Podcasts about voice123

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.

En este episodio converso con Alexander Torrenegra, uno de los emprendedores más influyentes de Latinoamérica y fundador de compañías como Torre, Voice123 y Bunny Studio.Alex no solo construyó empresas que llegaron a millones de usuarios en todo el mundo. También desarrolló su propio estilo de operar, de pensar en productos y de tomar decisiones.Un episodio brutal para cualquier persona que quiera construir algo ambicioso.—Temas clave del episodio:• Emprender por necesidad vs. emprender por pasión• Qué tienen en común todas las empresas de Torrenegra• Por qué AI no es comparable con Internet• Modelos de negocio• Qué limita a los emprendedores de Latinoamérica• Los errores más comunes al emprender• Cómo opera internamente una empresa liderada por Alex• Y mucho más...—Dónde encontrar a Alexander:• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alextorrenegra/Dónde encontrar a Dylan:• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylanrosemberg• Sitio web: https://www.growthrockstar.com/• Blog: https://blog.growthrockstar.com/—En este episodio cubrimos:00:00 - Intro01:54 - Por qué emprende Alex Torrenegra07:35 - Obsesión con los marketplaces11:37 - Era de Internet, Mobile e IA18:23 - Torre: el futuro del recruiting23:44 - El modelo de negocio de Torre27:18 - Emprender en Latinoamérica35:25 - Pensar en mercados globales36:46 - Los errores más comunes de los emprendedores44:12 - Cómo opera Torrenegra sus empresas48:55 - Cierre—Dylan puede ser inversor de las empresas mencionadas en los episodios.

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.   

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.   

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.   

This episode is all about maximizing your business potential, whether you're just starting out or already established in the market.  Learn how to leverage casting platforms for direct bookings and master direct marketing strategies. This episode is packed with actionable insights to increase your return on investment. Implementing mid-year performance reviews can be a game-changer for your business, using powerful tools like cash flow spreadsheets and client churn reports to meticulously track your financials and client engagement. Discover the added value of integrating financial data to set and achieve your financial goals, ensuring sustained success. Explore how to turn one-off projects into recurring gigs and the crucial role of tracking booking sources. Learn how to use social media, direct emails, and client referrals to build a solid client base. 00:02 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey bosses, who says marketing can't be as creative as voice acting? With a VO Boss Blast, we're proving it can be. Let us create a marketing campaign that helps get you hired. Our master list of over 90,000 creative contacts can get your message in front of your potential buyers. Find out more at vobosscom. That's the VO Boss Blast at voboss.com. That's the Voboss Blast at Voboss.com.  00:29 - Intro (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss, a Voboss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza.  00:48 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey everyone, Welcome to the VO Boss Podcast and the Real Boss Series. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and I'm here with the illustrious Mr Tom Dheere.  00:58 - Tom Dheere (Host) Hello, hello, oh, I'm illustrious now this is very exciting.  01:01 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) You are illustrious, you are illustrious. Oh my gosh Tom, how's your week been?  01:06 - Tom Dheere (Host) My week's been. It's been pretty good. It's been pretty busy. It's one of those weird times of year this is early summer when we're recording this and people are at schools getting out and people are starting to figure out. You know they get their lighting up their vacations and all that stuff.  01:25 So you know, I'm using this time to capitalize on how I'm going to figure out what I'm going to be doing with the second half of my year, because I always, at the end of the halfway point of the year, I take a look at my voiceover business, see how it's doing, what's working and what isn't, and if I need to make any adjustments for the second half of the year.  01:39 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I think that's an excellent idea because, as a matter of fact, I was just this week. I got an email from my email service provider who notified me that they were going to increase the cost of my yearly fee almost like one and a half times as much, and so I was like, oh, I've got to really sit back and take a look at my return on investment, and so I think that is something that bosses need to do absolutely to make sure that their businesses are on track and make sure that their growth is happening. And if it doesn't appear that it is happening, maybe how do you evaluate growth that can happen in the future?  02:17 - Tom Dheere (Host) So, yeah, Okay, so, oh, there's so much to talk about with this one. But, bosses, if there's one thing I want you to walk away with, is that the industry changes constantly. What used to work may not work as well as it used to, or it may not work at all anymore. In my 25 years of being in the voiceover industry, effectiveness is really the key to be a voice actor, and learning what it takes to become effective early in your journey as opposed to what's effective later on in your voiceover journey.  02:53 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Like mailing CDs to potential clients. I just had to say that which I did, which I did.  02:58 - Tom Dheere (Host) So did I. Let me tell you, my post office hated me so much because I'd come in with a lawn bag of padded mailers and they'd be like oh.  03:06 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And I used to have to walk to my voiceover studio for 10 miles in the snow.  03:11 - Tom Dheere (Host) Sorry, Uphill both ways.  03:13 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Uphill Anyways. So yeah, how do we determine how effective our businesses are and how do we strategize moving forward?  03:21 - Tom Dheere (Host) Right. The ultimate determiner is like how much money am I making? And it's like, okay, did I make more money than I did last year or week or quarter? So that's obviously an indicator. But that's a very broad brushstroke because, like I've noticed over the years, because I track my voiceover revenue meticulously, gig to gig, Doesn't surprise me, Tom. I know right. Not surprising that the VO strategist meticulously tracks his voiceover revenue.  03:43 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) There you go. Well, me too, but I have my accountant that has probably more of a hand in it than me, and then she'll report to me if I need to know things.  03:49 - Tom Dheere (Host) Right. So one thing I do like to do what's called a client churn report. So basically I look at the end of every quarter, I look at how many gigs did I have, how much money did I make, how many of them were from new clients, how many of them were from return clients, and then I look at the same quarter from the previous year to see if the amount of money new clients and old clients went up, went down or stayed the same.  04:18 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Now let me ask you what are you recording that data into? Do you have?  04:23 - Tom Dheere (Host) a CRM Okay, okay, I was going to say do you have a?  04:24 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) CRM. Do you have a CRM? Okay, okay, I was going to say do you have a CRM or do you have a spreadsheet?  04:27 - Tom Dheere (Host) That I do in a spreadsheet because I have a cash flow spreadsheet which tracks every penny that goes into my voiceover business and every penny, that goes out of my voiceover business. It's a free download at voestrategistcom. You can just type in free in the search bar and you can find it and download it. It and you can find it and download it. It also helps you run reports. It's got little auto sums and I've got little formulas in there so it can help track your stuff.  04:47 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That's awesome, tom, and can that be integrated? Like would I be able to export reports from my QuickBooks and be able to import, do you think into that's a?  04:55 - Tom Dheere (Host) great question. It may require some reformatting.  04:59 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Finagling.  05:00 - Tom Dheere (Host) And a little finagling, but actually I'm so glad this came up. When it comes to analyzing your voiceover business, that cash flow spreadsheet does so many things. It tracks all the money that I make. I also list all of my revenue and expense goals for the month, the quarter and the year. But here's the other fun thing that it does I have little columns where I have little codes. So, for example, there are three what I call portals in the voiceover industry. I'm sure I've talked about this before Representation, online casting sites and self-marketing which includes inbound and outbound marketing.  05:34 So every time I book a voiceover gig, in that column I write down whether it was RE, which it was a gig I booked through my representation, if it's OC, through an online casting site, either free or pay-to-play, like Voice123. And then the last one is S-M, or self-marketing, which means did it happen as a result of a cold call or a cold email, or indirect? Is it a result of someone finding me on Google?  05:59 Or was I referred to that client by a fellow voice actor or a fellow client, because I have clients who refer me to clients all the time and so whenever I type that in, there's a little section to the side of the spreadsheet that has, by revenue and by percentage, how much money I'm making based on the portal that I'm doing. It also does it for genre. I have a column for genres e-learning, commercial, industrial.  06:22 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh, that's awesome. I love this. And you say that this is a free download.  06:25 - Tom Dheere (Host) It's a free download, that's awesome, that's a great tracker. Yeah, because it lets me know just how I'm doing with the genre of voiceover, because you can break it down by genre and you can also break it down by portal. But I'm not getting all my e-learning through one portal and I'm not getting all my explainers through one portal.  06:44 Because sometimes I'll get an explainer through one of my reps. It's rare but it happens. But I'll get a lot of e-learning through online casting sites and self-marketing, so to be able to really look and see how my voiceover business is doing and be able to go to last year's spreadsheet and see how it's doing I love that, tom.  07:02 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I love that you have a free resource. I have to. I'm sorry I didn't have to exclaim that and interrupt you and say that, because I will tell you that I created a spreadsheet myself when I started to track auditions, to track jobs that I booked. It is a thing you do have to remember to put the information in, but it was very, very valuable to find out and I'll tell you, I love a person who can really work a spreadsheet, because you've got it all figured out already, yeah, and you've got the columns there. I mean, bosses, take advantage of this. We're going to put a link in the show notes. Okay, continue, tom. I'm sorry.  07:32 - Tom Dheere (Host) I got so excited.  07:32 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I had to interrupt you.  07:34 - Tom Dheere (Host) Well, yeah, I've been building this spreadsheet for 20 years.  07:37 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yes, I think 2004,.  07:38 - Tom Dheere (Host) 2005 is when I first built this spreadsheet first built this spreadsheet, so I'm looking at it right now.  07:43 So yeah, genre so like. For example, so far this year, 23.8% of my voiceover revenue has come from e-learning. But also I do it as the VO strategist. So it also tells me how many 15 minute consults I've booked, how many one-on-one coaching sessions I've done, how many conference appearances, how many mentorship sessions, how many people bought my videos at the VO strategist. So I use it for both as a voice actor and both as the VO Strategist, because this is tracking all the money.  08:11 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, good, I'm going to download it to track and ganguza business. However, I will say that there's reports that are generated off of QuickBooks or whatever your accounting software is, but I like that you have the added columns. Like I can't add a column in QuickBooks that says where did you book the job?  08:25 - Tom Dheere (Host) Well, I probably could, but I haven't done that that's why I stopped using all the accounting software in most of the CRMs, because it wasn't giving me the data that I need. Also this is a running total that I can see on my screen all at the same time. Here's another one no-transcript.  08:54 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Everybody talks about that.  08:56 - Tom Dheere (Host) I believe it's one of the most useless data points there is, and here's the reason, and you know this.  09:02 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I'm going to agree with you, but I want to hear your reason.  09:05 - Tom Dheere (Host) The reason why is because the casting process is so random and arbitrary.  09:11 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yes.  09:11 - Tom Dheere (Host) Because the best voice actor does not always get the gig, get the gig.  09:15 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yes.  09:15 - Tom Dheere (Host) And the best audition doesn't always get the gig. Like there's a great documentary called that Guy who was in that thing? And it's about 12 character actors in Hollywood and you know all their faces but you don't know any of their names and they talk about what it's like being a character actor on TV and film in Hollywood and one of them talks about the absurdity of the casting process and he says something like one week I'll get a gig because I remind the casting director of her brother-in-law.  09:41 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah.  09:42 - Tom Dheere (Host) And then two weeks later, I won't get the gig because I remind the casting director of her brother-in-law.  09:47 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, absolutely so.  09:48 - Tom Dheere (Host) we have no earthly idea what the thought process is behind a voice seeker. There's another story of how a woman cast a male voice actor and she was asked why did you cast that person? And she said he sounds like my father.  10:04 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Mm-hmm.  10:06 - Tom Dheere (Host) And then, upon further conversation, she said I trust my father.  10:10 So, that means A I trust my father. B I want a trusting sound, for this voiceover equals C. I want someone to do this voiceover who sounds like my father Absolutely. But what if her father sounds like Gilbert Gottfried or Bobcat Goldthwait and they probably have kids? I know Gilbert Gottfried had kids, I don't know about Bobcat but and I'm sure if their children hear their voice it's a trusting I'm going to be okay, I'm safe. But that doesn't work for the rest of the universe.  10:40 Absolutely so, that's why that's kind of an absurd thing to analyze.  10:44 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And I just want to tailgate off of that really quickly. I don't want to get off the track of what's my ROI. However, that's why you don't self-sabotage yourself if you thought, well, I did a great audition and I didn't book the gig, or I'm not good enough, don't let that feed into. I mean, of course, you want to be a great performer and a great actor. That always gives you, I think, the most competitive advantage. However, the casting process is wild and crazy, and anybody that's taken an audition demolition class with Law and myself we've done, I believe, six of them so far. By the way, you can check them out on the VO Boss YouTube channel if you want to watch one.  11:20 Sometimes there is no rhyme or reason as to why you receive a job, and so I agree with you there that tracking that is not always going to give you the most useful information. However, I know people will be like, well, my booking ratio on Voice123 or my booking ratio on Voicescom. Again, in reality, all you can do, I think, is validate that you have ample opportunities, right, right, right. And within those opportunities, it would be nice if you, on average, booked a certain percentage, but again, I wouldn't let that dictate whether that is a good return on investment, would you agree?  11:53 - Tom Dheere (Host) It doesn't necessarily dictate your worth as a voice actor.  11:57 What it can dictate for the pay-to-play sites in particular, anne, is how effectively are you feeding the algorithms to give you the casting opportunities that you want, that you're right for, and are you effectively auditioning for the casting notices that those algorithms served up? So, with that in mind, I do track my booking ratio on Voice123. I have the $2,200 tier, so I have the second highest tier. So obviously I want to make sure there's a return on my investment. However, the number is skewed because I I'll give you a perfect example Two years ago on Voice123, I booked a gig.  12:34 I did an audition. It was for a grocery store chain doing an internal video about produce. I think it was about bananas. You know, like, if you work in their produce department, here's how to make sure the bananas, how not to bruise them, how to check them for quality, how to display them properly, how to rotate out bananas that are going to expire or whatever. And it was one gig $550 for like a three-minute in-house thing, directed session took all of 15 minutes. It's like okay, perfect. A month later they needed one on shrimp. A month later they needed one on avocados.  13:07 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I did not audition for those. You didn't have to audition, but you got the job. Yes, right, the recurring client.  13:11 - Tom Dheere (Host) But if I wasn't on Voice123, I would not have gotten that casting opportunity.  13:16 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) The majority of my work, too, is a lot of referral clients. Referrals and or clients that I got because I'm on pay-to-plays but not on a certain subscription level just because of my schedule, and so therefore I can't really count that. But I still get, believe it or not, if my profile is up there, every once in a while I will get a direct job, and then that client will come back.  13:35 - Tom Dheere (Host) Right, right. So, with that in mind, on the spreadsheet, the cash flow spreadsheet, I do have a new column where I track audition bookings versus direct bookings.  13:45 Oh, okay, so audition bookings versus direct bookings. Oh okay. So how much did I get? Was this an audition and pray gig or was this a legacy client gig? So, just as an example as of this conversation, my direct booking percentage is 79% and my audition booking is 21%, which means roughly 80-20. Four out of every five bookings that I get, I didn't have to audition for them. Now, that is something that a lot of voice actors.  14:10 Yeah, that tells me something about my business model and it tells me about my effectiveness in marketing, about my effectiveness in auditioning and my effectiveness in client retention, because it's one thing to book a client once, it's another thing to book a client twice, and it's another thing to book a client a few times a year for years and I have a couple clients.  14:28 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Right, I have some clients I've worked with for decades, myself too, and I don't audition for them.  14:33 - Tom Dheere (Host) Some of them I never auditioned for in the first place, I just sent them the demo and then they're like, okay, great, and they here's your first gig work, which is right, that's the best kind of client, isn't it? That's a regular client, the one that you don't have to market to or audition for. However, audition and pray, I think, should be part of a balanced breakfast of all voice actors, whether it's through their agents, or through a casting site, or whether it's through their marketing strategy.  14:58 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Agreed Because auditioning and pray I mean. First of all, it gets you exposed to potential new clients in a multitude of ways. Because, first of all, if the agent hears you continually submitting good auditions, they might refer you to someone or they might shortlist you. Even if the client doesn't pick you, or if the client hears the audition and they may not cast you this time, they may save you for a future casting or come back to you for a different casting.  15:26 - Tom Dheere (Host) Here's another example. So for you VO bosses who have or are considering working with Anne, you decide you want to work with Anne. You want to get e-learning coaching. You may have been in the business for a little while. You may have gotten a smattering of e-learning gigs here and there, but now you want to really hunker down, get some quality training, get a quality demo, come up with a quality marketing strategy. So you work with Ann, you get your e-learning coaching, you produce a spectacular e-learning demo and then, of course, then we say Ann, what do I do now? And then she talks to you about marketing strategies. So you start to market that demo. The other thing you do is you put that demo on your website. So you come up with a marketing campaign. I'm going to put this demo on my website. I'm going to build a list of potential e-learning clients and if you have already done some e-learning work, it's supplemented by the work you've already gotten from existing e-learning clients and then you put it out there. Direct email.  16:25 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Direct email through a boss blast. Put it out there.  16:27 - Tom Dheere (Host) Direct email, direct email through a boss blast or direct email for cold calling, exactly, posting it on social media, talking to people on LinkedIn, so on and so forth. That's where this spreadsheet and your analytics can be an extremely powerful tool, because you can decide all right, this e-learning marketing campaign is going to take one month, so the first of the month the page the e-learning landing page goes live, and then you start through the VO Boss Blast. You start scheduling and sending emails to potential current and past e-learning clients. You post content on social media, you do things on LinkedIn. Maybe you record a video on TikTok or Instagram or YouTube talking about the demo or your experience with Ann or any part of your journey which is a part of helping people see your humanity.  17:12 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And, by the way, with any good coach right, I will if you provide a testimonial page. I also put demos on my YouTube channel, so there's the marketing that happens through that as well. So you're getting potential opportunities as well as my own referrals to you.  17:27 - Tom Dheere (Host) Right, so you do all of that stuff and then at the end of the month, now you can figure out.  17:32 These are the analytics, so you can obviously go to your website, regardless of where the website was built. You should have some form of dashboard where you can look at how many times did people visit your e-learning landing page, how many times did they listen to your e-learning demo, how many times did they download? Because remember, that's the most important part of a campaign like this is to get downloads. You want people to download your e-learning demo and have it on file for when a project comes up that you would be right for. They have that demo on hand because they're not going to remember you and they're not going to remember your website. It may not be bookmarked. That's why most voice seekers and Anne may agree that most of them have a folder, a file of digital shoebox of some sort that has a pile of demos. Absolutely, and when a project comes along, because the odds of you emailing somebody your demo and the odds that they have a project that you're perfect for.  18:23 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) At that time Extremely slim. It's all about timing.  18:26 - Tom Dheere (Host) Right, it's all about timing.  18:27 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, I just did a teachable moment all about timing. Like you just don't know when people are going to need or require your service and you can't expect that just because you got the demo yesterday that there are all these people that need something today.  18:40 - Tom Dheere (Host) Right. So you have to manage your expectations by the analytics. So should it be e-learning bookings in that one month? I don't think that would be fair to you because it's extremely unlikely. What you can look at is how many times did they go to your website, how many times did they listen to that demo? How many times did they download that demo? How many emails were opened and clicked on?  18:59 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) You brought up a really good point. Is that? Okay? So a boss blast. You can go to the VO boss page to find out more about the Boss Blast. But the Boss Blast is simply allowing to cast the net out into a potential audience that could have a need, and you don't know exactly at what time that need is. So there's that direct marketing from the Boss Blast. But also I love the point that you brought up about the website.  19:23 Bosses, you have a website, it is a tool, it is your storefront. It is your responsibility to have enough knowledge about that tool so that you can go find out, like did somebody download my demo? How many times has the page been visited? Right? Because, just as there is with the Boss Blast, we have statistics. I can work with you, like when we send out a campaign, we have all the stats, we know who it was sent to, we know who opened it and we know who clicked. Now, once they get to your website right, they can click either the demo that's there or they can click on your website, and so once they do that, that's it. I just know that they've gone to your website.  20:00 Now, on your website, you need to be responsible for how many times has that been downloaded, how many times has that page been visited? And that can really help to see who's listening to your demo and what your booking ratio could be after that. And so those stats are important to know. So if you do not know how to access the back end of your website and we will have a podcast probably very shortly on just websites you must make it a point to educate yourself, and if you've had a website designer that did that for you, then you must either ask them how do you find out these stats right? Can they set up Google to actually allow you to see those stats, so when people visit your website, that you can find those stats and just know that, even if you may not be technically minded, you should really educate yourself on how to find that information out. That's important stuff to know. Sorry, I'm on my soapbox there, but gosh, it's so important.  20:52 - Tom Dheere (Host) No, that's amazing advice, Anne. Now here's the next part about this is here's some real life, practical real life experience that I have had this year is that one of the genres that I've been focusing on in 2024 is political. Over $10 billion is being spent on political marketing and advertising this year, so I updated my political demo. I've already had a list of political contacts because I've been marketing myself as a political voice actor since 2022.  21:21 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Are you direct marketing yourself, or are you on a roster as well?  21:24 - Tom Dheere (Host) Both, I'm on rosters, but I'm also direct marketing. I did a direct marketing, I did a direct marketing email blast, updated my political landing page and I sent out, I'd say over the past month and a half, roughly 150 emails to production companies that are dedicated to and specialize in creating political content radio, tv, digital streaming that require a voice actor. And do you want to guess how many replies I got to this?  21:52 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) email of 150?. Oh, I can imagine.  21:54 - Tom Dheere (Host) I can imagine the answer is zero, zero Now. At first I freaked out.  22:00 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) But did you get hired?  22:01 - Tom Dheere (Host) No.  22:02 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Ah, okay, not yet.  22:03 - Tom Dheere (Host) Okay. So the question is what's going on? So, after some reflection and talking to other political voice actor friends, is they are so busy. These political production companies are so busy they do not have the time to open, much less read, any of my emails, much less click on the link download the demo or reply.  22:26 They don't have the time because everything has gone bananas this year, so because the debates have started the conventions are starting soon and then everybody's going to go crazy, from the presidential election all the way down to dog catcher and everything in between. However, I do have some existing clients who just send me work. They're like hey, here's another one, Can you do it today? Hey, I've got these five spots. I need them by first thing in the morning.  22:52 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Is that going to stop you from sending a direct email in the?  22:55 - Tom Dheere (Host) future? No, not at all.  22:56 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I wanted you to make that point.  22:57 - Tom Dheere (Host) Because this particular genre at this particular time of year. I have now, through experience, learned to manage my expectations about what's going to happen Because, like nowadays, if you're doing a direct marketing email, if you're getting one, to 2% of people replying to you, you're doing good, that's awesome.  23:16 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, that's what I tell my boss blast people yes, if you're getting one to 2% click or open you used to look for. If you get a 10% open rate and then 1% click rate.  23:26 - Tom Dheere (Host) Those days are over.  23:32 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah Well, 1% is good. So, yeah, it's absolutely good. But there's still again if you know your audience and you know what to write to them, it's still effective. I would still say there are still people that open their emails and there's always that chance.  23:39 - Tom Dheere (Host) Right, so the point is just because they didn't reply to your email. I guarantee there's a folder in their Gmail or their inbox where they just took that email and just dragged it into that folder.  23:50 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Exactly, which is why when I go through stats with people because we will go through who opened it and who clicked on it but then after that you don't know what they're going to do with it and, honestly, unless you're hacking into their systems, you really don't know if they've put it into a folder or not. I love the fact that you also are mentioning that you have to manage your expectations. Again, it's about timing and managing expectations as well, but that initial data can really help you to find out is it worth your investment?  24:18 - Tom Dheere (Host) Right. So the aforementioned e-learning direct marketing campaign that you do from the Boss Blast yeah, looking at how many people opened it, how many people clicked on the demo, how many people downloaded the demo, which, if you're using a good CRM like there's a bunch of great CRMs out there which we could talk about in another conversation it can give you a good idea of what's going on.  24:37 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) They don't have to download the demo either. They could just play it. Do you know what I mean? That's the other thing too. And they keep the email without downloading the demo.  24:44 - Tom Dheere (Host) So again, it's like everybody has different habits. Some people will save the email, not open it. Some people will save the email, open it. Some people save the email, open it. Click on the demo, listen to it, but not download it.  24:55 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Some people save the email and then forget about it right so that you need to consistently right every once in a while.  25:00 - Tom Dheere (Host) Right, do a follow-up every few months. Do a follow-up in that top-of-mind email, right, Right. So the lesson here, bosses, is that analytics don't always tell the story. You can't live or die by your analytics, but at the end of a year I can look and go, okay. Here's a trend Right. Here's an example 2023, looking at the three portals. So last year, 12% of my voiceover revenue came from my representation, 49% came from online casting sites, 23% came through direct marketing strategies, 16% came through indirect marketing strategies.  25:38 Now, if you look at five years ago 2019, I had my representation percentage was one or 2%.  25:46 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Right, and I would say your pay to play your roster was high pay-to-play was non-existent because I wasn't a paid member of oh, that's right. At that time I took a long break because in the beginning I had a high percentage rate right, but my direct and indirect marketing strategy was like 81, but I also made 20% less in 2019 than I do in 2024.  26:10 - Tom Dheere (Host) So how did me going from focusing on direct and direct marketing to focusing on online casting sites, increase my representative percentage? What happened? What are the analytics? This is my theory. In 2019, I auditioned 450 times. The whole year 2023, I auditioned 1,854 times. I got better at auditioning. Voice123 made me a better auditioner because I got reps in. Also, it helped me keep a better idea on casting trends. What are people?  26:40 - Intro (Announcement) looking for.  26:41 - Tom Dheere (Host) How can I read a casting notice and match it up with who I am and what I can provide as a problem solver, as a voice actor? That fed into increasing the quality of my representation auditions. I got better auditioning on online casting sites and, by extension, I got better at auditioning for my reps. So that's why I went from like 1% or 2% in 2019 to, five years later, booking 12% of my revenue.  27:06 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I love that. I think it's kind of like goal setting right If you don't write it down. It's kind of like in your head you're like but I've auditioned, but I've sent my direct marketing email, or I've sent my emails and I've done my marketing, but in reality if you're not writing it down or recording it, it's really hard to track what you've done. I mean, it wasn't until I started tracking my auditions and where I was booking and it helped me to determine a genre. Oh, I should pursue more work in this area. There's so many things you can learn from it, from just recording it. So consider it like a goal right. Consider that document recording and gosh, it doesn't get any easier than downloading a free template from Tom.  27:42 - Intro (Announcement) Dheere's website.  27:42 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That's for darn sure. I mean really. This has been such an enlightening conversation, tom. I mean the amount of information you can find out just by tracking your return on investment where are you auditioning, where are you spending your money, where are things happening can really inform you to make great decisions about how to evolve and how to move your business forward. So do it, guys. Download that document and understand that, yes, this is a marathon, not a sprint. We'll probably say that for every podcast that I work with with you, tom. I mean, I say that all the time, but you guys it is. Tom, thanks so much for your invaluable wisdom on this. I love that you're such a geek about all of this, and if anybody can produce a really cool spreadsheet, I'm sure it's Tom Dheere.  28:22 - Tom Dheere (Host) I am a happy mutant, so yeah.  28:25 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) All right. Big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl. You too can network, connect and download documents like a boss. Find out more at IPDTLcom. You guys have an amazing week and we'll see you next week. Thanks, tom Bye.  28:40 - Intro (Announcement) Bye. Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, Anne Ganguza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at vobosscom and receive exclusive content, industry 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 the Voiceover Gurus Podcast, host Linda Bruno gets down to business. She welcomes Rolf Veldman, CEO of Voice123, to discuss the evolving landscape of the voiceover industry and the role of AI technology. Rolf shares insights into Voice123's recent developments, including its innovative Voice Credential Authenticity Initiative. This initiative aims to protect voice talent by embedding a unique, silent watermark onto every audio file, ensuring the authenticity and ownership of their work. Rolf explains how this technology works and its potential impact on the industry, emphasizing the importance of building trust and security for voice actors. He discusses the balance between AI's opportunities and challenges, reassuring listeners that human creativity remains irreplaceable. The conversation also touches on how AI can enhance the voiceover process, offering efficiency while preserving the artistic essence of voice performances. Linda and Rolf explore the dynamics of the voiceover market, from the influx of talent during the COVID-19 pandemic to the evolving demands of clients. They highlight the significance of platforms like Voice123 in providing opportunities and insights for both new and experienced voice actors. Tune in to learn how Voice123 is paving the way for a secure and prosperous future in the voiceover industry. Visit our website, Voiceover.Guru, and join our vibrant community for weekly script reads and more! CEO of Voice123, Rolf Veldman, is an historian who enjoys turning great ideas into great businesses. He leads a diverse, globally-remote team of achievers who are pushing the boundaries of the voice over industry. Based in the Netherlands, Rolf loves strategy board games, traveling, cycling, and pottering about in his garden next to a national park near the German border.  FOR MORE INFO ON THE SHOW AND THE GURUS, PLEASE VISIT: Coaching Website: https://voiceover.guru/  and https://learnwiththegurus.com/ Join our Circle Community: https://the-voiceover-gurus.circle.so/home Linda Bruno Voice Actress  https://www.lindabruno.com Alyssa Jayson Actress and Musician http://www.alyssajayson.com Kevin Kilpatrick Voice Actor   https://kevinkilpatrick.com/

