicate a certain amount of time per day on your business, and that tells your brain, it tells your body, it tells your being that you are serious about this business and you are manifesting along the way as you do that. And plus, I think it's a critical part of again that tracking system that helps us to understand where are we, where do we want to go and how are we going to achieve that? Absolutely, yeah, fantastic, wow, I love that.  17:33 So what sort of goals would you say for, let's say, a beginning talent? What sort of financial goals should they have? Because I know there's a lot of people that are like quick, they're like I want to make the money now, right, and I know, as a coach, sometimes that is something that just doesn't happen right away. I mean, they're not making thousands upon thousands of dollars right away, and I think that's where most people get the most discouraged right in the beginning of their career. So, in terms of financial goals, what would you say are realistic financial goals for new talent that are starting out.  18:06 - Danielle Famble (Host) I think the first thing that a new talent should take a look at is where are they currently at, to look realistically and then I think really like the percentage that maybe 1% or 2% maybe not per month but per quarter might be a really great target to hit. So where are you at currently and how can you do just a little bit better per quarter to get you to that 4% per year? And I would also take a look and see things outside of the returns. But what are you doing today? Is it that you need to coach with someone else? Do you need to invest in yourself and your business? Do you need to learn how to use your DAW a little bit better for editing your auditions? Those kinds of things can really help with your bottom line because once you have a little bit more skills in your business, then you're able to use those skills to generate income. But I think, looking at it from where you're currently at, then looking at maybe a one or 2% increase from where you currently are, is incredibly realistic. Yeah.  19:06 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, and I think also, when you're starting out, you have to be realistic in terms of, like, financial success, what you consider to be financial success and what you're considering to be investment in growing the business, because there are lots of businesses that need to take that time to grow. They need to invest in their product, they need to invest in their marketing, they need to invest in their storefront, right, which? These are all things like what is your product? It's your voice, right? Well, that's your coaching. It's your demos. What is your storefront? That is your website, what is your marketing? All of these things. Have you taken a marketing course? Do you have a mail service? That kind of a thing.  19:49 So, what are you investing? And a lot of it might take more investing than you're getting back in the beginning, and longer time it takes, longer it does, it does. And so I feel as though your financial goals at this point need to be realistic thinking. I have some people saying, well, I want to make $5,000 a month and they're just getting out in voiceover, and I'm not saying that you can't do that, but I'm just saying that until you really start to grow and make those investments.  20:08 I think marketing is a big, big part of that, because you can be a new talent and you can be amazing, but if nobody knows that you exist, right, they can't pay you and so you can't meet those financial goals. And so you've got to really get out there in front of people, and that requires your marketing efforts either direct mails, creating content out there. The quality of your auditions is marketing Exactly, exactly the quality of your studio out there. So there's a lot of things that will go into this in order to help meet your financial goals. And the better you are, the more skilled you are right, the better your product is right, the better you're able to market that product. Then I think the more skilled you are right. The better your product is right, the better you're able to market that product, then I think, the more able you're going to be to meet those financial goals in the end.  20:51 Yeah, absolutely so, for, let's say, talent that have been out there for a while. Is it realistic, do you think, for them to think, oh okay, well, I made six figures last year, I'm going to make six figures this year, year, I'm going to make six figures this year, or I want to increase that by 12% this year. How realistic do you feel that is?  21:08 - Danielle Famble (Host) Oh yeah, I think that's incredibly realistic. I think that really taking a look at where you currently are, or what happened last year versus what you're attempting to do this year, I think that's incredibly realistic and you can go back and you can look at your systems and say, all right, this is what I did. What of it worked? You can look at your systems and say, all right, this is what I did. What have it worked? What things do I need to improve? What maybe should I invest in my business to help get me to that 12% or more return? I think that's incredibly realistic. Also, it does mean that you need to look at the genres that you're working in, yeah, and the market the market that you're working in as well.  21:43 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, so important. Yeah, don't leave out the fact that you could be. You know, I want to do animation or I want to do character work, whatever that is Right, and you can be an amazing character animation, you know, have a great demo, have a great product out there. However, you've got to figure out where's the market, right? Where's the market at this time? Are there trends in that market? Am I able to reach that market and how am I able to get in front of the eyeballs that can hire for that market and what are they willing to pay Like? That's the part where I think most people they forget. Oh, so now there's a money, right, there's a value put on that on the market. Not that you're not worth a million dollars.  22:23 However, there's a term for it, danielle, and I don't know if I know what it is, but there is a rate out there that is the going rate, right, it's a competitive rate for people that want voices for animation or people that need a commercial voice. There are rates all over the place. Of course, we always say go to the GVAA rate guide, right. But I mean, sometimes the market can't pay that rate, right. That particular client just can't pay it. They don't have the budget for it, and sometimes that's the truth, right? A lot of times we want to say, oh no, I can't do that job. I know what I'm worth and I can't do it for that rate and that's OK, that's your business decision.  22:58 But don't dismiss that sometimes clients literally don't have it in their budget to pay that value, and then that's a decision that you make, right? Whether you want to accept that, to do that maybe below your rate or not. And I'm not saying you should do that for everything. But there is a value. There is a value that the companies put on it and they will have budgets. I mean, people have budgets for a reason. So you have to be considerate of the company and not just be angry at the company if they can't meet your budget.  23:28 You know, I think a lot of times we tend to so quickly dismiss and say, well, they're not paying me what I'm worth, and so therefore and yeah, I say, if that's your decision, that gives you time to go find somebody who will pay you what you're worth. But sometimes understand that it is possible that the company doesn't have the budget at this moment Doesn't mean that they won't have the budget in the future, or that you can't work on that in the future. So yeah, just a thought Wow, good stuff, danielle, wow.  23:54 - Danielle Famble (Host) Yeah, that's a really good discussion. I think that talking about goals is incredibly important, not just about the financial goals, but the inputs to your goals as well, because that can just be general business goals, life goals. Once you learn how to do this in one aspect of your life, you can really move it to other aspects of your life. Oh yeah absolutely, absolutely.  24:14 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) All right. Bosses Love this conversation. Danielle Can't wait for our next one. I'm going to give a great big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl. You, too, can connect and network and make money like bosses like Danielle and myself. Find out more at IPDTLcom. You guys have an amazing week and go out there and let's set some financial goals and meet them. We will see you guys next week. Bye, bye.  24:38 - Intro (Announcement) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, Anne Ganguzza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at vobosscom and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution with permission. Coast-to-coast connectivity via IPDTL.   

Anne Ganguzza and Tom Dheere reflect on their time at the Mid-Atlantic Voice Over Conference (MAVO) and show listeners how to align your conference choices with professional objectives and comfort zones. The BOSSES talk about embracing the vibrant energy of smaller conferences, where meaningful connections and enriching learning experiences await. Anne and Tom share personal stories that capture the joy of stepping out of the studio and into creative spaces filled with camaraderie and collaboration. Whether you're new to the scene or a seasoned pro, this episode is filled with invaluable strategies to enhance your career and make every conference moment count. 00:00 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey bosses, real Boss, Tom Dheere and myself have a very special deal for you guys. Tom, tell them what it is.  00:08 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) All right, anne. If you use the promo code BOSSVOSS that's B-O-S-S as in V-O-BOSS and V-O-S as in V-O-STRATEGIST, and the number 24, so that's BOSSVOS24, you get 10% off my 30-minute check-in, my one-hour strategy session and my one-hour diagnostic.  00:27 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And you'll get 10% off all coaching packages and demos on the Anne Ganguzza website. So, guys, black Friday starts now and runs till the end of the year. So everybody, get yourselves on that site and get yourself a discount. BOSS, VOS, BOSS, VOS 24.  00:43 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) BOSS, VOS 24. BOSS. VOS, BOSS, VOS, 24. BOSS, VOS, 24. 00:47 - Intro (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss, a VO boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza.  01:06 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey everyone, welcome to the VO Boss Podcast and the Real Boss Series with the one and only Tom Dheere. Tom Dheere, yay, hi, anne, tom, I get to see you like. I just saw you at MAVO, which was so wonderful. We have to just meet each other at conferences, I feel like there needs to be a change to that.  01:27 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) You live in LA, I live in New York City, so you know we have some logistical challenges.  01:32 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I know, but I feel like we should be seeing each other more, because what a great time.  01:36 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Well then, they need to produce more conferences so we can hang out more, right.  01:39 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, I don't know. Well, I don't know. There might be some people that disagree with that, I'm not sure. Some people are saying that there's more conferences than are needed in this industry. But you know, I like people to have a choice.  01:51 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Yes, and different conferences meet different needs. Some of them are different sizes, like Mavo is very boutique, like under 100 people, as opposed to VO Atlanta, which is wonderful in its own way, but that has 1,000 people and that can freak out a lot of people. And then one voice is like somewhere in the middle with attendance and there's different focuses. Some have a bilingual track or a Spanish track, some have an audio book track and some have a children's track, like Mavo did. So you just got to find one that's right for you, based on your budget, your professional needs and just your social comfort level.  02:24 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Sure, let's do a recap about Mavo, then, because it was my first year at Mavo, oh, and I truly, truly enjoyed it. It was, it was my first year speaking at Mavo and I loved it. It was small, it was intimate, and she had a boatload of great speakers there, and I really felt as though she worked her tail off to make it a nice experience for everyone.  02:50 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) I agree, this was my fourth 2018, 2020, 22, which was virtual, and then 2024 now. So, like most conference presenters, they like to have people come every other year so they can mix up the speakers and the content, and I always have a lovely time there. Val Kelly, who's the producer of the Mid-Atlantic Voice Over Conference MAVO for short always does a lovely job and, like you said, she puts together a fantastic group of speakers. Like, considering the size of the conference, it's like, quality-wise, a disproportionate quality. Like the quality of speakers, considering the size of the conference, it's just such really high-end.  03:31 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh my gosh, Really high-end people. It was incredible high-end speakers, especially because you and I were there. Well, no, I'm sorry, I love it. I think her theme in the beginning was more character-based animation, because that's what she did, and she mentioned to me this is the first time she was going to have somebody coming in that was really talking about things other than character animation, and, of course, I did a general session on corporate, and then I did two mastery sessions which actually were oversold, which I loved on e-learning, and the other one was on acting for narration oversold, which I loved on e-learning, and the other one was on acting for narration, and I just loved the response of the attendees that were there to my classes, and so I had a great time while I was there, but I worked hard, and I will say, though, that the speakers that she had were amazing.  04:18 You were there, I mean, jessica Blue was there, everett Oliver was there I mean I'm just going on and I met some people that I had never met before in person, which was there. Everett Oliver was there. I mean I'm just going on, and I met some people that I had never met before in person, which was great Casting directors, andy Ross. I mean, I just had such a good time meeting new people and now I've got new resources.  04:35 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Yeah, I had a fantastic time too. What did I teach? I did a breakout session or I don't remember what the name of it was. The term, but it was make taxes less. Taxing had a great turnout, with people trying to figure out how to file their taxes. As a voice actor, that was fun.  04:48 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, that's important.  04:49 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) It is important. I'm noticing a slight uptick in people going to conferences and wanting to get a little bit more understanding of the business side of voiceover, which and considering that's what I do as the VO strategist obviously I'm thrilled that people are expressing more of an interest to complement all the great performance training that they want to get and that they know that they need. But I also did one on smaller voiceover market mastery how to, if you live in a suburban or rural area, how you can thrive both online and in person.  05:15 But the one that was extra interesting is and we talked about this before we started recording is that I was the moderator for the AI panel.  05:23 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah.  05:24 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) And you were in the audience and you participated I was. It was very, very interesting and we had the board of the National Association of Voice Actors, or NAVA, as the panelists president, vice president, director of operations and a member at large and the conversation was very interesting. What I thought was interesting is that I read the room at the beginning, if you remember, and I said who here doesn't know the first thing about AI as it pertains to voiceover? And not a single person raised their hand. Now, maybe they were shy and didn't want to admit they didn't know anything, but I think a lot of them are now that it's been a few years that the voiceover industry has just become aware at all that AI has been permeating the industry long before we understood what was going on. People are making a point to educate themselves, and you have been a huge contributor to that with your VO Boss series. When you interviewed, was it 30 or 35 companies At?  06:15 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) least At least 35 CEOs of companies, of AI companies Some are of companies that don't exist anymore and some that do. So, yeah, and that was back. I think I started two and a half years, maybe three years ago, doing that and talking about how do you create a voice, are you ethical, are you, you know, how are you utilizing the voices and how do you feel about voice actors and treating them fairly and giving them compensation for that voice? And so it was something that I really have been on a journey to do, to research and educate myself, because I think, I mean, we're both educators, tom, and it's so important for voice actors to educate themselves about the industry, about the business and how they can run their business to coexist with disruptive technologies like AI.  07:04 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Right, right Were you in the room when J Michael Collins did his presentation.  07:08 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I actually was finishing up a mastery session and he was talking about trends in commercial, I believe, or trends in performance, since the new administration or the upcoming administration change.  07:22 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Yes, that's why I brought it up, because I sat in on that and took a page of notes. He did a fascinating history of how you can line up who's president of the United States with trends in commercials and tone and what affects us as casting specifications.  07:39 So he made a lot of interesting points about those who voted for the winner and what kind of reads are maybe called for, and those who did not vote for the winner of the election and the type of reads that are going to resonate with them for the next few years. So I bring this up, bosses, because this is part of the value that you get out of attending any voiceover conference, much less going to MAVO. It's education, it's networking, it's the opportunity to meet great coaches like Anne, or get to know a casting director or someone like that. But also industry trends what's going on in the industry right now and how you need to adjust or adapt your understanding of the voiceover industry and how you can adjust your business model to adapt to what may change in the coming years.  