What’s the deal with representation? In this episode, Anne & Lau break down the basics. They share what agents do, how they can help with your career, & why you should (or shouldn't) sign with one. Lau shares her experience as an agent & what she does on a day-to-day basis while Anne gets answers to common questions voice actors have about having an agent. Agencies are businesses, but they have the power to help you find work, making them a potentially valuable part of your career. Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all answer to the "do I need an agent" question. It depends on the kind of work you are looking to do & what your goals are. We know there are many ways to BOSS with and without an agent, but if you want to learn more, we’ve got you covered.
Transcript
>> It’s time to take your business to the next level, the BOSS level! These are the premiere Business Owner Strategies and Successes being utilized by the industry’s top talent today. Rock your business like a BOSS, a VO BOSS! Now let’s welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza.
Anne: Hey everyone. Welcome to the VO BOSS podcast and our business superpower series. I'm your host Anne Ganguzza, and I'm excited to bring back to the show my very special guest co-host, Lau Lapides. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. It's a good day, Lau.
Lau: It's a great day. It's always a great day to talk voiceover. It's like we could, I was just saying we could talk forever. This podcast should be like day and night. It should never stop ever. 'Cause we could talk so much about it and life and being a human being and all the things we care about. There you go alongside that.
Anne: So I do wanna say that we recently just met and really clicked and of course I'm super excited that you are now representing me. And I thought about it because I love the fact that I think you get almost as excited, if not more excited about providing me with opportunities than I do about being repped by you.
Lau: Totally.
Anne: And I thought it would be a great time to talk about, should we get representation? What's the deal with representation or should we not? Because I get that question all the time from my students.
Lau: Oh my gosh. I do too. It's an ongoing conversation. It's a great discussion to have; all questions are good questions. There's no answer to it. I don't think there's a specific answer to it, but the discussion's really important to have, and you're right. I do get really off on getting the work for others. I love you do the feeling. And I was trying to think back when I was a performer full time. I dunno if I felt that way about even myself. Like I was always kind of that agent manager type, you know what I mean? I was just kind of like that Jewishy producer myself, you know, kind of thing, New Yorky thing, whatever that is. I love it. I love it. Not just for the work itself, but for the process of being able to get someone inside of something that they're on the outside of. It's almost like a secret. To me, it's like a safe, like I get to help someone find the combination to the safe.
Anne: Oh, I love that.
Lau: And get inside of it and discover what the treasures are. Sometimes it's money and sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's just a whole bunch of like a portal of a world that you weren't in before. It's Narnia's closet. That's what it is.
Anne: I love it. Well, I have to say I've done casting myself, and I always love that let's fit this voice talent to this job. And it's wonderful when it comes together like that.
Lau: It is, it is.
Anne: And so I think that it is having agents is a wonderful thing. However, agents solely represent a portion of where I get my opportunities from. And I always try to explain that to anybody who like, when they first start getting into the business, they're like, when do I get an agent? I need an agent. I'm like, well, I literally was working in the industry for about four years full time before I got my first agent. I think it's helpful to really understand the role that agents play in helping to get work for voice talent. So let's start with you, Lau. Tell me a little bit about your role as an agent and what types of are specific genres that you specialize in.
Lau: So I have now been in an agent capacity for about two and a half years. So I'm still relatively young in the agent world. I was a coach and for many years, still am, and a performer myself, still am. But I mean, that happened well, we were right in the middle of the COVID and you know, as a business thinker immediately, I start thinking, what problem can I solve? Who needs, what, who needs what, what's missing, what's missing. So we're Boston based in the new England market. I said, oh, I don't know of any voiceover divisions. We don't have a department in an agency that's voiceover. We have some great studios that will do casting, but we just don't have that like a New York, like an LA has that. And I sort of aspired to be like the big guys. I always said, well, now we're in a global market, right?
We're in the middle of COVID, we're locked in our houses, everyone's still doing voiceover. And I said, what can we do? So I wanted to open this division, and I ended up pioneering the MCVO and opening it under the umbrella of Model Club. That's my colleague, Tim Ayers who owns and operates Model Club. So it was a really interesting, unorthodox way of working where this company, my company Lau Lapides started to become a contractor to a licensed agency to start a division that we had the knowledge of how to do that. So we went ahead and did that, started stocking the roster. And I sort of have been around agents for most of my life.