Rolf Veldman is CEO of Voice123, the world's first and largest online marketplace for professional voice actors. At Voice123, Rolf spearheads a widely diverse and fully remote team that has set itself the task of crafting the future of the voiceover industry. In this podcast, we talk about - The Voice Authenticity Initiative (FAQs HERE (https://voice123.com/thebooth/about-voice123s-voice-authenticity-initiative/#:~:text=Voice123's%20Voice%20Authenticity%20Initiative,their%20datasets%20and%20audio%20files.)) - Low paying TTS/synthetic voice opportunities on V123 - How the V123 algorithm works and why - Current buyer challenges - What sets apart people booking more on V123 - Waitlist for V123 premium - What makes V123 better than other online casting platforms Learn more about Voice123's Voice Authenticity Initiative HERE (https://voice123.com/thebooth/voice-credentials-audio-security/) CLICK HERE for 15% off a Voice123 Membership ($359 tier and up, for first-time members) - https://bit.ly/3uPpO8i Terms & Conditions - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CcYMkdLxWfbmwbvu-mwaurLNtWYVpIBgkJpOQTYLDwc/edit?usp=sharing *LET'S CONNECT! * facebook.com/atlantavoiceoverstudio instagram.com/atlantavoiceoverstudio twitter.com/atlvostudio tiktok.com/@atlantavoiceoverstudio YOUTUBE: https://youtube.com/atlantavoiceoverstudio Atlanta Voiceover Studio & ProVoiceoverTraining's Classes & Workshops www.AtlantaVoiceoverStudio.com www.ProVoiceoverTraining.com **Sign up for FREE weekly VO tips: https://bit.ly/AVSemail

How do you determine your worth as a voice actor, especially when you're just starting out? Join Anne and Tom as we unravel the complexities of setting rates in the voiceover industry. We challenge the misconception that newbies should work for less and emphasize the need for a solid base studio session fee. From understanding SAG-AFTRA and Global Voice Acting Academy (GVAA) rate guides to navigating the nuances of broadcast and non-broadcast work, we provide practical insights that empower you to establish your value right from the get-go. Efficiency and quality are your best allies in commanding higher rates and securing repeat clients. Learn the essential strategies for managing your career, from cultivating new leads and staying updated on market trends to understanding client churn. We'll share actionable advice on how to keep your pipeline full and stay ahead of the curve in this ever-evolving industry. 00:01 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey boss listeners. Are you ready to turn your voiceover 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. Find out more at anneganguzzacom.  00:26 - Intro (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next project. Find out more at anganguzacom. 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. The boss, a VO boss.  00:46 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza. Hey, hey, everyone, welcome to the VO Boss Podcast. I'm your host, Anne Ganguza, and I am here on the Real Boss series with my co-host, Tom Dheere. Hey, Tom Dheere, how are you?  00:57 - Tom Dheere (Host) Hello Anne, how are you doing?  00:58 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Real boss. Yeah, hey, Tom, as a real boss. How's your year going? By the way, it's gone by so fast already.  01:06 - Tom Dheere (Host) First quarter gone.  01:07 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, first quarter and tax season is already coming.  01:10 - Tom Dheere (Host) Well, I mean, we filed, I filed and I got paid already. So yeah, oh, very, very nice.  01:15 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So, speaking of numbers, you're a numbers guy, so how's your year going?  01:20 - Tom Dheere (Host) It's funny because I just did my first quarter analytics financially and I think I'm like literally like $300 ahead of first quarter 2023.  01:32 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Congrats.  01:33 - Tom Dheere (Host) Can't complain about that.  01:34 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Being ahead is always a plus, always a plus and myself as well, and I'm ecstatic that I got paid already from the government, so that's good. I'm going to reinvest that in my business. But I love talking real numbers, like real money. So I thought it would be good to talk about real money, because so many times I have students who just get into this industry and they get that first job where somebody's interested in their voice and then they panic and they say, oh my God, they've come back to me and they want to know what I'll charge for this job and I thought we should actually. Let's talk about that. Let's talk about those numbers. How do people come up with those numbers?  02:13 - Tom Dheere (Host) Right. It's funny because, like we could just say, well, just go look at the SAG-AFTRA contract if you're union, or go look at the Global Voice Acting website if you're non-union, and this will be the world's shortest podcast episode.  02:24 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That's it. Gvaa rate guide and SegAftra Boom and you're done.  02:28 - Tom Dheere (Host) But, as you well know, it's a lot more complicated than that. But I want to do a little bit of myth busting real quick. A lot of voice actors coming into the industry think hierarchical. They think vertical, as in. Since they're just entering the voiceover industry, they should get paid the lowest and the people who have been in here the longest should get paid the highest. And that is not necessarily true. I mean, if there's one thing I've learned in the 25 plus years I've been doing this is that the last gig I got isn't always the worst paying gig I've got, and then the next gig I've got isn't always the best paying gig that I've got.  03:08 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It fluctuates, it just does right. I mean, before the rate guides. Well, I think there was always SAG-AFTRA, but SAG-AFTRA mostly concentrated on things that were national and broadcast right, and so national, regional, local, anything that was broadcast. So what was a girl to do back in the early years when I was there trying to figure out what do I charge? And literally it set myself into a panic and I always, tom, had to pretty much just kind of wing it and guess what? I think that that's even still true today.  03:44 - Tom Dheere (Host) I mean, now we have guides that we can look at as benchmarks, but in reality every job is absolutely different, especially when you're talking non-broadcast rates, so broadcast rates, radio, tv, cable, internet, streaming right, all the front-facing stuff, where there's going to be a session fee, which is how much you get paid to record the voiceover audio files, and then the usage fee, which is how much you get paid for giving license, because you're literally licensing your voice to the voice seekers for them to use your audio files in a certain period of time and in a certain area.  04:31 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Absolutely.  04:31 - Tom Dheere (Host) Right. So that's broadcast in the broadest sense, for lack of a better term, and just by giving your listeners that basic explanation. That's what sets up this avalanche of other questions. It's like how big of a market, how many listeners, how long are you getting paid for? It's, in simplest terms, the more listeners or viewers, the more you get paid, and the longer that they're going to air this spot, on whatever medium they decide, the more you get paid. So the question is where do you start with that? So actually, that leads me to a question. Anne, do you have like a turning?  05:13 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) on the lights fee. Do you have a base studio session fee? Yes, I absolutely do. For me to step into the studio, I have a certain fee and a lot of my work is non-broadcast. So if I am doing any work that's broadcast. Typically that's either handled by my agent, right? Who's negotiating that for me? Which is why it's awesome to have agents, because they handle that and they're always fighting for the most part, if you've got a good agent for your best interests.  05:35 If it's not an agent fighting for the rates, then I have to go to a rate guide to start somewhere and figure out what that is. But for non-broadcast, absolutely. I have a rate for stepping into my studio and that is my studio session fee, which.  05:51 I try to equate everything non-broadcast to the same equivalent on the broadcast side, because these days, with synthetic voices right, I want to make sure that nobody's going to be using my voice for a purpose that it wasn't intended for, and so I will actually put and I'm probably getting ahead of myself on my non-broadcast, I will put an actual length of time, whereas previously this was not something we talked about in perpetuity in another episode. But I want to absolutely address that. For non-broadcast, typically it was you gave somebody a rate for usage of that file and it was forever. And now, with synthetic voices and the fear of getting our voices stolen or used for purposes other than intended, I now put in for non-broadcast. I put in a length of time that they can use that for as a safeguard.  06:42 - Tom Dheere (Host) Right and for certain things I mean there's explainers and corporate and e-learning and stuff like that.  06:47 Most of that stuff isn't evergreen anyway, because, like an explainer video, for example, the company's branding may change, the name of the company may change, the product, the service, the widget may change, so they're going to need a new explainer video.  07:03 If they have just like one explainer video which is parked on their website and their social media channels just saying we are this company, this is what we do, in two, three years, maybe five at most, they're going to need a new video and they may go to you and they may go to somebody else. But when you see non-broadcast in perpetuity, you want to be smart about it. You want to give it some form of shelf life, and that's a big part of this conversation, anne is how do you communicate this? How do you educate your clients? By explaining, like look, in a few years you're going to need a new one of these anyway, because I've noticed that for like non-broadcast, most of them want it in perpetuity, not because they want to synthesize your voice or because they want to hose you financially, it's just because they just don't want to be bothered. They just want to do this and it's done, and it's there and now they can go focus on other things.  07:48 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, they say that it's theirs.  07:49 - Tom Dheere (Host) And they say it's theirs. For non-broadcast genres there's a whole bunch of different ways to charge. Sometimes you charge by the finished minute. If it's an audio book, you charge by the finished hour. If it's long form e-learning modules, you could get paid by the word.  08:06 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Exactly, I mean, those are the big ones there used to be per page but I don't remember the last time I got paid per page and you know what. I'll be completely honest, tom, I don't remember the last time I quoted an e-learning module on a per word basis, because most of the companies or most of the people that I'm working with I'm not on a roster that is paying on a per word basis or working with an instructional e-learning company, that usually is on a per word basis.  08:31 Whenever I get e-learning clients, I always price them on a per hour, per finished hour basis and I get paid the same for e-learning as I do for corporate pretty much.  08:41 - Tom Dheere (Host) Yeah, I mean they're both informational, non-broadcast, so in the broadest brushstrokes they're pretty much the same genre-wise, with the exception that e-learning is usually used to train students and new employees and corporate is for internal communications, like an HR video or a memo, or here's how you pick your employee benefits, and stuff like that.  09:01 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Or even a corporate narration video. That's what I meant. Corporate training and e-learning to me is the same. Do you know what I mean? Corporate training and academic e-learning rates are the same to me, except most educational institutions can't afford what a company can Right.  09:15 It's harder for them to get the money, but I think one thing that I want to emphatically tell the bosses out there that are just beginning for non-broadcast is that really every job is unique and we don't always have a rate guide to go to, and it's up to you as a business person to understand what would be an acceptable market rate for that and price it accordingly to that and also know your worth because, again, like you had mentioned before, you think that just because you're newer, you should charge less, and that is probably not the. That is not the way I would be thinking about it at all as a new person into the industry. Because you're being paid for your voice right, you're being paid for your voice. You can get just as much as I can or Tom can for that voice. It is your business.  10:11 - Tom Dheere (Host) Right. Here's the thing about that is that a lot of my students immediately devalue themselves. Yeah, and you shouldn't do that to yourself, because, think about it on the other side of the equation is that if you're a voice seeker, do you care how long the voice actors have been doing voiceover Really? I mean in the abstract. Well, of course we would like an experienced narrator, but when it comes down to the audition, within two, three seconds, either they like you or you don't. It doesn't matter how long you've been doing voiceover.  10:43 Now there is obviously a correlation between the ability to tell a story effectively and how long you've been doing this. But ultimately, if you've got quality training from Anne and a quality demo and that demo is submitted and you've been trained by Anne to audition effectively for projects, I'd say 90, 95% of the time, it's a level playing field. Regardless of how long you've been trained by Anne to audition effectively for projects, I'd say 90, 95% of the time, it's a level playing field regardless of how long you've been in the industry, and I agree with you there, completely agree with you.  11:10 So you take that data point and then you extrapolate that. Well, if that's the case, then that means everybody should get paid the same who's auditioning for that, because if one of my students auditions for an e-learning project and I audition for an e-learning project, if I book it, I shouldn't necessarily get paid more than they should.  11:28 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I agree with that, completely agree with that. Again, they're paying for the voice. They're not necessarily paying for the experience. However, in dealing with the client, your level of experience might have a part in it because after you get the job, in order to maybe keep the job or have the person keep coming back, that's where your experience and customer service comes into play and that's where I feel that you can command. And again, you can command just as much if you can give them a good experience.  12:00 - Tom Dheere (Host) Right. This is what I tell my students is that your talent will book you the first gig with a client. Your project management skills will book you the next gig with the same client, because if me and a student are auditioning for the same gig and they book it. Great, they should get the same that I get, but then they better deliver the goods, communicate the retake policy, understand how to use their DAW, understand how to edit and deliver the audio files, being able to take direction if it's a live setting those are skills that.  12:31 Yes, there is a correlation between your experience level and the ability to execute good project management, but if you work with Anne or if you work with myself, part of our jobs is to teach you that and how to be able to be professional and communicate effectively and do all those things, because it's not just getting the first gig, it's getting the next gig and the next gig and the next gig without auditioning.  12:56 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Exactly. And it's funny because it reminds me of a conversation I had in my Voices in Podcasting Clubhouse the other day with Jodi Krangel and Cheryl Holling, where we got into this discussion about acting right, because a lot of coaches these days will say it's more important now more than ever to have your acting skills so that you can separate yourself from the synthetic voices. And Jodi said you know, I don't know if I'm completely convinced about that, because in reality it also has to do with your customer service. And I'm like, yeah, well, you've got to get the gig first right, which is your auditioning talents and your performance talents and your acting talents are going to get you the gig.  13:34 Then what's going to help you keep it is going to be that customer service that business aspect that you just mentioned, in order to keep them coming back and then commanding that good rate, moving forward.  13:48 - Tom Dheere (Host) And that's when it comes into so for the audition, to book the audition it's about your talent and your storytelling ability. After that, it's about your ability to manage the project effectively. Because, also, if you can demonstrate that you can deliver the goods and do it quickly and do it right, then, yeah, you're in a better position to command higher rates and slash. Or you're in a position to just get more bookings without having to audition for this end client that you got that initial gig with and other end clients at this production company or recording studio or ad agency or marketing firm or political production company or explainer production company has they're like yeah, you work with Ann. Ann delivered the goods on this series of explainer videos. She can do that for you and your series of explainer videos too. So it's not just about getting as much as you can for the project in question, it's about delivering the goods so you can get paid over and over and, over and over again.  14:44 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And aren't those the best jobs?  14:46 - Tom Dheere (Host) Well, we all want regular clients, like everybody, everybody, in every part of the country.  14:50 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) You don't have to audition for them, that just takes out a complete amount of steps. And it's funny because I think for me and for my business right. I'm always telling people you always have to cultivate new leads, because if you've been in the business for a long time, undoubtedly you'll probably have repeat clients. Right, tom? You must have lots and lots and lots of repeat clients Many, many, many, many, many repeat clients and me too, and I'm grateful for them.  15:10 but I always have to be cultivating the new clients as well, and that means I have to really continually assess and understand rates and what I should charge and understand my worth in the current market, in the current market.  15:24 - Tom Dheere (Host) Yes, my friend Adam Werner, audiobook narrator, fellow FAFCon attendee. He taught me about client churn, which is every quarter. I look at all of the voiceover gigs that I booked and all the clients that I worked with and the genres that I booked and how I got the gig whether it was through my representation, whether it was through an online casting site and whether it was through my self-marketing strategies and I look to see how many new clients did I gain and I keep a very close eye on how many new clients I'm getting, because if I'm getting a regular stream of new clients, that means my marketing strategies are working well, yes, yes and your marketing strategies.  16:03 Is your self-marketing strategy? Cold calls, cold emails, indirect marketing, social media, blogging, whatever. But also, am I just auditioning better through my representation? Am I auditioning better through my online casting sites? Because clients are just going to naturally go away, they're going to retire, they're going to go out of business, they're going to change their business model.  16:23 They're going to hire their nephew who wants to do musical theater, to do their phone greets. And now you're out. Ai is going to replace and already has replaced some of us voice actors. For certain clients, that's just going to naturally happen. So you always want to keep the till full.  16:39 Yep, yep, absolutely absolutely want to keep the till full, yep, yep, absolutely, absolutely, and making sure that you understand what you're worth in today's current landscape on a per word, per finished minute, per finished hour, per studio hour. You always want to keep an eye on that, yeah. So how do you keep an eye on that, anne? How do you keep an eye on current rates? What are your go-tos? What are your habits?  16:57 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, my current rates. I actually make sure that I check the rate guides frequently because they're continually being updated by people more than me out in the industry. Back in the day I was a core contributor to the GVAA rate guide and I think you were too Tom like e-learning and corporate and telephony and medical and those were the rates that I helped with on that rate guide. I make sure that I'm continually assessing those rate guides, but I'm also assessing the market. I mean, I work in the market and so I do a lot of research on the client and I try to understand, like, where else could they be going for potential business or another voice, and how can I remain competitive with that voice? And so how do I keep myself current? It's continual research, really, and assessment with the rate guide and some of it, honestly, is just pulling it out of the air. That is really what happens Sometimes. It's nowhere to be found and you just have to use your best judgment. Always use your negotiation 101 tactics on asking what is the budget?  18:06 That's like the most important first question I think you can ask a client.  18:10 - Tom Dheere (Host) Do they have a?  18:10 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) budget, and if they have a budget, can you work within that?  18:13 - Tom Dheere (Host) Right, my go-to's is just looking at my agent casting notices and looking at my online casting site casting notices yes, yes, yes.  18:19 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Market assessment notices. And looking at my online casting site casting notices Market assessment.  18:23 - Tom Dheere (Host) Market assessment and what Ann does and what I do. You should be doing both of those. You should be doing both of those because when you get a casting notice from your representation, it's been pre-negotiated. They've already gone through the rigmarole of negotiating with that particular client, so what you get is most likely the finished product of what the actual rate is going to be for that project. So that will let you know, because, along with that casting notice, in addition to the rates, is the specs, the session fee, the usage fee, the market, the exclusivity and conflicts and the rate of usage, how long it's going to be used for. So you can use that to greatly inform your broadcast rate sheets. And then for non-broadcast, looking at the online casting sites and just noticing trends in e-learning versus corporate, versus explainer, versus telephony, versus medical versus voice of.  19:17 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) God. And in order to do that, in order to do that, do you need to be a member, tom? I know, because some of them will post job rates without you necessarily actually being a paid member if you're a free member, but I believe you've got to be a paid member to get that information these days.  19:33 - Tom Dheere (Host) For places like Voice 123, I believe you won't have access to the casting notices unless you're on the tier, because the only way you'll get them is if they make it to your inbox, and the only way it makes it to your inbox is having a subscription tier, unless you have a free site, a free membership and some casting notices come in and some say here's the jobs you missed and here's the money.  19:53 Right, voicescom, I think you can run searches but you can't audition unless you're a paid member. But you know what? There's other places to go. I mean you could look at Backstage and Badalgo and Casting Call Club, even Twitter. Now Casting Call Club and Twitter, there tend to be lower no-pay jobs, which is why a lot of voice actors early in their journey go to Casting Call Club because it gives themselves a great opportunity to kind of develop their audition skills, their rate negotiation skills, build up their portfolio, resume, genre awareness and confidence, all of which are extremely, extremely important things. But if you're able to hit the ground running and you have more resources at your disposal which I've got, a pay-to-play site like a voice123 or voicescom you can get a much better idea of what current trends in the rate structure is for voiceover gigs.  20:38 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And you know what's so interesting. What I'm hearing from you, interestingly enough, is not just understanding the rate guide and then understanding the principles of negotiation and what you're worth, but also your audition techniques, right. Auditioning techniques, it's a first impression, right. And so if you're looking to command a particular rate for a job, even if you don't get a job that you've auditioned for right, you're submitting auditions into your agent and you're just, you're nailing time after time after time, or you're nailing the auditions in the pay to play, right, you're getting consistent in people's minds and that is building your value.  21:16 And it's interesting because when people come to me and they say I want to get a corporate demo or I to get a medical demo or I want an e-learning demo, I've, over the years, evolved into the type of coach that is really coaching how to do the audition to get the gig first, because, honestly, we all can do that. Read, that's a really pleasant, nice read. You know that's reading the words, but it takes acting skills to really tell the story. And so I really work on building up students' storytelling skills and acting skills and that, I feel, is going to command you the higher rate.  21:51 - Tom Dheere (Host) Yes, I've got some numbers for you.  21:53 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I know you love your numbers, I do, I do, I do. Tell me Okay.  21:56 - Tom Dheere (Host) In 2019, I auditioned roughly 400 times. Okay 1% of my voiceover revenue came from representation. 18% came from casting sites. I wasn't on any paid casting sites back then. Fast forward to all of 2019, 5 years later, 2023, I did 1,854 auditions. My online casting site revenue percentage grew from 18% to 50%.  22:24 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Wow, that's incredible.  22:26 - Tom Dheere (Host) My representation revenue percentage went from 1% to 12%. Wow, that's incredible, and my overall revenue increased by 20%.  22:36 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And now, what would you say that was due to then?  22:39 - Tom Dheere (Host) Auditioning Auditioning right and auditioning skills.  22:43 Getting my reps in on specifically Voice123. And you can hear, if you haven't watched our casting site VO Boss Video, go check that out. You'll hear me talk about Voice123 in severe detail, about my voiceover journey, the fact that I was auditioning so much on pay-to-play sites I was just getting better at auditioning. I was auditioning so much on pay-to-play sites I was just getting better at auditioning, which meant when I was getting those agent and manager-driven auditions, I was just getting better at auditioning there too and as a result, I booked more gigs and I booked better gigs.  23:12 So, if nothing else, don't put all of these things into separate buckets or silos, pass judgment on them and ignore them, or covet one and ignore the other. It's through data and money I've shown that the online casting site portal and the representation portal are clearly linked. There was clearly a synergistic relationship between the quality and quantity of my auditions on Voice123 and the quality and quantity of my audition efforts through my agents and managers. I love that you're backing it up with the numbers and quantity of my auditions on voice one, two, three and the quality and quantity of my audition efforts through my agents and managers.  23:43 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I love that you're backing it up with the numbers, because I mean, it's so easy right To point the finger and say, oh well, pay to play suck, or there's too many people on the pay to plays, or the pay to plays are bottom feeders. And so, therefore, I didn't get to the audition on time, which you know that plays a certain part in it.  24:03 But also it could be like my agent keeps sending me the same auditions to everyone. So it's easy to point the finger and lay blame. But I'll tell you what a lot of times, if you can increase your audition skills, you can increase your net worth, you can increase the rate that you can ask for. It's kind of like this what came first, the chicken or the egg, the audition or the value right that you can charge your potential client? I mean, honestly, it just goes hand in hand. If you are a better actor, if you are a better auditioner and that's going to require an investment, typically in working hard with maybe a performance coach that can give you good feedback. Because if you're like I don't know what's happening, the pay-to-plays suck these days. I'm not getting any work or my agent is not getting me work, and I hate it when people blame their agents for not getting them work.  24:50 It really is up to you to put in that investment into your business so that you can audition better and then command those better rates.  24:58 - Tom Dheere (Host) Absolutely so. Creating a rate sheet from scratch or using the SAG-AFTRA guidelines or using the Global Voice Acting Academy rate guides is an important thing to understand what is a voice actor's worth in relation to the genres and the broadcast versus non-broadcast market. But I'll be honest. I mean, yes, I have had rate sheets that I built from scratch and talked to other voice actors over the past 15, 20 years, but these days I don't really look at it anymore. I just kind of just know, through repetition, what I'm worth, what the genre is worth, what the gig is worth based on the broadcast or non-broadcast usage. Is it going to just be in a museum exhibition or is it going to be on a corporate website that has 10,000 employees?  25:40 After a while you just kind of get the hang of it, but that does not help our bosses who are early in their voiceover journey. So bookmark that SAG-AFTRA rates, Bookmark that GVAA. Have your own little Google Doc. Keep track of the agent auditions that you get if you have representation. Keep track of the online casting site audition rates. Just start to note them. Just make a little simple spreadsheet Genre rate terms.  26:03 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I did that right in the beginning of my career. It was like audition. Where did the audition come from? Did I book the gig? What was the price? Literally? That can really help establish for you rates to charge and just make sure that you're keeping up with those rates and really doing some market research. If you're new to the industry, those rate guides use them as a guide only. That doesn't mean that they're the be-all, end-all of what you as a business owner should charge. But I would say, rather than going to the lower number because you want the client right, make sure that that number is well within what you are worth. And just because you started just recently doesn't mean that you can't command the same rate that Tom and I can.  26:47 - Tom Dheere (Host) Right, and here's the thing about that is that the lowest bid doesn't always book the gig. It does not always. It does not always win.  26:55 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I get nervous when I buy things that are too cheap. Then I'm like oh, I don't know about the quality of this Right, because you know there's going to be.  27:01 - Tom Dheere (Host) Yeah, there may be a lack of quality. I mean, think of it this way Like my wife and I were just in the big Macy's flagship store a couple weeks ago to see the Macy's flower show, and we walked through the departments and you see, like on the top floor of Macy's is the luggage and you luggage and you've got five different suitcase sets. The first few are worth $100 and then the last one is worth $400. What are the ones people are going to look at first? They're going to be like why is this one $400? What is it that gives it more value than the other ones?  27:32 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And I'll tell you something too Sometimes I can't believe I'm going to admit this like on the air top as a female when I go shopping clothes shopping right and they have huge, huge sales. When there's like bins of clothing that are slashed 70%, sometimes that's almost too overwhelming and exhausting. And now that the prices have been slashed so much, I'm like I don't know people have been handling these clothes. I don't know. Are they not in fashion anymore? I question everything right.  27:58 Oh my gosh, they're so low, yeah, why are there so many of those in the bin of the same like style? Is that because it's not in style? And then I question all the other aspects of it. The quality, is it in style? And so, literally I will. To save my brain the overwhelm of low prices, I will go to the stuff that is priced higher and it's usually presented much nicer right and it's less overwhelming. Think about your voiceover right. Think about your voice and presenting it in a way that you are worthy, right. You are worthy of commanding that price. You are worthy of the elegant luxury brand of that voice, right and people paying that money. There is such an attraction to that for a lot of buyers it's like a psychological aspect.  28:45 - Tom Dheere (Host) Yeah, look, look, vo bosses. If you have gotten your training, if you have gotten your demos, if you've built your website, if you have your home recording studio set up and you have a rate sheet built, you're worth it. Yeah, absolutely, you are worth it. You are worth it and you have a rate sheet built, you're worth it. Yeah, absolutely, you are worth it. You are worth it and you are worthy, yes, absolutely Good stuff.  29:05 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) We could go on and on and on about this, but I find, tom, when I talk to you, like our podcasts run a little bit long because we have so much to talk about. You're so easy to talk to.  29:14 - Tom Dheere (Host) Aw, you too.  29:15 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Thank you, Tom, for the wonderful, wonderful, sensible business head that you have. I absolutely love, love, love our sessions together and, bosses, I'm going to give a great big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl, that allows me to connect with Tom and talk numbers, because I love to do that, and all sorts of other wonderful business things that we should know as voice actors. You can find out more at IPDTLcom, tom. Thanks again so much. I just love our sessions together and I can't wait till our next one.  29:45 - Tom Dheere (Host) It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me back.  29:47 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Bosses, have a great week. We'll see you next week. Bye.  29:52 - 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 V? O bosscom 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.   