08:29 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) One thing that I like to think about in regards to trends is trends. You have to keep your eyes and ears open and assess what you feel is happening in the industry, as well as what your clients are saying. And so, while I would never say this is the trend in black and white, this is what it's going to be or this is what's calling for, and then say that's it, I'm only going to practice that trend. I say be the actor, because when you're the actor, you can be versatile and you can cover any trend and so just know which ones seem to be resonating along with culture and the current status and the current flow of advertising. But also be that actor. Take that coaching, training that allows you to be the actor that can be versatile, that can follow direction, no matter what they want, because there can be trends all over the place.  09:19 So, for example, after the Super Bowl last year, there was the Poppy read. Right, there was that read. I was not asked for that poppy read very often, even though that was spouted as the latest and greatest big trend. So, again, my customers had their own specific direction for what I do. Also, it depends on genre right, genres that you're working on, and I feel that if you are a well-versed actor, you're gonna be able to adjust yourself to any trend. However, it is important that we all educate ourselves on what's current and relevant out there, because you probably don't want to be out there doing that old announcer read, although that's one of the reads that could potentially come back, or it can be a read that one of your clients wants, and a lot of times we get the gig with one read and then they direct us to something completely different, and so keeping your ears out and eyes out for trends is great, but also that age old advice that sage, wise advice to just get your acting skills in order, I think is absolutely still relevant.  10:20 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Oh, 100, 100%. And this is why you want to have good coaches that can help guide you through the voiceover industry, teach you the basics of voiceover, that are the evergreen content, like breath control or microphone techniques, script interpretation, and then obviously layering that with the genre training, like what you do with your e-learning and your narration training. And this is where the advantage of going to a voiceover conference is, for both attendees and for speakers and presenters like you and me, is that we can have conversations with speakers, other coaches, other casting directors. What's going on, what trends are you noticing, how have you had to adjust your teaching or coaching style to adapt with what's going on in the industry and how we can prepare for what's going on next.  11:06 And if there's one thing I noticed is that, yes, you are technically J Michael Collins' competitor and he is technically Everett Oliver's competitor and he is technically Nancy Wolfson's competitor. But like the level of camaraderie and the very from what I've noticed over many years free-flowing exchange of information. Well, you know the old thing the rising tide lifts all boats. So we're all happy to exchange information, Like if I go to the same conference that a Mark Scott does or a Paul Schmidt does, and Paul Schmidt. He was hanging out at the bar for this conference. He wasn't an actual attendee.  11:39 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) He was there he was living in the.  11:41 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) he lives in the area, so he's like yeah, let me go hang out with my friends, and it was. It was awesome to see him.  11:45 There was a couple of people that just showed up and just like, hey, what's going on? A couple of people that just came to hang out. We all are in these little booths talking to ourselves all the time in a vacuum and we have to build characters and connect and engage, but just to be able to stop wearing sweatpants all day, get out of the booth and just go, just hang out and get dressed up.  12:17 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I love getting dressed up.  12:18 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Yes, and look fabulous, fabulous every day, and I actually got the chance to wear a suit which I haven't done in so long.  12:25 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I had costume changes, Tom. I had costume changes you know, I call them costume changes, but I love it.  12:31 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Like you're hosting an Oscar.  12:33 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I had a few of them, which is pretty cool.  12:35 Yeah, Right, Okay, and now it's hand-wearing and a lot of it is just the energy, right, the energy at a conference and the energy especially at a smaller-sized conference too. The energy at, let's say, a larger conference can be overwhelming, right, it's great and it's exhilarating, but it can also be overwhelming and stressful For something for a much smaller venue. I really enjoyed the energy because it wasn't like we couldn't hear each other over the loud din of thousands of people. We were all a close group that kind of gathered in the restaurant slash bar area every night and ultimately had a great time talking to one another, and I absolutely love it. And we did fun, crazy things, Like I actually have a little video that will be coming out. We all had everybody say the same line and be the actors that they are, and so I literally recorded multiple people saying the same line with their drinks in hand and that should be a cute little video coming out in a few days. Everybody just had a blast. Whether you normally do that type of a thing, it was just nice to see the improv and the acting and the laughter and just so much fun hanging out after hours or after the classes are done, and typically when I'm at a conference.  13:51 I know that for myself I don't know, Tom, if this happens to you too the more conferences I'm presenting, I'm very, very hyper-focused on my presentations because I want to make sure I'm ready and I've got the energy to teach a three or four-hour class, which some of these ended up being, and so I'm not always socializing late in the late hours because I'm like well, I got to get up early, but I noticed that none of it was overwhelming for me, so I was able to hang out and really visit with people later on in the evenings. That I typically do at larger conferences. Just because I find that there's so much noise at the bigger conferences, I get a little more stressed out quicker and I'm like well, I got to go to bed now because I got to make sure I'm up and I can do my class in the morning. I don't know what did you feel about that, Tom?  14:35 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Yeah, I noticed the same thing because we were both at VO Atlanta this spring and, like I said, there's 1,000 attendees and probably what 50 or 60 speakers plus a couple of dozen staff. So it's an amazing, wonderful experience, but it can be a little overwhelming Canva presentations and making sure my outlines are just so and timing it a little bit to make sure I have time for Q&A and sidebars and stories and stuff like that.  15:05 So, I found myself staying. I was at the bar for a little while. I think I turned into a pumpkin around sometime between 10.30 and 11 o'clock at night, which I think is a yeah that was me.  15:15 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That's a long time for me. Oh, really At home I'm usually in bed by nine, so I mean oh yeah, I'm like I'm a wimp.  15:22 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Back in the day. I'd be at the bar until two, three, four in the morning, but I just don't have the battery power for that anymore. Also, I'm hitting the gym in the morning, so like I was in the gym, Me too. Friday, saturday morning and Sunday morning I was in the gym at 7.30. Oh.  15:37 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I missed you those. I missed you those times because I was prepping for a nine o'clock class.  15:43 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Well, yeah, I didn't have any nine o'clock classes this time, so I had a little time to be able to go down. I just did like a half hour on the treadmill just to kind of get my steps in and get my circulation going, have a nice breakfast and then get some tea and make my way down. But I was wondering, Anne I'm sure there's a lot of bosses here who have never been to a conference before what would you suggest as some like voiceover conference strategies for someone that's never been to one?  16:05 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Ah, yes, for me I really like to get the most out of, and I'm like, probably sometimes the worst, I'm the worst offender because I'm so busy and I'm not looking at the schedule. But I would say look at the schedule, decide ahead of time, right, what classes look good for you, and and really kind of create your schedule before you get there. It's nice you can make last minute changes, you know, once you get there, depending on, like maybe somebody says, oh no, no, no, you really have to go see this talk or this presentation or I've seen this person before and they're really great and you might make changes then. But I think, really having a plan and of course, old school, I'm either a notepad to jot things down or I like to do notes on my phone a lot in order to get things from the presentation. I know that for me, because I've lost my talent to write, tom, I mean, I don't know like, do people like I can barely sign my name these days because I'm typing so much. So a lot of times what I'll do is I'll take a picture, like a screenshot, of the presenters or the screen, if they've got a display, and then I'll just jot down notes while I'm talking in my notes on my phone, or I'll just create right a note on my phone and I'll take pictures while I'm doing it as well. So now I've got the notes and I can take pictures and then I have that across all my platforms, and so that's kind of the way that I take notes for that and I also make sure nowadays to get people's contacts.  17:28 And, tom, I'm the old school. You probably saw my cards on the table because I purchased them for one other conference and I'm like you know what? I'm just going to leave them on the table. On the back of it I made sure that I had a QR code that basically, when you scan it, I'm right in your contacts in your phone. So it's got my name, yeah, it's got my name, my address. So it's no longer just like oh, it's a card that just has your email, your phone. It has a QR code that you can scan so that it automatically goes into contacts, and I find that that is super beneficial. Like all the contacts that I made, we basically just touched each other's phones or we called each other and then filled out information so that it went right into our contacts. Not so much exchanging cards these days, but I say always have some for backup. What about you?  18:11 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Well, for those of you who are listening to this, I just flashed my VO Strategist business card, which also has a QR code on the back. I also have I think it's hopbio, h-o-p-pbio, where you can kind of make a little mini type of website, and I have one for Tom Deere, voice actor, and I have one for VO Strategist. It's a QR code also, so people scan it and then they can see it's also linked, so it has all your contact information on there. You can even hyperlink your blog to it. So it's just kind of like everything that you are in like one little place. It's like one-stop shopping for marketing. As to note-taking, I have to let everybody know that Anne took a picture of some of my notes at a class at a workshop that she wanted to go to but she couldn't make it to, which is perfect.  18:55 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yep, I absolutely did, and I love it. I mean, it's now it's in my phone so I can refer to it at any time, which is great.  19:01 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) I'll deal with your one of two things. I'll use Google Keep, which is a Google note-taking app. But what I've been doing more and more lately is that before I go to a conference and I pretty much know I mean I've got all my presentations, but then I look and see when I'm not presenting and what workshops I have time to attend and be a student of is that I'll set up in Google Drive. I'll set up a Google Doc and it'll just say, like 2014, mavo. So if you go into my Google Doc for those of you who have broken in you see I've got the year that I attend the conference and the name of the conference, so I can just see, in chronological order, every set of notes I've taken for every conference that I presented at or attended. So I'll often bring my tablet and I'll just be typing directly into the Google Drive doc that I had already set up. So when I get home it's already there. I don't have to do anything.  19:48 But I do take pictures of screenshots, like you do pictures of slides and what I'll often do is, I'll take a picture of the slide and then I will just copy and paste that picture into that Google Drive doc. So I don't have to transpose it either.  20:03 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Exactly that way, you've got your notes and your photos. Yeah, it's all together, so it's all together.  20:07 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) One bit of advice I will give our bosses who do attend a voiceover conference is find a note-taking buddy that looks like they're going to be presentations that you want to go to as like the primary ones you know, like if you want to go to all the ones about cartoons and video games.  20:27 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Like you were my note-taking buddy, yeah. Yeah, be a note-taking buddy, you were my note-taking buddy for Jay Michael's presentation Right.  20:33 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Because you're just like click there, you go, so like, but based on what you want to do. If you have a friend who wants to focus on business and marketing and tech and you want to focus the performance ones, they go to all the other ones and you just take notes and you just swap, yeah.  20:45 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, I'd like to really like give props to the business classes in the conferences, and I know because I used to teach business classes Sometimes I mean it used to be that they were the hard sell right.  20:56 And the funny thing is is I think what people need the most is business sometimes, because it's so easy to take performance after performance after performance classes. But your performance is wonderful in your studio by yourself. If you're not selling, if you don't have the business savvy, you don't have the marketing savvy and you're not selling yourself, well then nobody's going to see your beautiful performance. So I do want to give a big push for those of you that go to conferences, give yourself I mean I know you might hate business or you might hate marketing but do yourself a favor and sign up for a marketing session so that you can understand, like, how marketing has trends have changed or new ideas. I mean you could come out with one, just one new golden nugget for how to market yourself and that can make all the difference to get you seen or in front of a casting director, or in front of a talent agent, or in front of a new client and then, boom, it's been able to grow your business.  21:51 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Well as the person who teaches all the business and marketing breakouts and workshops and mastery sessions at all of these voiceover conferences. Obviously, I have a vested interest and I want all of you to attend my classes and take my content. But Anne is 100% right attend my classes and take my content. But Anne is 100% right. There is and I've noticed it over the oh geez, 13 years or so that I've been attending and speaking at voiceover conferences is that they tend to be populated by a lot of professional students. They just keep taking performance class after performance class. They don't take any business and marketing class and they never pull the trigger. They never go for it.  22:26 Now I can't speak to why any one of them can't or won't pull the trigger. It may be financial they can't leave their day job. It may be psychological they just have certain emotional mental blocks that are preventing them from pulling the trigger. But I say this in almost everything that I speak at is that your talent will get you your first gig with a client. Your project management skills will get you the next gig with the same client. Project management is all the stuff you have to do between the moment that the email hits your inbox and the moment that the check clears. So if you're able to use your talent to get an audition and book it, if you don't know what to do when it's time to press the red button and I'm not talking on a performance level, I'm talking on a technical and a business level you're useless as a voice actor and they're not going to come back.  23:11 So I speak at a lot of these and there's a lot of other great business and marketing coaches that presented a lot of these. I think it's really important for you to take the time yes, if there's a certain casting director that you want to meet, if there's a certain coach you'd like to connect with to see if you'd be a good fit for getting coached for them and booking a demo, which I know Anne experiences that all the time make it a point to go to one or two business or marketing related things, because it's not even just being about a well-rounded voice actor, it's about being effective at all, because if you don't know that stuff, you're not going to get anywhere. All the best video game and cartoon coaching in the world isn't going to get you anywhere if you don't know how to demonstrate your value, to get you those casting opportunities and if you don't have the business savvy to capitalize on those opportunities, yeah, I mean, I agree, a thousand percent, a thousand percent really.  23:59 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I mean, and I've seen it conference after conference and I used to teach the business classes early, early on, before I knew Tom, I used to do like social media classes, business classes, and it was interesting because people were just so drawn to like the character and the animation classes and those performance classes and I think you really just need to have I mean, this is one of the reasons why I started the VO Boss. It was really about the business strategies for voiceover artists and really that's what this podcast was all about to hopefully help educate in the business sense of it, business and marketing sense of things, because you can have the best voice in the world but if nobody knows about it, there you sit, there you sit, wow. So some good tips and tricks, guys. I highly recommend the Mabel conference. I know Val, she just works so hard at it and it really was a lovely conference and I hope I get asked to go back next year.  24:53 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) I hope you do too, and I had a wonderful time and I always look forward to it, and hopefully I will get asked again as well. Hint, hint, val, if you're watching this.  25:00 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yes, Val, we love you Val. So yeah, I'm going to give a great big shout out to our sponsor, IPDTL. You too can connect and network like bosses. Find out more at IPDTLcom. Bosses, have an amazing week and we'll see you next week. Bye.  25:17 - Intro (Announcement) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, anne Ganguza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at vobosscom and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via ipdtl.   

