Social Media and Going Viral with Tawny Platis

Anne welcomes the talented Tawny Platis, an accomplished voice actor and viral content creator. Tawny shares her compelling story, from her early days in childhood acting to launching a successful retail business at just 18, and ultimately thriving in the competitive voiceover industry. Their conversation unearths the business behind content creation and the effort required to engage audiences effectively. The BOSSes insights reveal the importance of passion and joy in crafting content that resonates, whether it's through comedy or informative storytelling. Tawny recounts her own path to becoming a viral sensation and shares how blending various skills and experiences can lead to a fulfilling and impactful career. Tawny shares practical tips for newcomers, from adapting one's voice for various professional settings to building a solid business foundation.

00:02 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey bosses, are you struggling with that ever-elusive, real, conversational, authentic, like you're talking to your best friend, Reed Book? Coaching with me and I'll help you take your voice over to a real and believable place. Find out more at annganguzacom. 

00:21 - 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. 

00:40 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey, hey, everyone. Welcome to the VO Boss Podcast. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and I am so very excited to have with me in the studio special guest voice actor and boss viral content creator, tawny Plattis, packard, raid, shadow Legends, raycon Headphones and a billion more Too many for me to read. She's also currently the voice of Harmony's mom in the House on the Outland series by Make Animations and is going to play Sophie Bott in the upcoming Garbage People film now streaming on Tubi Tawny yay, you're here Finally. 

01:23 - Tawny Platis (Guest) It was a long time coming. I'm so happy to be here. 

01:26 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, thank you so, so much for taking a piece of your busy day and talking with us. Gosh, I've been following you for a long time and, I think, to a lot of people in the industry. All of a sudden they're like hey, have you seen this girl with this? Is it the 10 different styles of voiceover? Which is where I? That's the big one, that's the big one, right? Have you seen this girl? I'm like gosh, she's amazing and I'm like I've known that for many years. So perhaps you could take our bosses, who are not as familiar with you as I am and, by the way, I've been a fan of yours and I've watched you like rebrand, like through my eyes, and we could have five episodes talking about what a boss you are. But why don't you tell our bosses a little bit about your journey into voiceover and your career as it stands today? 

02:13 - Tawny Platis (Guest) Yeah, I actually got my first voiceover job when I was six years old for a local radio station in San Diego, but my first on-camera role was for a baby blanket ad, also local to San Diego, when I was about four months old. So I've been doing this for a lot of decades now and kept doing that, you know, local child actor type of stuff until I turned 18. And then I started a retail store because I think we both know at this point, you know, the acting biz is very volatile. 

02:41 So I was like I need to make sure I have like a backup plan just in case. This doesn't work out. So my backup plan was to start a retail business. Funny enough, what were you retailing? Just out of curiosity, if you're familiar with like consignment type stores like Buffalo Exchange, I did that, but it was like baby and maternity stuff. 

02:58 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh, wow, I love that. And was that just something you decided to do on your own Kind of? 

03:03 - Tawny Platis (Guest) I had worked retail. I started working retail when I was like 15, 16, I want to say and I had a knack for it. I was pretty good at sales and I was like I think I could open a store, I think I could do this. I love that. So I was 18 and I did that my senior year of high school. I started doing that. Everybody else was getting ready to go to college and I was opening a store in the neighborhood over to mine and I built it up. It was just me, one other person from this little 500 square foot hole in the wall spot over two years to a 5,000 square foot warehouse type of store and it had 10 to 15 employees. And our biggest year, we did a little under a million dollars in sales. 

03:40 So I went from doing like $150 a day in sales to doing that and being able to be financially independent by the time I was 23. 