Anne: That was stocking the roster, not stalking, right? Okay.
Lau: Stocking, like adding people in, adding voices in like --
Anne: Stock.
Lau: Yeah, stock.
Anne: Not stalk.
Lau: No, not stalk. All right. I have to articulate that one really well. Right? .
Anne: I think that was that New York accent
Lau: It was that New York accent. And I had to learn as I went, to be honest with you. I think this is the kind of trade that people who go into casting or go into agency work are working with agencies and working with casting. And they're apprenticing and they're learning how to do it as they go. You can't learn it in a classroom. It's not that type of thing. And so I was learning through the years how to do these things by kind of doing it. And this was a fit and this was kismet. And then I launched it when we launched it. You can imagine we had immediate response from talent all over the place --
Anne: Oh, I bet. Yeah.
Lau: -- who wanted to submit because it's exciting simply to have a voiceover agency or voiceover division. And so that was kind of cool and exciting, and then figuring out how do we connect to breakdowns and how do we get some of the best auditions, and how do we connect the dots with current clients, whether they're regional clients or national clients, and just sort of spend time figuring that out and doing that. But we were lucky in in the sense that we started getting great auditions almost immediately, like --
Anne: That's great.
Lau: -- between the clients that we already had, Tim already had, and my connections nationally, we started getting a lot of stuff in, and it was almost overwhelming to, to find talent for that.
Anne: I wanna just kind of interject here because I think most talent don't think about what is a talent agency, right? And I just wanna kind of bring it home and say, we need to understand that a talent agency or an agent, they are a business. And their business is to match clients up with voice talent. And so they have their own work to do in terms of securing clients that and advertising to clients, that they have a great roster that they can help fulfill that need. So I think sometimes voice talent forget that agents, they aren't magic. They don't have magical clients. They have to do a ton of work to get those clients and to keep those clients.
So understanding that an agent is also a business will help you to understand that once you have an agent, when you get an agent, there needs to be a relationship there, where we both can benefit each other. And that agents are also in a business and need to make money. And part of that is by matching clients to talent. And if there is a profit margin there, then obviously the agent is going to work that deal. And the reason I bring that up, Lau, is because I think that a lot of agents work specifically in broadcast media, because there's opportunity for more profit there versus let's say a one0off non-broadcast sort of a deal. So maybe you can expand upon that a little bit.
Lau: Yeah. I mean, I think just a baseline for people who are learning about agencies, or maybe wanting to tier up to the next level of a better quality agency, just simply put agencies are the middle people. They're the middle women, middle men. They're in the middle. So they're the contract dealers, the negotiation people, the people who find the talent, connect the talent to the job, help with casting. The -- we're not casting directors per se. We don't take the place of a casting director, but we do help in all sorts of capacities. And we do get clients that say, hey, what are your thoughts? Like, can you help narrow this down?
Anne: You do shortlist, right? You do shortlist?
Lau: You do shortlist.
Anne: I was gonna say, yep.
Lau: You do recommendations. You do shortlist. And because sometimes they happen very fast, they will rely on you to make quick recommendations and have very quick answers to questions, questions on availability, questions on rate structure, questions on union status.
Anne: Sure.
Lau: Questions on what their setup is in their home studio. So there's a lot of stuff that has to happen that goes through the agent that has to happen fast. And the reason they'll go to an agent, many reasons, but one is for speed, so that they know that they're gonna have their stuff when they need it as quickly as possible. They don't have to chase the talent.
Anne: That makes sense. And they don't have to cast the net wide and make their own decisions. So, yeah. And I think, so, let me ask you a question. Do, do the majority of agencies, or is this really dependent, do they shortlist themselves or it depends on the client if the client is looking for --
Lau: Yeah, it depends on the client. And once in a while you will have a private client that is with other agencies as well. So like if it's something that's on a national platform or even a regional, if you're going through a casting office, they'll have other agencies. They'll be submitting their top talent from other agencies. They'll whittle that down fairly quickly. And then they'll, you know, reach out to you. As an agency, you're never the only fish in the ocean.