Gold Crushes Ants, Ill-Fitting Robes and Disruption's Power Redistribution Aidan McCullen: [00:00:00] Gold Crushes Ants, Ill-Fitting Robes and The Power Redistribution of Disruption. Just a brief reminder of what this episode is in case you have not heard it before.. Each week I write a newsletter called The Thursday Thought. For years, listeners to the Innovation Show have asked me to narrate it. I never had enough time. So today, I am using AI. I have cloned my voice. It is not perfect, but it saves me hours of effort. For those who want the short version. Here is a paragraph: Disruption redistributes organisational power, information and status. As Machiavelli noted, those in power dislike such change. However, there is a twist to this week's Thursday Thought. Sometimes, the new-found power does not sit well with those who inherit it, to their detriment and to that of the organisation. Gold Crushes Ants! Let's begin with a quote by Plato from "The Republic." Plato wrote: "But when the cobbler or any other man [00:01:00] whom nature designed to be a trader, having his heart lifted up by wealth or strength or the number of his followers, or any like advantage, attempts to force his way into the class of warriors, or a warrior into that of legislators and guardians, for which he is unfitted, and either to take the implements or the duties of the other; or when one man is trader, legislator, and warrior all in one, then I think you will agree with me in saying that this interchange and this meddling of one with another is the ruin of the State." This passage from Plato's The Republic expresses the idea that societal roles should be distinct and specialised to ensure the stability and well-being of the state. Plato argues that each individual has a natural aptitude and should perform the role suited to their abilities. The cobbler (a metaphor for any tradesperson), the warrior, and the legislator/guardian represent different classes in society. Plato believes that problems arise when individuals try to take on roles for which they are [00:02:00] not naturally suited or when they attempt to accumulate power by combining multiple roles. For example, if a cobbler tries to become a warrior or a warrior tries to become a legislator, it disrupts the social order and leads to chaos and ruin. This concept is part of Plato's broader vision of a just society, where everyone contributes according to their strengths and society functions smoothly as a result. The Power Shift. Let's take for example, the significant shift in power that occurred in many organisations due to the advent of digital technology. The rise of roles such as heads of digital, data, AI and E.S.G. transformed traditional industries, from media companies to physical retailers. These new roles require a different set of skills, mindsets and perspectives, often leading to friction within long-held hierarchies. In many traditional organisations, digital leaders face resistance similar to what Plato described. Established professionals, [00:03:00] akin to the warriors and legislators in The Republic, often see these newcomers as threats to their traditional roles and authority. This resistance can be rooted in a fear of obsolescence or a reluctance to adapt to new methods and technologies. For instance, the introduction of digital journalism revealed how technology can challenge the conventional roles within a newsroom. It changes the "speed to market", it raises concerns about traditional journalists and the changing nature of editorial control. This works both ways, where new power dynamics can lead to tensions when digital leaders overstep their bounds or when their innovations disrupt the status quo too abruptly. All of a sudden, their importance leads to ego problems. Gold Crushes Ants: The Gradual Path to Power and Responsibility. “If you give a ton of gold to an ant, it will only crush the ant.” — Sadguru There's a profound parable shared by Sadguru...

Anne Ganguzza sits down with Rolf Veldman, CEO of Voice123, for a riveting discussion on navigating pay-to-play platforms amidst the shifts brought on by disruptive technology. Anne and Rolf go in-depth on pay to plays, social media, and the opportunities and challenges that voice professionals need to navigate. They discuss the complex algorithms that dictate audition opportunities on platforms like Voice123 and the balancing act to make it fair for the different levels of subscribers. As more companies test the validity of AI and synthetic voices, Rolf discusses Voice123's strategic partnerships with specialized companies, highlighting their commitment to protecting voice actors' work through digital fingerprinting. 00:01 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey guys, Anne Ganguzza here. Imagine a voiceover journey where every step is filled with discovery and growth. That's the path I want to work on with you, through nurturing, coaching and creative demo production. Let's unveil the true potential of your voice together. It's not just about the destination, it's about the gorgeous journey getting there. Are you ready to take the first step? Connect with me at Anne Ganguzza dot com. Hey everyone, welcome to the VO Boss podcast. I'm your host, anne Ganguza, and today I am so excited to have a very special guest, Rolf Veldman, coming from the Netherlands. Rolf, it is so wonderful to have you today.  01:07 - Rolf Veldman (Guest) I'm very happy to be here, Anne.  01:08 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, for those of you that don't know Rolf, I mean probably everybody knows of you, but Rolf is absolutely a boss who enjoys turning great ideas into great businesses, and I, for one, have been following Rolf for gosh since he stepped into the CEO position, because I like to watch bosses when they work. So Rolf leads a diverse, globally remote team of achievers who are pushing the boundaries of the voiceover industry and maybe pushing the buttons of the voiceover industry too, as we all know and, yes, based in the Netherlands, where I just was, I absolutely love it there. You also like to garden because you live near a national park near the German border, which is awesome.  01:49 - Rolf Veldman (Guest) Yeah.  01:50 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, it's always nice to know those other things besides being, you know, the CEO of one of the largest online pay-to-plays that you also like to garden. I love it.  01:59 - Rolf Veldman (Guest) No, I don't want to say it as my main hobby, but like I'm sitting here in my office but I tend to take my laptop downstairs and then, when it's sunny out, I sit in the garden dogs around me like couldn't make me happier with that.  02:09 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Love it and it's so beautiful. The country is just beautiful.  02:16 - Rolf Veldman (Guest) I don't know exactly where you are, but every part of it that I visited I just absolutely loved.  02:18 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I mean, it's tiny, You're through it in a heartbeat Right, but you're close to everything else.  02:21 I feel so that's what's so cool about it. Well, Rolf, I know we have a little bit of time not too much time and I know that there are, as I mentioned a little bit earlier, there are two things typically that people want to know with pay-to-plays, right, they all want to know about the algorithm and they all want to know about AI. And so start me off by telling me first how, since you've come in to be at Voice123, how the industry has evolved and how Voice123 has evolved.  02:52 - Rolf Veldman (Guest) I mean that question alone could be two hours. I guess I know right, Because a lot has changed already. I know that AI was already there from the beginning, but since we'll get to that later, I think the main difference is is in the last five to six years because I joined in 2018 the audio part of advertising has exploded. The fact that we're doing podcasts now and not radio, I mean it's open doors to kick in, but so many people are consuming content on their phone by audio more and more and more, like audiobooks have skyrocketed. So many of these industries that voice actors are part of have been growing tremendously and as part of that, also the number of people who want to be in voiceover. So it's been an explosive amount of people coming into the industry. And when new people come into the industry, that changes things all the way from how you offer your services to how relevant certain companies become.  03:44 Like I felt the last five years, and even now, Voice on 3 is constantly at risk of being replaced. We might be here for the last 20 years, but how do we stay relevant? So our goal is always to stay at the core of what we do. In the core of what we do is we want to make sure that voice actors and their clients they build great relationships don't get in the way like that's sort of our vision of what our role is in the voiceover industry. By staying close to that, I think we're still very much a relevant player and it's still a popular place for people to find each other and do VO.  04:11 But especially the amount of people that came in and the type of work that has changed the last couple of years has been wow. Like, just to build on that, like we have a search bar in Voice on 3 where you can see where clients type in keywords what they're looking for and you can see trends that used to last maybe six months or nine months in terms of style of voiceover or popular niche. They now change week over week. Really depends on what is hot on TikTok or Instagram. Advertisers jump on it straight away and you see that reflected in how people are getting booked on Voice on 3. Like the space, part of it has changed.  04:44 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) You know, what's so interesting is that we talk in our industry. We're like, okay, what are people looking for? And we go to these workshops with casting directors and we say, okay, what are people looking for? But what's so interesting is that you have a really good idea of what people are looking for, and I think that voice actors sometimes we have a narrow view right of what do we need to do to. First of all, you mentioned the word relevant, which I think is so important, not just for your business, but so important for us to remain relevant and to be able to deliver products that our clients are looking for. And you have a great idea of what people are looking for.  05:19 So, bosses, listen up. I mean, rolf is kind of the guy that has a really good idea of what trends are happening, what people are looking for in the online space and maybe just in general, right, because there are so many people now that are seeking voice talent online as opposed to going through agents. And so the people that go through agents, right, think about, in the United States, agencies and talent agents that book commercials, promos, those types of things that are broadcast. Well, you probably get pretty much. Well, you get some of that, and I'm sure that you get quite a bit of all the other non-broadcast stuff too, and that's where we as an industry right.  05:59 We don't always know what are people looking for. People constantly ask when I'm coaching them what do people look for? What are people looking for for corporate narration? What are people looking for? People constantly ask when I'm coaching them what do people look for? What are people looking for for a corporate narration? What are people looking for for e-learning and that sort of thing? So I love that you, number one, said that you need to remain relevant, because we also, as bosses, need to do that, and also you can tell us a little bit more about trends that are happening.  06:19 - Rolf Veldman (Guest) Yeah, there's so much we can zoom in, but let me start with some fundamentals.  06:22 That I think that people sometimes underestimate is that while maybe, as a voice actor, you are nervous because you have to audition and you have to start this relationship, on the other side is a person that's often in the same place. Most people don't know vo and most people are either creating a video or an ad and then voice over is just the other thing that they do. So so they come in with especially new clients. They come in with complete misunderstandings of how this industry works and what they're looking for is almost like handholding, and not from us but from you. Like we see that the people that are most successful on voice on the three actually spend a great deal in being very consistent in their communication, like being almost like your own customer support agent, and that you're very crystal clear in what your availability is, how you respond to these clients, because most clients are afraid of two things Bad studio quality, which is still number one problem for a lot of people who book voiceover. That there are still many, many people who record via the phone.  07:23 And that you can stand out by just having your environment checked and being sure that you have a fair minimum on that one and again you beat out 80% of the people on places like voice on the 3 and voices in other places just by doing that.  07:35 The other one is that first contact point, and that first contact point is all about that customer relationship and being welcoming, being helpfully trustworthy towards the other side.  07:45 A lot of voice actors not a lot, but some voice actors come at it with a lot of distrust with the first message is the list of demands, and we see that they don't succeed so well If the first interaction is a question or a welcome. We see that just those messagings are so important on a digital space, because the difference between going online and going through an agency is if you want to work with an agent, most likely what the end client wants is an experience, the experience of doing the ad and going to a studio and look at us, we're doing the real thing, like people are just people. They go to work, they want to experience their own little piece of hollywood. That's what you get by an agent. But on casting sites there's a lot of people that have a deadline, they want to meet it and I want to make it a joyful experience. So they want to collaborate. So if you start from collaboration, you have so much of an advantage.  08:30 Then there's two other things that I think are trends.  08:33 The other one is the pandemic has changed or accelerated the amount of people who want to turn their content into audio.  08:43 One of our fastest growing clients on Voice on 3 is universities and colleges, because they used to give in-class lessons, but they took what's left of the pandemic and basically turned every course into an e-learning course as well, just on the side or as a way to get back to it. So that's a fast growing segment of voiceover. And the other one is that more and more clients know that they have to stand out, but they also have to be consistent in their messaging, so they want to work exclusively with one or two voices that represents their whole brand. That used to be like Coca-Cola has a celebrity. Now, even on a midsize and lower size companies, they want to have a consistent voice and they want to work with that same person. And that means that you as a voice actor need to be more versatile. You need to not just do specializing the commercial side of it, but be available for maybe some of the in-house aspects that that company wants to do.  09:33 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh, I like that A couple of interesting things. I like that, yeah, a lot, and one thing I've always liked about Voice123 is that you basically allow us to nurture that relationship with the client. You don't get into it, you don't do any managed sort of projects that I know of, unless that's something that you're thinking of doing or is that, yeah.  09:50 - Rolf Veldman (Guest) So the whole fundamental aspect of Voice on the 3 is we know that we succeed if the voice actors succeed. We know that the only way to succeed as a voice actor is if you can turn a client into a returning client.  10:00 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yes.  10:01 - Rolf Veldman (Guest) Right.  10:02 So, for that. We need to make it an open space Like we would love to build the perfect features for everybody to do everything on Voice on the 3, but we know that people work in their own way, so we will never make it forced to stay on Voice on the 3. People put their emails in their profile. Often the first message is this is my email, let's move over here. Or maybe you've experienced this yourself, but you can see people being contacted on LinkedIn based on an audition they did on Voice123. Oh yeah, absolutely.  10:27 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I still have a client that I got on Voice123 from ages ago and I wasn't even a member, I was in between memberships and I was on the free. So I still have one client that I've retained through that relationship and I love that. You brought up how important the relationship is and nurturing the relationship and how people online are, yes, absolutely looking for an experience. You're right, there's a lot of companies out there. Well, first of all, they don't know a lot about voiceover, they don't really know how it works, and so it's up to the voice actor to really kind of handhold and take them through that process successfully, and then they have a great chance of that client returning, which is one of the ways that I've been able to stay in business for so long.  11:07 I mean, honestly, I do a lot of things Everybody that knows me, I do this podcast, I do a bunch of other things and so I'm very fortunate that I have a lot of returning clients and that's how my business is maintained and that's an important thing these days, especially when economies shift and they go up and down, and so it's really important to have those clients that keep returning and know that there's a lot of successful people utilizing Voice123 that have been able to do that.  11:32 - Rolf Veldman (Guest) And there's a position of strength that you have as a voice actor is that you have the word actor or artist in your name, which immediately creates awe. Like every time I talk to you or any kind of voice actor or professionals, I always feel that I'm exposed to my own incompetencies, like I cannot do what you do. You're the one in the booth, you're the one who can act. Most companies have tried this with somebody in-house and then suddenly you record. It's such a massive difference. So you, you come in as an expert, so it's okay to then guide the client in the process to a certain of course.  