03:49 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So yeah, that's fantastic. Now, that's one part of your story I was not familiar with and that's fantastic. At a young age, the entrepreneur comes out, the boss entrepreneur. So I can only imagine that that really helped give you a great foundation for running your own voice acting business. I feel like you're so multifaceted that you're not just a voice actor. Right, you're an empire, and a lot of that empire and I want to kind of get right into it, because I know there's so many people that are like how did you do it? How did you become viral? Because that is so elusive to many people out there. So talk to us about the foundations in your business right in your retail business that helped you in evolving and growing in voiceover and how you've come to really not just be a voiceover actor but like, literally, you are a content creator, an influencer. 

04:41 - Tawny Platis (Guest) Yeah, influencer that word? Yeah, I am though. 

04:45 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, but you are, I mean you probably are sick of hearing that, but in reality you really are. I mean you've got the reach out there to really influence a lot of people and affect them. And I know from people who've come to me I'm like have you seen that girl? I mean of course I know that girl, she's super talented. But yeah, talk to the experience of your retail years and how it helped you. 

05:05 - Tawny Platis (Guest) I think that is what has helped me the most, to be completely transparent, being able to also have that background with coming from a family that owned businesses, like for generations, you know, and it was all very much like very squarely middle class businesses too. That's another thing is like it definitely wasn't something where, like I came from, a lot of wealth or anything. 

05:26 Everybody has always been right smack dab in the middle, but the privilege that I had from that was knowing how to run a business and know how to go about using LegalZoom just to start an LLC, and like knowing how to find the information that I needed to do what I wanted to do, and that's a huge leg up, and I often tell people that do ask me about voice acting so what do I need to do? What kind of agents do I need to pursue, what accents, what microphone do I need? And I'm like, like, but honestly, get a business plan, like I was like learn business. 

05:57 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I love that. I love that. 

05:59 - Tawny Platis (Guest) Yeah right. 

05:59 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Because if people don't know who you are and can't find you, they can't hire you right as a business. 

06:05 - Tawny Platis (Guest) And get good at sales. That's another thing too is like that has always been, I think really a huge part that gets overlooked in what we do. Like we have people that take all these classes and they're so into the microphone. What microphone do I need? What microphone do you have? Because that's the missing piece of the puzzle. I need to get the microphone, and it really isn't. You know, like that's the easiest part is like getting your sound studio, your recording space, set up. That part's easy. You pay some buddy $100, $200. They do a sample for you, they get you all set up and then you're good to go. 

06:34 How are you finding work? How are you finding jobs? And then are you staying consistent with this? I can't tell people enough that, like there are admittedly so many incredibly talented voice actors out there who send me their stuff and I'm like you're better than I am and they don't do anything with it because they don't know how to sell, they don't know how to run a business. You know, which is kind of an unfortunate part about being an artist and a creative is like we are so focused on that, which is wonderful, but the reality, the unfortunate reality is like. 

07:03 We have to know how to turn that into a business and be able to boss ourselves, because we don't have somebody telling us what to do. So learn how to run a business. That's the biggest piece of advice to doing well in this industry is being able to manage yourself and learning how to sell your product, which is your voice. 

07:24 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So then let me ask you I assume that your content creation, even though sometimes it seems to have nothing to do with voice, although there's a lot of videos that you've done that talk about voiceover you've also done a lot of videos that don't necessarily talk about voiceover. 

07:37 I mean, you did one video, actually, which I really loved, on synthetic voices, and I was like, where does this woman come from? Because, look, as you know, with the VO Boss podcast and I say this all the time literally for about a year I did extensive interviews with CEOs of AI companies and talking about synthetic voices and talking about ethical practices and all that stuff, and you came out with a video that was so in depth about your thoughts and your take on it, which I was just I don't know where this girl comes from I was just so, so impressed with that. I had to tell you that, as a fangirl and, doing the work that I've done and studying it, I thought that that was an amazing video. So your content is not just about the 10 voices of voiceover. So talk about how the type of content that you create, how does that help you to market? 