Conversé con Alex Torrenegra, CEO y fundador de Torre, y Shark en Shark Tank México y Colombia.Alex tiene una historia increíble: viniendo de una familia muy modesta en Colombia, fundó su primer negocio a los 14 años con un objetivo: comprarse una computadora. Esta experiencia lo obsesionó con la idea de mudarse a EEUU para ser parte de la creación del internet.-Este episodio es presentado Bonnus, transforma tu negocio con el API OpenBonnus. Distribuye más de 150 Gift Cards de las mejores marcas, como Amazon, Cinépolis, Nutrisa y Starbucks. Por ser miembro de la comunidad Startupeable, obtén un 100% de descuento en la integración del API aquí: https://rebrand.ly/SLDBDSP-Por favor ayúdame dejando una reseña en Spotify o Apple Podcasts: https://ratethispodcast.com/startupeable-Años más tarde, ya en EEUU, Alex fundó dos startups Voice123 y Bunny Studio. Ambos negocios alcanzaron una escala de millones de dólares en facturación sin levantar un dólar de capital y Voice123 fue adquirida.En 2019, Alex fundó Torre con una visión bastante ambiciosa: utilizar inteligencia artificial para crear una nueva red social para encontrar trabajo — en otras palabras, disrumpir a Linkedin.Hoy Alex y yo hablamos de:Qué industrias son más vulnerables a la inteligencia artificialQué tan preparados estamos en Latinoamérica para esta ola tecnológicaSus errores y aprendizajes más grandes creando productos con IAPor qué decidió levantar capital para Torre después de bootstrappear exitosamentePor qué cree que un fundador que bootstrappea es más feliz que uno que levanta capitalLa historia de Jorge es prueba de que los latinoamericanos podemos construir tecnología de punta para mercados como EEUU y el mundo. Espero que disfruten esta gran conversación.Notas del episodio: https://startupeable.com/torrenegra/Para más contenido síguenos en:YouTube  | Sitio Web  -Este episodio es presentado Bonnus, transforma tu negocio con el API OpenBonnus. Distribuye más de 150 Gift Cards de las mejores marcas, como Amazon, Cinépolis, Nutrisa y Starbucks. Por ser miembro de la comunidad Startupeable, obtén un 100% de descuento en la integración del API aquí: https://rebrand.ly/SLDBDSP-Distribuido por Genuina Media

In this episode, Anne Ganguzza and Tom Dheere dissect the key components of building a robust online presence. From identifying customer pain points to harnessing the power of color psychology in your website design, The BOSSES explore what it takes to convey competence and reliability. We also delve into the subtle yet vital aspects of maintaining an easy-to-navigate, professional website that establishes credibility and trust. Learn how consistent visual cues and coherent storytelling can make or break your brand's effectiveness in today's competitive market. Finally, The BOSSES tackle the nuances of maintaining a consistent brand across social media platforms. We underscore the importance of professionalism and how off-brand or controversial content can jeopardize client relationships. 00:01 - Intro (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss a VO boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza.  00:20 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey, hey everyone, welcome to the VO Boss Podcast and the Real Boss Series. I'm here with my special guest co-host Tom Dheere. Hey, Tom Dheere, how are you?  00:30 - Tom Dheere (Host) Hey Anne, I'm good. How are you? I'm awesome.  00:33 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Thank you very much.  00:34 - Tom Dheere (Host) You look fabulous today.  00:35 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Why thank you? So do you. I love your coloring.  00:39 - Tom Dheere (Host) Thank you, it's one of my Hawaii shirts because my wife's from Hawaii, so we go to Hawaii all the time.  00:43 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) There you go. It's very boss.  00:45 - Tom Dheere (Host) Thank you. I love your blue because it kind of matches the coloring in the background. You look very branded today.  00:51 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Why, thank you. You know I have multiple brands and multiple colors for my brands, and so it's interesting because red is typically my boss brand. But I thought, you know, let's work a little A&G and Guza brand in here as well, which is my blue, my signature blue. So I'm kind of combining them right now. And, yeah, I've been branded for a while yet, but I don't know, tom, what are your thoughts? I think we should talk about branding, because it is a big discussion among voice actors and it's like everybody makes a big deal like oh my God, I have to like figure out my brand, and they and it's like everybody makes a big deal Like, oh my God, I have to like figure out my brand and they stress out over it. And so let's talk about brands. I mean, how important is it for voice actors to brand these days?  01:33 - Tom Dheere (Host) Well, my thoughts have evolved on this quite a bit over the past 15, 20 years or so. I used to be of the mind that every voice actor absolutely must brand themselves. They should design a logo, they should pick a font, they should pick a color scheme and then their demos, their business cards, their website, their social media content, all of their outbound marketing content newsletters and things like that should be 100% branded. It should be 100% aligned.  02:04 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well then, I fit the bill there for you. You're perfect. Okay, you're perfect.  02:08 - Tom Dheere (Host) But over the years when I had that perspective, I was focusing primarily on direct and indirect marketing strategies to get the bulk of my voiceover revenue.  02:20 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I agree, myself included.  02:21 - Tom Dheere (Host) I have representation. I'm on casting sites, but for me, direct and indirect marketing was the place and it's like the old mentality. It's like Anne, why aren't you wearing my glasses? Because they help me see better. So obviously they should help you see better. But gotten a little older, hopefully gotten a little wiser, and just looking at myself and looking at all the students I've had over the years and watching what other successful voice actors do, I don't know if everybody needs to brand themselves.  02:50 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, gosh Tom, for many years there was no branding, right, there was no internet. Well, I shouldn't say there was no branding, but it wasn't as visible. And so how did voice actors in the 80s stand out?  03:02 - Tom Dheere (Host) They didn't, they just auditioned and booked.  03:05 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) They were managed by their agents, right or managers. And so they didn't have to necessarily brand their businesses. They became known for their voice and their agents were out there kind of branding for them, right.  03:20 - Tom Dheere (Host) Yeah, their reputation was built solely on the quality of their auditions and the quality of the experience when they were in the recording studio working with the clients. And that was it. The value promise was the audition Sure, the value delivery was the recording session. Yeah, platforms on top of that. Most voice actors feel obligated in a way that they have to brand themselves because they have to be on all of these social media platforms and they have to be spewing out content all the time in the hopes that they will catch somebody's attention to stay top of mind to get them into and through the sales funnel and all of that stuff.  04:01 But to your point, if representation was the only casting portal in the industry, no, we wouldn't need to brand. There are online casting sites too pay-to-play sites, voice123, voicescom, vidalgo, what have you? You don't need to brand yourself on there either, because all it's about is the value promise of the audition and the value delivery of the recording session or delivering the files properly formatted, with the proper amount of takes, and you took the direction on the casting notice or whatever. You know what I mean.  04:28 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) What about Fiverr? Just out of curiosity. I know we've had this, I know that's a bad F word but I think it depends on how the platform is marketing you right, or how are people finding out about you right On the platform?  04:38 - Tom Dheere (Host) Yeah, and it's interesting because Fiverr and Upwork, which are technically online casting sites, they weren't designed as voiceover casting sites like Voice123 and Voicescom, but they seem to be conducive for voiceover casting. There's very little auditioning happening on Fiverr and Upwork.  04:54 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) People come and look and listen.  04:55 - Tom Dheere (Host) It's direct bookings. So, with that in mind, yeah, your branding actually is very important.  05:01 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Your headshot's very important, I agree.  05:05 - Tom Dheere (Host) Your tagline, the verbiage, how you package and present yourself. Yeah, branding is important.  05:07 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So then, if you're direct marketing, right, I feel that a brand is very, very important. If you're direct marketing and if people are finding you online, let's say at your website, like for me, tom, and we have different businesses, right, you and I I have multiple brands. I don't have a ton of time to audition, except for my agents, right, which that's a whole different way that I obtain my job, and I don't have any time literally these days to audition on pay-to-plays. However, I do exist on pay-to-plays because I want to make sure that I know the platform so that I can recommend to my students. So for me, my branding is still relevant, I would say, because that's how I get a lot of people that say, oh, the Ann Ganguza brand or Ann, I see you everywhere, and that's good, because that's kind of my purpose.  05:53 - Tom Dheere (Host) Yeah, I have two brands. I have the Tom Dheere the H is silent, but I'm not voice actor brand and then I have the VO strategist brand, and both of them serve different needs. Well, obviously, one for me as a voice actor and then one for me as a voiceover business and marketing consultant and coach and mentor. What's interesting, and tell me, if you have this experience, is that your branding as Ann Gangu's a voice actor greatly informs your reputation and branding as Ann Gangu's a voiceover coach. Because, with a very precious few exceptions, like a Maurice Tobias or a Mary Lynn Wisner, you need to be a boots on the ground, successful, consistently working actor to be taken seriously as a voiceover coach. Absolutely, absolutely.  06:39 So a part of my branding as a VO strategist is go check me out at tomdeercom, listen to my demos, look at my YouTube channel, see all the work that I've done, because the fact that I've done a bunch of e-learning modules is one thing, but the fact that I was the voice of Inspector Gadget in the Inspector Gadget video game last year gives you a lot of street cred. So that attracts certain types of voice actors who want to do that sort of business. And even if they don't. They grew up on Inspector Gadget, so I'm writing the coattails of the brand of Inspector Gadget when I brand myself as Tom Dheere voice actor, because I was Inspector Gadget, which also then feeds into well, if he's able to book work like that, he's competent as a voiceover business and marketing coach. So they all feed into each other.  07:23 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I love that. You said that you branded on the coattails of another brand and I think that's definitely a strategy. I mean he used to talk about that all the time is that to get credibility? If you are the voice of a brand that is out there and that is heard and seen, then that is your brand right, gaining credibility from another brand, and so it's kind of a strategic partnership. However, I think you can get that strategic partnership. It doesn't necessarily mean like oh, I'm Ann Ganguzza, I have to have blue. That's only a visual part of my brand, that is one part of the encompassing brand when people come to my website. But people if they don't see anything right. So there's a visual part of your brand, there's an audio part of your brand and then there is, I would say, an in-person, physical part of your brand as well that all contributes to who you are and if people decide if they want to work with you or not.  08:20 Right, there's that personality, part of your brand that says I'm reliable, I'm fast, I am accurate. I have the voice that can work with your brand and make it come alive. So there's so many aspects to branding besides, let's say, a website, which is what I think most people think. When they talk about branding, they think, oh, I've got to have that tagline Gosh. I gave up my tagline years ago because it just wasn't pertinent for my particular brand. It just wasn't, and I was out there showing my photograph a long time ago because for me it worked. I felt like people wanted to connect with a person and not necessarily an image of a microphone.  08:59 - Tom Dheere (Host) Sure, it's funny that you say that, because I've been teaching branding for well over 10 years and I've always told my students that branding is telling a story what is the story of you? But also there's usually two ways that you can tell your story as a voice actor from a branding perspective. You can brand your sound or you can brand your personality. So the more distinctive your sound is or the genres that you can do, the easier it is to brand in that direction. If you've got a particularly young voice or particularly deep voice, or if you do movie trailers primarily, or if you do military fiction, audio books exclusively or almost exclusively, it's a lot easier to brand. But the branding of your personality is what is the experience of working with you? So for years I used you as one of my examples of, yes, branding your personality using your tagline are you ready for awesome?  09:54 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That's true. Are you ready for awesome? I like that. I did use that and I haven't used that in a while, so let's talk about that. Tom, tell me, what was it that attracted you to that particular aspect of my brand?  10:06 - Tom Dheere (Host) What attracted me to that is that you were setting expectations of what the experience of working with you was is like. So there's the value promise. Like I said, value promise and value delivery. This is about the value delivery. If you work with me, you're going to have a great experience. You're going to be working with a professional, intelligent, excited, ethical, prepared voice actor. That's what are you ready for. Awesome means to me.  10:33 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Geez, maybe I'll bring that back, Tom.  10:36 - Tom Dheere (Host) I mean, why not?  10:36 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I love that, I like that it meant something to you and yeah, absolutely, and it's not that I actually got rid of it, tom. Before that one, I had Dream Out Loud. That was my tagline, and I thought Dream Out Loud didn't do anything for me, necessarily because Dream Out Loud was kind of more focused on me rather than my client. Right, in terms of like, are they dreaming out loud? No, they need somebody that's not dreaming, they need somebody that can speak. Their brand, right, and so therefore, are you Ready for Awesome, kind of helps out their predicament in a much better way. So, yeah, actually I think that that's a great brand. I'll have to talk to my web person.  11:15 Your webmaster, business coach my webmaster to maybe bring that back. And it doesn't have to be all over my page, right it can be in certain parts of my page or in, let's say, in my signature file. It could be in a lot of different places, but I like that. You're right. It basically tells people this is what you're going to be working with.  11:32 - Tom Dheere (Host) Right, and one of the key aspects of any successful brand, regardless of whatever sector that you're in healthcare, automotive, beverages or whatever is that an effective company is able to identify the pain points of the customer. What do you need, what are you struggling with? And then your branding helps you tell the story of how you can solve their problems, how you can address those pain points, how you can cure what ails them, so to speak. Are you ready for awesome is a great way of letting them know that if you work with me, everything's going to be okay, Everything's going to be taken care of, you're going to have an awesome experience and you're going to get what you need, which are quality audio files delivered on time, properly formatted and that help you tell the story of your company's brand most of the time right.  12:21 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Now I do believe that people visually see that text, they read it, they comprehend it. There's also something to be said for your website in general, and we can have a whole other podcast on websites. But I do believe that, like when I go to purchase something from a website, I have to see that website and feel that I trust it and that the people behind that website have a valuable product and I can purchase that without fear that I'm not going to get that product delivered in a timely and quality manner. And so I assess a lot visually the product by looking at a website. If the website is not constructed in a professional manner, of what standards are today, I hesitate to click and buy. And so I do feel that if you are a voice actor that has a website out there and people happen upon your website, at least have it functionally and visually professional enough so that it instills trust in your potential client, so that they can say oh, okay, this looks safe, right For me.  13:31 I mean, gosh, it's like oh, I buy online all the time. I mean this is like the 21st century, right? We buy online all the time. So again, that place where I buy needs to instill trust in me. And now a quick word from our sponsor, which could be me. Hey bosses, are you looking for even more voiceover resources? Head on over to vopeepscom and take a look at our special Vopeeps VIP VIPs membership. You get access to over 350 hours of on-demand video workshops in addition to free live monthly workouts. Plus, you'll get 15% off each monthly VO Peeps workshop in the future. Sign up now at vopeepscom.  14:12 - Speaker 4 (Host) Hi, this is Debra Elaine Fowler sending a huge shout out to Anne for her VO Boss podcast. I've been listening now since the very first episode six years ago, and I always learn something new. The guests are interesting and Anne brings up topics that maybe I haven't thought about. I find myself researching new topics almost every week. Anne, keep it up, I love what you're doing. And now back to the show.  14:38 - Tom Dheere (Host) The website tells the story of you and of the experience they're going to have as a result of working with you, Because they're immediately. Obviously the first thing that happens as they go to the website is they see the website. Yeah, you know what are the colors that?  14:50 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) come out?  14:51 - Tom Dheere (Host) What are the fonts Right? How is it organized or laid out? What are the colors? What are the fonts? Is it easy to find your demos?  14:58 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Can I contact this person that's like so important to me?  15:01 - Tom Dheere (Host) Can I contact this person in the way that I want to contact them? Do I want to pick up the phone? Do I want to email them? Do I want to message them on Instagram, or do I want to use their contact form or any of a number of ways? So this tells the story of your competency as a voice actor, and it needs to be consistent. That's why you should be looking up the psychology of color when it comes to establishing a brand. It's like what is the type of voiceover work that you do? How does that reconcile with your personality? How does that reconcile with the needs of the customers that you want to attract? A lot of this stuff is very subconscious or unconscious on the part of voice seekers when they go to your website, but what's there and what isn't there speaks to your brand.  15:43 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Absolutely. And there's something to be said, like there's something almost intangible. When I go to a website and I say oh, oh, I like that, Like it's like pretty packaging, right, I mean.  15:52 I like that package, and so that makes me interested to want to find out more, and if the verbiage on the website helps me to find out more and gets me to where I need to be quickly. Because, again, I don't know. I mean, how many people go around just looking at websites to say, oh, that's a pretty website or, oh, I don't like that website. I mean, really there's a purpose, right, people are shopping around going to a website either finding information.  16:18 Maybe you somehow attracted them to get to your website to find out more about you and your brand and your voice. And if they can get that information easily and it seems to speak to you as being a credible, professional, trustworthy business, product right that they can purchase, then I think that really all has a handle on. It's like a part of the sales funnel, right? I feel like your brand is part of the sales funnel.  16:41 - Tom Dheere (Host) It absolutely is, and that also extends onto your social media platforms and the content that you're creating on the social media platform. If you're trying to brand yourself effectively and consistently, the branding on your social media platforms should line up perfectly with what's going on on your website the font, the logo, the color schemes, the banners, the verbiage and the content that comes out. All of this needs to be consistent Verbiage.  17:07 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Tom verbiage, and that means if you're on a social media platform and verbiage is coming out of your mouth that isn't necessarily conducive to promoting your brand in a positive way. You might want to think about that. That means if you're going to be controversial or you're going to be spewing verbiage in your social platforms that may be off brand. You might want to consider maybe not doing that or having a completely different brand. I feel like personal brands and voice actor brands are very close.  17:40 It used to be, where, okay, I have a business brand and I'm going to only talk about business on that and I have a personal brand, but I feel like those two brands have really melded together over the years, tom.  17:51 - Tom Dheere (Host) Oh, yes, no, they've completely blurred for a number of reasons. I mean, one reason right now is that if, through your marketing strategies, you've been able to get a voice seeker to go to your social media platforms or to your website, one thing they're trying to determine is are you human?  18:04 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah or are you an AI? That is slowly becoming more of a consideration for voice seekers, and if you're human, are you a good human.  18:12 - Tom Dheere (Host) And are you a good human there?  18:13 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) can be human actions that are controversial that would potentially harm their brand if they were to align right Strategically. We talked about strategic alignment with brands If they were to align with your brand right, it could hurt their brand.  18:27 - Tom Dheere (Host) Right. That leads me to a great point, Anne, is when it comes to your branding. To be perfectly honest, the vast majority of voice seekers aren't paying any attention to anything we're doing on social media, and they're not paying attention to much that's going on on our website. However, they will vet you. They will check out your brand for the aforementioned AI reason and for exactly what you said because nobody wants to work with a voice actor who is an NDA violator.  18:52 Sure sure, absolutely. And starts talking about auditions that they did for projects that haven't been cast yet.  18:57 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Or negatively about companies that they've worked with.  19:00 - Tom Dheere (Host) Or client questions, whether it's warranted or not.  19:02 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh my gosh, whether it's warranted or not, guys, just don't do that.  19:05 - Tom Dheere (Host) I see, specifically audiobook narrators regularly complaining about the publishers because, oh, I didn't get enough of a pronunciation guide or there were too many spelling errors on this manuscript, and I'm just as they're doing it. I'm like, what are you?  19:16 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) doing yeah yeah, why Because?  19:18 - Tom Dheere (Host) audiobook publishers are the ones that are the most likely to pay attention to your branding and pay attention to your website and pay attention to your social media platform and if you're kvetching about your client like that's a great way to lose a client.  19:32 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That's like anybody complaining about their employer. Right, hr is continually going out online to see if you're making complaints and then that's the first line of fire to get fired if you're speaking negatively. And so even if you think it's private, like in a Facebook group, and it's marked a private group, it's not. Screenshot is like literally a couple of keystrokes away, and even if it says it's private, it's not. We all know things are not private.  20:00 I mean yesterday I happened to be on a family outing at Disney and everything I talked about came up on my Facebook feed just saying so nothing is private. And so really just for your brand's sake, and so I do want to. I know now we've got into the whole what's good for your brand, but let's go back to Tom. If someone is just doing jobs through their agent, is it required that they have a website now and a brand specifically, or maybe not?  20:28 - Tom Dheere (Host) Website yes, brand maybe.  20:30 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Okay. Maybe, what's on the website then?  20:33 - Tom Dheere (Host) Okay, well, from a branding perspective logo consistency of font on the logo itself and the tagline and with the verbiage on the website the color scheme that you have established on this logo needs to align with the color scheme that is on the homepage and all the other pages, unless there's a possibility you've branded yourself based on genre or subgenre.  20:55 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Is this for voice actors who are managed or who have talent, agents only, or is this?  21:00 - Tom Dheere (Host) It's a great question. I can't speak to what voice seekers that work through managers and agents are doing. How much are they vetting the voice actors that are represented by the agents and managers that they're working with? Most of the time they're probably not. It's usually just send me these auditions. We'll pick the person that we think is the best who vocally represents this company brand message.  21:19 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Unless you're well-known, I would say right as a video game, character or an animation, character and then I think, your brand is important online. Right your actions in your social media. I'm thinking Daniel Ross, who recently, you know, is now the voice of Donald Duck. Bob Bergen has the voice of Porky. Pig, I mean and Christina Milizia, who I just interviewed as well on this podcast, and Christina Milizia who?  21:41 I just interviewed as well on this podcast the characters that they represent. She has to be careful. They have to be careful what they do online and also their actions, because a lot of them might go to cons and do autograph signing, and so that's an in-person branding as well, so they have to be very careful about their brand.  21:58 - Tom Dheere (Host) Okay, there are two groups of voice actors. There's public figures and private figures. Public figures in voiceover are those who do cartoons, video games and audiobooks. Okay, because if you're an audiobook narrator, you're being followed by authors, rights holders and listeners of the audiobooks. Okay, and it's a very public thing because these are very front-facing products audiobooks, cartoon and video game voice actors are also public figures, also just because of the fan base. The fan base really wants to know and loves to adore and follow the voice actors who are the voices of their favorite cartoon and video game characters. Everybody else is kind of clumped into the private voice actors. With the exception of, for me, inspector Gadget, red Dead Redemption and a handful of other things. I'm primarily a private voice actor. So me talking about my e-learning and her explainer experience online, nobody cares, nobody cares that?  22:59 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Tom Dheere. I'll tell you what his e-learning module.  23:03 - Tom Dheere (Host) That HR video he narrated oh for God's sakes. Like nobody does that. Nobody does that, nobody cares, nobody cares about that. And yes, that, nobody does that, nobody cares, nobody cares about that. And yes, your branding should be influenced by that Absolutely. So you want to be careful. So if you're a private voice actor, yeah, don't be an NDA violator. Don't be a client basher. Don't be some religious political whack job.  23:24 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That's all you have to worry about. And even if you're a public figure in a way that you don't think like because I know there are people who are out there that troll. I've been trolled. If you're out there as a coach, as a demo producer, I guess you can say if you've been trolled, you've made it.  23:39 - Tom Dheere (Host) Right, because then, so you actually matter. I matter in a way, but yes, I've been trolled and that's very upsetting, but Tom, I'm sure you've been trolled too, Maybe.  23:46 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I don't know if Inspector Gadget has, but I mean Inspector Gadget.  23:51 - Tom Dheere (Host) I only got trolled in that. I'll just put it to you this way. There was one person who hated my performance so much that they took the trailer for the Inspector Gadget video game and replaced my voice with Don Adams, who was the original Inspector Gadget. So You've made it Tom, congratulations actually I'll take that as a proper trolling. There you go.  24:11 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So I guess then, in essence, tom, I know you've evolved over the years with your views on branding. You don't know if it's as necessary, or maybe just branding in general has evolved. I still feel like, in this sea of voice actors, if somebody is going to see you online, then brand is important.  24:29 If you're not necessarily online, if maybe you're part-time and hey, there's a lot of amazing talent that we hear every single day on national spots that don't have websites that I don't even know. We don't even know who they are, right, Because they don't need to have that brand. So I tend to agree with you and I think that we have to continually be educated about what's important for your business when it comes to being recognized. Now, what about voice actors that are new to the industry? Is it important that they have a branded website, that they have a tagline? Is it important that they have a headshot?  25:07 - Tom Dheere (Host) Okay, I think at first it's a terrible idea. I think it's a terrible, terrible idea because what drew them to the voiceover industry may not necessarily be what keeps them in the voiceover industry. In other words, they may not be any good at what they want to do and they may turn out to be really good at something that they don't want to do. So from a branding perspective-.  25:27 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) They don't know their brand yet.  25:28 - Tom Dheere (Host) They don't know their branding because they don't know what they can book. So if you're early in your voiceover journey, us bosses are taking a little pressure off. You Don't worry about branding yet Book gigs.  25:38 See what the voiceover industry tells you are the types of genres and subgenres in the markets that you can book Then you can build a brand around that because if that's something that's bankable, if people are willing to give you money to say this kind of voiceover work, then you can build a reputation on that because, like we said, branding, storytelling, reputation all of these things are intertwined. So just to have a basic, nondescript website with your contact information, basic information about you and downloadable demos which is the most important thing to have on a website- yes, absolutely.  26:12 Then let the branding come about you and downloadable demos, which is the most important thing to have on a website. Yes, absolutely. Then let the branding come to you and then you can and you're talking visual branding. Visual branding.  26:17 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yes, I'm going to say vocal branding. I'm very much into vocal branding, depending on what genre you study with me, right. So vocally branding, that's something that you can have a good coach help you with, because they're going to help and you will discover that vocal branding in the beginning.  26:34 For whatever genre you're studying Now, that doesn't mean that you won't evolve over time right To have more vocal brands. I think you can have multiple brands that are related, but you cannot, like, if you're a young person and you sound young right, for the entirety of the time that you are younger, for a few years at least, you're going to be more of that youthful sound, probably if that's how you've been vocally branded. So I think if you're new it helps to have a good coach to help vocally brand you. But visual branding and you're right, tom, as you go you'll find out. What do you get hired for? Right, I never thought about medical and all of a sudden I started getting hired for medical and now, oh well, that makes sense now because I used to work in the medical field. So you know something I didn't know before.  27:21 - Tom Dheere (Host) Yeah, what a great coach like you can help people with is what celebrities do you sound like? What sectors of the voiceover industry can you get work in? You know there's commercials in general, but then there's automotive in particular, or home and family products, or alcohol, or boots you know what I mean or cowboy boots or whatever that sort of thing. Anne can definitely help you with that. And then when you are positioning yourself, and then when Anne helps you make your demo, it can help with that vocal positional branding. So the spots that you would do on a demo with Anne would align with the celebrities that you can sound like. Not imitations, but just like reminiscent of.  27:58 You know what I mean. I'll give you an example For me right now. For the past year or so it's been Ryan Reynolds. I've been booking spots because I have a Ryan Reynolds sound.  28:07 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, you do.  28:08 - Tom Dheere (Host) A voice actor just connected with me on LinkedIn and said do you know that you sound like Ryan Reynolds and I don't have that branding anywhere on my website. I'm seriously considering doing it because these casting notices that tend to have the Ryan Reynolds celebrity reference I'm booking. So that may be something I would need to consider. But again, that's the industry. At this point in my journey, that's the industry telling me, because Ryan Reynolds wasn't a factor when I started in the 90s. But if I was starting now and working with Anne, she's got a good enough ear to know that like, yeah, you got kind of a Ryan Reynolds sound. Maybe we should get kind of these kind of quirky, fun, cute little spots on your demo to showcase that particular sound.  28:50 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Absolutely Well. That was a very involved branding conversation but I love it, I love it. I feel like we still could go on, and, on, and on. But, thank you, tom. So much for that. Guys, I'm going to give a big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl. You too, can network and connect like bosses like Tom and myself. Find out more at IPdtlcom. Have an amazing week, guys, and we will see you next week. Thanks so much.  29:20 - Intro (Announcement) Bye. Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, anne Ganguza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at vobosscom and receive exclusive content, industry-rev, revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution, with permission. Coast-to-coast connectivity via IPDTL.   