12:03 Of course there's always the client, the agency, the production houses that roll out a lot of ads and a lot of videos. Those are also good relationships, but those are relationships you manage differently. That's more about being available. You let them know that, okay, I'm available. My reply time is like 10 minutes. Well, for another type of client where you can see this is the end user or the people who are actually going to make the ad themselves. That's where you are the professional. So you have to know those tiny nuances and how you portray yourself in that relationship. I think are fundamental.  12:33 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So I think all of this is wonderful and great, but the one thing I know that are on the boss's minds right now are so how do I book that? What would you recommend that I do? How do I get the jobs to my inbox right? And that's controlled by something called an algorithm, which is probably the one big main point of dispute on every pay-to-play, not just voice one, two, three right, like what's the algorithm? Because you're getting the jobs and then somehow there needs to be a method to distribute those jobs equally amongst your members, and then there's different membership levels. So explain a little bit about how that works.  13:08 - Rolf Veldman (Guest) Yeah.  13:08 So it came from a very practical problem that we basically got too big.  13:12 So the algorithm is basically a fancy word for a decision process and it's very straightforward where a client posts a project and if it's US, english, female, like, you're still in a group, but as soon as it's male, you're no longer in the group, right.  13:25 So there's a couple of basic requirements of who you are as a person and what your services are, and then we go into the next stage where our goal is to get the client the most relevant auditions for their project right. So what we do is we invite the first group of people, and in that first group of people are a mix of people with good performance scores and with memberships. So if you pay the highest tier, you're stepping up compared to the lowest tier. We control the highest tier, otherwise it would be a monopoly but basically it's a mix of what you pay and then there is the ranking score, as we call it, and that is based on the client's feedback, whether a client books you from a job or likes you in the process of auditioning. That's what we take back and we use the last year's worth of data for that and that makes your score fluctuate.  14:14 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So it's a whole year's worth of data. So, how do you convince your client or your potential client to rate you? I guess that's a question, right, because some clients are just they're not going to bother with the rating, right? Yeah?  14:24 - Rolf Veldman (Guest) no, that's the flaw in the system, right? Ideally, every client that comes through we tell them let us know who you work with, but, as you know, most clients don't use us that way. Only like 40% of the work goes through the auditions. The other half is a mix of what happens on our search or on landing pages that are separately, because you can also just go through our directory.  14:44 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh, right, right, and then they can contact separately.  14:47 - Rolf Veldman (Guest) So all we know is from the audition, and in the past we've tried to force the client to close the project. Let us know who won or force the client to close the project Let us know who won or force the client to book a project, but all it did was scare the clients away and they don't want to use us anymore. We have to keep that open because we also want to keep the platform open, because if we make booking, Difficult.  15:07 Yeah, if we make it too forceful for you, then we become a middleman. We don't want to be a middleman, so we have to balance the fact that we don't want to collect that much information. We have to have enough information to know that it's relevant. So there's a flaw in the system that not every client likes all the proposals. That's why voice actors can now tell us hey, I got booked through this job and that counts also to your algorithm. But yeah, it's a fundamental issue in the algorithm Over a year's worth of data. That works and I have to think in big numbers, right, because we have about 120,000 active voice actors on a platform. So for 100,000, that works. But every now and then people fall off the edge and then we have to make sure that they don't waste their money on a membership. So that's why we're constantly tweaking the algorithm to make it better.  15:49 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Right, I was going to say. So what percentage? Or is this the percentage that changes is based on the feedback score, because I think the feedback score for most people is obviously it's the most variable, right? So when I make a decision to join Voice123, I have how many different membership tiers? I want to say eight or something, yeah, eight tiers to choose from. So do I pay you more money? And then how do I know, and you know what? I mean, how do I know which tier to pick?  16:15 - Rolf Veldman (Guest) I know, and you know what.  16:13 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I mean Like how do I know which tier to pick?  16:13 - Rolf Veldman (Guest) Yeah, so that's why we try to show you like in which market you're competing. One of the reasons we have the extra tiers is that we operate in every country, but like North Korea and some other sanctioned countries. So in a marketplace like the Netherlands, where I'm from, vo is not that big and we don't get a lot of jobs for Dutch people on Voice on 3, but enough and we have enough voice actors, so those people pay a lower tier In the US, which is very competitive if Voice on 3 is your only casting site that you go on, I would suggest paying a higher membership.  16:45 If Voice on 3 is something that you have on the site or that you partly work on and you work on other casting sites as well and you have agents, I wouldn't necessarily recommend a higher membership tier because throughout the year you get enough auditions and you have to be very selective about them, and you get enough direct messages to pay for itself.  17:01 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So I think what most people don't think about and you just pointed it out to me actually is that because it's global and because of the availability of the different jobs that come in, right, I think a lot of people maybe I can speak for people in the US they're like well, if I pay more, I should get more opportunities and I should be able to book more, but that's not always the way, because we don't want people who our clients consistently tell us not good to pay their way to the top. Got it.  17:29 - Rolf Veldman (Guest) But we also know, if you pay a little bit more for a membership you get very into voice on the dream. So they become very active. That's very good for us as well, because that means clients get fast additions. There's multiple aspects to it.  17:42 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, and this is a part that I never thought about and I'm so glad that you're bringing it up because you know, I think that with a better understanding of how Voice123 works, we can then as members of Voice123, make an educated decision as to maybe, which membership tier would be best for us and also what sort of issues you face, because there are so many variables in casting. And one thing I'm going to bring up before I let you continue is that I've always maintained that online casting companies pay-to-plays they don't have any accountability necessarily I'm not saying that about you, but I'm saying some of them don't in the fact that where did the job come from, did it get booked and who booked it? Right, and you just brought that up. I mean, you don't always know, the client doesn't always fill it out and the client is sometimes scared Well, maybe not, it's too many steps, right? They just want to be able to get in get their talent cast it Exactly.  18:35 So you've brought up like a fundamental fact that I think a lot of people just they don't think about when they're making that quick decision and they're just saying, well, I pay all this money, I should be getting the auditions, and how am I not ranking? And it's not fair. So I love that you're bringing up all the different sides of how you cast and I think you, especially by coming on this podcast and for the amount of times that I've seen you go, I mean literally put yourself out there at the conferences so that you can explain. I have so much respect for you for that and I thank you for that, Rolf, because that helps us. Do you know what I mean? And it helps me as, look, I recommend you guys all the time to my students and so it helps me really think, yes, I like the way this company operates. I'm on board because you're transparent.  19:17 I really believe you know and I appreciate your transparency with all of these things that we don't think about necessarily as actors, because we're not running that part of your business. We don't know what it takes to put together an algorithm, or we don't always know like what your clients and that's the biggest thing, we don't always know how clients operate, and I'm always telling my students that you know. If you're reaching out to a company directly to say, hey, I'm a voice actor, do you need services? Like, at any given point they may or may not need the service. You know what I mean. And so a direct marketing method is completely different than, let's say, somebody who comes to a pay-to-play because they have a need, Right Direct marketing. You don't know when that need's going to happen. Every company every day doesn't necessarily have a voiceover need, which is crazy.  20:00 - Rolf Veldman (Guest) And I think to bring this back to like you're a boss yourself, like if you do three things half-assed, you're not going to succeed in any of those right. So I would for any starting voice actor, particularly if you're constantly forced between the decision do I go hard for an agent? Do I go hard for these online casting sites or do I go direct marketing? Especially in the beginning. I would tackle them one at a time and even within the casting sites. Being on a casting site like Voice on the 3 or Voices or Badalgo, is so different. You cannot duplicate your profile or your behavior among these companies because they're their own ecosystem. So you have to really spend time to get to know it, because you're spending your marketing budget on these sites. So I would say tackle them one at a time, otherwise you're spread too thin.  20:42 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I get you, I get you. But I would also say, though, that as you progress and as you advance, and then people will say to me they've been in the business for years and they're like, well, I spent all this money on coaching and demos and a pay to play, and why am I not getting any work? Then I think I'm sorry, but you got to throw the spaghetti up against the wall, right. You've got to get yourself out in front of as many people as you can, and there's multiple marketing methods, and I think that that's what people don't understand. They think it's either putting all your eggs in one basket for pay-to-plays I should be getting work, I'm not getting work. I'm going to make any money in it? I think you really have to explore all the different options of marketing that you have right Direct marketing, pay to plays and, of course, agents and understand the intricacies of each. That is, I think, just as important as keeping your skills up to date, and your performance up to date is understanding the marketing and understanding the market that's out there.  21:33 - Rolf Veldman (Guest) Yeah, and understanding your own business, your business's relationship, and you know that you don't nurture a relationship in a day.  21:39 That's months If you're starting out that means that only in your second year or in your third year VO starts to pay off, because then all these people that come back start to compound. So you have to do a lot of the legwork, which is the scary part, especially on, maybe, sites like Voice123, where you feel like I'm auditioning, I'm not getting stuff back like it's working, but there's a patience to it. That's one of the reasons we have yearly memberships. We use them quarterly but we know that, okay, it takes about six to seven months for people who are starting out to get really booked for the first time properly, and actually it takes about two years for people to make about five times their money back. That's what we learned.  22:13 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That's very interesting to know, and I like that you brought up the fact that a relationship doesn't happen overnight. It really does take time to culture that relationship, and so I think that that's important for people to know too is that sometimes they quit too soon, too quickly, before they've given it a chance. So I love all that you've brought up so far. So let's get to the chase and talk about the other area that everybody wants to know, and that is synthetic voices and everybody's feeling very threatened by them, and so talk about Voice123's stance and position on synthetic voices.  22:46 - Rolf Veldman (Guest) Yeah, maybe I said this before, but when I joined the company in 2016 and in 2018 I became CEO, it was already my first mission to say okay. The board told me then AI is coming. It's either going to replace us and that's the fear back then Like it's going to replace voice actors and therefore voice one to three. What do we do? My view has shifted the last couple of years and even the last couple of months. Even though AI is everywhere, what I keep coming back to is the thing that we're talking about this entire podcast. It's relationships and the creative aspect. I think AI will do great in any industry to reduce inefficiencies, but it will never replace creative work or never replace art. That's why it's art right. So what our idea has been these last couple of years? We can go in so many directions, but we need to stay at the core and that is, we need to amplify that. You have a relationship with a client.  23:35 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) How does AI play that role.  23:36 - Rolf Veldman (Guest) We first thought maybe we should build our own AI model. But we realized, okay, that requires its own company and a lot of work. There's geniuses that work everywhere.  23:44 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I know that from interviewing so many people have realized this over the time.  23:48 - Rolf Veldman (Guest) Yeah, so that's not a side thing you do.  23:50 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, it's not a side hustle.  23:52 - Rolf Veldman (Guest) No. So then we realized, okay, maybe we should partner or acquire a company that does this already. But then we realized, same as with VoiceOver, ai goes into specific niches. So there's a company called Replica Studio they're all into gaming, right. There's a company like Respeech here that's more into movie part of it, and they have speech. And you see all these companies specializing on VO purposes. So we realized, okay, no, we need to instead of thinking about that technology. The technology will be there In two or three years. Anybody can build voiceover technology.  24:23 So, let's wait for that to happen. Let's set up the Voice on the 3 ecosystem in such a way that it is a secure place, because even before AI, voice actors have always been worried about is my audition being used without my permission? Right, are my files being stolen? So we learned from companies like Adobe, who have created all these kind of initiatives, to start stamping and IDing and signing all these different designer files to protect these freelancers. We have decided to sign every piece of audio file that flows through Voice on 2.3. Have decided to sign every piece of audio file that flows through Voice on 2.3. So that we have, like, a history and a protection layer within the system, without it being a watermark that beeps everywhere, but just a layer of protection that you always come back to. And we take basically a three-step approach. We sign every audio, we make it searchable for you in a cloud where you can access all the files that are being signed on Voice on 2.3. And you can check. That's the last part.  25:16 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So it's digitally signed. Got it All the audio that gets uploaded? Yep, okay.  25:21 - Rolf Veldman (Guest) All the audio, and that includes audio that isn't like.  25:24 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) This is just all audio additions, yeah.  25:27 - Rolf Veldman (Guest) And samples and everything that flows through the system. We just tag it, say it is found on 1, 2, 3, and it acts like a fingerprint that's unique, which also means that we got to a place, because there's so many samples that we got to ID your voice, so on top of that, we sort of added a Shazam for your voice.  25:46 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So if I have uploaded stuff to your system, you know that it's mine and you also know that it's voice one, two, three, and if it gets out of your system it is still got that mark on it and it's not audible. It's a digital fingerprint.  25:56 - Rolf Veldman (Guest) That's. I mean you should have done a pitch. That's way faster, yep. The last part of this is that, even if you hear your voice somewhere else and you think this is me, somebody has used my file or I don't recognize it, but you can upload it and then we can say, hey, this is with 95% certainty.  26:11 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Wow, that's fantastic.  26:12 - Rolf Veldman (Guest) So we thought we need that layer of protection in the system for people to feel safe to start also working on AI, and that's then. The next part is that we have a better life where voice actors who have a relationship with an AI vendor so let's say it's Respeecher, or Replica Studios or Eleven Labs I mean there's 50,000, I shouldn't name them all but if you have a relationship with any of these vendors, then we want to make sure it's available to our clients, in the same way that we let them know that you use SourceConnect. And what we thought would happen is that, okay, we have a version of our search where you type in a script and it automatically generates the audio. If you have an agreement with one of those companies, we thought, okay, they will start buying it. Nobody buys it. Nobody buys the audio file. What is happening is all those generated audio files turn into conversations where the client says I liked your voice in my script, let's work together. So what it is doing is it's creating a new type of audition.  27:08 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Very interesting.  