Anne: Right.
Lau: I think the, what agents try to get is private clients. Like we love private clients. Because we know like when I get a company, that's, let's say they're a regional company, and they're gonna cast and they reach out to us, I know that like eight times out of ten, we're gonna book that job.
Anne: Yeah. Yeah.
Lau: We're gonna book that job because they're privatized. We have a relationship them. We can provide the same talent over and over and over again. Whereas sometimes it's a hit or miss if you're going through casting --
Anne: And you're reliable. Exactly.
Lau: Right.
Anne: Just as we need to be as voice talent. Right? Just as we need to be to our clients. Right? Agents need to be that to their clients. Absolutely.
Lau: Exactly. So the relational factor's really, really important. And then of course they are assuming and rightly so that we're doing a screening process that they don't have to do.
Anne: Right.
Lau: They don't have to audition. They don't have to find the talent.
Anne: Right.
Lau: They don't have to do any of that. We're doing that.
Anne: Right. They rely on you because they know that you have a roster of professional talents that their studios have already been vetted. You already are familiar with the roster and their specialties and availability, that's another big thing. Right?
Lau: That's right.
Anne: Who's available? And so that I think really takes care a lot of the tedious details that they don't wanna have to deal with. And so.
Lau: Oh no, they don't wanna deal with any of that.
Anne: They reach out and oh gosh. Do I even begin in saying like the naming of files, of audition files?
Lau: Oh, it's endless.
Anne: Who takes care of that?
Lau: It's endless. That's right. I always joke. It's like they don't wanna have Jim in cubicle C handling that because Jim doesn't know how to do that, if you know what I mean? Like they don't get any of that. And so it would be overwhelming to them to go into a big pocket of say, thousands of voices to try to find what they're looking for. That would be way too overwhelming and time consuming to do. So that's another reason why they still go to agencies because they know it's not gonna be thousands and thousands of voices. It's gonna be the top 500 voices for critique. And then out of that, the specific submission for their criteria of their breakdown. And then they've got their top 15, 20, 25 people, which is more than enough for them, 'cause they know again, they're screened in their top to find who they need.
And it's funny because at the beginning Tim went from, oh, it's okay. I mean, if they have an iPhone, and they can can record in their iPhone they don't need a home studio, different -- to, okay. You need a studio, a source connect. And I was like, no, we want the best talent nationwide if not international, because we are now competing against very large agencies in the hub. So we don't wanna shorter ourselves by saying, oh, as long as they can jump on a phone and do something. No, no, we wanna have the industry standards in place so that if we book a McDonald's or we book a Dunkin Donuts, so we're really ready for that because they're auditioning your studio as much as they're auditioning you now.
Anne: Isn't that the truth?
Lau: Everyone knows.
Anne: That is the truth.
Lau: So the agent depends on that. .
Anne: I love that we're learning about agencies from the agency's business side because it really can help us as voice talent to understand like your day-to-day kind of activities. Like let's talk about your day when you are throwing out an audition to people. So tell me, what do you do as an agent when you are casting?
Lau: Well, I'm a little bit unorthodox in the sense that I now run two businesses. So I run my studio , which is separate, very separate, then the agency side from MC Inc. So when I run the agency side, we're constantly getting in auditions, which we've been filtered by the different relationships we have, the services we work with, but so they're coming in sometimes daily. They're coming in throughout the day. We're looking at them, making sure that they're legit, they're coming from where they need to come from, and then getting them out as quickly as possible. And that can be a challenge too, because if we're working on other work or we're recording or we're coaching or we're whatever, we have to really multitask or stop what we're doing to do that. Because I know once that audition comes to me, there's a chance it's gone out to X amount of other agencies.
Anne: Sure. Right.
Lau: So I gotta get my sneakers on and get that out really fast before some of my talent may get that from another agency.