One of the first places voice actors often look for auditions is on Pay to Play sites. For a fee, these sites let you audition for jobs from potential clients all over the world. But these sites can have downsides, including unethical business practices. Controversy over these sites has been highlighted at voiceover conferences and throughout social media. In this episode, the BOSSES delve into navigating online casting platforms and cultivating loyal client relationships outside of these sites. We discuss the investment of time and resources needed to be successful and the importance of evolving with the industry to avoid getting left behind. Ever-evolving AI technology challenges us to redefine our roles and strategies, and we tackle this head-on sharing insights into how we can adapt to remain indispensable. 00:00 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey VO Bosses. Ann Ganguzza here. Are you struggling to market that boss voice of yours? Well, let me tell you about the VO Boss Blast. With a custom vetted list and personalized emails, we can help you get your marketing message out to those who hire. Find out more at vobosscom and let's blast off together.  00:24 - Intro (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss a VO boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza.  00:43 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey, everyone welcome to the VO Boss Podcast. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza. Hey everyone, welcome to the VO Boss Podcast. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and we are here with the Real Boss series with my good friend and guest co-host, Tom Dheere. Hey, Tom Dheere.  00:55 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Hello Anne Ganguza.  00:57 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Tom Dheere, it was so awesome to see you at VO Atlanta. I have to say.  01:01 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Yes, the drive-by hug Right.  01:03 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I know and I saw you for like a split second, but still it was good for that split second to get the hug in. Absolutely, I know the two of us were insanely busy but getting back together since VO Atlanta. There was a big bomb dropped at VO Atlanta with the Drama, bomb.  01:17 Yeah, with the online casting panel, which began with an apology from the CEO of Voicescom. And so, hmm, let's talk, shall we? Let's dish, let's dish, let's, let's, let's fill some tea. So what were your initial? Were you surprised and what were your initial thoughts? And actually we should just recount for the bosses who were not there at VO Atlanta, the very first thing, on a panel of online casting with J Michael Collins, j Michael asked the acting CEO of Voicescom was he prepared to apologize to the voiceover community for the actions on behalf of Voicescom in the past few years, now that David Cicerelli has stepped down and indeed there was an apology. So, tom, were you there, present in the audience?  02:07 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Well, yes, I was there. I was asked to be there actually. Me too, me too Okay so you were part of that little group of people that were asked to make sure that we would be present at the online casting. Because then we could talk about it like this so then we could talk about it, or we could step up to the mic and ask some pointed questions.  02:23 But to give everybody a little bit of background is that Voicescom has had a pretty bad reputation for a good 10 years, Because I think the first great resignation was in 2014, which is when the interview with Graham Spicer came out and the article that somebody wrote showing how, you know, the same casting notice was posted on Voice123 and Voicescom, but the Voicescom was thousands of dollars lower. So they were caught kind of red-handed doing what many would consider some unethical practices.  02:53 Double-dipping, triple-dipping, Right so Jay O'Connor, who is the acting CEO of Voicescom, is also the son of the recently deceased Supreme Court Justice, sandra Day O'Connor, and he also works for Morgan Stanley.  03:10 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And Morgan Stanley was the company that put $17 million investment into Voicescom, not a voiceover company.  03:13 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Not a voiceover company. They invested that roughly six, seven years ago. So I'm assuming that David Cicerelli stepped down because he didn't come through on his promise to make their money back. So that's why they put one of their own people in there. So I'm assuming Jay's job is very simple make their money back. So that's just kind of the background. And JMC who I just had him on my Ask Me Anything said that one of the conditions of Jay appearing at VO Atlanta was that he apologized for the past business practices and behaviors. So it made me think about the word responsible. Jay was not CEO of Voicescom when all the interesting stuff happened. However, if you break down the word responsible, it's response able able to respond.  03:57 Oh, I like that Well yeah because, if you think about it, Jay is not guilty of the stuff that Voicescom did under their previous administration, but now he is able to respond to all of that stuff. So you know that late last year Voicescom signed the Fair Voices Pledge and altered their terms of service, the Fair AI.  04:19 Thank you Nava and Tim Freelander and Karin and all those wonderful people there. So what was extra funny is I was sitting next to Miranda Ellis, who's our buddy, who helps run VA for VO, and we were talking about it. We're wondering who's that guy up there? And then I was telling her about the whole Jay O'Connor thing and then JMC said and here is CEO of Voicescom, jay O'Connor, and we're like oh okay, there he is.  04:47 And yes, he did apologize. He gave them an F for how they handled the situation, but they said they're going to be working on moving forward and a lot of pointed questions were asked. I was surprised that he was there. I was surprised at the apology. I think he handled most of the questions from the audience pretty well, pretty professionally.  05:03 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I wasn't surprised at the apology. I mean, j Michael basically said are you prepared to apologize? And when you are a CEO of a company, I mean at some point, like I imagine, you're going to work that out politically correctly in front of an audience of thousands, knowing that we would be talking about this. What was he going to say? To be quite honest, I mean, I wasn't surprised that he apologized. I wasn't surprised that he took Jay Michael on it, because, guess what, there's business for him sitting there in the audience.  05:33 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Oh yeah, potential customers. There was a sea of potential customers in there and ones who had left the platform who now could be persuaded to return to the platform as well. I did make it a point to talk to him afterwards. I as well. I did make it a point to talk to him afterwards. I first said I'm sorry about your mother's recent passing.  05:46 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh, thank you.  05:47 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) I say thank you on behalf of I know he's a person.  05:50 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) He is a person, yeah, Like he's just a guy.  05:52 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) He probably didn't know Voicescom existed, right? So, like he doesn't know about this stuff and we have to give him the benefit of the doubt, of course of the doubt, we have to assume he's an ethical, response-able person and I said hey, if you need some insight from boots-on-the-ground people, let me know. I gave him my card. He said thank you, he was very kind. So am I optimistic about Voicescom? Cautiously pessimistic? No, yeah, cautiously optimistic. So I'll say cautiously pessimistic. But you know what? I'll tell you something, anne. I rejoined in September of 2023 because they did change their terms of service, they did sign the Fair Voices Pledge and also, as the VO strategist, I have students who want to understand what's going on and if it should be used and how it should be used Yep.  06:37 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) completely agree with that. So if nothing else.  06:39 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) I wanted to create an account to understand how the platform functions, how to feed the algorithm.  06:44 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) If we are going to be working with students I mean myself included. I mean honestly. I mean we have to know about these platforms so that we can talk about them and recommend them or not to our students. So I feel like I'm a member of Voice123. Now I will say that I was not able to stay for the full session at VO Atlanta because literally they scheduled that right in the middle of my X session, so after 20 minutes I had to leave and so I did not get a chance to speak to him myself personally. But I know a lot of people that I've talked to did, and Mark Scott also did a nice recap on his podcast about the conversation and his conversation with him as well, and myself and Law had a discussion about it as well on a podcast. So I think it's good that we're talking about it. But I'd like to go further, tom. I'd like to talk to you about pay-to-plays in general, what part they play now in the voiceover industry and where you might see them going in the future.  07:36 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) It's funny because maybe 15 years ago they were a disruptive force in the voiceover industry, not unlike AI right now, which is currently a disruptive force in the voiceover industry. And, like I've said about AI and you and I talked about this a couple of episodes ago when it comes to disruptive technologies or business models, you can fight it, you can ignore it, you can adapt to it or you can embrace it. So everybody has their own journey and their own path on how to define success as a voice actor and what they need to do. You want to do all high-end cartoons and video games. You need representation. You need to join SAG-AFTRA. You may need to move to LA or New York or Dallas and do a boots-on-the-ground thing. If you want to narrate audiobooks, that's a different track. If you want to narrate e-learning modules, that's a different track. The best way that I can illustrate this is talking about my journey on Voice123. I joined Voice123 in 2006.  08:47 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) no-transcript.  08:49 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Yeah, I joined it the first year that I went full-time as a voice actor. I learned a lot on there.  08:56 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It wasn't my first year as a voice actor, but it might've been my second or third, and it was an opportunity. It was a new opportunity to get work, and I remember at the time. How else did you get work outside of if you had an agent? I did not have an agent at the time. I was working on the online platforms like Freelancer back in the day I mean, it was Freelancer, I don't know if it was Odesk.  09:18 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Odesk Elance, Elance.  09:23 - Intro (Announcement) I was on all those too.  09:24 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I was on all of those too, and then Voice123 came out and I joined in 2006 as well, and actually it worked well for me Although you have actually created a record of how well you've done on that platform throughout the years, and so I'm eager to hear about that.  09:42 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Sure. So for those of you who are listening to this, I'll just read this to you as best I can, but I've got a little slide up here. So I joined in 2006. There was only one tier, it was $200. That first year, I made $1,100. So a great return on investment. Next year, rejoined, made $2,750. So that was great. 2008, it went up to $300. I made $2,650. 2009, made $1,. I made $2650,. 2009, made $1950,. 2010, I made $13,000.  10:08 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) What changed.  10:09 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) I got better at auditioning and I also landed a big textbook like a science textbook. So that was a big chunk of that $13,000.  10:17 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So let me ask you, in those years, in those early years, how many auditions were you doing? Were you doing 10 a day, 20 a day, as many as possible?  10:26 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) I was doing a lot less than that. I was doing a handful a day, but also my direct marketing strategies were working pretty well, so it was complementing. So I was blogging and doing social media and posting on Facebook and Twitter and stuff like that, so it was part of a balanced breakfast, absolutely. 2011, made almost $8,000. 2012, I renewed, but I only made $350. Now what happened in 2012 is that my voiceover career turned the corner. I went full-time in 2006, but late 2011, all the seeds I'd been planting for all those years started to bloom. So I found myself auditioning a lot less because I was just booking a lot more as a result of my direct marketing strategy.  11:08 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Right and then also probably repeat clients at that time were starting. I was also getting repeat clients.  11:13 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) So yeah, so that was happening too. Now, in 2013, I did not renew. I made only $300 just from a legacy client. But the main reason I didn't renew is because there was a cultural thing going on in voiceover where a lot of voice actors were saying that if you are on a pay-to-play site, you are contributing to the lowering of rates, you are a bottom feeder, you're enabling predatory practices, and I made the dumbest decision in my voiceover career, which was I stopped auditioning on Voice123. It was a huge mistake. So, 2014, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, I made virtually nothing because I didn't have a paid account.  11:50 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) But also what happened in those years. Had you gone more to direct methods of marketing? Yes, okay.  11:57 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Yes, direct marketing was my main jam. 2014 was, to be totally honest, and that was the year I made the most money as a voice actor. And then in 2015, 16, 17, 18, my income started fluctuating wildly $20,000, $30,000 rises and falls year over year. One of my top 10 clients replaced me with AI back then too.  12:17 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) In what year was that?  12:18 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) That was 2018, I think, A top 10 client. I was replaced by AI and then 2019, I made nothing. 2019 also, there was like a major downshift in my voiceover revenue because I noticed almost all of my direct marketing strategy stopped working. So did I all of a sudden become a lousy voice actor? Maybe Did industry trends change and my voice was out of fashion? Definitely not. It was becoming even more in fashion more young, energetic, friendly guy next door sound, which is still in demand. So, after contemplation and talking to friends and professionals, I rejoined for $888 in 2020. And now there was a tiered plan.  12:59 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, exactly I was going to say at this point bosses, pay-to-plays evolved. They used to be just one fee and it was usually around $200 to $300. I remember when Voicescom came on the scene it was the cheaper of the two, for $200, when Voice 123 was at $295, I believe, or something like that. And so then there was a bunch of people that joined Voicescom because they kind of undercut the competition, so to speak, which maybe we should have looked at that in the beginning and said, oh, look at that Now there's competition in the online community and online casting community because Voicescom was the second, I would say, largest platform to come out and they grew fairly quickly, I think because of that lower price point.  13:42 And they also did a bunch of good marketing, I would say, on Google. I think they did a bunch of Google ads and they had a bunch of. Seo that they were working on, and so they became really, really popular around that time.  13:58 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) So what happened in 2020 when I rejoined? So I rejoined like it was a Black Friday sale. Basically, I had one month and in one month I made $1,300. But here's what I noticed. Well, I made my money back immediately. But the other thing I noticed is that when you're on Voice123 and you can click on the client number, sometimes you can see an email address associated with that client profile and often it's the extension of productioncompanycom and I started noticing production companies that I used to work with or that on Voice123. So I was like oh, interesting. So apparently there has been a migration of ethical, well-paying production companies making quality content that had been slowly making their way to Voice123 and probably Voicescom too, because it's easier to curate a roster, it's easier to post an audition.  14:51 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh my gosh, yeah, you have hundreds and thousands of people of different voices on these platforms and it can be a little bit cheaper. I know that was the whole thing, because here you're not necessarily saying how much will it cost, right, when you have a direct contact, versus specify your budget, right? A lot of these pay-to-plays asked you to specify a budget and so if you specified a lower budget, you could still have hundreds of people responding to this, because it was like freelancer Odesk. It started to become the lowest bid, wins almost.  15:23 - Intro (Announcement) Yes.  15:24 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Like kind of thought, and especially when you're talking after the many years of online casting, it just then became a thing where, oh, I can get cheaper voiceover, and for a business, right, I can have lots of different voices I can choose from and it's probably cheaper. And so for a business, I mean really, where's that business decision, unless you've caught them right and you've become like a valued voiceover actor for them, that you've given them value over and over and over again. Now, all of a sudden, they have hundreds of thousands of people they can choose from that are credible, right, and they're cheaper. So business decision, tom?  16:00 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Yeah, here's the thing about that too is like since 2020, since I rejoined, my gigs aren't $100 or $200. They're $4, $5, $6, over $1,000.  16:08 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Because you can specify that.  16:15 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Because I can specify that and that also tells me that there are ethical, well-paying production companies on Voice123 in addition to bottom feeders. So in spring of 2021, the algorithm changed All of a sudden. The auditions there was a lot less and they were a lot lower paying, so I didn't renew.  16:27 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, they redid their platform a couple of times completely. So that caused a lot of commotion in the voiceover world.  16:35 And, interestingly enough, tom, I just want to bring this up who else was sitting on that stage at VO Atlanta but Rolf Veldman, who was always the one from Voice123 that got a lot of heat from these conferences. But I love Rolf. I think, rolf, he took it year after year after year right as a person who was not necessarily in the voiceover business either, but he would show up and he would respond and he was, I believe, transparent, which then I gave him my respect for that Because, if nothing else, he was transparent.  17:11 He finally was on the stage and probably going wow, the guy from Voicescom is getting all the heat this year.  17:18 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Oh, he was grinning from ear to ear. He was eating it with a spoon. He loved it. So 2022, I rejoined again, but this time I joined on the $2,200 tier. So this was late March 2022. In that year, I made $12,000. And then 2023, which is my first full calendar year of being under the $2,200 tier, I made almost $19,000.  17:39 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That's a definite return on investment. So.  17:42 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Yeah, and as of this year, 2022, and today, as of literally today, April, I have made $6,200.  17:50 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Now is the majority of that from new clients or clients that are coming back to you.  17:55 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Well, that's the thing, it's a combination. So there's two sets of clients, you know, there's your audition and pray clients, and then there's your legacy clients.  18:05 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Audition and pray Yep, absolutely Right.  18:06 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Commercials tend to be audition and pray. Cartoons, video games tend to be audition and pray. E-learning, corporate explainer, more of the audio book. Often those tend to be non-audition and pray because often you join an e-learning roster or you join a telephony roster and you don't audition, they just send you work. So with Voice123, there's a lot of them. One particular one comes to mind I auditioned for a corporate, short, three-minute, corporate industrial about bananas in a grocery store. If you work in the produce department, how do you handle the bananas to make sure they don't bruise, how to display them properly, quality check and all that stuff. It was a gig. Three minutes directed session, $550. So I'm like okay, that's like right in the sweet spot for that. That's like perfectly fine For three minutes directed session, great. And then they sent me nine more without auditioning.  18:59 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.  19:00 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) So an audition in Prey see, that's what people think about Voice123 is that it's an audition in Prey machine. It is if you suck, and it is if you can't audition well, and it is if you can't deliver the goods once you audition and book the spot. So I do have a lot of new clients, but a lot of them, a lot of them, have come back for more.  19:18 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And with Voice123,. One of the big differences of the platforms is that you can take the client off the platform. They have never intercepted and I don't believe that they will, because I think that's Rolf's claim to fame and how they lasted right through the turmoil of people being angry at them was that you could always take the client off the platform. Now, voicescom does everything in their power to make you not take the client off the platform, and that is where they get into people labeling them as double and triple dippers.  19:50 So not only are you paying for that yearly membership fee and they also have different levels. But when you have a managed job or any job you cannot disclose, you won't know their email address, you cannot work with them off platform and people have been threatened if it's found out that they're working with them off platform. So thoughts on that business policy. Tom, what do you think about that?  20:17 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) I'm going to answer that question with a question. Do you think voice actors should pay to audition for anything?  20:22 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, you know, yeah, that's a really, really good question. I mean, I don't think so.  20:27 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) I don't think so to a point.  20:29 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I think they should pay for a platform that gives them opportunities. So that's a tough one, right? I mean should they pay to audition.  20:38 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Well, I think of it this way If you told me 20, 25 years ago that I would have to pay to watch a Yankee game on television, I would have said you're out of your mind. And now they have the yes Network, where you have to pay to have access to get the quality content that you want. That being a Yankee game and auditions are quality content and that's a subscription model of a lot of businesses today.  21:02 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Right, and even I've considered it for this podcast, right, all right, so you can get a certain amount of listens free, but there is quality content or maybe more in-depth content that you would subscribe to.  21:13 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) And you do keep it with subscriptions, like Patreon pages do, and things like that. Yes, it's a common business model. Here's another question Do you think voice actors should get paid to do auditions?  21:24 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, that's a good question. Not necessarily. It depends on if that gets used right, If their audition gets used for the job, if you're getting paid.  21:32 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Is it a demo or a scratch track?  21:34 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think so. But now, okay, let's just say you pay for the option or you pay for the opportunity to get auditions. Should then there be an escrow fee? Right, and that's what a lot of people have the problem with an escrow fee. And should there be a managed services fee? And should there be a managed services fee? Now, anybody that manages a job, right that project, manages the job. A manager takes a percentage, an agent takes a percentage, but then on top of an annual fee right to audition, plus an escrow fee. Now, if you remember, tom, in the beginning Voicescom's escrow fee was an option and I believe is it still an option. If you want to do, because escrow was an option back in the early days, you could choose to have them hold the money or say I'm going to get my money guaranteed if I put it in escrow, and then you paid a fee for that.  22:27 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) I think it's mandatory now.  22:29 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, yeah, so that's triple dipping to a lot of people right, Get rid of one of those fees, I mean do you feel that's right.  22:40 - Intro (Announcement) I mean, I think it's fair that it's either you pay to be on the site and there's no additional fees or being on the website is free and then they're taking a percentage of it, not both.  22:48 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Now, you weren't there for the Q&A. Our friend, miranda Ellis, who I was sitting next to in the audience, got up and she said I have a problem with the fact that one of the casting spec options is broadcast in perpetuity. And she said that's a big problem for a lot of voice actors because that can create permanent conflicts. She asked are you going to get rid of that? And he said no, because we would lose a lot of business that way. That's not a good answer. That's the only thing I was truly unhappy about with his answers, but he owned it.  23:17 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, honestly, I think that it's a responsible action for an online platform like that to like lead the way. Right, because here's the deal. Right, you're talking about consumer mentality. I mean in voiceover jobs, I mean if people are not used to. If you're a small company, you're not used to hiring a voice artist and you're not sure, like, how does that work? Right, I mean in perpetuity. I mean if you work for a company, right, and they hire you, you sign a contract, you're working full-time, everything you do for that company is property of the company, and that just became that same mentality. Right for the freelancers Okay, I'm going to pay you.  23:53 Work for hire yeah work for hire and I pay you and that's it, and that's where the mentality stayed for a lot of companies. I think if you are a large service provider to a voiceover, you should take the lead and do what's right and do what's ethical, and that to me would be like start it and say no in perpetuity. There's not an option for in perpetuity.  24:14 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Right.  24:14 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And that would be a nice thing. Otherwise we sit here and we fight, and we fight, and we fight like we've always fought right To get rid of in perpetuity. Do you think in perpetuity will ever go away, tom?  24:24 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) I think it will always exist in some form yeah, I agree.  24:30 The thing that concerns me the most about it is that, like, if there's a casting notice and it says erotic, there is explicit sexual content. Everybody knows what that means. They know what they're getting into. If it's a casting notice for a political ad Democrat, republican or whatever you look at the script and you go oh okay, do I feel comfortable with this? You know what you're getting into. You can make a value decision. If it's these text-to-speech things, some of these casting notices, or if it's an online perpetuity, a lot of the voice actors don't know what that means. They don't know what they're getting into, and that's where SAG-AFTRA, nava and other organizations that's where the onus is on them to educate, to make sure that people are aware of what these things mean. That should not be the case. Voicescom should not have that option or the ability to modify the option.  25:16 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Exactly. You know what I mean Exactly.  25:17 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Because there's genres and sub-genres. You know like, if you want a public service announcement forever to technically broadcast and have that be in perpetuity, you can make a case for that.  25:26 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) You know what I mean.  25:27 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) But it's too broad and it isn't explained. There should be like a little button or a little like question mark or a little thing next to it. You click on that and it's like this is what this means.  25:37 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And voice actors should have been educated many, many, many years ago, right? And what does it mean when you deliver an audio file, right? This is where, okay, we're creatives, we're good at what we do, but we also this is where the business sense comes in. Right, here, have my audio.  25:53 And usually what happens is something bad has to happen for us to like say, oh shoot, I probably should have a terms of service or a statement of work or a contract for all our non-broadcast stuff. So all our non-broadcast people are like, yeah, sure, give me a hundred dollars or give me $500, give me a thousand, that's perfect. And then all of a sudden, they find that their voice is out there on TikTok, you know, I mean, I'm not saying that that was Bev, but things like that happen, right. Or it even happens today with agents that are looking after our best interests, where sometimes you'll find a commercial that was supposed to only be regional which is now in a different place. And how do we know about it? Not until somebody tells us about it. And so we should. Now, with the technology, there should be a way to voice print and tag our audio so that we know if it's not where it should be, and it's being used.  26:41 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) And they're working on that? Yeah, exactly, they are working on that, exactly.  26:44 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Wow, I really feel as though we should have a part two and a part three and a part four with this conversation. But wow, tom, good stuff. Thank you so much for sharing. I love that you shared the real numbers. I mean, anybody that knows me knows how much I love talking numbers because it really brings a level of realism to the bosses and I think that we all need to really see those numbers and it really helps to educate us on making good decisions for our businesses. So, thank you, tom, it was wonderful talking to you again and I look forward to the next podcast. Bosses, I'm going to give a great big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl. You, too, can connect and network like bosses real bosses like Tom and myself. Find out more at IPDTLcom. All right, have an amazing week, guys, and we'll see you next week. Bye.  27:33 - Intro (Announcement) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, Anne Ganguza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at vobosscom and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via IPDTL.   