27:09 - Rolf Veldman (Guest) Which I like, which is, for the clients, a fast way to get to know. Does Anne sound good in my script? Yes, okay, let's book Anne and do the real deal outside or inside. It's changing that part.  27:18 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So they're listening to the AI voice and then saying I want to work with Anne and get her human voice. That's very interesting.  27:31 - Rolf Veldman (Guest) Now that sounds almost too good to be true, rolf. Yeah, but so far it's what we see. But so far that's what you're seeing. So I think it's the 90-10 rule I think I mentioned this before where, in the end, ai is going to be part of us in the same way that all these other tools source connect and 10 years ago you had to start having your own home studio. The people who did that first, they pioneered that part of the industry.  27:44 Within the next five years, every voice actor will have an AI model. A client will ask them hey, I've generated 90% of this commercial or this audiobook with your AI. Can you do the last, the last 10? Can you come in for this scene? Or can you come in for this piece or the other way around? Great recording. We're going to do some post-production, maybe change some words. Do you consent to this that I use your ai for this, and so it speeds up those kind of moments? But in the end, people want to work with an and part of an is an's ai voice and we think voice on three's goal. Okay, let's make it the place where that happens. We don't make money on what any of the interactions is between you and the voice actor, like we do now, but let's make sure that this is a safe place where you can give clients access to your AI model in a way that you want to.  28:28 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So how are you actually giving clients access to? If you have an AI voice, how are you actually giving access to it? Are they able to generate it there on your site or no, they cannot download it. Oh, they can't download it.  28:39 - Rolf Veldman (Guest) They can buy it, and then all the money goes to the voice actor.  28:42 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Say that again.  28:44 - Rolf Veldman (Guest) All the money goes to the voice actor, okay.  28:46 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So you're not taking any percentage of that.  28:48 - Rolf Veldman (Guest) No, we add a fee on top of it, but never from it. Okay.  28:51 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, okay, yeah, and so do we price our voice ourselves.  28:56 - Rolf Veldman (Guest) Yeah, it's your rate card. Okay To be honest what I think will happen. We have this debate internally as well, so we're now in a first beta mode of this. Let's say it's six months from now or nine months from now no-transcript. You give them access to your model there and you can see what they're doing to generate it. It's like a logbook of how they generate it. That would be my ideal scenario of how it's getting used, because then you have full control.  29:25 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And so the talent is creating a rate card for their synthetic voice, then yeah, so let's say, when I create a profile, do I also upload a version of my synthetic voice? How do I make that available?  29:37 - Rolf Veldman (Guest) Yeah, right now you can just sign on to. If you go to the Voice on 3 search, it says connect your voice and you can start the process there, got it, and then we'll ask you these questions. But later on, ideally, it becomes part of your signing up. Hey, do you have an AI voice? Yes, what's your rate card? Then go here If you don't access to the client and you can embed this on your own homepage. Right, you can use the same logic on your homepage without showcasing the logo of Voice on the 3.  30:04 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh, wow, that's interesting. So you have an API that allows us to embed it on our own website.  30:09 - Rolf Veldman (Guest) You can already do your playlist of Voice on the 3 on your own website without showcasing Voice on the 3. So, it's the same logic. And then if you connect it with the cloud, where all your files are being stored and being signed, then it's hard to put it into order. But that was the whole six-layered strategy that we have. Okay, let's make sure there's trust. Let's make sure there's enough that we can track everything that's happening.  30:30 Let's make sure that we expose the relationship between the voice actor and the client, and that's sort of the vision that we have for AI.  30:36 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That's great. You know, I'd love to meet up again with you in you know a couple of months and have maybe a visual demonstration of this. I think it would be really great. Or if you have a visual demonstration of it. I'd love to link it up in my show notes.  30:47 - Rolf Veldman (Guest) All right, yeah, we'll share something yeah absolutely.  30:50 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That just sounds very interesting. There's a lot of layers there and there has lot of protection in terms of they can't download the file, but can they have, like I mean there's lots of ways to steal audio.  31:02 - Rolf Veldman (Guest) You know what I mean. That's not AI related, right? It was there before AI and will there be after. That's true.  31:06 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That's true. So there's nothing theoretically, I'm a tech girl, right? So there's nothing stopping anybody from taking our voices from this podcast right now, and making an AI voice out of them. So I just want bosses to be very careful of that. So the one thing about the signing right that you have the digital signing like this is Anne's voice. It came through Voice123. Is that open source technology?  31:26 - Rolf Veldman (Guest) Yeah, we're building on existing open source technology.  31:28 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) OK, because a lot of us voice actors right now we're like, ok, we keep hearing about it, we keep hearing about it. It isn't available to us yet. You know, I would like to have something right now that, even if I'm not a member of Voice123, I can just filter it, put it through and then my voice has a digital signature that later on somebody can tell if that audio or if I become a voice somehow, that they will be able to tell that it was my voice.  31:52 - Rolf Veldman (Guest) I agree. That's the whole idea. Yeah, so, and one of the reasons here we're pivoting more towards this is in part because we're going back to the beginning of this podcast about trends. We see that auditioning becomes less and less popular in the industry. The old school I want 50 auditions and I want to see as many talent as possible. I can see the new generation doesn't really want to do that. The next generation of people who book voiceover. They want to do the direct contact approach. They want to listen to some of your samples and then contact you directly and move it off.  32:22 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That's lovely. That's a really good trend. I like that, Rolf.  32:25 - Rolf Veldman (Guest) I think so too, but it also means for companies like ourselves okay, we have to reinvent ourselves a bit, yeah yeah, yeah, we have to make sure that we're relevant, and that's why we're focusing all about security and tooling, and your algorithm has to change then, too, right?  32:38 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Because then people searching on your site for a particular style of voice right? How do you get up at the top of that list without necessarily the feedback on any auditions, right? So you have to evolve with that as well. But that direct contact, I like that trend because I can actually see that happening myself outside of pay-to-plays, because it's becoming almost like overwhelming, right. With social media and data out there, it's becoming overwhelming, and I think people that are looking to cast for a voice they want it to be. That's why talent agents are good, because, again, they're a trusted source. They are the ones who like shortlist and say, okay, here you go, and it makes it less overwhelming for the client.  33:17 So you're experiencing that as well on pay-to-plays and I like that. I like that because I feel like it gives everybody a fairer shot of it. I mean, I get how, like auditioning, people want to hear you speaking their brand, but also I think they want to just kind of weed out all of the. You know there's a lot of people out there they want to weed out all the voices. Maybe I don't need a male voice or I want a female voice and I want somebody that has good audio, and I love that you brought that up, because good audio is still at the very core of a good product.  33:47 - Rolf Veldman (Guest) So many people in Voice on 3 put in their tagline what they do like a perfect girl-next-door kind of approach. That's the kind of voice I do. If you put in your tagline studio quality, you're beating out half the team.  34:00 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Ah, thanks for that tip, I like that. That's a golden nugget, rolf. So what a great conversation. I almost hate to have to cut this short, because I'd like to see a demonstration of the whole synthetic voice, ai, integration, and I might be calling you back in a couple of months.  34:15 - Rolf Veldman (Guest) I would love to yeah, yeah, thank you to you?  34:17 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, thank you so much. It's been an honor. I love, I love talking to you, ralph. So you are a boss. You are definitely a boss. Thank you for always being transparent.  34:32 - Rolf Veldman (Guest) Thank you for bringing us on the other side of the glass, so to speak. It's the other side of the discuss these kind of things, like we only know the voice actor experience by talking to all of you, so this is our way also to get to stay in touch.  34:44 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, good stuff. Rolf, thanks again. I'm going to give a great big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl Connect and network like bosses using IPDTL and, of course, voice123 and bosses out there. I have a nice little discount for you. If you are interested, I'll put that in the show notes. You can get a little discount if you are a first time sign up to Voice123. Ralph, thanks again. Bosses, have an amazing week and we'll see you next week. Bye.  35:12 - Announcement (Announcement) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, Ann Ganguza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at vobosscom and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via IPDTL.   

The complete archive of Subversive episodes, including exclusive episodes and my writing, is available on Substack. For a bit less, you can also subscribe to the podcast sans writing on Patreon. This is how the show is financed and grows, so I appreciate every contribution! Please subscribe at: ⁠⁠https://www.alexkaschuta.com/ ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/aksubversive⁠ We discuss biofoundationalism, exploring how biological traits influence political beliefs and behaviors. We chat about the dynamics of self-interest in political stances, the equilibrium of societal structures, and the implications of the fact that people have better things to do than have kids. We also speak about Elon Musk, examining how his understanding of power transcends language, his communication style, government efficiency, the politics of redistribution, the role of moral foundations in policy-making, the dynamics of globalization and economic growth, and much more. Dmitry is a writer and a founder in the DeFi space, currently building Salutary. He's on Twitter & Telegram: @BackTheBunny, and on Substack at the essence of a thing: https://backthebunny.substack.com/ Chapters 00:00 Understanding Bio Foundationalism 10:33 The Nature of Principles and Self-Interest 17:20 The Fertility Crisis and Its Implications 26:20 Elon Musk: A Study in Power and Influence 33:03 Assessing Elon Musk's Communication Style 39:42 The Politics of Redistribution and Entitlements 45:05 The Role of Moral Foundations in Policy Making 51:58 Globalization and Economic Growth Dynamics 01:03:28 Influential Thinkers and Personal Recommendations

Audio tech expert George Whittam, the genius behind George the Tech, joins Anne Ganguzza, on the VO Boss Podcast. The BOSSes tackle the technical hurdles of the industry - from unreliable internet to optimizing studio setups. George's solutions help empower voice talents to keep their focus where it belongs—on their craft. The BOSSes delve into strategies for leveraging technology and outsourcing to scale operations effectively. Adapting to change is non-negotiable in this rapidly shifting market, and finding a mentor can be crucial for navigating its complexities. The BOSSes highlight the importance of forming meaningful industry relationships and the camaraderie that can fuel professional success. 00:04 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey guys, it's that season again. Are you feeling that tickle in your throat? Don't let a cold or flu slow you down. Combat your symptoms early with Vocal Immunity Blast, a simple and natural remedy designed to get you back to 100% fast. With certified therapeutic-grade oils like lemon to support respiratory function, oregano for immune power, and a protective blend that shields against environmental threats, your vocal health is in good hands. Take charge of your health with Vocal Immunity Blast. Visit anneganguzza dot com to shop.  00:41 - Intro (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss a VO boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza.  01:00 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey everyone, welcome to the VO Boss Podcast. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and I am so happy and elated to be here with my special guest, audio tech guru and owner of George the Tech the one and only George Whittam, Woo-hoo.  01:16 - George Whittam (Guest) Hey, can you hear me okay from the Chili's in Palos Verdes, california.  01:21 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I can I, can I love it. You know George is. He is technology on the go, guys, and for those of you I don't know anyone that doesn't know you, but for those of you bosses out there that don't know George, you need to know George. He has been doing this since 2005, dedicating his life and I know this because he's helped me to serving the technical needs of bosses out there voice actors, podcasters, recording studio owners and in 2017, he launched georgethetechcom to assist anybody that needs support with just about anything. And he has an amazing team. I know firsthand. I have used that team. I've used George for many, many years and among his many successful clients I'm gonna say, in addition to me, are Don LaFontaine, bill Ratner, mr Beast, david Prog, melissa Disney, randy Thomas, joe Cipriano and Scott Rummel. Well, welcome, welcome, welcome and thank you for checking in with me, george, from your very busy schedule. George actually just popped off the road and said I will join this interview from the Chili's after my customer that you just went to go fix a studio.  02:32 - George Whittam (Guest) I did, I did. I do most of my work from home, of course, remotely, but I have a few clients who do have me on a membership program that I've been doing for many years and I make regular visits. So today was one of those days and technology, once in a while, it just flails miserably at letting you know that there's something you're supposed to be doing, and this was one of those moments. You texted me from the car. You're just, and you're like out of the blue tech, just checking in, and I'm like, oh, that's so nice, and it's just checking in, see you're not checking in.  03:03 You're like where the F are you right now?  03:05 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) George, george, where are you?  03:07 - George Whittam (Guest) In our Riverside room right now. So anyway, thank you. I hope this isn't too distracting. They find me a quiet corner of the restaurant, so we'll see how it goes.  03:17 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I love it. I will say, though, here's the deal, my video now Riverside. Anybody that's been on Riverside knows that it's uploading video and audio separately, and right now my upload is at 94%, Yours is only at 55%, so that 5G connection keep your fingers crossed that that internet is going to upload that video successfully and the audio Don't worry. Well, guess what I get to do this again.  03:42 - George Whittam (Guest) I got your back because I'm recording it. I was about to say, I was recording in QuickTime and it said that you've stopped recording, so I'm going to start recording it again, just so I have another layer of redundancy to this whole thing. But that is the really cool thing about Riverside is that, yeah, it doesn't want QuickTime, won't let me. Okay, fine, fine, we're going to rely on new technology today. But, yeah, riverside is really cool the way it keeps a local record and even if my internet isn't, great.  04:09 I'll eventually get it uploaded to you, so don't worry about that. Yes, Awesome.  04:15 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, it's always a good excuse to chat with you again, because it's so rare these days, I mean except when I'm desperate in need of technical support.  04:22 - Intro (Announcement) And.  04:23 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I'll have the bosses know that George helped me with my past or my latest studio upgrade. And I remember, george, that we were talking about me moving my Apollo solo into my studio which, by the way, it is moved in here and we were testing out this very long cable that went from my Mac studio out there into my studio and guess what it's working, and yay, technology. And so, george, you're instrumental in all of my studio upgrades and actually my original studio building when I moved to California back in oh my goodness, 2008. And so you've been through a lot of my studio builds. And let's talk a little bit about, oh gosh, what bosses need audio-wise right for being successful voice actors. They have so many technological needs.  05:14 - George Whittam (Guest) It is so many. You know. The thing is not everybody is like you, anne.  05:19 You love and embrace technology in a way that a lot of actors do not right and so on the cover of the laptop that you can't see because it's on the other side of the camera. I have a cover on my laptop and it's a picture of the left brain, right brain thing, right Like you know, the left being very technical, the right being creative, and I'm such a big proponent of finding the perfect middle balance. Maybe that's because I'm also a Libra, I don't know, but you know it's like I'm such a big proponent of finding the perfect middle balance. Maybe that's because I'm also a Libra, I don't know, but you know it's like I'm always trying to find that balance and I'm also trying to figure out who you are as my client. Are you more Ann Ganguza, or are you more Lori Allen, who's my quintessential super right brain, crazy actor talent, you know, and she knows that I'll say that and she'll laugh that doesn't love technology or doesn't care, right, I mean I get it.  06:09 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I mean we go into this industry. I mean some of us are just super, super creative and brilliant.  