08:26 - Tawny Platis (Guest) I love that. You asked that. So the way that that helps me to market is I'm talking about things that are relevant right now, and so much of how I figured that out is what made me, I think, successful in retail as well, which is very much like analytics driven. It's observational. I spend hours, you know, researching what's trending, what are people talking about, how are people moving, how are successful people who are doing what I'm doing? What are they doing? And then to juxtapose that, what is nobody doing either, you know, and how do I combine those things? So it's like I'm filling a need that's not being filled here, but am I doing it in a way that I have seen as proven successful? Like when I had my retail store it was 2009, so cut me some slack here but like I was obsessed with Mark Zuckerberg and what he was doing. You know, I'm like how is he figuring this out? How is he doing all this? Like how? And then Apple I was obsessed with Apple. Like how is Apple dominating? Like this, like, how is this so? 

09:21 relevant dominating the market? 

09:23 yeah, now we know what we know, um, you know, but that has continued in my career with voice acting, with content creation. You know how are people editing their videos, so it's not like copying, like verbatim what somebody's doing, but it's like not doing the millennial pause, for instance, like that's like such a huge faux pas when you're creating content. It's like setting up your camera and then, like you know, right then, like you know, like it's recording, and you leave this big old gap in the beginning to make sure you're recording. It's quick edits, it's speaking quickly and then the topics that you know are trending right now. So so much of I think what goes into that is being very aware of trends, and I say the same thing with voiceover. 

10:02 It's something I have noticed twice now in my career is like the way that I market in content creation is very similar to like what I do in voiceover, in the sense of I'm very much obsessed with the trends and analytics and tracking all of that, and I have noticed that a couple of times in my career now in voiceover, where we've had these big shifts in style and people are often blindsided and I can usually tell those are the voice actors that have stopped watching commercials. 

10:30 They don't take that time every day to go on iSpot TV or Hulu or YouTube or just wherever you find commercials and to watch them and to listen like, okay, who's getting cast what's popular right now? And we had that shift from the announcer read in the 90s and the 1000s to conversational, you know in the 10s. And now we're detached conversational, like with that Poppy commercial in the Super Bowl, and I'm seeing that with voice actors. They're like what does detached conversational mean? What is this? You know, and I'm like I hear it all the time, you know. So I think that, like making sure that you are staying just up to date with everything that's going on, and that means taking those classes, being involved in the community. That's going to ensure that you stay relevant. 

11:10 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, and also for those people that are doing non-broadcast work like e-learning and corporate narration, it's also important to see what is corporate narration. I have so many people that don't really understand what corporate narration is, and within the word corporate narration is the word corporate. Okay, companies are formed for a reason right To sell. So in corporate narration your focus is a sell. Now it's a longer style, it's a longer format than, let's say, a commercial. So your sell is very nuanced and guess you know what? It's not just information delivery, there's a sell. 

11:43 You have to connect and you have to have a back and forth in order to connect with your listener and that becomes a conversation. 

11:49 And so if I say I want it conversational, it doesn't mean I want it casual and I may not want it detached if we're talking about corporate, because in reality, for corporate, you're an authority, you know what you're talking about and you've got a long time to talk about it, so you may not be detached unless you're shooting for a specific market. 

12:06 So I love the fact that you talk about market research, because anybody that goes and all of you bosses out there can go and do research on okay, what's trending in corporate narration? What's trending in e-learning. There's lots of externally facing e-learning modules out there as well, and the one thing that people say is that e-learning is going to get taken up by synthetic voices. But I say that most people that really want a connected teacher and student connection are not going to go that way, and that's the way it should have been all along. But we ended up reading our material like robots and that's kind of why the first thing people think is that, oh yeah, synthetic voices are going to take that over. So the people who thought that was okay, the buyers are going to continue to think that's okay and maybe have a synthetic voice. But those who want a person that can connect right, no matter what genre, they're going to hire that human. 

12:58 - Tawny Platis (Guest) I hope so. That's my thoughts on it. 