We've all been there—faced with the decision to work with a business whose practices don't quite sit right. It's a crossroads that can define not just your career, but your character. The BOSSES tackle this head-on, discussing what it really means when corporations say "I'm sorry" and whether change follows their apologies. They also peel back the curtain on the pricing battles both in voiceover work and in the consumer world, questioning why we shouldn't always accept the status quo and, instead, fight for what's fair. This episode isn't just about the voiceover industry—it's a broader look at how we, as professionals and consumers, navigate the moral maze of modern business. 00:01 - Intro (Host) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss a VO boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza.  00:20 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey, hey, everyone, welcome to the VO Boss Podcast and the Boss Superpower Series. Hey, hey, everyone, welcome to the VO Boss Podcast and the Boss Superpower Series. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and I am back in the booth with the lovely, illustrious Lau Lapides.  00:31 - Lau Lapides (Host) Oh, hey Lau hey girl Nice to see you Love being back.  00:36 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I know I feel like it's been an age. I feel like we just haven't seen each other in a while, but yet we did just see each other at VO Atlanta and it was not enough time. The two of us were so insanely busy that I feel like I didn't get enough quality time with you or quality time with anybody oh goodness.  00:53 - Lau Lapides (Host) And that's really funny when you think about it, because when you go to a conference, especially those of us who are going in and we're speaking and we're facilitating, part of the reason why we go is not just to educate but also to meet people and talk and have conversations. And I'm telling you, between the sound, the noise factor, the lights, the running around, the coffee I don't know about you, but I'm taking many naps the coffee, I love it, I love it. The coffee, it's a lot, it's a lot on you at once in a very short amount of time.  01:27 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Right, but we did learn a lot, didn't we?  01:29 We did, we definitely did.  01:31 One of the panels that was brought up and I don't know if this discussion should be entirely about this that most of us are familiar with that in the very beginning of this voiceover industry emerged as a top player in the pay-to-play space who had some questionable business practices and ethics, and I think that that is a really wonderful topic to talk about your clients and business ethics and how you choose to work with your clients or not work with your clients depending on, let's say, their business practices or even your own.  02:07 Have you taken a look at your own business practices? Are they ethical? Where do you stand on that? And I think that here's the elephant in the room. So the CEO of Voicescom was present on a panel at VO Atlanta and the very first thing that Jay Michael asked him to do was to apologize to the community on behalf of his company on the way that he treated the community in terms of maybe double, triple dipping into the funds that voice talent pay to be on that platform, and I thought I'd ask what your thoughts are and what your knowledge is of Voicescom and their past business practices.  02:46 - Lau Lapides (Host) Right. Well, I think you know we're all in the know about that it's a large industry but it's a small industry. If you stay in this industry probably like many others, for your lifetime and you're in it, you really learn a lot and you know a lot and you know a lot of people. It's very in a facetious way. It's very incestuous in that it's a family-driven business where our friends are like our family and we treat our clients like our family and we really get to know one another quite closely. And one of the issues that we're talking about now, especially with Voicescom, is really just taking care of one another and being aware of best business practices that you want to have as your guiding light for your business. Right, and Voicescom really for a long time, has really gone down the path, the dark path, right.  03:33 The dark web or whatever they call that, a dark path, the deep path of nefarious business practices that have caught on very early and now I think most people know about it, unless they're just coming into the business. And you and I feel the same way. We're just not for it. We're not for working hard and working ethically and working with integrity and working for clients, but not doing it under fair practices.  04:01 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, you know, back in the day, voicescom, when they emerged actually, I believe the very first platform to emerge was well outside of freelancer and those types of platforms was Voice123. And I remember I was an early adopter of Voice123. And then Voicescom came along not too long after that and the owner of that company, the Cicerellis, david and Stephanie, I believe it's- yeah.  04:22 C Cicerelli, were well-known in the community and used to show up to VO Atlanta and the conferences, and they really made a stake in the pay-to-play and became a popular pay-to-play in the industry. And along the way, somewhere I can't even say exactly when it happened, but along the way there became like a fee that was known as the pay-to-plays developed. You would pay a fee to belong to it and so that would give you the opportunities to audition. And then there was this thing that they introduced called escrow, and escrow was if you wanted to make sure that you got paid, then Voicescom would hold that payment for you and then when the job was completed, they would then release that payment, and so as a fee for that holding right the escrow, they would receive a fee.  05:05 And so I remember at that time people were kind of like I think after a year or so of that, people started to question that Isn't that double dipping? It's like you're charging the talent twice, they've already paid to belong to the platform and now you're charging an escrow fee on top of that in order to hold the money. But it was a guarantee that you would get paid. So consider them like a bank right. So first of all, let me ask you your opinion of that. Do you think that that is a fair and ethical practice for a business? Oh, okay. And do you think that is considered double?  05:36 - Lau Lapides (Host) dipping. I do, I do, I absolutely do. You know it's funny. This was me in my early naive mind. I always thought of those platforms as online agencies in a certain way, because what they're doing is they're matchmaking. They're presenting clients to you that you're not going to get on your own, most likely You're not going to meet on your own, and they're presenting it in a way where they do not want you to go private with those clients. In other words, they don't want you to acquire those clients offline. They want you to stay within the platform and use them as the agents. So I'll call them an agency. They don't call themselves an agency, but that's the same premise, right? But a legitimate agency does not charge you anything to be with them. They're going to take their commission off your booking. So it's a totally different business model and therefore they're not an agency.  06:28 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So interesting. So I'm going to play devil's advocate here and I'm going to say not coming from the agency world, right, but coming from the business world, right, the escrow was an option. At that point, you did not have to decide to put money in escrow. But if you decided to put your faith in them and use the escrow model, they would then take a fee on top of that. So let's say it wasn't an agency, let's say it was a bank fee, right? Would you agree?  06:53 Then, if you thought of it that way and you weren't thinking of them as an agency, in order for you to belong to the platform, they provided you, maybe not matchmaking, but they provided opportunities for you. I mean, they were matchmaking through the algorithm, so to speak, but as a business, as strictly as a business, not thinking of it as an agency. As a business, they were providing you with opportunities. So you paid for that on a yearly basis or whatever, a monthly basis. And then if you wanted them to guarantee the money and hold on to the money because if the client didn't pay them, well, they still had to pay you then you would pay a fee no-transcript.  08:01 - Lau Lapides (Host) I don't want that service. I'm willing to take the incurred risk.  08:04 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And they allowed that Right. They allowed that in the beginning. I do remember that.  08:07 - Lau Lapides (Host) That is okay. I'll go down that road with them because I'm paying for a service, I'm paying for a platform service and those are valued leads. I get that, it's legitimate, it's valued leads, I'm getting bookings, perfect. But still the control is in my hands when they took that away, when they take that option away, then the nature of it changes in the mind of the consumer. So to me it's not an easy yes or no. It's more like how much control do I have when I'm working with that partner? Sure, sure. What do you think, annie?  08:37 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, I think, because I remember seeing it evolve right and it evolved slowly over time. So I think in a lot of instances they thought that the evolution of those policies and practices would not be noticed by the community. Now, I believe once they decided to not allow people to take customers off the platform, right, that became more of how were they going to enforce it right?  09:01 So, in order to, enforce it, escrow became like non-negotiable. It was a thing that they did, and so they took control of that. Now, a few years down the road, right then, it turned out to be managed projects. Now, on top of that, right as a service, they would manage the entire project, in case it was a larger project and you needed to cast, let's say, multiple roles or it ended up being a long-term project.  09:27 They would manage the project and then there was a fee on top of that. It was no straightforward fee. At this point it was okay. It was a separate negotiation between Voicescom and the client for a particular amount of money which they did not then disclose to the member or the voice talent that got the job right. Then they became the company that managed the job and paid the voice talent and paid their own employees to manage that job, which there is a certain overhead in managing a job like that. I've been a project manager yeah, they're casting.  10:01 - Lau Lapides (Host) They're casting, they're doing project management. They're taking care of the money. They're doing reach out for the leads. Exactly, they're getting the leads in right.  10:08 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So there's an additional fee. So now to some people in the industry not even thinking about that, it's triple dipping and your thoughts on that.  10:15 - Lau Lapides (Host) I agree.  10:16 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yes, yes, at that point, because there's no control left for the voice. Talent, right, yes, correct, I'm on that side At this point. When you don't offer the talent an option to opt out of escrow, now, theoretically you don't have to accept a managed job, right, you do?  10:31 - Lau Lapides (Host) not have to accept a managed job.  10:32 - Intro (Host) So, see how they played the edge.  10:35 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) They played the edge of, I would say, good business ethics and good business practices, but not unlike a lot of big companies out there who maybe you're not so privy. It's just because they're managing income that you are generating. Think about it right they took your choices away. That's what they did. Well, they really didn't take your choice away on a managed job. They did not.  11:00 - Lau Lapides (Host) Okay, but let me ask you this question I don't know how many tiers they have. I have a client that recently showed me something like six or seven tiers or eight tiers of options of different levels. Well, why aren't you doing that? On the other end, just give us the option of the tiers of involvement that we want to have you as a partner. So if I'm early, I don't know what I'm doing. I need all the help in the world. I might go for a higher tier because I'm going to want you to manage everything. I'm going to want you to bank the money. I'm going to want you to take care of me and hold my hand. But if I'm into it five or ten years, I don't need that because I know the practice, I understand how to take care of myself and take the calculated risk. But the option could easily be there. They're offering all these tiers for the membership itself.  11:46 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So I think, when it comes down to it again, I'm playing devil's advocate, right? I don't want people to say, oh my God, shelovesvoicescom advocate, right? I don't want people to say, oh my God, she loves Voicescom. But honestly, from a business standpoint, right, I do believe if you've not given the talent an opportunity to opt out of things, then you are triple dipping. However, they kept it right on the edge there where at one point and I'm not exactly sure, forgive me for not knowing this I'm not exactly sure about the escrow anymore. I don't know if that's an option or not anymore, if it's just it grow anymore.  12:15 - Lau Lapides (Host) I don't know if that's an option or not anymore, if it's just it's now like standard that they will pay you. I don't know if that was that ever an option, oh it was.  12:19 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It absolutely was an option.  12:20 - Lau Lapides (Host) That was a long time ago. It was a long time ago, that was early.  12:24 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Because I remember joining Voice123 back in 2004,. Maybe even earlier than that, I can't remember In the early 2000s, but it was an option. You did not have to choose escrow, and so I believe that if that's not an option anymore, they're definitely double dipping. And I think with the managed yeah, I mean absolutely with the managed. So there are people who say they should give up the yearly fee right for providing opportunities, or the membership fee, or they should give up the escrow or they should give up the managed fee.  12:56 - Intro (Host) Right Any one of those, and so.  12:58 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I do not know exactly what the new CEO at Voicescom said in the panel, because I had to go teach my own ex-session at the time, but he did indeed apologize on behalf of the company. So here's my question, laha what do you feel about an apology made? And of course, he was not CEO of the company back then? Here's my question, laha what do you feel about an apology made? And, of course, he was not CEO of the company back then? He had no prior knowledge of what was happening. He doesn't even come from a voiceover background. What is your thought about the apology?  13:24 - Lau Lapides (Host) Well, I treat it the same as any business and certainly as politics as well. I think he's a front man, I think he's probably a diplomat in certain ways, as a leader and someone who knows it is the right and ethical thing to do and what is expected of a community that he does not want to lose the partnership with. So is it honest? I don't know. Is it meant to be followed through? Who knows? And is there going to be a policy change? We will only know once we see it. It could be completely empty. It could be completely to satisfy the emotional feelings of talent which, quite frankly, at the end of the day doesn't mean very much if there's no policy change. So I say, wait and see. Does anything change after that? I think it was a good first move on his part.  14:13 It was a smart chess move. It was no skin off his nose. He probably doesn't even know what voiceover does for the most part.  14:20 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And everybody's like, well, he took a beating. And I'm like, well, I mean gosh. Remember Rolf a few years back from Voice 123. Every time he came on stage he took a beating. And I remember seeing Rolf this year and saying well, rolf, at least you won't get the brunt of it this year. And he laughed.  14:36 - Lau Lapides (Host) Exactly, and you know what, annie, I have to say. He said that's what a CEO does. Let me tell you, these Wall Street-type cats could care less. In fact, they plan those for their Saturday morning. They have a ball at Target practice. No one knows, no one understands, understands like what a boardroom is like unless they lived in a boardroom or lived in corporate America or lived in executive C fights. Like no one gets that. I remember my husband, who's now a CFO controller type. He said boy, when I was coming up the reins and I was already a controller at that I was dealing with ownership of a company and they would literally get up and throw a vase of flowers at me and it would hit the wall and crash. Literally, they would throw things at each other.  15:20 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So I really think— it's dog-eat-dog kind of. You know what I mean. Yeah, I think that.  15:24 - Lau Lapides (Host) that's like we want to feel as talented, satisfied that we got some comeuppance in the deal.  15:30 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, I'm sorry oh my God, I just rolled my eyes.  15:35 I mean, guys, I love the voiceover community Do not get me wrong but sometimes the drama, okay, I'm just saying we've got to remember guys, we are dealing with businesses, when we deal with these platforms and when we deal with our clients, they are businesses and in reality, in our own little bubble, we may think you know what I mean that, oh my God, yes, and I want. We may think you know what I mean that, oh my god, yes, and I want to say, you know, I'd love for everybody to be human and say, yes, they need to be good people and good humans and ethical. But gosh, it's not that way in a lot of places it's not that way, you have to open your eyes and be savvy and be smart.  16:08 yes, when you are dealing with businesses, that now for me and I would say a lot you too, I mean, do I want to deal with a business that I feel has questionable ethics and practices? No, I don't. I am fortunate that in my business I'm not dependent on that money, so I can choose who I work with, and I think that's the really wonderful thing about us in our industry that you can choose who you work with. Right and for me, that's always been where I felt like I won the corporate game If I was working for a particular company. And I work with a lot of students who they work in the corporate world and at some point they all want to get out of it because they don't feel appreciated or loved or they do a lot and they're working for someone else, and now that we have the option to work for ourselves first of all, I think we're the hardest CEOs, but also we have choices as to who our clients are.  17:03 So we can absolutely choose not to work with somebody who we feel that their business practices are questionable. That gives you more time to look for people who are right and get that business to somebody else.  17:14 - Lau Lapides (Host) Exactly. And to piggyback right onto that, I was talking to a client this week who is also in my agency as well and who said, listen, I have a friend and he's on Fiverr and he came to me and we're actually accountability buddies and I told him everything I thought about this and he said but Lala, I don't know, Did I do the right thing? What do you think about that? What do you think about that? What do you think about what?  17:34 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) he's doing To be a friend. Is somebody on Fiverr? Well, no what he's saying is.  17:38 - Lau Lapides (Host) He came to this person and he said what do you think of me being on Fiverr? I know that it has some dark imagery in the business and people are dissuaded away. What do you think? So I said and I had to be a diplomat as well, because I'm not here to wreck businesses and give businesses a bad reputation but here's what I said and I honestly believe this. I said listen, whether your friend goes on Fiverr or not, or a million other platforms or not, you're the accountability buddy, which is terrific. Keep them checks and balance and remember this. That exactly what you're saying, annie.  18:16 Your business is your business, it's yours, it belongs to you. It's private to some degree. It puts food on your table, it makes you happy and sleep at night. You're an artist, you're a business person, but you're an artist and I don't want to sit in judgment and jury of other artists. I don't want to censor their moves. I say you do what works for your business.  18:38 Now, if you want to go into areas that are illegal, criminal, whatever, I'm not going to go there. That's just not where I'm going to go. It's not what I do and what I'm about or what my personhood or brand is about. But I still. I don't want to judge anyone, I don't want to be in judgment of anyone, because I feel like they're the ones, at the end of the day, who have to get up in the morning and go through a whole day supporting their business, and I don't know what their lives are like. Right, they might be poor, they might have no money in the bank. They might say law, I can't even afford a simple ad in like you know whatever.  19:15 And I said, well, listen, you do what works for you and that's going to bring you to the next thing. I mean, that's just the way I roll. You know what I mean? It's the same discussion we've had about FICOR, about financial core. We get a lot of people. I just got an email this morning from someone who is in my class who said I went SAG and law. I need your help now. I need your help. I want to go FICOR. I'm a little conflicted. I don't know what to do, how to do it. I know the union doesn't want to talk to me about it, of course, right. And I say listen, you know there's pros and cons to every choice you make, but as a coach because I'm still a coach. I'm going to talk to you and educate you about what your choices are Sure absolutely.  19:56 And then you go and make your choices and I'll support you in the choices you make. It doesn't mean I agree with them.  20:02 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It means I support you Sure, absolutely, absolutely.  20:04 - Lau Lapides (Host) Right, and isn't that at the end of the day?  20:06 Annie where we want to go is like we're not always going to agree with. This has been a big ethical. For a week I had another from my roster. He emailed me about an AI company that reached out to him and wanted to work with him. He said number one is this legitimate? Is it a scam? And number two I don't like it. I don't like their rates, I don't like the usage. I don't like it. I don't like their rates, I don't like the usage. And I said, well, go with your gut. Yeah, absolutely Go with what you feel, Otherwise you won't be happy. Absolutely, Absolutely.  20:35 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Right and I'm going to say that I do believe that when a company is not acting in an ethical manner, I do believe it's important that people speak up and speak their mind about it, because that is the only way that change will become enforced, or change can happen, if there are enough voices that are raised up about it. So I do believe organizations like NAVA, even the Facebook groups and again, like I said, I say there's so much drama, but I mean we are creatives, I mean there is drama in our world, but I also want bosses out there to, yes, embrace your creative and embrace your drama, but also embrace the business aspect of things and try to understand that it's not an affront against you personally.  21:20 I mean Voicescom did they insult you personally by charging a fee?  21:26 I mean it can infuriate you absolutely, but it wasn't a personal attack.  21:30 However, it is up to you to educate yourself on the practices of any given business and then decide whether that is something you want to support or not.  21:38 And if you feel that you're being taken advantage of, absolutely, I say raise your voice. But I don't say raise your voice and stomp off like a spoiled little child. That's not getting your way, but raise your voice in an educated and smart way that can help to promote change, I would say, or promote awareness in the industry, which is what VL Boss I set out to do was to provide a resource for the community so that we could talk about things like this and it could be open and we could discuss and I will be the first to say there's many of you who know the VL Boss podcast from the very beginning and there was a question, there was a question of certain people that I had on my podcast whether they were ethical. Now, I was not educated at the time and that could be something that people may or may not believe is true. However, at the time, I was not educated about business practices no-transcript.  22:57 - Lau Lapides (Host) You're buying items, retail items from big box stores. Right? Let's say you're going to Target, walmart or a Macy's or Nordstrom's, whatever, and you walk in. I'm going to guarantee you you are paying 50% to 100% over retail in terms of the profit margins that they are charging you, but somehow, somehow, many of us go.  23:19 Well, you know, you know. And are you going to go to the manager and you're going to complain about that? The manager will say hey, with all due respect, ma'am, I don't make decisions. You got to go up. Are you going to spend all day? I'm asking a real question to the audience Are you going to spend all day, every day, fighting that good fight, even though you're right, you're right fighting that good fight to get to corporate, to get to the CEO, to make sure the prices come down, to make sure they're affordable? Probably not.  23:49 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I love that you brought that up. Law, probably. But one more thing.  23:53 - Lau Lapides (Host) I want to say and I'm not talking about boycotting, that's up to you. I'm not suggesting that in any way. I'm just saying we make ethical decisions every day of our lives, all day long. Where am I going to go to the gas station? Am I going to pay that for gasoline? Am I going to go to the gas station? Am I going to pay that for gasoline? Am I going to whatever? So everything you could be fighting, I think there is a level of toleration we have to find in our lives to stay happy and healthy, knowing we're being taken for a ride.  24:23 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, absolutely. I love that you made that comparison. That is so, so important, because I think we're in such a bubble and we think that everything's in front to us personally.  24:32 And it's not. It is business business in this country, I mean. So we ourselves are free to set our prices, right, we are free to set our prices. And so what if the tables were turned and somebody said, well, that's not ethical, I mean, in a very weird sense, right? If you think about AI and you think about synthetic voices and people's value of, okay, what is a voice worth?  24:58 Now, my human voice and my acting and my personal brand is worth a lot. That's where I will make that bold statement to say this is what I charge, this is what I'm worth, will make that bold statement to say this is what I charge, this is what I'm worth. However, there will be people who need a voice that may not see the value right for their project, for a human voice. They don't have a need for it, right, and they make that choice not to work with us. And so, again, we are in the free societies where we can make our price, in the free societies where we can make our price, and the rebellion against us, right, or the speaking up against us is hey, we don't have that budget or we don't feel the value is there to pay that amount of money for a voice. I mean, I hate to sound so cold, but that's just the reality of business. That's the reality of it.  25:48 - Lau Lapides (Host) When you deal with people and you deal with budgets, you're going to run up against the same thing. I had a client of mine in my roster that said law, I need your thought because I have a long, long, long time client and she's just not going to pay me what I'm asking. She's not going to pay me what I'm worth. She's not going to. What should I do? Should I walk away from it at this point, or should I stay with it, or whatever? We talked that through. But the point is, that's your world, that's our world, that's business.  26:14 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That's what we do every day.  26:15 - Lau Lapides (Host) That's not going to go away. I mean, whether you call that unethical or not, I'm not sure, but thousands of years ago I'm sure, we were being overpriced for fish and beef and meat on the open market. You had to haggle, you had to negotiate, you had to figure out what you're willing to pay for that item, and there's also supply and demand. So when you have a tremendous supply, tremendous supply, you don't always have the demand to meet that, and so therein lies the ethics, exactly exactly.  26:46 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And supply and demand has a lot to do with paying me what I'm worth. I mean honestly like if there is more demand for our voices.  26:55 - Lau Lapides (Host) We can afford to pay Go higher, go higher.  26:58 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yes, if there is less demand, then you know what We've got to kind of compete in the marketplace.  27:04 - Lau Lapides (Host) Right, and let me qualify it by saying we're in no way suggesting for the listeners that you need to sell out or you need to do things you don't want to do or you're not comfortable doing. We're saying you live in a world, you live in a world and no one said that world is going to be fair.  27:20 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh yeah.  27:20 - Lau Lapides (Host) So fair practices, best practices, are ones that you set and your clients set, and you have what they call a meeting of the minds. And if you don't and you want to fight for it and it's worth fighting for, then fight for it. But just know you got to pick your battles wisely.  27:40 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Absolutely, because you could be fighting all day long, every day, yeah, and it can be exhausting. And in the meantime, if you're spending all of your time fighting those battles, then you're not making money in your business, right? So and again. I always bring it back to this right. I find value in this. For me, my Chanel lipstick is worth the money that I pay, right, and I always like to bring it back to my Chanel lipstick.  28:00 But in reality now I found that the quality of the Chanel lipstick has gone a little bit downhill, and so now I'm on the hunt for something new, right, that can give me the quality that I am willing to pay the price for. So, bosses, keep in mind, you will have clients out there that will go out there and hunt for that voice, right, that is the quality that they desire for their project. So you can be that voice and you can, at that point, charge, right. You can charge, as we were mentioning before. It is your option, it is your option and so, ethically, I think it is up to you guys out there to educate yourself right on business practices and then take a deep look at yourself, take a deep look at what it's costing you in your business Not necessarily, like, as Law was saying before, fighting every single day and taking up a lot of your time and energy in fighting that so that you have no time to have a business.  28:57 - Lau Lapides (Host) Yes, you want to choose your battles wisely and I always like to say I don't mind losing some battles and you will throughout your life but I want to win the war.  29:06 - Intro (Host) And what that means is I want to win my business.  29:09 - Lau Lapides (Host) I want to win overall my business practice and my goals. But that doesn't mean every day is going to be fair and every day is going to come out the way I want it to come out. And you know it's like I love Dunkin' Donuts and when I go through, if I get a donut, that donut is two or three bucks, is half the size now, and you'll say but Law, with all due respect, you shouldn't be eating donuts. Well, that's beside the point. The point is I have a choice. I'm not talking about health, I'm just talking for fun. Now I don't have to buy that donut.  29:39 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) You don't have to pay the money for that donut, but am I going to?  29:41 - Lau Lapides (Host) go fight the CEO over the size of it and the cost of it? Probably not, because it's not a battle that I really want to take up Wise words Law.  29:48 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Wow, what a great discussion. I really really enjoyed it so good.  29:52 - Intro (Host) Yeah, bosses.  29:53 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So remember, educate yourself and look deep within and pick your battles. So, all right, I'd like to give a great big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl. You too can connect and network like bosses, like Law and myself. Find out more at IPDdtlcom. You guys have an amazing week and we'll see you next week. Bye, see you next week, bye.  30:15 - Intro (Host) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, Anne Ganguzza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at voboss dot com and receive exclusive content, industry-rev, revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution, with permission. Coast-to-coast connectivity via IPDTL.  30:44 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey bosses, we are so excited to announce our audition demolition, our third audition demolition coming up September 20th. That is our live event F***.  31:00 - Lau Lapides (Host) Oh no, f***, oh no, you got to submit this for bloopers.  31:06 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah For OVC, yeah right, all right, stop Record.   