06:18 - George Whittam (Guest) If we had our choice, we would let someone else run all the technology and take care of it for us, which is what you do Absolutely. In a perfect world, we would all have our own little virtual assistant engineer people who just log into your machine and run everything for you. I do know a precious few actors who have actually availed themselves of such a thing, which is a pretty nice position to be in, right, and that would be a really cool scenario where you really don't need to think about it. But the fact of the matter is, the vast majority of the time, we have to think about and know what's going on with the technology and ensure that we're giving the client super clean, great quality audio quickly and on time, reliably, etc. Etc. And that's the goal.  07:01 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It is about good audio, but it's about a lot of other things beyond just good audio, you know, willing to really experiment and figure out solutions for your clients that are not like status quo. So if they have a budget, you can fit yourself within that budget and you make things work and you say, all right, so if you need this, we can maybe substitute this or we can work with this. And I'm talking bosses, my firsthand experience, not just on what microphone or give me a stack to put on my audio, but like home studio builds from the ground up, like what can I do to save money here? Or what can I do? I have this in my budget and you literally have created things from like the ground up, depending on your client's budget.  08:01 And I think that that's really awesome and it really goes to show like the versatility and the amount of skills that you have in, not just like one thing. I mean you have to be great at everything, because everybody has different technology, everybody has a different microphone, everyone has a different DAW, everyone has a different environment in their house that you have to kind of assess and then say, well, okay, here's a solution. And then I'm quite sure, myself being one of them going, no, I can't do that, so you'll come up with multiple solutions. Or if something doesn't work, you'll actually get it to work. You'll figure out what it is that's not working and then make it work.  08:38 - George Whittam (Guest) Yeah, it's so many different things because there's a lot of things that you can get away with or there's certain things that you can make work or get it to work. Here's my black bean burger and fries.  08:49 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) All right.  08:50 - George Whittam (Guest) There's a lot of things you can get away with, so I'll try to talk while you take a bite. I will eat when you're talking, okay, so there's a lot of things that you can make work. There's a lot of things that you can get away with, and that's where people start out right. That's where you begin, that's where you learn on your own.  09:06 That's where you get used equipment. You get hand-me-downs, you buy what you can find on Amazon, right, you get away with it. You make it work. But at a certain point your clientele requires this consistency, quality and this quick turnaround, and that stuff starts to be cumbersome, it becomes a bother because it's getting in your way, right. So that's a big part of it. And then I'm glad you said earlier budget.  09:33 You really need to know where you're at. I mean, this is why voice acting, especially now as an entrepreneurial pursuit, you really need to have a pretty good idea where you're at with your budget. When you come to me, be honest with yourself, be honest with me. I'm not here to spend unnecessary money. I'm not here to push you or upsell you. I'm going to tell you exactly where you're at, based on where you are with your budget, and make sure it fits, because that's my goal is to help you out and get you where you need to go at the budget you've had to spend.  10:07 And then if it's either really too low, I'll let you know if I think it's not going to work, or I will speak up if I think you're overspending, if I think you've got this budget and it's unnecessarily. You know it's like, oh well, you've got that much to spend, all right. Well, let's think about that. Should we really spend all of that? Or should we really be spending 20% of that on the mic and maybe 50% of that on building your website, getting your demo, that kind of stuff right? So I'll make sure your money is spent the right way, but be really honest with yourself about what your budget is. Know where you're ready to spend so we can get off on the right foot.  10:50 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So let's talk about the types of services that you do offer, because I'm happy to recommend you and your team to my students, and I think they might have preconceived notions as to oh well, george can just create a stack for me, or George can just tell me what microphone to buy, with lots of experience in multiple operating systems. So it's not just the mic or not just the studio, it can be your computer, it can be your software, it can be how to use Twisted Wave or how to use I just had a student the other day Studio One. I'm sure you have somebody on your team that can help with somebody with Studio One, and so can you create a filter for that? And so I'm constantly saying to myself I know lots of different audio engineers that specialize right, and I think that's great, but they're all independent, right? And so I can't be like, oh gosh, well, who knows Twisted Wave or who knows Studio One, or who knows?  11:48 And I'll think about it. What's great is you're like a one-stop shop, because now you've built yourself up a team. What's great is you're like a one-stop shop because now you've built yourself up a team, and I love this, because when I hired you in the beginning it was just you and you're I mean, you're busy back then and I love how you've like I mean, talk about being a boss, right. You've actually grown your little empire there and created a team of really amazing people that work for you, that have great skills and very specific skills. Speak to that a little bit.  12:14 - George Whittam (Guest) It's been a dream for a really long time to expand beyond myself. It started probably 12, 13 years ago in New York City. I knew I couldn't be in New York City that often and I had a few clients in New York and I thought, god, it'd be a no-brainer to have somebody else backing me up here in Manhattan. I actually had interviews in Borders bookstores with people that responded to ads, sat down, interviewed people and onboarded some folks and it just turned out that, one, maybe it was too soon to do it and two, it wasn't enough demand, because at that time it was a different time. But New York it was almost 100% studio town. Right, all the gigs were in studios because they're all over the place, they're all like walking or a subway ride away. So New York was a different environment.  13:05 So flash forward now quite a few years and I decided, with the new website that I had built by Skills Hub a couple of years ago, that it was finally time to properly expand the team. And now that I have a system built, an infrastructure, a booking system, the whole thing that allows me to essentially infinitely expand, I can build it as big as I want. I finally had the tools and everything in place to do that, and so we have that. Now you can go onto the website. Let's say you need help with Adobe Audition. You can see who is available that is actually an Adobe Audition expert and then you'll see their availability and you can book into the system right then and there and get help with someone that actually knows what they're doing. I realized after a while there's a certain point where I don't necessarily learn and retain new information the way I used to. I think that's just life, that's just age, right?  14:02 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, there's so much now.  14:04 - George Whittam (Guest) And there's so much more.  14:05 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, I know you're like right Anne.  14:07 - George Whittam (Guest) Right, but I get that I totally get that.  14:10 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) But think about this what I really love. What I really love is, again and again, this is the VO Boss podcast. So I really like to always relate things to how you can really be a boss, and I think all of us voice actors are bosses, obviously in our own right, and I think we really need to look for ways that we can grow and expand. Right and it's not an easy thing, right, it's a scary thing how can you scale? How can you provide more services for your clients so that your business can move forward successfully? And you are such a great example of I mean, not everybody that's a voice actor, is an audio engineer and they're going to scale their businesses in the way that you did, but it's all relative right, as voice actors, how can you scale your business? And so if you think outside of the box and you think about what can you do that's efficient as a voice actor, right, maybe you don't like technology, maybe you don't understand your computer, and I'm saying there's a certain element that we have to be technologically adept, but you can consider outsourcing these things as a voice actor so that you yourself can scale your business, and you've offered this great place for people to have all kinds of options, and so it's not just like a one-shot deal.  15:25 George, I need help. You have like 24-7 support, and I know for a fact that you've got emergency tech support, which I know, having worked in technology for how many years prior to voiceover. Technology is awesome until it doesn't work and then people panic, right, and that's when it's almost the most important to have that type of support. And so I'm sure lots of you voice actors have had something happen with your computer, like, and all of a sudden you're at a loss, or something happened in your studio, you're at a loss, and now all of a sudden, do you have a backup? Do you have a way that you can deliver your goods, deliver your product to your client?  16:01 And I think we all need to really start thinking about how can we outsource, how can we scale, and you've got a great place where, if voice actors don't necessarily love working with technology or learning technology, nor do they have the time right For me. I have no desire to be an audio engineer, I know what I know right, and if I have problems, let's say I'm setting up my new Mac studio. Well, I don't want to spend my entire weekend trying to learn anymore. I mean, I love learning, don't get me wrong but I don't want to right now. That's not an efficient use of my time.  16:33 So I'd much rather call you and say hey, george, I know you've set up Macs, I know you've done the Apollo on this iOS and I'm running into these problems. Or I know I'm having a problem like with Zoom and then sending my audio through Zoom. How can you help me? So it just makes sense for me, as a boss, right to outsource that. And so make sure, out there, guys, that you have a source, and I highly recommend George a hundred times If you haven't figured it out by now, I'm recommending him a hundred times over. Have a source, have a place that you can go when you run into trouble technology-wise or with your computer, or you want to just learn. You also have educational resources. You have tutorials. Yes, you have one-on-one help. You've just got all those options and I think it just really lends itself. Not only are you showing people how you're a boss and you're scaling your business right. They can scale their business with you.  17:26 - George Whittam (Guest) Yeah, being a boss is what I've really become now. I was always solopreneuring. In a way I still am, but now I do actually have people that look to me for getting paid, look for me for getting jobs, look for me for communication and support and actually training. The content we create for you guys we use internally to train our own team. I want more of our team to be comfortable with the Universal Audio Apollo. I've been encouraging them to watch the content we already have. Everybody who does work for me gets complete carte blanche access to my entire library of content right, so they all can learn.  18:03 I want to work with you, then I would love to have you. I mean, honestly, the point is that we've built the network, we've built the system, we have the infrastructure. Now it's just a matter of what's the next thing a voice actor needs, or what's the next thing podcasters need, what's the next thing people that do media appearances need, studios, people that need to do executives, c-suite folks what do they all need? And we're trying to eventually fill these different gaps right, and so my role now is more of a boss, more of a CEO, more of a director, even beyond. I spend way more hours of my day doing director, boss, ceo work than I do actual build time nowadays, and that's just how things have morphed. But it's great.  18:52 I love finding out that somebody got a service from one of our team and I didn't even know about it. That's the coolest thing ever. Oh, you helped that guy. Awesome, I had no idea. That's great. That means things are working. I don't have to micromanage everything, and so that's been a huge thrill for me, and it's just allowed us to be so much more helpful to more people.  19:11 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That's such a relief. I know my own business. When you said about micromanaging, and in reality, you know, we talk all the time about voice actors, we're solopreneurs, we wear all the hats, but now's the time to really start thinking about, okay, what is the most efficient use of my time? Right, and I want you bosses to really open your minds out to thinking that a lot of people they get stuck in this whole thought process that, oh, I can't afford to hire somebody. But in reality, if you sat down and you marked what is your price per hour? Right, how much money do you make when you're doing voiceover, versus how much money are you making when you're trying to, like, do the billing yourself? Right?  19:50 - George Whittam (Guest) I'm so glad you mentioned the hourly thing because a while ago somebody made that clear to me.  19:55 There's the hourly rate that you charge retail, right? I know what my hourly rate is per hour. If you want to consult with me directly, it's $360 an hour. Whoa huge number. Wow, that sounds really crazy. That's not what I make per hour. What I make per hour is actually what I made last year. Subtract my expenses, take my net revenue right and divide that by I don't remember the magic number is whatever. It is 52 weeks a year, you know. And then you basically whittle it down to what your actual hourly wage actually is and you start to realize like, oh my gosh, that's what my actual time is worth. And so you're going oh, now it is worth spending $25 an hour for a virtual assistant or somebody because I'm actually worth $50 an hour.  20:45 You know what I mean. So that's. It's really good to know that.  20:48 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Exactly, exactly.  20:50 And I think that we need to look outside of, like, the numbers that are just spent, because somebody might say, oh, I spent a thousand dollars on this microphone.  21:00 If you figure out what your value is per hour, right, and you're doing tasks that I always say, don't bring you joy a certain standard where, if I want to be able to direct somebody right that I'm going to outsource stuff to, I need to learn enough about it so that I can direct intelligently, right.  21:20 I know, you know, if somebody's saying to me well, it's taking me five hours to do this, when I know, in fact, maybe it shouldn't be taking five hours, because when you become a boss and you start employing people, you have to be concerned about, okay, what's the value of your employees and what are they bringing you, what are you paying them right and how efficient can they be? And I think also, george, it becomes where you now have to inspire the people that work for you to want to do their best for you, that they want to help move your company forward, and to do that, you've got to pay them a fair rate you definitely do and you've got to inspire them with things that they like to do right so that they join the team right.  22:01 And that's a whole other set of boss skills that's a whole other set of boss skills which I love.  22:06 - George Whittam (Guest) The amazing person I brought in to do our customer service and actually kind of act as a bit of an assistant to me as well. She also is a graphic designer. So when I realized that she was getting these skills, she was literally studying and I said you know what? Let's try some things, let's get you doing some more creative endeavors, and I'm paying her more for that. I said you know, track your time when you're doing graphic design, when you're creating our thumbnails and our promotional content for the socials and our webinars, and that's a different rate. You tell me what you think is a fair rate for your graphic design and then you have a rate for all the other general work and she breaks up her billing that way and so she's getting paid better for that work and that's going to be much more fulfilling for her because it's creative stuff and I think it's been working out really well. You know, my biggest fear is her going away. If she goes, away.  23:02 That's going to be a giant pain in my neck to find another person like her Finding good.  23:09 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It's going to be very difficult, so I want to keep her around.  23:12 - George Whittam (Guest) It's a delicate balance and I trust her. It sure is, you know, but it's a tricky one. The more you rely on outside help, the more you start realizing you need to make sure what will you do if that person needs to be replaced? It's another skill.  