13:00 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That's my thoughts on it until, ultimately, our ears become attuned to maybe a different sound. But I love the market research and I love the fact that you kept the word conversational in there, because I don't want to disband the word conversational, because conversation indicates that you've got a back and forth Right. So let's talk about content. In terms of being a boss and creating content, what percentage of your day is thinking of content, creating content? What does it take to create great content? And is there a secret to having that content go viral? Of course, everybody wants to know the secret, that kind of thing. 

13:32 - Tawny Platis (Guest) I'm so glad you asked that too, because everybody's like what's your secret to going viral? From my standpoint as somebody who does this, I don't think there is a secret beyond the secret being like you got to be in the right place at the right time. 

13:45 So often which I don't think people like to hear, because that's very scary that there is a luck component to everything we do, and that doesn't mean it's only luck. 

13:56 That means you have to be really good at what you do, you have to work really hard, and then you also have to get lucky. 

14:00 And I think that's terrifying to people, as they're like so I can do everything right and it still won't happen, and I'm like, yeah, so much of it is the right place at the right time, and then it taking time to. 

14:11 You know, like I've been doing this for years, yes, and then I am, within the last year or so, I'm at the point where it's like I pretty much just need to upload a video every day, couple days, few days, whatever it is. I pretty much just get emails at this point in my inbox that are like hey, we'd like to hire you for XYZ, and I'm very grateful to be in that position to where it's like that's pretty much all the marketing I really need to do, unless I'm after something really cool and specific. Like I'm like I want to do more, like big animation now, so I'm going to reach out to some people, but like now it's like I'm able to like make a living just posting that content and having people find me as a voice actor and hire me for these jobs, and it has taken, you know, literally decades to get to that point of being able to be your overnight success took decades right. 

14:57 Yeah, so yes. 

14:59 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And the viral thing was the luck component of it being in the right part at the right time. But I mean, you've been posting videos for gosh since I've been following you, which is years, and you had, I think, in the beginning and I always thought that this was such a tough shtick, is you were comedy. I mean, a lot of what you do has a comedy element to it. Do you think that that has something to do with, let's say, your success in terms of being viral or just having people love your videos? 

15:26 - Tawny Platis (Guest) I do. I think that you have to choose one of two things when it comes to doing content creation, or both things. You have to entertain or you have to educate. Yes, I agree, and you know, if you're like me and you don't have a degree, you're not an expert in anything. You can't be like look, I have the piece of paper that says I'm smart. Yeah, you know, you just went right out of high school into the working world. You have to entertain, you know, or you have to establish yourself so much that you do become an expert in something. And again, that takes time just the amount of years you've been doing it. So I was like okay, I don't have the piece of paper saying I'm an authority to speak on something, so I guess I have to be entertaining. And I think that there's a couple ways you can do that, and one of the ways is through making people laugh. You know, and I think that's a big draw to something. It's like oh, I like this content because it makes me laugh. 

16:13 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Everybody likes to laugh, so that's where that really came from was just not being educated enough to make educational content to me, since I've been following you with the comedy and then also with your experience in retail and having that, I feel like you took on the challenge and you loved it, and so now you've got this really cool mix of. I know maybe you don't want to be called an influencer, but in reality when now people are asking you to create content and sell right and then also use your voice right and you're on camera, so I feel like it just took every piece of you that you've maybe been passionate about or loved. Listen to me, I'm analyzing you right now and it just brought it together into this beautiful like. This is where you are today, unless, of course, it doesn't bring you joy, but I kind of feel like it might. I don't know. I feel like you like what you do. I do like what I do. 

17:05 - Tawny Platis (Guest) I'm very, very lucky that I get to do this and I'm very lucky that I was born into a certain situation where it was truly the perfect storm, where it was like having that family that like could teach me how to run a business. Right, right and like you know, for better or for worse, being put into acting as an infant and doing that for 30 some odd years. I'm extremely lucky in that way that, like I really did have kind of all of that stuff that allowed this to happen. 