In this conversation, Marc Scott chats with the V123 Pros, Katherine Tole and Natasha Marchewka. They address issues such as the relationship between voice actors and online casting platforms, the importance of understanding the Voice123 algorithm, and the effectiveness of upgrading membership tiers. They also discuss the role of audition Likes in improving visibility and the importance of strategic auditioning. The conversation highlights the need for voice actors to adapt to changes in the industry and stay informed about the latest trends and features of online casting platforms. The V123 Pros also dig into keywords and tagging, search optimization, AI on Voice123 and much more. CONNECT WITH THE V123 PROS V123 Pros Course - https://www.v123pros.com/a/8l4bg  V123 Pros Accountability Program - https://www.v123pros.com/accountability Katherine Tole Website - https://katherinetole.com Natasha Marchewka Website - https://natashamarchewka.com   Marc Scott on Instagram - @marcscott RESOURCES FOR VOICE ACTORS * The VOpreneur Guide to Testimonials Visit https://vopreneur.com/testimonials * Get an instant $25 credit when you sign up for VoiceZam Visit https://voicezam.com/marcscott * For voice over services: Visit https://marcscottvoiceover.com * Want VOpreneur Swag? Visit https://teespring.com/stores/vopreneur * Join the VOpreneur Facebook Group Visit https://facebook.com/groups/vopreneur EVERYDAY VOPRENEURS IN THIS EPISODE * Thanks to "Uncle Roy" for production assistance! Visit https://antlandproductions.com * Thanks to Christy Harst for VO contributions! Visit https://christyharst.com * Thanks to Krysta Wallrauch for VO contributions! Visit https://krystawallrauch.com If you need guidance with your voice over business or learning how to more effectively market, I can help. Book a 15 minute free consultation with me to discuss your specific needs. Book Your Consult Key Takeaways from this Episode Upgrading membership tiers may not necessarily improve a voice actor's ranking or percentage on Voice123. The number of likes and the ratio of liked auditions to total auditions play a significant role in a voice actor's success on Voice123. Voice actors should be strategic in their auditioning, focusing on their strengths and targeting specific genres and voice styles. Understanding the Voice123 algorithm and using relevant keywords and filters can improve a voice actor's visibility on the platform. Stay updated on the latest trends to ensure your samples are relevant and appealing to clients. Use keywords that people are actually searching for. Choose the membership tier that aligns with your language, demographic, and voice style to optimize your auditions and opportunities.

In this conversation, we chat with voice actor, Troy Holden. We talk about Troy's background, growing up in Nashville, and the influence of transplants on the Southern accent.  Troy shares how he got into voiceover and his journey to becoming a full-time voice actor. He talks about the wrong path he initially took and how he course-corrected with the help of mentors. We also discuss the mindset shift needed to value one's worth and the importance of training and competence in the voiceover industry.  In this conversation, Troy Holden shares his journey as a voice actor and the lessons he has learned along the way. He discusses how unexpected opportunities helped him gain confidence and improve his skills. Troy emphasizes the importance of embracing authenticity and staying true to oneself in the voice acting industry.  He also shares his experiences with navigating accents and characters, and how he has learned to make decisions on job opportunities.  Troy discusses the changing landscape of the voice acting business, including the shift from pay-to-play platforms to direct marketing. He shares his favorite types of work and the joy he finds in character work. Troy also highlights the importance of personal growth and the role of community in the voice acting industry. Takeaways Connecting with people in the industry can lead to valuable conversations and opportunities. The Southern accent is evolving due to the influence of transplants in areas like Nashville. Transitioning to full-time voiceover requires planning, preparation, and support. Avoid the trap of accepting cheap work and undervaluing your worth as a voice actor. Training and competence are crucial for success in the voiceover industry.  Embrace authenticity and stay true to yourself in the voice acting industry. Focus on targeted marketing to specific industries or regions to increase direct business. Build relationships with clients and aim for repeat business. Find joy in the work you love, whether it's video games, commercials, or other types of projects. Chapters: 00:00 Introduction and Background 03:08 Getting into Voiceover 08:00 Transitioning to Full-Time Voiceover 13:14 Mindset Shift: Valuing Your Worth 21:46 Shift from Pay-to-Play to Direct Marketing 26:00 Favorite Types of Work 27:49 Advice for Voice Actors _____________________________ ▶️ Watch this video next: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVUuUfwNTG-9nSM75_5dKCc5WYE9gqX-P SUBSCRIBE: https://www.youtube.com/@vo-pro?sub_confirmation=1 The VO Freedom Master Plan: https://vopro.pro/vo-freedom-master-plan The VO Pro Community: https://vopro.app Use code You15Tube for 15% off of your membership for life. The VO Pro Podcast: https://vopro.pro/podcast 7 Steps to Starting and Developing a Career in Voiceover: https://welcome.vopro.pro/7-steps-yt Move Touch Inspire Newsletter for Voice Actors: https://vopro.pro/move-touch-inspire-youtube Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/vofreedom The VO Pro Shop: https://vopro.pro/shop Say Hi on Social:  https://pillar.io/paulschmidtpro https://www.instagram.com/vopro.pro https://www.clubhouse.com/@paulschmidtvo https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulschmidtvo/ My voice over website: https://paulschmidtvoice.com GVAA Rate Guide: http://vorateguide.com Tools and People I Work with and Recommend (If you use these links to buy something I may earn a commission.):  Recommended Book List with Links: https://amzn.to/3H9sBOO Gear I Use with Links: https://amzn.to/3V4d3kZ As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. For lead generation and targeting - Apollo.io: https://apollo.grsm.io/yt-paulschmidtpro Way Better than Linktree: https://pillar.io/referral/paulschmidtpro

There was a surprise, stealthy, mystery guest this year at VO Atlanta, and fireworks ensued!  There I was, on stage in the main ballroom at VO Atlanta, getting ready to take my seat on The Famous Online Casting Panel. J. Michael Collins, the moderator, walks by and announces to the panel, “65 seconds!” I turn and a man in a blue plaid sportcoat holds out his hand and says, “Hi, Paul. I'm Jay O'Connor, Voices CEO.” And my first thought was, is this guy gonna curse me out? Stare me down? Take a swing? Takeaways: Jay O'Connor, the CEO of Voices.com, made a surprise appearance at Vio Atlanta and apologized for past transgressions. Enforcing GVAA rates for all jobs would help rebuild trust within the voiceover community. The practice of triple dipping, charging talent a subscription, 20% of the job, and clients for managed services jobs, was defended by Jay O'Connor. Engaging in open dialogue and listening to the concerns of the voiceover community is crucial for rebuilding trust. Leadership within the voiceover industry and advocating for voice actors is necessary for a stronger industry. Chapters: 00:00 Surprise Guest: Jay O'Connor 01:14 Apologies and History 03:09 Concerns for the Platform 04:35 Managed Services Jobs 05:56 Triple Dipping 06:25 Engaging with the Voiceover Community 07:10 Trust and Future Actions 08:07 Leadership and Rebuilding Trust 09:44 Advocating for Voice Actors _____________________________ ▶️ Watch this video next: https://youtu.be/InOzCGUtjm8 SUBSCRIBE: https://www.youtube.com/@vo-pro?sub_confirmation=1 The VO Freedom Master Plan: https://vopro.pro/vo-freedom-master-plan The VO Pro Community: https://vopro.app Use code You15Tube for 15% off of your membership for life. The VO Pro Podcast: https://vopro.pro/podcast 7 Steps to Starting and Developing a Career in Voiceover: https://welcome.vopro.pro/7-steps-yt Move Touch Inspire Newsletter for Voice Actors: https://vopro.pro/move-touch-inspire-youtube Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/vofreedom The VO Pro Shop: https://vopro.pro/shop Say Hi on Social:  https://pillar.io/paulschmidtpro https://www.instagram.com/vopro.pro https://www.clubhouse.com/@paulschmidtvo https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulschmidtvo/ My voice over website: https://paulschmidtvoice.com GVAA Rate Guide: http://vorateguide.com Tools and People I Work with and Recommend (If you use these links to buy something I may earn a commission.):  Recommended Book List with Links: https://amzn.to/3H9sBOO Gear I Use with Links: https://amzn.to/3V4d3kZ As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. For lead generation and targeting - Apollo.io: https://apollo.grsm.io/yt-paulschmidtpro Way Better than Linktree: https://pillar.io/referral/paulschmidtpro  

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

We couldn't be more excited to embark on the SEASON 2 journey of the Points of eXperience Podcast with you. ⭐BECOME A PATRON AND SUPPORT US TODAY!⭐ https://www.patreon.com/PoXPodcast ----------------------------------- Become a Paid Subscriber on Spotify: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/poxpodcast/subscribe ----------------------------------- Please subscribe and follow us on all social media and enable notifications on all podcast platforms! https://www.PointsofeXperiencePodcast.com ----------------------------------- * For 15% OFF your subscription to Voice123 visit: *https://www.Voice123.com/plans/pox ----------------------------------- Questions? Email info@pointsofexperiencepodcast.com Instagram: https://www.Instagram.com/PoXPodcast Twitter: https://www.Twitter.com/PoXPodcast Facebook: https://www.Facebook.com/PoxPodcast TikTok: https://www.TikTok.com/@PointsofeXperience ---------------------------------------- Original Music by: SkaneMusic - https://www.instagram.com/skane.music/1 Edited by: Keith "Neku" Lawson - https://twitter.com/OzmaNeku

In our chat with J. Michael Collins, he emphasizes the importance of using voiceover sites wisely and not overspending on memberships. He also highlights the significance of having a strong marketing game and reaching out to clients on a regular basis. He also talks about the benefits of search engine optimization for visibility and attracting clients. JMC emphasizes the importance of networking and building relationships in the industry. Finally, he provides some insights into what can be expected at VO Atlanta 2024. JMC Demos: https://www.jmcvoiceover.com/demo-production _____________________________ ▶️ Watch this video next: https://youtu.be/xp6c7Wy1TKA SUBSCRIBE: https://www.youtube.com/@vo-pro?sub_confirmation=1 The VO Freedom Master Plan: https://vopro.pro/vo-freedom-master-plan The VO Pro Community: https://vopro.app Use code You15Tube for 15% off of your membership for life. The VO Pro Podcast: https://vopro.pro/podcast 7 Steps to Starting and Developing a Career in Voiceover: https://welcome.vopro.pro/7-steps-yt Move Touch Inspire Newsletter for Voice Actors: https://vopro.pro/move-touch-inspire-youtube Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/vofreedom The VO Pro Shop: https://vopro.pro/shop Say Hi on Social:  https://pillar.io/paulschmidtpro https://www.instagram.com/paulschmidtvo https://www.clubhouse.com/@paulschmidtvo https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulschmidtvo/ My voice over website: https://paulschmidtvoice.com GVAA Rate Guide: http://vorateguide.com Tools and People I Work with and Recommend (If you use these links to buy something I may earn a commission.):  Recommended Book List with Links: https://amzn.to/3H9sBOO Gear I Use with Links: https://amzn.to/3V4d3kZ As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. For lead generation and targeting - Apollo.io: https://apollo.grsm.io/yt-paulschmidtpro Way Better than Linktree: https://pillar.io/referral/paulschmidtpro