23:27 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And the people that work for you. They need to be better than you, and I think that's an ego thing for a lot of people. Do you know what I mean it's like? Oh no, I want to do it because I want to have control over it. I mean, I'm a control freak. I know this. I mean it took me a while, but once I started realizing that when you hire people who are better than you at the tasks like I'm not a graphic artist, so I want to hire somebody who's amazing at that and then pay them what they're worth, they aren't bitter, they don't feel like, oh, they're just working for pennies, and so they get excited because you want to work with them and collaborate. They get excited about helping you grow your business and you get excited about helping them grow their skills or grow their career as well under you. So I think it's something that bosses out there can really start to think about.  24:10 How would you expand right? And I think now too, with the technology and with AI and all this talk about the industry and how it's changing, I think technology it's always good to educate yourself on the technology evolve with the technology, those other things that we're talking about in addition to voiceover, like on-camera work, right? Voice actors maybe this is something that you know. You want to present yourself more professionally to your clients. What's involved in a good I don't know webcam or good lighting for your studio and that sort of thing. So that's the sort of thing that you can help them with as well in terms of expanding and broadening their horizons, even outside of voice acting.  24:51 So I love that you said that you were also delving into on-camera and technology for expanding businesses, because I think voice actors should also consider things like that. I mean, it's something we've talked about on the podcast as well, as we're moving forward along with this technology. What other services can you offer your clients? What other things can you do? Are you going to be making TikTok videos, right? How can you get your message out there? How can you market yourself right so that people know you exist, so they can hire you? And a part of that is getting out there, getting heard, getting seen, and you can help with that.  25:26 - George Whittam (Guest) And you might also be able to parlay that thing, because now you've become the spokesperson for that channel or that brand or that explainer and if you can now take that ability to create content into a visual medium and you might move beyond just doing voice, if you end up being comfortable on camera. You may not know if you're comfortable on camera until you do it. When I started my first podcast or really web channel, YouTube channel East West On your Body Shop, you can go back and watch episode one.  25:58 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh yeah, and I was like a deer in headlights Myself too.  26:01 - George Whittam (Guest) I got a lot more comfortable on camera. So you know, as I evolve and I start doing more and more interviews and interviewing others and I'm going wow, I'm really comfortable doing this. I've actually really enjoying this. How can I parlay this into a different? So now I'm thinking about speaking engagements and doing speaking roles.  26:21 I've gotten to teach in a couple of universities now. Wow, I love doing that, so maybe I need to parlay that into another thing. So I'm looking into speaking now. So it's just ever-evolving. If you get stuck in one lane, you can quickly start feeling discouraged. When that one lane that you chose starts grinding to a halt, you really need to be ready to try new stuff Starts getting traffic right and saturated.  26:47 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I mean now I'm just thinking of that, you know, because after the pandemic I mean I had so many people that I think got into voiceover because of the pandemic and now I thought we were saturated before. But there's a lot of people in there. I'm not saying there isn't enough work, voiceover work. However, there's an awful lot of people doing voiceover. So I think it's always healthy for us to consider how we can always grow and always evolve. So I'm going to ask you one last thing, george, before I have to run for the day what would be your best advice that you would give someone out there just getting into the industry?  27:21 - George Whittam (Guest) Definitely work with a coach that understands the spectrum of what you need to learn in a holistic way. That coach doesn't have to be an expert in every aspect, but the coach should be very aware of that. You need to learn these separate skills right. So someone like Anne, for example. She knows a lot about a lot of things, but she also knows when it's time to get another person involved a demo producer, an expert engineer.  27:47 Yeah, that's so, so helpful, right, and it's so easy. These days it's almost like getting support is just like dating. It's so easy to just keep swiping right or swiping left. Which one is it? Because you're like well, that was nice, let me try that guy, and I hear that guy's good. Let's try that guy.  28:03 Hook your wagon to somebody for a while and focus in on what they have to say and learn before you start constantly seeking fresh perspectives. It doesn't mean fresh perspectives are bad, but you really need to focus on one person's methodologies and get behind them and then, after you've done it for a while, consider well, is it the best way? Well, maybe I could learn a new skill, or maybe I have another way to learn this that could save time. I never am offended when a client says I worked with somebody else along the way, but I do get concerned when somebody's pretty new and they've already taken, let's say, consulting from three or four different techs and four or five different coaches, because they're going to have a lot of conflicting or somewhat differing opinions and you're going to get so off base.  28:51 So find somebody that is well vetted, somebody that has like we have our trusted partners page on our website. Everybody on there is somebody we have worked with and trust. And hook your wagon to somebody like Ann, so you have that one point of focus to help you navigate all of this, and then they can help shut you off into different directions for those specialty things. Otherwise it can feel hopelessly confusing and there's just too much conflicting information out there. So that's the best thing I can say Just find one single point of trust, follow that person, get the advice they can give you and find the expertise in different areas when you need it, and go to georgethetech early and often. Yes.  29:41 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yes, yes, I was just going to say how can people get in touch with you, george the tech?  29:44 - George Whittam (Guest) You have your landing page right, Absolutely Slash.  29:48 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yep, is it slash? Be a boss, my gosh.  29:50 - George Whittam (Guest) I don't have it memorized.  29:51 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I have it like in a link, I think so I'll check it, I'll look it up.  29:56 I'll put that in the show notes. Yeah, I'll put it in the show notes for services. I do have a nice little link that I can send to you. That will save you some money on your first services with George. So highly recommend. George. It's been so nice to have you and I appreciate you pulling off to the side of the road and being safe and talking with us today, and I'm going to give a great big shout out to IPDTL you too can connect and network like bosses. Find out more at IPDTLcom and George, it's been so wonderful talking with you. I feel like we should do a series. We should do a whole series with George the Tech.  30:31 - George Whittam (Guest) We'll do another one in a proper environment when I'm in my home studio, I promise. And, by the way, it's slash AG, so georgethetech slash AG for Ann Ganguza. That'll take you to all the information we have and our discount codes and come and visit us and learn from us. We have so much useful content that's affordable and accessible. So happy to be of service and thank you, ann. Thanks for being so cool, a friend and being always a pleasure to talk to yes. You're a blast to be around.  31:04 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I feel the exact same way about you. So thanks so much. All right, bosses, you have an amazing week and we'll see you next week. Take care, bye, bye.  31:13 - Intro (Announcement) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, Anne Ganguza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at vobosscom and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via IPDTL.   

In this episode of BOSS money talks, we guide you through the essential financial and managerial responsibilities of running a voiceover business. Discover how to budget for employees or contractors effectively, distinguish between different types of workers, and ensure fair compensation. Learn about the mental preparation required to step into an employer's shoes, the importance of training and feedback, and how to create a nurturing work environment that drives growth and success. Whether you're outsourcing tasks or managing an in-house team, this episode is packed with insights to help you effectively grow your business. We also highlight the critical role of trust and communication in any business operation. 00:03 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey bosses, ever feel overwhelmed by marketing? I get it. Let's tackle it together with a VO Boss Blast. We're all about making marketing as enjoyable as voice acting itself. Dive in with me and let's blast off together and let's turn those marketing challenges into victories. Sign up today at voboss com.  00:27 - Intro (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss a VO boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza.  00:46 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey everyone, welcome to the VO Boss Podcast and the Boss Money Talk Series. I'm your host, nne Ganguza, and I am so excited to bring back to the show money girl Danielle Famble to the show, hey.  00:58 - Danielle Famble (Guest) Danielle, hey, glad to be back.  01:00 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) How are you?  01:01 - Danielle Famble (Guest) I'm great. How are?  01:02 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) you. I'm good, you know, it is that time of the month, yeah. I'm talking about that financial time of the month.  01:09 - Danielle Famble (Guest) Oh yeah.  01:11 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I know what that sounded like, but anyways, it's that financial time of the month where I have to pay the people that work for me, and so I have to pay my employees. Do I call them employees, my contractors, my virtual assistants, whatever that I have, or whatever you may have bosses out there that help you to run your business, and I highly highly recommend them because they can really help you to grow, but it is something that, financially, I need to make sure that I account for it, and so I thought it'd be a great topic to talk about in our episode, because I know a lot of voice talents that are either they don't want to do marketing or they don't want to do social media, and so they're hiring assistants and they really need to know how to account for this financially in their businesses.  01:56 - Danielle Famble (Guest) Yeah, no, this is a really important topic because what you're talking about is being an employer, being responsible for the people who are helping you grow the business that you have created, and that's a really big responsibility. So not only is it about, like, accounting for it, but it's also making sure that you mentally are prepared for all the things that comes with being an employer. So, yes, being ready for the financial implications every single month is really important. But also, what are you wanting your employees to help you do? Contractors, whomever and there's a designation there. It depends on if they are specifically working for you and you've onboarded them from a tax perspective.  02:40 But if they are a freelancer, then a contractor, and there are different ways that you have to kind of deal with that.  02:45 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) You know what? I love that you brought up the fact that not only like financially right, we have to figure out, okay, first of all, we're going to be outsourcing things in our businesses and we will be paying as an employer or as a contract, whatever, we'll be paying somebody, and so, financially, we need to be responsible, but also as a boss right, as a VO boss, you need to be a boss, and so there's also not just financial implications, but also are you ready to be a boss? And really, what are the criteria, what are the qualifications for people that you bring on board that can help you to grow your business, to be successful financially and growth wise?  03:24 - Danielle Famble (Guest) Yeah, I think you also need to take a look inward.  03:26 Before you become a boss of someone else is really to figure out is there something for them to do consistently, what do you want this person to help you with, what are the tasks? And being able to train them on those tasks so that whenever they are doing whatever it is you have them doing in your business, they know how to do it. You know how to do it and you know if it's being done correctly or incorrectly and there's some feedback that needs to be given. So really knowing that, but also understanding that when you bring someone into your business, when you become a boss, you're responsible for, in a way, their livelihood. Personally, I take that responsibility seriously because I know before I became a boss, before I was running this business, I know what it feels like to be sort of at the whim of your employer and it can kind of be a bit of a vulnerable position. So you get to decide what kind of boss you want to be when you are the VO boss of your own business.  04:23 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Absolutely. I love that you brought that up. It is something that you're right. You need to look inward. You need to really take consideration.  04:30 If you've never been a boss of someone else, there are lots of different aspects to it and how to be a good boss, right, and so, financially, I'm going to say that number one, if you've worked in the corporate world at all and I say this so many times, like we just we want to be appreciated for what we do, right, we want to feel that maybe we can make contributions to the companies in which we work. And if we are not getting that happiness or that joy or that satisfaction, then typically we look elsewhere or we're like I got to get out of the corporate world, I just want to do voiceover. So the same thing when you're an employer, you're a VO boss and you have somebody that's working for you, you want to make sure that number one, you're paying them a fee. That is, I think, something that motivates them, inspires them, is fair, right Compensation, and you're not just trying to like get somebody because you don't have a ton of money and so I can't afford to pay you a whole lot. I really look at it differently. I'm like right, this is someone's livelihood. They're depending on the salary or whatever it is. You're paying them this little stipend for their livelihood and a lot of times they're freelancers themselves. If you happen to hire within the voiceover community, or if not, it is a portion of their income.  05:37 So you want to be a good boss number one, financially. You want to make sure that they're getting paid fairly, that they're getting paid, I would say, competitively for what they do, like if they're social media, if they're doing accounting, if they're doing whatever they're doing. You want to make sure that they're getting paid a fair fee, because you want to make sure they want to work for you and they want to be part of the team. That is the whole mental thing, right? You want them to work their best for you so that you can grow together, and so I think that's one thing to take into consideration. You're paying them fairly and then also, you're willing to manage them, because these are living human beings and there are emotions at play, right?  06:27 - Danielle Famble (Guest) There's all kinds of things that come into being a good boss, and I love that you talked about managing them, because really a huge step really comes from you being the person who is working in your business working your business to managing and overseeing other people who are taking on those tasks.  06:37 Again, this whole thing really is like a huge mental shift, because you need to now be able to articulate what it is that you are looking for, how to give feedback to that person and receive feedback, because once the person that you've hired becomes the one who's responsible for this task, they will likely become better at it than you were, because they're spending more time doing it than you did, and so maybe hearing and receiving feedback on a different way to go about this task, for example, might actually be better. But do you want to just stick with what you said and how you went about growing the business to bring them on in the first place, or do you want to take that feedback from them? It really is about like how much do you want to micromanage or not micromanage at all, and a huge part of it is also creating and crafting the vision for your business. Where are you going? Because you now the boss, you're the leader and you're sharing this vision and the people are helping. You know you're growing together, as you said. I love that.  07:34 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Exactly, and you want them to be motivated and inspired to help you achieve that vision, especially for those of you that work in the corporate world. Right, how much? If you sit back and think about it, how much did you really care if you were helping the company to grow right? Was it just a salary for you or were you invested in it? And I think that, for me personally, the happier I was at my job, the more involved I was in being proud of what I had to contribute and being proud in seeing the company do well, and to me, that was when I was happiest, and that's how I want my employees to be. I want them to be happy to watch us grow together and to be proud to be part of that vision, and a lot of that absolutely requires, number one, that I pay them fairly and give them bonuses for jobs well done, which I actually do to keep them motivated. And also very much what you said listen and be open for feedback, not just giving orders or saying here, do this, but listening to them if they're inspired and motivated to want to help grow the business.  