17:32 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, it's like all the pieces together into like where you are today just seem to be like it's all the pieces that you're amazing at and that have just come together to work well for you. I always tell bosses that for me it's worked out to kind of follow where my joys and passions are, because the energy that I'm putting out really is what people can connect to. And that is where I think success comes, and it doesn't necessarily have to be success just financially. It can just be success in like I've created some really great content that has changed people's lives and you have certainly done that. And that, see, I'm going to get all choked up because I know what that's like. 

18:09 Do you know what I mean? I'm not saying that I'm viral, but as a teacher, right, my mission and my joy is to make an impact right and to really help people or make them smile when they're down or, you know, inspire them. And you, I mean I mean you've done that and see, I get, I get. I'm like emotional. I get emotional because I just love that. I love when people can do that and they do do that and they realize it and that seems to be like their mission to really just help and inspire and entertain and make people smile. So Thank you for that. 

18:41 - Intro (Announcement) Thank you for that. 

18:42 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And now I'm going to ask you do you miss any one part of it more than the other? Do you miss, like on-camera acting, or like, do you feel like in the future you might want to do, like, maybe more of that, or maybe you want to open a new store? Where are you going next? I mean, what's up next? 

18:58 - Tawny Platis (Guest) for you, it will never be retail again. I will live on the streets before I ever do retail again. Retail is so tough, oh gosh. 

19:04 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) What about online retail? Though you don't have the inventory, you don't necessarily have the brick and mortar. 

19:09 - Tawny Platis (Guest) That's the problem. 

19:10 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) No, I mean, you don't have the brick and mortar. 

19:12 - Tawny Platis (Guest) Let's put that right, I always make this joke that I'm like you know, retail is unhealthy. When you go from retail to going to entertainment and go, people are so nice and like encouraging, encouraging, and this is so healthy for me, it's so healthy being in entertainment, you know, like that's really an indicator of how horrendous like working with like retail and customer service and with the public, like that that's so funny that you say that, because I remember when I got married, my in-laws owned a wedding, a bridal shop, and I was like you know, I think this could be a fun thing. 

19:40 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) They're like oh God, no fun thing. 

19:42 - Tawny Platis (Guest) They're like oh God, no, you don't want to go. No, you don't want to go. Oh, I've worked bridal. 

19:44 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh, I've worked, bridal, you don't want to go bridal and God forbid, you don't want to go bridal retail. 

19:46 - Tawny Platis (Guest) And I'm like, oh okay, I've worked bridal and I've worked with parents and I don't care for either of those demographics. You know I get you there. 

19:56 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So let me ask you a question in terms coaching, voiceover coaching Tell us a little bit about that. 

20:04 - Tawny Platis (Guest) Sure, yeah, I do business coaching for voiceover. That is like kind of my main thing. And then I do the surrounding stuff around that. So, like I do like voiceover 101, which is like very like step one through a million of like how to go, and specifically for that person, when it comes to like private coaching, I'm like, okay, what are your goals, what is it you want to do? 

20:28 And then what's your background you know, and then we can talk about like how to get from point A to point B and then also like my opinion on kind of like what you should do, let's get you a voiceover evaluation, kind of get an idea of like how much coaching you're going to need here roughly. And then I also, you know, do the specialty coaching, where it's stuff that I particularly have mastery in. So I teach stuff like you know, the content creation that I've been doing for a lot of years, the business side of things been doing business for a lot of years and then the areas of voice acting where I predominantly work, which is a lot of corporate e-learning and then commercial. I don't think it's really ethical to teach voiceover stuff that you don't have like at least 10 years of experience in, so yeah audiobooks is not one of those things I teach just for that reason. 

21:07 I'm like audiobooks. I'm still newer in that game. So, yeah, that is what I do coach and I have pre-recorded classes that are more generic. So it's more like this is all the ins and outs of the industry as of the beginning of 2024. So that's always a great option for people if they're looking for something that is like more. Let me just hear 130 plus minutes of like what the voiceover industry is and how to like kind of go about it. That's always something that is really really helpful, I have found, for people. But, yeah, I do that kind of coaching and typically with my private sessions, I try to only keep a few people that. 