Today's episode of The Other Stories has been sponsored by Voice123, the world's first voice-over marketplace with over 30,000 projects of all genres flowing through annually. Voice123 is the top choice for producers needing a voice to complete their creative projects, and they've recently a handy report of 37 AI-Powered Tools that will help you boost efficiency in your pre and post-production workflow. Grab your free copy at Voice123.co/37AIToolsTOS.You'll see why signing up for a free Voice123 account at voice123.com is your most hassle-free way to post your projects and hire a voice actor today!Inside the House of Mirrors'Late one evening, Gianni, a solitary, middle-aged man, enters –on a whim, perhaps to revisit a youthful experience—a seemingly empty House of Mirrors, and just as he senses the presence of another inside, the lights go out.'Written by Nicola Lombardi and translated by Joe Weintraub(www.nicolalombardi.com)Narrated by Manny RealguyProduced by Duncan Muggleton (http://soundcloud.com/duncanmuggleton)With music by Duncan Muggleton (https://temporalrecordings.wordpress.com)And Thom Robson (https://www.thomrobsonmusic.com/)And sound effects provided by Freesound.orgThe episode illustration was provided by Luke Spooner of Carrion House (https://carrionhouse.com/)A quick thanks to our community managers, Joshua Boucher and Jasmine ArchAnd Joshua Boucher for helping with our submission reading.And to Ben Errington, our cartographer, mapping out the ever-changing terrain of social media,After thirty years of writing--3 novels, six collections, one film adaptation, multiple translations from the English--Lombardi is considered a master of the horror genre in Italy (his website can be found here:at www.nicolalombardi.com). His first collection in English, The Gypsy Spiders and Other Tales of Italian Horror, was published by UK's Tartarus Press in Dec. 2021.Join TOS+ to access over 75 exclusive episodes, get regular stories in higher quality audio, a week early, and ad-free, at https://theotherstories.net/plus/Support the show, get audiobooks, and more at https://www.patreon.com/hawkandcleaverJoin our communities for book clubs, movie clubs, writing exercises, and more at https://theotherstories.net/community/Leave a voicemail or get in touch at https://theotherstories.net/submissionsCheck out our writing courses at https://theotherstories.net/courses/Grab some merch at https://gumroad.com/hawkandcleaverThe Other Stories is a production of the story studio, Hawk & Cleaver, and is brought to you with a Creative Commons – Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license. Don't change it. Don't sell it. But by all means… share the hell out of it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's episode of The Other Stories has been sponsored by Voice123, the world's first voice-over marketplace with over 30,000 projects of all genres flowing through annually. Voice123 is the top choice for producers needing a voice to complete their creative projects, and they've recently a handy report of 37 AI-Powered Tools that will help you boost efficiency in your pre and post-production workflow. Grab your free copy at Voice123.co/37AIToolsTOS.You'll see why signing up for a free Voice123 account at voice123.com is your most hassle-free way to post your projects and hire a voice actor today!Champion of Meridoria'Young Trevor finds solace in the fantastical realms of his books, while struggling to connect with the reality that surrounds him. But what happens when the boundaries between these two worlds begin to blur?'Written by JT Shields (www.jtshields.com)Narrated by James Barnett (https://www.JamesBarnettCreative.com)And Josh Curran (https://twitter.com/jcurranwriter)Produced by James Barnett (https://www.JamesBarnettCreative.com))With music by Ghosthack (https://www.ghosthack.de/)And Dark Fantasy Studio (http://darkfantasystudio.com/)And Thom Robson (https://www.thomrobsonmusic.com/)And sound effects provided by Freesound.orgThe episode illustration was provided by Luke Spooner of Carrion House (https://carrionhouse.com/)A quick thanks to our community managers, Joshua Boucher and Jasmine ArchAnd Joshua Boucher for helping with our submission reading.And to Ben Errington the ongoing explosion of content being fired out of his Social Media canon.J T Shields is a writer from the UK who enjoys all things horror. You can follow his work on www.jtshields.com.James Barnett is the producer of the Night's End podcast and After The Gloaming. Search for them wherever you get your podcasts. You can also catch other works of his at www.JamesBarnettCreative.comJosh Curran is a narrator and writer. He has narrated many episodes of The Other Stories over the show's lifetime. He is also the creator of the horror Audio-Drama podcast, Miscreation. You can follow him on twitter, @jcurranwriterJoin TOS+ to access over 75 exclusive episodes, get regular stories in higher quality audio, a week early, and ad-free, at https://theotherstories.net/plus/Support the show, get audiobooks, and more at https://www.patreon.com/hawkandcleaverJoin our communities for book clubs, movie clubs, writing exercises, and more at https://theotherstories.net/community/Leave a voicemail or get in touch at https://theotherstories.net/submissionsCheck out our writing courses at https://theotherstories.net/courses/Grab some merch at https://gumroad.com/hawkandcleaverThe Other Stories is a production of the story studio, Hawk & Cleaver, and is brought to you with a Creative Commons – Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license. Don't change it. Don't sell it. But by all means… share the hell out of it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's episode of The Other Stories has been sponsored by Voice123, the world's first voice-over marketplace with over 30,000 projects of all genres flowing through annually. Voice123 is the top choice for producers needing a voice to complete their creative projects, and they've recently a handy report of 37 AI-Powered Tools that will help you boost efficiency in your pre and post-production workflow. Grab your free copy at Voice123.co/37AIToolsTOS.You'll see why signing up for a free Voice123 account at voice123.com is your most hassle-free way to post your projects and hire a voice actor today!The Yule Fire'Someone has to hold vigil by the ritual midwinter bonfire. The survival of Gwyn's tithing depends on it. But why must it always be her? This year, Gwyn will have a little celebration of her own.'Written and narrated by Jasmine Arch (https://jasminearch.com/)Wraparound segments written by Andy Conduit-Turner (https://twitter.com/andyctwrites)Wraparound extra narration performed by Luke Kondor (https://www.instagram.com/lukeofkondor) and Daniel Willcocks (https://danielwillcocks.com)Produced by James Barnett AKA Jimmy Horrors (https://www.JamesBarnettCreative.com)With music by Dark Fantasy Studio (http://darkfantasystudio.com/)And Beat Mekanik (https://freemusicarchive.org/music/beat-mekanik/)And Tim Kulig (https://timkulig.com/)And Kirk Osamayo (http://www.kirkosamayo.com/)And Duncan Muggleton (https://temporalrecordings.wordpress.com)And Thom Robson (https://www.thomrobsonmusic.com/)And sound effects provided by Freesound.org and Boom Library The episode illustration was provided by Luke Spooner of Carrion House (https://carrionhouse.com/)A quick thanks to our community managers, Joshua Boucher and Jasmine Arch.And Joshua Boucher for helping with our submission reading.And to Ben Errington, the Rudolph of Content Creation, guiding us through the dark and foggy pathways of the digital world with his bright ideas and illuminating content.Jasmine Arch is a writer, poet, narrator, podcaster and all round chaos-for-brains. Find out more about her or her work at JasmineArch.com.Join TOS+ to access over 75 exclusive episodes, get regular stories in higher quality audio, a week early, and ad-free, at https://theotherstories.net/plus/Support the show, get audiobooks, and more at https://www.patreon.com/hawkandcleaverThe Other Stories is a production of the story studio, Hawk & Cleaver, and is brought to you with a Creative Commons – Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license. Don't change it. Don't sell it. But by all means… share the hell out of it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's episode of The Other Stories has been sponsored by Voice123, the world's first voice-over marketplace with over 30,000 projects of all genres flowing through annually. Voice123 is the top choice for producers needing a voice to complete their creative projects, and they've recently a handy report of 37 AI-Powered Tools that will help you boost efficiency in your pre and post-production workflow. Grab your free copy at Voice123.co/37AIToolsTOS.You'll see why signing up for a free Voice123 account at voice123.com is your most hassle-free way to post your projects and hire a voice actor today!Nanny Rutt'A mycologist is sent to study a rare new fungi deep in an ancient woodland.'Written by Georgia Cook (https://twitter.com/georgiacooked)Narrated by Josh Curran (https://twitter.com/jcurranwriter)Edited by Karl Hughes (https://twitter.com/karlhughes)With music by Umcorps (https://soundcloud.com/umcorps)And Thom Robson (https://www.thomrobsonmusic.com/)And sound effects provided by Freesound.orgThe episode illustration was provided by Luke Spooner of Carrion House (https://carrionhouse.com/)A quick thanks to our community managers, Joshua Boucher and Jasmine ArchAnd Joshua Boucher Carolyn O'Brien for helping with our submission reading.And to Ben Errington, the social media Wendigo, turned into such after finding himself trapped in a mine with nothing but social media content for sustenance. Alone, in the dark, for years… he started to… change… he started to… tweet.Georgia Cook is an illustrator and writer from London. She is the winner of the LISP 2020 Flash Fiction Prize, and has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, Staunch Book Prize and Reflex Fiction Award, among others. She can be found on twitter at @georgiacooked and on her website at https://www.georgiacookwriter.com/**Josh Curran is a narrator and writer. You can follow him on twitter, @jcurranwriterJoin TOS+ to access over 75 exclusive episodes, get regular stories in higher quality audio, a week early, and ad-free, at https://theotherstories.net/plus/Support the show, get audiobooks, and more at https://www.patreon.com/hawkandcleaverJoin our communities for book clubs, movie clubs, writing exercises, and more at https://theotherstories.net/community/Leave a voicemail or get in touch at https://theotherstories.net/submissionsCheck out our writing courses at https://theotherstories.net/courses/Grab some merch at https://gumroad.com/hawkandcleaverThe Other Stories is a production of the story studio, Hawk & Cleaver, and is brought to you with a Creative Commons – Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license. Don't change it. Don't sell it. But by all means… share the hell out of it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's episode of The Other Stories has been sponsored by Voice123, the world's first voice-over marketplace with over 30,000 projects of all genres flowing through annually. Voice123 is the top choice for producers needing a voice to complete their creative projects, and they've recently a handy report of 37 AI-Powered Tools that will help you boost efficiency in your pre and post-production workflow. Grab your free copy at Voice123.co/37AIToolsTOS.You'll see why signing up for a free Voice123 account at voice123.com is your most hassle-free way to post your projects and hire a voice actor today!Editorial by Luke Kondor (https://www.lukekondor.com)Produced by Karl Hughes (https://twitter.com/karlhughes)***Join TOS+ to access over 75 exclusive episodes, get regular stories in higher quality audio, a week early, and ad-free, at https://theotherstories.net/plus/Support the show, get audiobooks, and more at https://www.patreon.com/hawkandcleaverJoin our communities for book clubs, movie clubs, writing exercises, and more at https://theotherstories.net/community/Leave a voicemail or get in touch at https://theotherstories.net/submissionsCheck out our writing courses at https://theotherstories.net/courses/Grab some merch at https://gumroad.com/hawkandcleaverThe Other Stories is a production of the story studio, Hawk & Cleaver, and is brought to you with a Creative Commons – Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license. Don't change it. Don't sell it. But by all means… share the hell out of it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's episode of The Other Stories has been sponsored by Voice123, the world's first voice-over marketplace with over 30,000 projects of all genres flowing through annually. Voice123 is the top choice for producers needing a voice to complete their creative projects, and they've recently a handy report of 37 AI-Powered Tools that will help you boost efficiency in your pre and post-production workflow. Grab your free copy at Voice123.co/37AIToolsTOS. You'll see why signing up for a free Voice123 account at voice123.com is your most hassle-free way to post your projects and hire a voice actor today!Dream was produced by the story studio Hawk & Cleaver and its community. To support the studio and to join our discord community, head over to www.patreon.com/hawkandcleaver.Dream was written by Daniel Willcocks (www.danielwillcocks.com)Editing and sound production by James Barnett AKA Jimmy Horrors of Dissonance Media. www.jamesbarnettcreative.comGeorgia Cook plays the role of Alice (www.georgiacookwriter.comJosh Curran plays the role of Henry (www.twitter.com/joshcurran)Manny Realguy plays the role of FatherJoseph Maudsley reprises the role of Old Knobbly (www.twitter.com/josephmaudsley)A special thanks to our chanting cultists. A full list of contributors can be found at www.theotherstories.net/dreamThe Dream Theme Music was created by Duncan Muggleton (www.twitter.com/duncanmuggleton)Music by Tim Kulig, Kevin Mcleod, and Dark Fantasy Studio.Music: Various by Tim KuligLicensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-licenseMusic: Despair and Triumph by Kevin MacLeodFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/3641-despair-and-triumph Licensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Sound Effects provided by Freesound.org, Ghosthack, and Boom Library. Artwork was created by Paramita at www.creativeparamita.comFinally, a special thank you to this episode's sponsors:Shadow & Spice Book Box – quarterly subscription boxes for lovers of fantasy, horror, and dark romance – sign up now at www.bookboxcanada.comAnd Eerie River Publishing, an independent publishing house specialising in dark fantasy and horror. Find out more at www.eerieriverpublishing.comThe Other Stories is a production of the story studio, Hawk & Cleaver, and is brought to you with a Creative Commons – Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license. Don't change it. Don't sell it. But by all means… share the hell out of it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's episode of The Other Stories has been sponsored by Voice123, the world's first voice-over marketplace with over 30,000 projects of all genres flowing through annually. Voice123 is the top choice for producers needing a voice to complete their creative projects, and they've recently a handy report of 37 AI-Powered Tools that will help you boost efficiency in your pre and post-production workflow. Grab your free copy at Voice123.co/37AIToolsTOS. You'll see why signing up for a free Voice123 account at voice123.com is your most hassle-free way to post your projects and hire a voice actor today!Dream was produced by the story studio Hawk & Cleaver and its community. To support the studio and to join our discord community, head over to www.patreon.com/hawkandcleaver.Dream was written by Daniel Willcocks (www.danielwillcocks.com)Editing and sound production by James Barnett AKA Jimmy Horrors of Dissonance Media. www.jamesbarnettcreative.comGeorgia Cook plays the role of Alice (www.georgiacookwriter.comJosh Curran plays the role of Henry (www.twitter.com/joshcurran)Manny Realguy plays the role of FatherJoseph Maudsley reprises the role of Old Knobbly (www.twitter.com/josephmaudsley)A special thanks to our chanting cultists. A full list of contributors can be found at www.theotherstories.net/dreamThe Dream Theme Music was created by Duncan Muggleton (www.twitter.com/duncanmuggleton)Music by Tim Kulig, Kevin Mcleod, and Dark Fantasy Studio.Music: Various by Tim KuligLicensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-licenseMusic: Despair and Triumph by Kevin MacLeodFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/3641-despair-and-triumph Licensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Sound Effects provided by Freesound.org. Finally, a special thank you to this episode's sponsors:Shadow & Spice Book Box – quarterly subscription boxes for lovers of fantasy, horror, and dark romance – sign up now at www.bookboxcanada.comAnd Eerie River Publishing, an independent publishing house specialising in dark fantasy and horror. Find out more at www.eerieriverpublishing.comThe Other Stories is a production of the story studio, Hawk & Cleaver, and is brought to you with a Creative Commons – Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license. Don't change it. Don't sell it. But by all means… share the hell out of it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's episode of The Other Stories has been sponsored by Voice123, the world's first voice-over marketplace with over 30,000 projects of all genres flowing through annually. Voice123 is the top choice for producers needing a voice to complete their creative projects, and they've recently a handy report of 37 AI-Powered Tools that will help you boost efficiency in your pre and post-production workflow. Grab your free copy at Voice123.co/37AIToolsTOS. You'll see why signing up for a free Voice123 account at voice123.com is your most hassle-free way to post your projects and hire a voice actor today!Dream was produced by the story studio Hawk & Cleaver and its community. To support the studio and to join our discord community, head over to www.patreon.com/hawkandcleaver.Dream was written by Daniel Willcocks (www.danielwillcocks.com)Editing and sound production by James Barnett AKA Jimmy Horrors of Dissonance Media. www.jamesbarnettcreative.comGeorgia Cook plays the role of Alice (www.georgiacookwriter.comJosh Curran plays the role of Henry (www.twitter.com/joshcurran)Manny Realguy plays the role of FatherJoseph Maudsley reprises the role of Old Knobbly (www.twitter.com/josephmaudsley)A special thanks to our chanting cultists. A full list of contributors can be found at www.theotherstories.net/dreamThe Dream Theme Music was created by Duncan Muggleton (www.twitter.com/duncanmuggleton)Music by Tim Kulig, Kevin Mcleod, Sache Ende, and Ghosthack.Music: Various by Tim KuligLicensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-licenseMusic: Blockbuster Atmosphere 6 (Horror) by Sascha EndeFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/137-blockbuster-atmosphere-6-horror Licensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Music: Despair and Triumph by Kevin MacLeodFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/3641-despair-and-triumph Licensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Sound Effects provided by Freesound.org and Sound-mp3.com. Artwork was created by Paramita at www.creativeparamita.comFinally, a special thank you to this episode's sponsors:Shadow & Spice Book Box – quarterly subscription boxes for lovers of fantasy, horror, and dark romance – sign up now at www.bookboxcanada.comAnd Eerie River Publishing, an independent publishing house specialising in dark fantasy and horror. Find out more at www.eerieriverpublishing.comThe Other Stories is a production of the story studio, Hawk & Cleaver, and is brought to you with a Creative Commons – Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license. Don't change it. Don't sell it. But by all means… share the hell out of it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's episode of The Other Stories has been sponsored by Voice123, the world's first voice-over marketplace with over 30,000 projects of all genres flowing through annually. Voice123 is the top choice for producers needing a voice to complete their creative projects, and they've recently a handy report of 37 AI-Powered Tools that will help you boost efficiency in your pre and post-production workflow. Grab your free copy at Voice123.co/37AIToolsTOS. You'll see why signing up for a free Voice123 account at voice123.com is your most hassle-free way to post your projects and hire a voice actor today!Dream was produced by the story studio Hawk & Cleaver and its community. To support the studio and to join our discord community, head over to www.patreon.com/hawkandcleaver.Dream was written by Daniel Willcocks (www.danielwillcocks.com)Editing and sound production by James Barnett AKA Jimmy Horrors of Dissonance Media. www.jamesbarnettcreative.comGeorgia Cook plays the role of Alice (www.georgiacookwriter.comJosh Curran plays the role of Henry (www.twitter.com/joshcurran)Manny Realguy plays the role of FatherJoseph Maudsley reprises the role of Old Knobbly (www.twitter.com/josephmaudsley)A special thanks to our chanting cultists. A full list of contributors can be found at www.theotherstories.net/dreamThe Dream Theme Music was created by Duncan Muggleton (www.twitter.com/duncanmuggleton)Music by Tim Kulig, Kevin Mcleod, Dark Fantasy Studio, and Ghosthack.Music: Various by Tim Kulig & Kevin McleodLicensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-licenseSound Effects provided by Freesound.org.Artwork was created by Paramita at www.creativeparamita.comFinally, a special thank you to this episode's sponsors:Shadow & Spice Book Box – quarterly subscription boxes for lovers of fantasy, horror, and dark romance – sign up now at www.bookboxcanada.comAnd Eerie River Publishing, an independent publishing house specialising in dark fantasy and horror. Find out more at www.eerieriverpublishing.comThe Other Stories is a production of the story studio, Hawk & Cleaver, and is brought to you with a Creative Commons – Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license. Don't change it. Don't sell it. But by all means… share the hell out of it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's episode of The Other Stories has been sponsored by Voice123, the world's first voice-over marketplace with over 30,000 projects of all genres flowing through annually. Voice123 is the top choice for producers needing a voice to complete their creative projects, and they've recently a handy report of 37 AI-Powered Tools that will help you boost efficiency in your pre and post-production workflow. Grab your free copy at Voice123.co/37AIToolsTOS. You'll see why signing up for a free Voice123 account at voice123.com is your most hassle-free way to post your projects and hire a voice actor today!Dream was produced by the story studio Hawk & Cleaver and its community. To support the studio and to join our discord community, head over to www.patreon.com/hawkandcleaver.Dream was written by Daniel Willcocks (www.danielwillcocks.com)Editing and sound production by James Barnett AKA Jimmy Horrors of Dissonance Media. www.jamesbarnettcreative.comGeorgia Cook plays the role of Alice (www.georgiacookwriter.comJosh Curran plays the role of Henry (www.twitter.com/joshcurran)Manny Realguy plays the role of FatherJoseph Maudsley reprises the role of Old Knobbly (www.twitter.com/josephmaudsley)A special thanks to our chanting cultists. A full list of contributors can be found at www.theotherstories.net/dreamThe Dream Theme Music was created by Duncan Muggleton (www.twitter.com/duncanmuggleton)Music by Tim Kulig & Dark Fantasy Studio.Music: Various by Tim KuligLicensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-licenseSound Effects provided by Freesound.org and Sound-mp3.com. Artwork was created by Paramita at www.creativeparamita.comFinally, a special thank you to this episode's sponsors:Shadow & Spice Book Box – quarterly subscription boxes for lovers of fantasy, horror, and dark romance – sign up now at www.bookboxcanada.comAnd Eerie River Publishing, an independent publishing house specialising in dark fantasy and horror. Find out more at www.eerieriverpublishing.comThe Other Stories is a production of the story studio, Hawk & Cleaver, and is brought to you with a Creative Commons – Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license. Don't change it. Don't sell it. But by all means… share the hell out of it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's episode of The Other Stories has been sponsored by Voice123, the world's first voice-over marketplace with over 30,000 projects of all genres flowing through annually. Voice123 is the top choice for producers needing a voice to complete their creative projects, and they've recently a handy report of 37 AI-Powered Tools that will help you boost efficiency in your pre and post-production workflow. Grab your free copy at Voice123.co/37AIToolsTOS.You'll see why signing up for a free Voice123 account at voice123.com is your most hassle-free way to post your projects and hire a voice actor today!Dream was produced by the story studio Hawk & Cleaver and its community. To support the studio and to join our discord community, head over to www.patreon.com/hawkandcleaver.Dream was written by Daniel Willcocks (www.danielwillcocks.com)Editing and sound production by James Barnett AKA Jimmy Horrors of Dissonance Media. www.jamesbarnettcreative.comGeorgia Cook plays the role of Alice (www.georgiacookwriter.comJosh Curran plays the role of Henry (www.twitter.com/joshcurran)Manny Realguy plays the role of FatherJoseph Maudsley reprises the role of Old Knobbly (www.twitter.com/josephmaudsley)A special thanks to our chanting cultists. A full list of contributors can be found at www.theotherstories.net/dreamThe Dream Theme Music was created by Duncan Muggleton (www.twitter.com/duncanmuggleton)Music by Tim Kulig, Kevin Mcleod, Dark Fantasy Studio, and Ghosthack.Music: Various by Tim Kulig & Kevin McleodLicensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-licenseSound Effects provided by Freesound.org.Artwork was created by Paramita at www.creativeparamita.comFinally, a special thank you to this episode's sponsors:Shadow & Spice Book Box – quarterly subscription boxes for lovers of fantasy, horror, and dark romance – sign up now at www.bookboxcanada.comAnd Eerie River Publishing, an independent publishing house specialising in dark fantasy and horror. Find out more at www.eerieriverpublishing.comThe Other Stories is a production of the story studio, Hawk & Cleaver, and is brought to you with a Creative Commons – Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license. Don't change it. Don't sell it. But by all means… share the hell out of it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's episode of The Other Stories has been sponsored by Voice123, the world's first voice-over marketplace with over 30,000 projects of all genres flowing through annually. Voice123 is the top choice for producers needing a voice to complete their creative projects, and they've recently a handy report of 37 AI-Powered Tools that will help you boost efficiency in your pre and post-production workflow. Grab your free copy at Voice123.co/37AIToolsTOS.You'll see why signing up for a free Voice123 account at voice123.com is your most hassle-free way to post your projects and hire a voice actor today!Dream was produced by the story studio Hawk & Cleaver and its community. To support the studio and to join our discord community, head over to www.patreon.com/hawkandcleaver.Dream was written by Daniel Willcocks (www.danielwillcocks.com)Editing and sound production by James Barnett AKA Jimmy Horrors of Dissonance Media. www.jamesbarnettcreative.comGeorgia Cook plays the role of Alice (www.georgiacookwriter.comJosh Curran plays the role of Henry (www.twitter.com/joshcurran)Manny Realguy plays the role of FatherJoseph Maudsley reprises the role of Old Knobbly (www.twitter.com/josephmaudsley)A special thanks to our chanting cultists. A full list of contributors can be found at www.theotherstories.net/dreamThe Dream Theme Music was created by Duncan Muggleton (www.twitter.com/duncanmuggleton)Music by Tim Kulig, Kevin Mcleod, and Dark Fantasy Studio.Music: Various by Tim KuligLicensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-licenseMusic: Unnatural Situation by Kevin MacLeodFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/4567-unnatural-situationLicensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-licenseSound Effects provided by Freesound.org and Mixkit.co.Artwork was created by Paramita at www.creativeparamita.comFinally, a special thank you to this episode's sponsors:Shadow & Spice Book Box – quarterly subscription boxes for lovers of fantasy, horror, and dark romance – sign up now at www.bookboxcanada.comAnd Eerie River Publishing, an independent publishing house specialising in dark fantasy and horror. Find out more at www.eerieriverpublishing.comThe Other Stories is a production of the story studio, Hawk & Cleaver, and is brought to you with a Creative Commons – Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license. Don't change it. Don't sell it. But by all means… share the hell out of it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's episode of The Other Stories has been sponsored by Voice123, the world's first voice-over marketplace with over 30,000 projects of all genres flowing through annually. Voice123 is the top choice for producers needing a voice to complete their creative projects, and they've recently a handy report of 37 AI-Powered Tools that will help you boost efficiency in your pre and post-production workflow. Grab your free copy at Voice123.co/37AIToolsTOS.You'll see why signing up for a free Voice123 account at voice123.com is your most hassle-free way to post your projects and hire a voice actor today!I Don't Know What Possessed Him'Laura's brother has become distant and strange. At first, she thinks he's just imitating his weird, creepy missing friend, but quickly discovers that there's something more sinister at play.'Written by Mike Garley (https://www.mikegarley.co.uk/)Narrated by Shara Jahnke (https://www.instagram.com/zellezra/)Edited by Duncan Muggleton (http://soundcloud.com/duncanmuggleton)With music by Duncan Muggleton (https://temporalrecordings.wordpress.com)And Thom Robson (https://www.thomrobsonmusic.com/)And sound effects provided by Freesound.orgThe episode illustration was provided by Luke Spooner of Carrion House (https://carrionhouse.com/)A quick thanks to our community managers, Joshua Boucher and Jasmine ArchAnd Joshua Boucher Carolyn O'Brien for helping with our submission reading.And to Ben Errington, the enigmatic mage of messages, his content spells casting an indelible mark upon the digital scrolls of social media, leaving us forever enchanted.Mike Garley is a writer of comics, games, screenplays and other such cool stuff. Mike wrote beActive Media's EMMY nominated comic series; Collider, as well as Wallace and Gromit, Adventure Time, Eponymous, The Kill Screen, and is also the editor of the Dead Roots comic anthology.Shara Jahnke is a quirky, enigmatic laloceziac who lives in beautiful Eugene, Oregon. When she's not fashioning medical products to rescue your squishy brains, she's using her own to plot new story ideas, hone her archery skills, play video games, and occasionally lose herself in paralytic fits of existential dread. You can find her on Instagram at Zellezra, and Facebook at Shara Danaé Jahnke.Join TOS+ to access over 75 exclusive episodes, get regular stories in higher quality audio, a week early, and ad-free, at https://theotherstories.net/plus/Support the show, get audiobooks, and more at https://www.patreon.com/hawkandcleaverJoin our communities for book clubs, movie clubs, writing exercises, and more at https://theotherstories.net/community/Leave a voicemail or get in touch at https://theotherstories.net/submissionsCheck out our writing courses at https://theotherstories.net/courses/Grab some merch at https://gumroad.com/hawkandcleaverThe Other Stories is a production of the story studio, Hawk & Cleaver, and is brought to you with a Creative Commons – Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license. Don't change it. Don't sell it. But by all means… share the hell out of it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's episode of The Other Stories has been sponsored by Voice123. Grab your free copy at Voice123.co/37AIToolsTOS.Nine-Tenths of the Law'Gifted occultist Tallulah Briggs is used to being called upon by the rich and bored for entertainment and for power. But when the wealthy Dierdre Aust asks her to conjure dangerous beings for her, the price may be higher than anyone expects.'Written by Dexter McLeod (http://www.twitter.com/DexterMcLeod)Narrated by Jasmine Arch (https://jasminearch.com/)Edited by Karl Hughes (https://twitter.com/karlhughes)With music by Dark Fantasy Studio (http://darkfantasystudio.com/)And Thom Robson (https://www.thomrobsonmusic.com/)And sound effects provided by Freesound.orgThe episode illustration was provided by Luke Spooner of Carrion House (https://carrionhouse.com/)A quick thanks to our community managers, Joshua Boucher and Jasmine ArchAnd Carolyn O'Brien for helping with our submission reading.And to Ben Errington, the mystical content wizard, sorting instagram posts from twitter posts and facebook posts with his social media sorting hat.Dexter McLeod is a writer from the southern United States. You can follow him on Twitter, @DexterMcLeod.Jasmine Arch is a writer, poet, narrator, podcaster and all round chaos-for-brains. Find out more about her or her work at JasmineArch.com.Join TOS+ to access over 75 exclusive episodes, get regular stories in higher quality audio, a week early, and ad-free, at https://theotherstories.net/plus/Support the show, get audiobooks, and more at https://www.patreon.com/hawkandcleaverJoin our communities for book clubs, movie clubs, writing exercises, and more at https://theotherstories.net/community/Leave a voicemail or get in touch at https://theotherstories.net/submissionsCheck out our writing courses at https://theotherstories.net/courses/Grab some merch at https://gumroad.com/hawkandcleaverThe Other Stories is a production of the story studio, Hawk & Cleaver, and is brought to you with a Creative Commons – Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license. Don't change it. Don't sell it. But by all means… share the hell out of it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Deep Roots'A man discovers the consequences of returning home after thirty years.'Today's episode of The Other Stories has been sponsored by Voice123. Grab your free copy at Voice123.co/37AIToolsTOS.Written by Georgia Cook (https://twitter.com/georgiacooked)Narrated by Justin Fife (https://www.twitter.com/justinbfife)Edited by Duncan Muggleton (http://soundcloud.com/duncanmuggleton)With music by Duncan Muggleton (https://temporalrecordings.wordpress.com)And Thom Robson (https://www.thomrobsonmusic.com/)And sound effects provided by Freesound.orgThe episode illustration was provided by Luke Spooner of Carrion House (https://carrionhouse.com/)A quick thanks to our community managers, Joshua Boucher and Jasmine ArchAnd Joshua Boucher Carolyn O'Brien for helping with our submission reading.And to Ben Errington, the content enchanter… the contentchanter… the enchanter of contents, he chants, enchantments, for the content, to make us content. Nice one, Ben.**Georgia Cook is an illustrator and writer from London. She is the winner of the LISP 2020 Flash Fiction Prize, and has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, Staunch Book Prize and Reflex Fiction Award, among others. She can be found on twitter at @georgiacooked and on her website at https://www.georgiacookwriter.com/**Voice actor and podcaster follow Justin Fife on Twitter at www.twitter.com/justinbfifeJoin TOS+ to access over 75 exclusive episodes, get regular stories in higher quality audio, a week early, and ad-free, at https://theotherstories.net/plus/Support the show, get audiobooks, and more at https://www.patreon.com/hawkandcleaverJoin our communities for book clubs, movie clubs, writing exercises, and more at https://theotherstories.net/community/Leave a voicemail or get in touch at https://theotherstories.net/submissionsCheck out our writing courses at https://theotherstories.net/courses/Grab some merch at https://gumroad.com/hawkandcleaverThe Other Stories is a production of the story studio, Hawk & Cleaver, and is brought to you with a Creative Commons – Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license. Don't change it. Don't sell it. But by all means… share the hell out of it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's episode of The Other Stories has been sponsored by Voice123, the world's first voice-over marketplace with over 30,000 projects of all genres flowing through annually. Voice123 is the top choice for producers needing a voice to complete their creative projects, and they've recently a handy report of 37 AI-Powered Tools that will help you boost efficiency in your pre and post-production workflow. Grab your free copy at Voice123.co/37AIToolsTOS.You'll see why signing up for a free Voice123 account at voice123.com is your most hassle-free way to post your projects and hire a voice actor today!She Burns'A struggling actress visits a cryptic Seer, who hands her a crooked match, and a choice.'Written by Luke Kondor (https://www.instagram.com/lukeofkondor/)Narrated by Georgia Cook (https://twitter.com/georgiacooked)Edited by Duncan Muggleton (http://soundcloud.com/duncanmuggleton)With music by Duncan Muggleton (https://temporalrecordings.wordpress.com)And Thom Robson (https://www.thomrobsonmusic.com/)And sound effects provided by Freesound.orgThe episode illustration was provided by Luke Spooner of Carrion House (https://carrionhouse.com/)A quick thanks to our community managers, Joshua Boucher and Jasmine ArchAnd Joshua Boucher Carolyn O'Brien for helping with our submission reading.And to Ben Errington, the virtual warlock, summoning engagement and every social media content spell.Luke Kondor started writing on his computer in his early teens and never looked back… and now he has very sore eyes. He also runs and produces a short story podcast called The Other Stories, which has amassed over 11-million downloads and has a monthly listenership of ~100k downloads. Currently he lives and works on a dining room table in the middle of Sherwood Forest. For more head to www.lukekondor.com**Georgia Cook is an illustrator and writer from London. She is the winner of the LISP 2020 Flash Fiction Prize, and has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, Staunch Book Prize and Reflex Fiction Award, among others. She can be found on twitter at @georgiacooked and on her website at https://www.georgiacookwriter.com/**Join TOS+ to access over 75 exclusive episodes, get regular stories in higher quality audio, a week early, and ad-free, at https://theotherstories.net/plus/Support the show, get audiobooks, and more at https://www.patreon.com/hawkandcleaverJoin our communities for book clubs, movie clubs, writing exercises, and more at https://theotherstories.net/community/Leave a voicemail or get in touch at https://theotherstories.net/submissionsCheck out our writing courses at https://theotherstories.net/courses/Grab some merch at https://gumroad.com/hawkandcleaverThe Other Stories is a production of the story studio, Hawk & Cleaver, and is brought to you with a Creative Commons – Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license. Don't change it. Don't sell it. But by all means… share the hell out of it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's episode of The Other Stories has been sponsored by Voice123, the world's first voice-over marketplace with over 30,000 projects of all genres flowing through annually. Voice123 is the top choice for producers needing a voice to complete their creative projects, and they've recently a handy report of 37 AI-Powered Tools that will help you boost efficiency in your pre and post-production workflow. Grab your free copy at Voice123.co/37AIToolsTOS.You'll see why signing up for a free Voice123 account at voice123.com is your most hassle-free way to post your projects and hire a voice actor today!Hungry Shadows'Can your own shadow be your most dangerous adversary? If you believe that it has the power to consume you, than it certainly can.'Written by Nicola Lombardi & Joe WeintraubNarrated by Manny RealguyEdited by Duncan Muggleton (http://soundcloud.com/duncanmuggleton)With music by Duncan Muggleton (https://temporalrecordings.wordpress.com)And Thom Robson (https://www.thomrobsonmusic.com/)The episode illustration was provided by Luke Spooner of Carrion House (https://carrionhouse.com/)And sound effects provided by Freesound.orgA quick thanks to our community managers, Joshua Boucher and Jasmine ArchAnd Joshua Boucher and Carolyn O'Brien for helping with our submission reading.And to Ben Errington, the enigmatic spellbinder, weaving intricate incantations of content.After thirty years of writing--3 novels, six collections, one film adaptation, multiple translations from the English--Lombardi is considered a master of the horror genre in Italy (his website can be found here:at www.nicolalombardi.com). His first collection in English, The Gypsy Spiders and Other Tales of Italian Horror, was published by UK's Tartarus Press in Dec. 2021.Forged in the centre of a supernova 10,000 years from now, Manny rides the cosmic waves and feasts on dying planets shitting out stars.Join TOS+ to access over 75 exclusive episodes, get regular stories in higher quality audio, a week early, and ad-free, at https://theotherstories.net/plus/Support the show, get audiobooks, and more at https://www.patreon.com/hawkandcleaverJoin our communities for book clubs, movie clubs, writing exercises, and more at https://theotherstories.net/community/Leave a voicemail or get in touch at https://theotherstories.net/submissionsCheck out our writing courses at https://theotherstories.net/courses/Grab some merch at https://gumroad.com/hawkandcleaverThe Other Stories is a production of the story studio, Hawk & Cleaver, and is brought to you with a Creative Commons – Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license. Don't change it. Don't sell it. But by all means… share the hell out of it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's episode of The Other Stories has been sponsored by Voice123, the world's first voice-over marketplace with over 30,000 projects of all genres flowing through annually. Voice123 is the top choice for producers needing a voice to complete their creative projects, and they've recently a handy report of 37 AI-Powered Tools that will help you boost efficiency in your pre and post-production workflow. Grab your free copy at Voice123.co/37AIToolsTOS.You'll see why signing up for a free Voice123 account at voice123.com is your most hassle-free way to post your projects and hire a voice actor today!The Balloon'In a desolate world ravaged by an unyielding pandemic, two unlikely survivors - a guilt-ridden police officer and a lonely young woman - endure the crumbling society around them.'Written by Benjamin Percy (https://benjaminpercy.com/)Narrated by Justin Fife (https://www.twitter.com/justinbfife)Edited by Karl Hughes (https://twitter.com/karlhughes)With music by Tim Kulig (https://timkulig.com/)And Thom Robson (https://www.thomrobsonmusic.com/)And sound effects provided by Freesound.orgThe episode illustration was provided by Luke Spooner of Carrion House (https://carrionhouse.com/)A quick thanks to our community managers, Joshua Boucher and Jasmine ArchAnd Joshua Boucher and Carolyn O'Brien for helping with our submission reading.And to Ben Errington the ongoing explosion of content being fired out of his Social Media canon.**Benjamin Percy is a novelist, comics writer, and screenwriter. He writes Wolverine, X-Force, and Ghost Rider for Marvel Comics. And his latest novel -- The Sky Vault -- releases in September of 2023. For more, head over to https://benjaminpercy.com/**Voice actor and podcaster follow Justin Fife on Twitter at www.twitter.com/justinbfifeThe Other Stories is a production of the story studio, Hawk & Cleaver, and is brought to you with a Creative Commons – Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license. Don't change it. Don't sell it. But by all means… share the hell out of it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

