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