Anne: Sure. Now question. Yeah. In terms of like audition deadlines, so this is the bane of my existence, right, with my agents. Right? Because I don't have a lot of time during my day however, so when my auditions come in from my agents, I wanna turn that around quickly, as quickly as I possibly can. So when you understand, let's say, okay, here's your audition. Deadline is this date, are you determining that date for your agency? Or is that the client that's determining that date?
Lau: Well, the client gives us the truest date that they have. I don't know how accurate it is to their inside process.
Anne: Right, right.
Lau: But they'll give us the hard deadline of what they need. Then we'll move the deadline in so that we have time to process it.
Anne: Sure, sure.
Lau: And we also have time for retake. So let's say there's someone that we have to have in on this audition, but he's on vacation and he is in the mountains and he has no reception, but he can do it tonight or tomorrow, we'll hold that for him so he can do that if possible. So we always time it. So let's say it's due Thursday at 5:00 PM Eastern. We'll time it so that we're getting it in by like Wednesday, if possible, so that we can process it and leave time for problems as they arrive.
Anne: And so when you say process it, you are downloading the audition file. You are doing shortlisting if you have to, if your client has asked you to. Correct?
Lau: Yeah.
Anne: And so is that you personally, or do you have a team that helps you to do that?
Lau: We have a team. I have a team that helps me do that. And the industry standard now is Dropbox. So we're all using Dropbox to transfer our files, and even going out now, I'm watching slates go out. So slates are slowly going out where we're sending in a zip or we're sending in a pack and they know where it's coming from. So we don't actually need a slate. So some of the private clients and some of the companies we work with say no slate. We don't wanna hear it. We don't need it. Great.
Anne: Okay. Nice.
Lau: One less thing to do. That's good.
Anne: Sure.
Lau: And then we try hard to establish our own protocols if they don't give us direction on labeling and they don't give us direction on this or that. We try to say, listen, we're just not always getting that from the client because they don't care about it. They don't know about it. And it's not relevant. So just do this when you don't hear about it, just do this.
Anne: Whoever has to download the files, this is the way I feel, whoever has to download the files needs to be the one that determines how the file is named.
Lau: Yeah, exactly. And sometimes agents will send it out and you just won't get that direction, and people are confused. They'll say, wait a second. Am I missing something? I'll say, no, they didn't give us that direction. We're not giving it to you. So just go to your default of, we always label like this, label like this.
Anne: I would say name, project, Anne Ganguzza dash and then name of the job. That's my default. That's it.
Lau: I do say, Anne, one of the biggest things you can have as a benefit for yourself is speed. Because ours are not that speedy. We're not like a pay-to-play site where you have to get in in 10, 15 minutes. We'll give you a day. We'll give you two, even three days, sometimes like a really long time. But if people are gonna wait until the third day, what'll happen is like, I already know there's a natural bell curve in every roster. I know like the top voices we have, unless they're already on another gig or they're on vacation, they're gonna submit within about an hour or two.
And I just know they're gonna be the first ones up for it because A, they're great like you, but B, they may cut that audition off because they may get enough in the first day. And then they don't need to listen to day two or day three.
Anne: Right. Right. Right. Exactly.
Lau: So I just say to people, you know, don't, don't put yourself under a terrible rush, but don't wait until the last minute either. You know, get it in as soon as you possibly can, move it out the way because those, as I notice our booking ratios, those people tend to be booking more than folks who are waiting longer.
Anne: The ones that get it in first, yep. That makes sense.
Lau: They are.
Anne: That makes sense because at some point too, I think that we have to realize that when you're listening to so many auditions at one time, at some point it starts to become like white noise. .
Lau: I would imagine it's overwhelming.
Anne: I's overwhelming.
Lau: Even it's hard for us to listen to demo submissions sometimes so if we get 10 or 15 at a time, it's time consuming, and we wanna give it what it needs, the attention that it needs. But we have to be careful with the time.
Anne: It just brings me back to like, this is what we're always saying is that you need to differentiate yourself from the pack when you're sending in that audition. And it doesn't mean that you're different is like -- a lot of times I'll look at the spec and I'll be like, okay, I get it. But I still wanna add my own unique spin on it because everybody else is gonna look at those specs and try to do it exactly like those specs or what we think they want to hear. And so I think making it more unique in that audition, I mean, for me, it's what have I got to lose in making it unique? I mean, if I can make it unique, they're gonna know that I have the capability of making it sound just like in my head it says it should sound like.