SHOW NOTESTranscripts available at creativepeptalk.com/episodes!Sign up to the newsletter and receive a FREE copy of The Creative Career Path e-book! https://www.creativepeptalk.com/pathCheck out the Creative Pep Talk shop at creativepeptalk.etsy.comFollow Invisible Things on Instagram!**PRE-ORDER INVISIBLE THINGS! Upcoming picture book out July 18th, 2023!** *Currently with all pre-orders you can get a FREE poster!___Grace Miceli's InstagramGrace Miceli's WebsiteDraw It Out: Transform a Journal Entry into an Evocative Comic - Skillshare Class by Grace MiceliThe Book of Symbols: Reflections on Archetypal Images"The Kekulé Problem" - Nautilus Article by Cormac McCarthyCALL TO ADVENTUREWrite a life list (with no judgement). What do you associate with those things? What do they represent for you personally?SPONSORS & SHOUT OUTSVOICE123 This episode is sponsored by Voice123, the first online marketplace for voice actors to grow their voice over business.Got a creative project you'd like to bring to life? Download our free step-by-step guide at voice123.co/creativepeptalk to successfully find the right voice for your projects. You'll see why signing up for a free Voice123 account at voice123.com is your most hassle-free way to post your first project and hire a voice actor today!OUR PATREON BACKERS Thank you patrons, we appreciate you so much! If you have the means, support the show at patreon.com/creativepeptalk!

SHOW NOTESTranscripts available at creativepeptalk.com/episodes!Sign up to the newsletter and receive a FREE copy of The Creative Career Path e-book! https://www.creativepeptalk.com/pathCheck out the Creative Pep Talk shop at creativepeptalk.etsy.comFollow Invisible Things on Instagram!PRE-ORDER INVISIBLE THINGS! Upcoming picture book out July 18th, 2023!*Currently with all pre-orders you can get a FREE poster!–––Greek Myth - Theseus and the MinotaurCALL TO ADVENTUREActive ImaginationTake the connections from your collections, put them on the page and start asking yourself, what are these about? Daydreaming into intention, without judgment.(The Creative Self Excavation Series)SPONSORS & SHOUT OUTSADOBE FRESCO Adobe Fresco is a free drawing and painting app built for the latest stylus and touch devices. Fresco brings together the world's largest collection of vector and raster brushes, plus revolutionary live brushes, to deliver a completely natural painting and drawing experience. For artists, illustrators, animators, sketchers, and anyone who wants to discover, or rediscover, the joy of drawing and painting. Available on iPhone, iPad, and Windows. https://adobefresco.app.link/CPTVOICE123 This episode is sponsored by Voice123, the first online marketplace for voice actors to grow their voice over business.Got a creative project you'd like to bring to life? Download our free step-by-step guide at voice123.co/creativepeptalk to successfully find the right voice for your projects. You'll see why signing up for a free Voice123 account at voice123.com is your most hassle-free way to post your first project and hire a voice actor today!OUR PATREON BACKERS Thank you patrons, we appreciate you so much! If you have the means, support the show at patreon.com/creativepeptalk!

Today's episode of The Other Stories has been sponsored by Voice123, the world's first voice over marketplace. You'll see why signing up for a free Voice123 account at voice123.com is your most hassle-free way to post your projects and hire a voice actor today!Coyotes'A group of migrants attempt to cross the American border for safety, only to find that something within is hunting them.'Written by Thomas Kent West (http://www.twitter.com/@thomaskentwest)Narrated by Shara Jahnke (https://www.instagram.com/zellezra/)Edited by Karl Hughes (https://twitter.com/karlhughes)With music by Chris Zabriskie (https://chriszabriskie.com/)And Thom Robson (https://www.thomrobsonmusic.com/)The episode illustration was provided by Luke Spooner of Carrion House (https://carrionhouse.com/)And sound effects provided by Zapsplat.com and Freesound.orgA quick thanks to our community managers, Joshua Boucher and Jasmine ArchAnd Carolyn O'Brien for helping with our submission reading.And to Ben Errington for tunneling through the digital soil of social media, like a diligent and handsome earthworm.Thomas Kent West is an American writer of speculative fiction. He is the winner of Horrorbabble's 'Artifacts of Horror' contest and the Black Hole Entertainment short fiction prize. Shara Jahnke is an enigmatic laloceziac who lives in beautiful Eugene, Oregon. When she's not fashioning medical products to rescue your squishy brains, she's using her own to plot new story ideas, hone her archery skills and play video games.Join TOS+ to access over 75 exclusive episodes, get regular stories in higher quality audio, a week early, and ad-free, at https://theotherstories.net/plus/Support the show, get audiobooks, and more at https://www.patreon.com/hawkandcleaverJoin our communities for book clubs, movie clubs, writing exercises, and more at https://theotherstories.net/community/Leave a voicemail or get in touch at https://theotherstories.net/submissionsCheck out our writing courses at https://theotherstories.net/courses/Grab some merch at https://gumroad.com/hawkandcleaverThe Other Stories is a production of the story studio, Hawk & Cleaver, and is brought to you with a Creative Commons – Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license. Don't change it. Don't sell it. But by all means… share the hell out of it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

SHOW NOTESTranscripts available at creativepeptalk.com/episodes!Sign up to the newsletter and receive a FREE copy of The Creative Career Path e-book! https://www.creativepeptalk.com/pathCheck out the Creative Pep Talk shop at creativepeptalk.etsy.comFollow Invisible Things on Instagram!PRE-ORDER INVISIBLE THINGS! Upcoming picture book out July 18th, 2023!Currently with all pre-orders you can get a FREE poster!–––Steal Like an Artist by Austin KleonThe Marginalian (formerly known as Brain Pickings) by Maria PopovaNetworked Knowledge and Combinatorial Creativity - The Marginalian by Maria PopovaEPISODE 392 with Kirby FergusonEverything Is A Remix by Kirby FergusonCALL TO ADVENTUREMake a dry bones collage. Erase the boundaries and find connecting points between the collections you've unearthed.(The Creative Self Excavation Series)SPONSORS & SHOUT OUTSADOBE FRESCO Adobe Fresco is a free drawing and painting app built for the latest stylus and touch devices. Fresco brings together the world's largest collection of vector and raster brushes, plus revolutionary live brushes, to deliver a completely natural painting and drawing experience. For artists, illustrators, animators, sketchers, and anyone who wants to discover, or rediscover, the joy of drawing and painting. Available on iPhone, iPad, and Windows. https://adobefresco.app.link/CPTVOICE123 This episode is sponsored by Voice123, the first online marketplace for voice actors to grow their voice over business.Got a creative project you'd like to bring to life? Download our free step-by-step guide at voice123.co/creativepeptalk to successfully find the right voice for your projects. You'll see why signing up for a free Voice123 account at voice123.com is your most hassle-free way to post your first project and hire a voice actor today!OUR PATREON BACKERS Thank you patrons, we appreciate you so much! If you have the means, support the show at patreon.com/creativepeptalk!

Today's episode of The Other Stories has been sponsored by Voice123, the world's first voice over marketplace. You'll see why signing up for a free Voice123 account at voice123.com is your most hassle-free way to post your projects and hire a voice actor today!Werms'When a plumber who's seen too much is buried alive by a sadistic gravedigger, he discovers a series of mysterious tunnels extending from the bottom of his casket.'Written by Andrew Benzinger (https://www.instagram.com/andrew.benzinger)Narrated by Justin Fife (https://www.twitter.com/justinbfife)Edited by Duncan Muggleton (http://soundcloud.com/duncanmuggleton)With music by Duncan Muggleton (https://temporalrecordings.wordpress.com)And Thom Robson (https://www.thomrobsonmusic.com/)And sound effects provided by Freesound.orgThe episode illustration was provided by Luke Spooner of Carrion House (https://carrionhouse.com/)A quick thanks to our community managers, Joshua Boucher and Jasmine ArchAnd Carolyn O'Brien for helping with our submission reading.And to Ben Errington for tunneling through the social media abyss with his powerful content, delivering unto us, golden content nuggets.**Follow Andrew Benzinger on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/andrew.benzinger.**Voice actor and podcaster follow Justin Fife on Twitter at www.twitter.com/justinbfife.Join TOS+ to access over 75 exclusive episodes, get regular stories in higher quality audio, a week early, and ad-free, at https://theotherstories.net/plus/Support the show, get audiobooks, and more at https://www.patreon.com/hawkandcleaverJoin our communities for book clubs, movie clubs, writing exercises, and more at https://theotherstories.net/community/Leave a voicemail or get in touch at https://theotherstories.net/submissionsCheck out our writing courses at https://theotherstories.net/courses/Grab some merch at https://gumroad.com/hawkandcleaverThe Other Stories is a production of the story studio, Hawk & Cleaver, and is brought to you with a Creative Commons – Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license. Don't change it. Don't sell it. But by all means… share the hell out of it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

SHOW NOTESTranscripts available at creativepeptalk.com/episodes!Sign up to the newsletter and receive a FREE copy of The Creative Career Path e-book! https://www.creativepeptalk.com/pathCheck out the Creative Pep Talk shop at creativepeptalk.etsy.comFollow Invisible Things on Instagram!PRE-ORDER INVISIBLE THINGS! Upcoming picture book out July 18th, 2023!*Currently with all pre-orders you can get a FREE poster!Greek Myth - Theseus and the MinotaurCALL TO ADVENTUREPsychological mudlarking!Unearthing psychically charged symbols, stories, and archetypes from your life. Digging into, collecting the things holding energy.mud•lark (n): a person who scavenges in river mud for objects of value.(The Creative Self Excavation Series)SPONSORS & SHOUT OUTSADOBE FRESCOAdobe Fresco is a free drawing and painting app built for the latest stylus and touch devices. Fresco brings together the world's largest collection of vector and raster brushes, plus revolutionary live brushes, to deliver a completely natural painting and drawing experience. For artists, illustrators, animators, sketchers, and anyone who wants to discover, or rediscover, the joy of drawing and painting. Available on iPhone, iPad, and Windows. https://adobefresco.app.link/CPTVOICE123This episode is sponsored by Voice123, the first online marketplace for voice actors to grow their voice over business.Got a creative project you'd like to bring to life? Download our free step-by-step guide at voice123.co/creativepeptalk to successfully find the right voice for your projects. You'll see why signing up for a free Voice123 account at voice123.com is your most hassle-free way to post your first project and hire a voice actor today!OUR PATREON BACKERSThank you patrons, we appreciate you so much! If you have the means, support the show at patreon.com/creativepeptalk!

Today's episode of The Other Stories has been sponsored by Voice123, the world's first voice over marketplace with over 30,000 projects of all genres flowing through annually. voice123.co/TheOtherStories.The Rescue'A hero makes a final assault on Faraway Keep, where the Lord Chamberlain has locked away the heir to the throne.'Written and narrated by Andy Conduit-Turner (https://twitter.com/andyctwrites)Produced by James Barnett AKA Jimmy Horrors (https://www.JamesBarnettCreative.com)With an opening theme composed by Duncan Muggleton (https://soundcloud.com/duncanmuggleton)Based on the original music by Thom Robson (https://www.thomrobsonmusic.com/)Additional music in today's episode has been provided by Dark Fantasy Studio (http://darkfantasystudio.com/)And sound effects provided by Freesound.org and Zapsplat.comThe episode illustration was provided by Luke Spooner of Carrion House (https://carrionhouse.com/)A quick thanks to our community managers, Joshua Boucher and Jasmine ArchAnd Joshua Boucher and Carolyn O'Brien for helping with our submission reading.And to Ben Errington for creating a social media fairy tale, each tweet a new adventure, every post a happy-ever-after.Andy Conduit-Turner is a writer, editor and podcaster from the UK. You'll find Andy himself @ AndyCTWrites on Twitter.James Barnett is the producer of the Night's End podcast. www.JamesBarnettCreative.comJoin TOS+ to access over 75 exclusive episodes, get regular stories in higher quality audio, a week early, and ad-free, at https://theotherstories.net/plus/Support the show, get audiobooks, and more at https://www.patreon.com/hawkandcleaverJoin our communities for book clubs, movie clubs, writing exercises, and more at https://theotherstories.net/community/Leave a voicemail or get in touch at https://theotherstories.net/submissionsCheck out our writing courses at https://theotherstories.net/courses/Grab some merch at https://gumroad.com/hawkandcleaverThe Other Stories is a production of the story studio, Hawk & Cleaver, and is brought to you with a Creative Commons – Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license. Don't change it. Don't sell it. But by all means… share the hell out of it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

SHOW NOTESTranscripts available at creativepeptalk.com/episodes!Sign up to the newsletter and receive a FREE copy of The Creative Career Path e-book! https://www.creativepeptalk.com/pathCheck out the Creative Pep Talk shop at creativepeptalk.etsy.comFollow Invisible Things on Instagram!PRE-ORDER INVISIBLE THINGS! Upcoming picture book out July 18th, 2023!*Currently with all pre-orders you can get a FREE poster!James Acaster's new project, “Temps”CALL TO ADVENTUREFlip the pyramid.Maslow's upside down flow chart – finding self, finding the scene, and finding the superfans.(The Creative Self Excavation Series)SPONSORS & SHOUT OUTSADOBE FRESCOAdobe Fresco is a free drawing and painting app built for the latest stylus and touch devices. Fresco brings together the world's largest collection of vector and raster brushes, plus revolutionary live brushes, to deliver a completely natural painting and drawing experience. For artists, illustrators, animators, sketchers, and anyone who wants to discover, or rediscover, the joy of drawing and painting. Available on iPhone, iPad, and Windows. https://adobefresco.app.link/CPTVOICE123This episode is sponsored by Voice123, the first online marketplace for voice actors to grow their voice over business.Got a creative project you'd like to bring to life? Download our free step-by-step guide at voice123.co/creativepeptalk to successfully find the right voice for your projects. You'll see why signing up for a free Voice123 account at voice123.com is your most hassle-free way to post your first project and hire a voice actor today!OUR PATREON BACKERSThank you patrons, we appreciate you so much! If you have the means, support the show at patreon.com/creativepeptalk!

Today's episode of The Other Stories has been sponsored by Voice123, the world's first voice over marketplace with over 30,000 projects of all genres flowing through annually. voice123.co/TheOtherStories.They Never Grow Up'The crew of the Ferrous Pike embark on a perilous voyage to save their children and reclaim their future.'Written and narrated by Andy Conduit-Turner (https://twitter.com/andyctwrites)Produced by James Barnett AKA Jimmy Horrors (https://www.JamesBarnettCreative.com)With an opening theme composed by Duncan Muggleton (https://soundcloud.com/duncanmuggleton)Based on the original music by Thom Robson (https://www.thomrobsonmusic.com/)Additional music in today's episode has been provided by Dark Fantasy Studio (http://darkfantasystudio.com/)And sound effects provided by Freesound.org and Sounds-mp3.com and zapsplat.comThe episode illustration was provided by Luke Spooner of Carrion House (https://carrionhouse.com/)A quick thanks to our community managers, Joshua Boucher and Jasmine ArchAnd Joshua Boucher and Carolyn O'Brien for helping with our submission reading.And to Ben Errington for creating a social media fairy tale, each tweet a new adventure, every post a happy-ever-after.Andy Conduit-Turner is a writer, editor and podcaster from the UK. You'll find Andy himself @ AndyCTWrites on Twitter.James Barnett is the producer of the Night's End podcast. www.JamesBarnettCreative.comJoin TOS+ to access over 75 exclusive episodes, get regular stories in higher quality audio, a week early, and ad-free, at https://theotherstories.net/plus/Support the show, get audiobooks, and more at https://www.patreon.com/hawkandcleaverCheck out our writing courses at https://theotherstories.net/courses/Grab some merch at https://gumroad.com/hawkandcleaverThe Other Stories is a production of the story studio, Hawk & Cleaver, and is brought to you with a Creative Commons – Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license. Don't change it. Don't sell it. But by all means… share the hell out of it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's episode of The Other Stories has been sponsored by Voice123, the world's first voice over marketplace with over 30,000 projects of all genres flowing through annually. voice123.co/TheOtherStories.The Boy King & The Frog'Whilst a young boy sleeps and dreams of a land in which he is king, a mysterious frog named Sir Ivan comes to visit.'Written by Luke Kondor (https://www.lukekondor.com)Narrated by Andy Conduit-Turner (https://twitter.com/andyctwrites)Produced by James Barnett AKA Jimmy Horrors (https://www.JamesBarnettCreative.com)Opening theme composed by Duncan Muggleton (https://soundcloud.com/duncanmuggleton)Based on the original music by Thom Robson (https://www.thomrobsonmusic.com/)Additional music by Dark Fantasy Studio (http://darkfantasystudio.com/)And Chriz Zabriskie (https://chriszabriskie.com/)And sound effects provided by Freesound.org.Episode illustration by Luke Spooner of Carrion House (https://carrionhouse.com/)A quick thanks to our community managers, Joshua Boucher and Jasmine ArchAnd Joshua Boucher and Carolyn O'Brien for helping with our submission reading.And to Ben Errington for creating a social media fairy tale, each tweet a new adventure, every post a happy-ever-after.Luke Kondor makes stuff, including Keith – a short film made in 7 days with no ideas, no money, and no camera, www.lukekondor.comAndy Conduit-Turner is a writer, editor and podcaster from the UK. You'll find Andy himself @ AndyCTWrites on Twitter.James Barnett is the producer of the Night's End podcast. www.JamesBarnettCreative.comYou can join our Bookclub, Movieclub, and writing exercises over at Facebook.com/groups/theotherstories.Leave a voicemail or get in touch at https://theotherstories.net/submissionsBecome a Patron for early access to the episodes, bonus content, and heaps of free stuff over at Patreon.com/hawkandcleaverThe Other Stories is a production of the story studio, Hawk & Cleaver, and is brought to you with a Creative Commons – Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license. Don't change it. Don't sell it. But by all means… share the hell out of it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Intro by Andy Conduit-Turner (https://twitter.com/AndyCTWrites)You can join our Bookclub, Movieclub, and writing exercises over at Facebook.com/groups/hawkandcleaverT-shirts, mugs, posters, and comic books are available at www.gumroad.com/hawkandcleaverGet help with your short stories and your podcasts by heading to TheOtherStories.Net/servicesToday's episode of The Other Stories has been sponsored by Voice123, the world's first voice over marketplace with over 30,000 projects of all genres flowing through annually. Grab your free copy at voice123.co/TheOtherStories.Andy Conduit-Turner is a writer, editor and podcaster from the UK, with a love of horror across all mediums, you can find his stories featuring on several volumes of The Other stories, his comics published by Horde Comics and more. You'll find Andy himself @ AndyCTWrites on Twitter, on the Horror Hangout podcast, discussing the best and worst of horror films…oh, and standing right behind you. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's episode of The Other Stories has been sponsored by Voice123, the world's first voice over marketplace with over 30,000 projects of all genres flowing through annually. Grab your free copy at voice123.co/TheOtherStories.Upon A Star'Eager adventurers embark on a quest to a hidden cave that was, once-upon-a-time, pierced by a fabled meteor.'Written and narrated by Andy Conduit-Turner (https://twitter.com/andyctwrites)Produced by James Barnett AKA Jimmy Horrors (https://www.JamesBarnettCreative.com)With an opening theme composed by Duncan Muggleton (https://soundcloud.com/duncanmuggleton)Based on the original music by Thom Robson (https://www.thomrobsonmusic.com/)Additional music in today's episode has been provided by Dark Fantasy Studio (http://darkfantasystudio.com/)And sound effects provided by Freesound.org and Sounds-mp3.com.The episode illustration was provided by Luke Spooner of Carrion House (https://carrionhouse.com/)A quick thanks to our community managers, Joshua Boucher and Jasmine ArchAnd Joshua Boucher and Carolyn O'Brien for helping with our submission reading.And to Ben Errington for creating a social media fairy tale, each tweet a new adventure, every post a happy-ever-after.Andy Conduit-Turner is a writer, editor and podcaster from the UK. You'll find Andy himself @ AndyCTWrites on Twitter, on the Horror Hangout podcast, discussing the best and worst of horror films.James Barnett is the producer of the Night's End podcast. You can also catch other works of his at www.JamesBarnettCreative.comYou can join our Bookclub, Movieclub, and writing exercises over at Facebook.com/groups/theotherstories.Leave a voicemail or get in touch at https://theotherstories.net/submissionsT-shirts, mugs, posters, and comic books are available at www.gumroad.com/hawkandcleaverGet help with your short stories and your podcasts by heading to TheOtherStories.Net/servicesBecome a Patron for early access to the episodes over at Patreon.com/hawkandcleaverThe Other Stories is a production of the story studio, Hawk & Cleaver, and is brought to you with a Creative Commons – Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license. Don't change it. Don't sell it. But by all means… share the hell out of it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Escaping The Fall'A disoriented hiker, an eerily silent forest, and no sign of the friends whose idea it was to even come out here. Would you find your way home?'Today's episode of The Other Stories has been sponsored by Voice123, the world's first voice over marketplace with over 30,000 projects of all genres flowing through annually. Grab your free copy at voice123.co/TheOtherStories.Written by Jasmine Arch (https://jasminearch.com/)Narrated by Josh Curran (https://twitter.com/jcurranwriter)Edited by James Barnett AKA Jimmy Horrors (https://www.JamesBarnettCreative.com)With music by Daniel Birch (https://danielbirchmusic.com)And Thom Robson (https://www.thomrobsonmusic.com/)The episode illustration was provided by Luke Spooner of Carrion House (https://carrionhouse.com/)And sound effects provided by Freesound.orgA quick thanks to our community managers, Joshua Boucher and Jasmine ArchAnd Joshua Boucher and Carolyn O'Brien for helping with our submission reading.And to Ben Errington for weaving our social media spirits into an intergalactic content tapestry.Jasmine Arch is a writer, poet, narrator, podcaster and all round chaos-for-brains. Find out more about her or her work at JasmineArch.com.Josh Curran is a narrator and writer. He is also the creator of the horror Audio-Drama podcast, Miscreation. You can follow him on twitter, @jcurranwriterYou can help support the show over at Patreon.com/HawkandCleaverYou can join our Bookclub, Movieclub, and writing exercises over at Facebook.com/groups/hawkandcleaverT-shirts, mugs, posters, and comic books are available at www.gumroad.com/hawkandcleaverGet help with your short stories and your podcasts by heading to TheOtherStories.Net/servicesThe Other Stories is a production of the story studio, Hawk & Cleaver, and is brought to you with a Creative Commons – Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license. Don't change it. Don't sell it. But by all means… share the hell out of it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.