08:41 And I'm so fortunate to have a wonderful team that works with me that I think I can proudly say that I have had two people that have worked for me for over five years, if not coming up on eight to 10 years of working with me. So I needed to every year make sure that I was keeping them inspired and motivated and happy and giving them compensation when they're due, Like I'll give them. Oh, you know what I really appreciate that job that you did. Here's a $100 Amazon gift certificate, and that also requires, when you're an employer, you have to be comfortable with paying people. I mean, I think there's a whole mental thing about that, right. It's like, oh my God, you have to be confident enough in your business so that you're not worried about money all the time. Have that confidence, right, I will have the money to pay. And you have to secure those systems in place, right, so that you can pay.  09:37 - Danielle Famble (Guest) Yeah, I mean it can be for some VO bosses out there like a one-time thing. I have this one task and that make it a contract thing and once it's done, it's done. But when we're talking about having assistance or help, that is helping on an ongoing basis. That means ongoing pay. And, to your point, when I was working in the corporate world, to be honest with you, I was happiest when I was making the type of money that would allow me to live the life that I wanted to live.  10:02 And I wasn't really thrilled about anything else other than how it affected my life. And money affects my life in so many different ways.  10:11 So it's really just making sure that you can keep people fair in their compensation, but also make sure that you're paying on time oh yeah, I like to get paid on time for the work that I've done. And making sure that you can pay on time and to your point, it's making sure that you have the resources and the money and the revenue coming into your business, that paying your assistance is not a monthly freak out moment.  10:33 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Exactly that's so, so important. Yeah, I like how you said that, yes, it was all about like money was something that made you comfortable, right, that you were being paid and being compensated on time, to the point where that's what made you want to work for that company, being paid well. And also, I will say back in my younger days, I was being paid well and I had the bonus that I was really proud of how I was contributing to the company and I really believed in the company. So that was like such an added bonus and actually I think that it really set a lot for like why I was in the career I was in for that length of time because I was happy, both compensation-wise and also like motivation-wise and purpose-wise. So I do feel that when you have assistants, if you want to, let's say, have them for any period of time, maybe you're just hiring them for one job and it's one and done. But if you do want to have them on an ongoing basis, there's also a whole relationship that becomes important for you to develop with them so that they look forward to doing whatever they're doing for you and it's not just a boring job that doesn't give them any joy. So whatever you can do to make that joyful for them and make them want to continue to work for you and want to continue to grow the business Financially wise.  11:55 It is a thing that I do every month. I have them send me invoices and I have different people that I pay at different times of the month, and so I want to make sure that I'm paying them in a way that I'm not like PayPal, where fees get taken out, so it's pretty much bank to bank sort of transaction wise. And when I do that, also it's important to have my accountant who knows what I'm paying, because technically speaking, right and we were just talking about this earlier If I pay over a certain amount to someone, I do need to declare that on my taxes. So having a good bookkeeper slash accountant that can understand, okay, this money is being used to pay my employees.  12:37 - Danielle Famble (Guest) Yeah, and we talked about this earlier how does your bookkeeper or accountant account for the services that's happening? So these are business expenses, these are business services that they are providing, and you are paying for the service of having someone you know run your business.  12:54 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) They're like a vendor. Can you really say they're an employee if they're an independent contractor? Not really right, because independent contractor is more like a vendor. For you, sure, and for, I think, most of us. For me, that's what it is. I don't actually employ someone where I'm paying health benefits or anything like that. So, I want to make that distinction where I'm not that type of corporation where I'm paying somebody full time and they're getting health benefits, I'm paying an independent contractor, but I still also have to account for that to the IRS.  13:23 - Danielle Famble (Guest) Yeah, and most VO bosses will probably find themselves in a similar position. I also have essentially a vendor, a contractor, who I'm not paying their health insurance and pension and things like that, as we did when we were working in the corporate world. So it's a different distinction. But it also requires the level of bookkeeping and making sure that you know how much you've paid them throughout the course of the year so that you can get them the correct tax form at the end of the year. And that means working with an accountant or working with a financial professional who can help you do that, unless you feel super confident in doing it yourself. But if you're running a business, in my opinion, and you are paying someone to help you run your business, another part of that is paying someone to help you keep track of the finances of your business.  14:10 It all works together.  14:11 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, absolutely. I do think that ongoing education for your contractors or employers is important. Oh yeah, in terms of, first of all, I make sure that I meet with my people, at least my assistants that do the majority of, let's say, my social media work or marketing work, that sort of thing. I make sure that we meet once a week actually, and that works for us in our business. But I don't necessarily meet with my audio editor at all. That's usually done through email and then after a month's worth of podcast audio editing he'll send me an invoice.  14:42 But anybody that's doing work for me that requires a little bit more than just audio editing. That might require helping me grow my business out there on social media, which I think is important that they know me and they know what I'm looking for and that I can specify that. And I don't like to micromanage at all because, frankly, I'm busy and so it takes some time to get the right employee right that you trust to handle things A control freak like me. In case anybody didn't realize that you know, A-type personality.  15:17 For me to give up power and just say go ahead, please do this for me and be okay with that was a big step for me as an employer, because I'm very much a control freak. I very much said, well, I can't hire somebody to do it because they're not going to do it as well as I do. Yeah, exactly, and you have to give up. That's a big mental aspect. You have to give that up because there are people who are better than you at certain things. And why not, right, hire someone like we talked about with a financial accountant or bookkeeper? Right, why not hire somebody that that's what they love to do and that's all they do? I want people that are better than me doing things for my business to grow my business. So you've got to give up that ego, the fact that nobody but you can do it. Right, you have to really place trust in your employees, because when you do that and you hire people that are better than you, that's what's going to grow your business.  16:09 - Danielle Famble (Guest) Oh, absolutely, and a huge part of that is communication. As you said, you meet with your team once a week. I also have a weekly In person.  16:18 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, not in person, I shouldn't say on Zoom.  16:19 - Danielle Famble (Guest) On Zoom.  16:20 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Like a Zoom. I don't just text back and forth. Although I do text a lot of times, but-.  16:24 - Danielle Famble (Guest) Right.  16:24 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) We meet on a Zoom meeting. On a Zoom meeting.  16:26 - Danielle Famble (Guest) I also with my assistant. We meet once a week on a Zoom call and then we use Slack to communicate. We communicate via Slack every single day and at the end of our meetings I always say, if you need anything, I'll be in Slack. I mean, it's the way to get to me as quickly as possible. I love Slack.  16:42 Yeah we talk every single day and the more communication actually the better, because then that person gets to know you and they can kind of hear your voice and your tone of voice and how you're wanting things done. They get to know your style, how you give feedback. That open communication actually really just helps person to person. You're dealing with, in some ways, hopefully a human being who can really start to craft what they do to who you are, because this is a brand about your personality, about your voice, about your style so it's huge.  17:13 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, I really do feel that I make it a point to express my appreciation frequently to my assistants, because they're like my right-hand people in reality and I'm always like, oh God, I appreciate you guys, thank you so much. I'm always making sure to do that because, again, I want them to feel appreciated. A thank you goes a long way to really having employees work their best for you, which is what you want. I mean, you're investing money in your employees as well as your business, right? So you want to make sure that your investment is going to pay off for you. And now here's the question what if you hire someone that is not necessarily working out well for you? What are your best tips for that? Because that's happened to me too, and that's not always easy as a boss to fire someone.  17:56 - Danielle Famble (Guest) It is not always easy. It is a very real possibility. Whenever you bring anyone into your business as a contractor, as a one-time gig work, whatever, whenever you bring someone in, it's very real possibility that it doesn't work. So I think, before you bring that person in, have a very clear understanding, write it down. I would even say with what it is that you are looking for, what are the checks and how do you know if this person is working or not working.  18:22 Have the metrics so that you can say hey, this is what I'm hoping to accomplish, this is what I need, and you know if that person has it or not.  18:31 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, and you bring up a really good point, because when you say, write it down, so everybody that works for me has to sign an.  18:40 NDA right Number one and they have a contract Like I have a statement of work, here's what I expect, here's what you'll be paid, here are like the terms, and you can actually create that NDA or that contract fairly simply.  18:54 I have a lawyer that I hire all the time, but there are templates out all over the place, but that kind of keeps me I feel legally secure, so that, let's say, I'm discussing something about growing my business, that I don't want them to go out and then implement, which is always like an issue when you hire people within the same industry, because if they work for you and then you discuss ideas like here's how I want to grow my business, what's to stop them from necessarily taking those ideas and implementing for their own business? And sometimes I'm not saying that I'm completely possessive, but there were cases. A long time ago, I hired somebody to work on development of this podcast and there were a lot of ideas that were flying around about how to grow which then, after the person did not work out for me, ended up somehow being implemented by them. And so that's just one of those things. I think. To safeguard your own business and your personal brand, you need to have a contract in place.  19:50 - Danielle Famble (Guest) Absolutely. I think having a contract in place again, this is, you're running a business and so doing the things that businesses do to keep themselves safe. Contracts are a huge part of it. Ndas are a huge part of it. Sometimes I have to sign an NDA in order to audition.  20:05 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, yeah exactly.  20:06 - Danielle Famble (Guest) There needs to be that sort of level of secrecy and security. So that's incredibly important and making sure that the person understands why and understands what they're assigning is incredibly important as well. So there are so many layers to it, not just oh, I need help with my marketing, let me just bring somebody in. It goes deeper than that and to your point of if it doesn't work out, have the off-ramp. How do you offload this person from your business? How do you off-board them? And understanding, like, what does that look like? And it needs to take time.  20:39 But before you get to that point, I would ask the VO boss themselves if it didn't work out, why? If it's a personality thing, completely understand that happens too, because personality traits if you're working with someone, you need to be able to work with that person. But if it didn't work out because they weren't doing things correctly, did you train them correctly? Really understanding, like your role in it? Because, as the boss, it is your responsibility to make sure that you are running the business, your business the way that you want it to be run, and it needs to be run If the people that you've brought into your business are not living up to your expectations. Did you set the right expectations, did you communicate those expectations to them, did you provide feedback on those expectations and then did you give consequences for what is going to happen if those expectations are not met?  21:28 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, absolutely. I mean that is employer 101 right there. Absolutely, and that's covering yourself, and you want to make sure that you've covered yourself because your assistants have potential access to your life. I mean a lot of times like they'll have passwords to social media accounts. My accountant has the password to my QuickBooks. I mean my gosh.  21:48 Essentially, that could be very damaging if that person was not ethical right, and so there's a lot at stake for you. Passwords, personal accounts, branding, I mean just so many things that you're going to entrust them with. And I realize that, as an employer, again, as I said, if you're that type of person that says I'm the only one that can do it correctly or I'm worried about that, that is a mental thing that you will have to step back and take a look at. If you want to hire somebody and make sure that, if that is the case now, you want to make sure that you're protected, and so that requires NDAs, that requires contracts, and again, mine were not difficult. A consult with a lawyer that had me fine tune. A template for a contract for working for me worked, and all I have to do when I hire somebody else is just change the amount they're getting paid and change the name and change the address and then have them sign it before you start giving them access to your life and your business, because that is sacred to you.  22:44 - Danielle Famble (Guest) Yeah, and it's a vulnerable thing, like you are putting yourself knowingly in a vulnerable position where other people know intimate details about your life and your business.  22:56 - Intro (Announcement) However, large or small you?  22:58 - Danielle Famble (Guest) want to give out that information and if you are not prepared for that mentally going into it, it's a really hard transition to make when that person is actually there. I would say really ask yourself are you mentally prepared to be a boss of other people? Are you financially prepared to pay them and the finances not be a thing that other people? Are you financially prepared to pay them and the finances not be a thing that stresses you out, Because this entire process is quite a lot and are you ready to manage? Are you ready to share your vision and make sure that your vision is being executed by other people, that's not just you. All good stuff.  23:34 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And in the end, guys, I promise you, it may be scary, it's worth it but.  23:38 I'll tell you what it's worth it, and it's the only way, I believe, that I could have grown my business to the point that it has grown and to allow me the freedom. I'm a little bit of a serial entrepreneur and I think, danielle, you probably are too, and so it's been the only way that I've been able to really do the things that I want to do in my businesses, to progress and move forward, and it's taught me a lot. Being a VO boss number one just in my voiceover career, but also being an actual boss, has taught me so much about myself and helped me to grow personally as well as professionally. So I think it's a win-win. It's a challenge and it's scary, but it's so worth it, oh man.  24:19 - Danielle Famble (Guest) I couldn't agree more. You learn so much about yourself when you are now responsible for other people. I'm not a parent, but I can imagine there's a very humbling sense when you become a parent, that you are now responsible for this other person and you have to think about yourself and them in a different way. Similarly with business, you learn so much about yourself, your capacity to lead, your desire to lead, your generosity, all of those things when you have someone else that you are bringing into this thing that you created your business. It is a journey. You'll run into adversity, you will have to figure it out, and then you learn about yourself how you're able to do that. And once you learn those things about yourself, the next hurdle may be just around the corner, but you know that you've been able to do it in the past. So that resilience, really that muscle builds up. It's totally worth it. I would not be able to have the business that I have if I was responsible for doing everything. You can only do so much with the amount of time.  25:21 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) You're only one person. You have only so many hours exactly in the day. So, oh, I love this conversation. Thank you so much, Danielle.  25:28 - Danielle Famble (Guest) Yeah, this is great, I love it.  25:29 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) For having this conversation with me. Bosses, I'm going to give a big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl. You, too can be a boss. Find out more at IPDTLcom. You guys have an amazing week and we'll see you next week. Bye.  25:44 - Intro (Announcement) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, Anne Ganguza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at vobosscom and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via IPDTL.