Lau: Sure, sure.
Anne: So I'm not gonna give them that. I don't wanna give 'em what I think it should sound like. I wanna give 'em that unique take so that it, it makes them wake up.
Lau: That's right.
Anne: It makes them get me the gig and then they can direct me to whatever they want afterwards.
Lau: And, and do it up front because you don't know if they're gonna listen to your entire demo.
Anne: Exactly.
Lau: And some of the demos we get are not even industry standard. They'll go on for two or three minutes. Very rarely will we listen to a three-minute demo just because we get it, like the first two reads or three reads, like we get it, we get what you can do. So put something up front that's your strong suit, something you get hired for all the time, and then put something that's incredibly diverse and varied from that right next to it.
Anne: Are you talking audition or are you talking demo? So like --
Lau: I'm talking demo.
Anne: Okay.
Lau: I'm talking demo, but also audition. I would say audition as well, because let's say they don't say how many takes they want. I'd say, okay, if you can do three unique takes, do three unique takes, right? What's the worst? They don't listen to them all. But if they do and they really love your voice, make them super diverse, super unique, and very pinpointed as to where you live and where your voice lives. Because there wouldn't be any reason as send in more than one take that sound the same.
Anne: Right, right, exactly.
Lau: That's a very, a common mistake that people make, you know, otherwise you send one great take, just do your best. Take one great take and call it a day. But if you can do diverse or --
Anne: A completely different.
Lau: -- do it. Yeah, do it.
Anne: Absolutely. So now let me ask you a question. So when should voice talent search for an agent? Is there a time?
Lau: Again, I'm really unorthodox about that. I know a lot of agent friends I have say, don't talk to me until you get like five years under your belt. You've already been with an agency. I got some good credits and I love your demo, and I trust you because that's what I represent. And I get that. I don't feel that way actually. I feel like people should be up for it when they feel ready. And then it's very quick to tell if we think that they're ready. Even if they haven't worked yet, even if they have no resume, we've taken in some people that are amazing, that are new. They're just new.
They're coming in. They did a beautiful demo. They're clearly professional in the way in which they write to us. I just instantly like them. I said, why would I hold them back on the basis of like that they haven't worked? They have to get work to work. So if we love their voice and we feel like, oh, we've got a market for their sound, bring them in. Right? But the bread and butter voice is always gonna go first because we have a lot of fans of animation and video game and all of that great stuff. It's just, for us, it's not gonna be the big market for us. And it isn't for a lot of agencies. I think agencies more and more are bringing in slowly animation opportunities, but much of their stuff is just real person stuff.
Anne: I'm glad you said that. So I'm gonna say some agencies specialize in just animation or that's their thing. And I would say that those would be located more in the places like LA and those markets where animation is there, but in terms of other agencies, I'm gonna say, yeah, your bread and butter is commercial for the most part, right?
Lau: Yeah. Yeah. It is. For the most part. It is. Yeah. Once in a while, we'll see an animation come through, we'll see a narration come through. We'll see a couple different things, but yes. And I have found that with friends that run agencies too. Once in a while, they'll get a great industrial or a really nice nice eLearning piece. But much of the time they're just doing as many nationals as they can get in and as many of their regional market and their local folks, as they can get in to really, really pay the bills.
Anne: Good. I'm so glad you said that. And I just wanna kind of make that point to the BOSSes out there. It becomes, where can you make a profit? And I don't mean to make all agents to be all like hungry, profit driven people, but you are a business. And so for the most part, those nationals and those regionals, those are the ones that are bringing in the money in, the consistent money, right, that will be able to make a profit so that you can survive as an agency. So then I wanna also point out that if you are a voice talent, and the majority of your business is e-learning or corporate and that sort of thing, I have a ton of, and I know a lot of voice actors where they have a lot of work in that area -- that happens to be where I do a lot of my work as well. So in terms of, for me, when I was getting agents, I have like 10 agents all scattered around. It doesn't mean that I get auditions from all 10 agents all the time. And I have certain agents that I work closely with because I book with them and we have a relationship. And so that's where my auditions come from, my agents.