21:42 I work with at a time so I can really give them the time that I do have, because that's another important thing. If you're teaching voiceover, I think you should be working in voiceover and I am booked every day, agreed, agreed. 

21:54 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I know myself, I'm scheduled to the max because I do voiceover and I coach and I produce demos and I do a couple other things. I do this podcast, so it is every minute of the day is scheduled for me, which I assume is exactly the same for you. So, absolutely, that's wonderful. So, in terms of the future, where do you see yourself in the future? 

22:12 - Tawny Platis (Guest) Honestly, I have no idea and I think that that is because I very much follow where my career is going at the time, where the leads are, and I'm very open to what that could be. I didn't think I'd be here Like I oftentimes tell people, particularly in with what got me into voice acting full-time. I never thought that was going to be where I ended up. I went into corporate and I was like this voice Because like I pitch my voice lower so I sound like an adult, but like I have a very high pitch, like I don't usually show people my natural voice, but like my natural voice is really up here, like when I talk to people, but I sound like a baby. So I'm like always like sound like an adult and like one of my teachers told me that in high school she was like you need to do something about your voice. 

22:54 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh, interesting, yeah, otherwise nobody's going to take you seriously. 

22:58 - Tawny Platis (Guest) And I was thinking like, even with this being my pretend speaking voice. I still feel like it's pretty high. So it was like nobody's going to hire me for corporate. And then somebody found me for corporate and that's where I ended up and I do a lot of that kind of e-learning corporate stuff in San Diego that's so interesting. 

23:17 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So now, when you're completely relaxed, does your voice, do you let your voice go back up, or is it something you've just kind of muscle memory trained yourself to kind of just speak in a particular pitch? 

23:25 - Tawny Platis (Guest) It's very muscle memory. The only time when that does come out is when I am really comfortable and relaxed. So, like you know, if my voice starts going up, like that, like that's how you know I'm like really comfy with you. 

23:37 So if I start talking to you like this, that's how you know that we're really tight, so pretty much like my roommate, my best friends, like family, like they will hear that one, but even with them it usually like it'll take a few minutes or a drink to like a drink or two, and then it comes back. Yeah, I got you, I got you. 

23:57 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Wow. Well, what would be your best tip for those bosses just starting out in the industry? 

24:03 - Tawny Platis (Guest) My best tip business class, like from somebody who teaches business, like and general business, is great too. I think it applies, I think retail applies so heavily to voice acting funny enough or maybe not so funny, but I think like just that is such an oversight. You know so much of voiceover you can learn very quickly, and then the rest of it is practice, which there's no rushing, there's no rushing practice. You know, some of us have, I think, kind of more of an inclination similar to like learning piano, where like you have that friend. 

24:32 that just it makes sense to them and it doesn't make sense to you and you have to practice more and that's just is what it is. But I don't feel like there's enough emphasis put on the business and the sales side of what we do. So, like that's, my biggest advice is like get those classes, do your research before you pay for anything like ask around, make sure you take your time so you find somebody who's reputable. I think we both know that's another big issue in our industry. So, yeah, I think that is probably the best piece of advice I could give to people who are starting out in this. 

25:04 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, that's great advice. So how can bosses get in touch with you if they would like to find out more and overwork with? 

25:10 - Tawny Platis (Guest) you? Yeah, my website is tawnyvoicecom and I have all my contact information there. Depending on how you want to get in touch with me, there's a lot of different ways, awesome. 

25:20 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, thank you so much. Oh my gosh, I could talk to you for another hour or so, and then maybe we'll be at that level where you're talking with your real voice to me. But anyways, thank you so much. We so appreciate the words of wisdom that you've given to us Bosses. I'm going to give a great big shout out to our sponsor, IPDTL. You too, can network and connect like bosses. Find out more at IPDTLcom. Tani, you're the best. Thank you so much. 

25:45 Thank you, Bosses have a great week and we'll see you next week. Bye. 

25:50 - 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 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.