Lau: That's right, that's right.
Anne: So I will take the time to do that. But those jobs that they're offering, they're almost all broadcast commercial genre. And I do get a couple of industrials once in a while from one of my agents. And so if you BOSSes are out there, if you are not necessarily booking in commercial yet, or you're not interested in commercial, then maybe an agent, you don't need one right away. I think everybody should have an agent. I think everyone, at some point should have a commercial demo. But if that is not in your future, that you don't like commercials. You don't think you'd ever wanna do one. And you just wanna spend your career doing eLearning, then that's absolutely fine.
Lau: Absolutely. By no means do you have to have an agent in order to work because the world is filled with so many different, wonderful genres of voiceover. You just need to be inventive and clever about doing your homework and doing your research in these different genres. Like for instance, I recently brought into our studio, one of the big romance and erotica voiceover instructors, and she did a wonderful workshop for us. Anne, I knew nothing about that. I did, I just didn't know about--and she talked a long time, a good hour about the business of it, like where to find work. How to list your name, how to do this, how to charge your rates, how to -- and I think, wow, this is great. So do I need an agent for that? No, I really don't. Could I get an agent later in the right market? Probably, but you don't need it. So, so you have to determine, gee okay. If this is my bread and butter market, I probably wanna get an agent to get the upper level auditions, but in these other areas, I can probably make my own inroads and my own connections. Get some great clients into a combination of the two.
Anne: Absolutely, absolutely. BOSSes, it's not necessary to have an agent to get work. You can get work in multiple genres without necessarily have an agent, but I'm the type of person that I like to have opportunities, as many opportunities as I can. Thus, I think it's wonderful that I have these amazing agents, like Lau, that are on my team. They're on my side. They wanna see me work. They wanna get me work, and it becomes a relationship just like you have a relationship. And I love that we talked so much about your business of the agency because a lot of times, voice talent don't, they don't think about it and they don't realize it. And I think if they understood the perspective from your side as a business, it helps us to form, I think, a better relationship with you, because we understand where things come from, and why do I get that audition at 8:00 at night? Well, because all day long, they've been fielding emails and dealing with clients and you are getting it out as quick as you can to us.
Lau: Yeah. And maybe it's coming from a different time zone.
Anne: There you go. Exactly. So there's lots of things that we may not think about when we get an audition in for our agent. And also in terms of like, well, is my agent listening to me and shortlisting me or not? Or is it the client? Or how do I know that this audition wasn't sent out to hundreds of other people? And I think the really good agents understand the opportunity and will send it to the group of people that would be great for the opportunity. Sometimes I have agents that it seems like maybe they didn't do that. Maybe I just got like the generic send out all auditions to all the roster, and therefore I make my own decision.
Lau: Yeah. I know, people hate that. They're not filtering .
Anne: I know, but I'm thankful for the opportunity. And so, I mean, come on, we can all handle looking at audition and looking at the specs. If you don't fit the specs, don't respond.
Lau: I was always the same way too. I was like, okay, it's not for me.
Anne: Yeah. I would never complain about that. It actually kind of bothers me that I see some people complaining about that, the cattle call auditions. I'm like my gosh, it's, it's an opportunity. And it takes me a minute to look at those specs and read them and say, do I fit those specs? Am I male? No. So guess what? I, thanks. I'm fine. Just waiting for the next one. So --
Lau: It'd be like clients just from different businesses calling you or emailing you, be like, do you know, we don't do that? That's not what we do. And I'm surprised you would call me. We'd say, oh, how interesting, let me refer you to someone or let me find out more about you, what have you.
Anne: I like that. Right. And that goes back like, look, if I got a castings spec, and I've done this before, where it didn't fit me, but I said, oh man, I know a perfect voice for that, I actually would write back to that agent and say, I have a great recommendation. Can I send this audition? Would you be open for me to send this audition?
Lau: I love you. I love you. I love people like you and I have a number of people in MCVO that do just that. They say, Lau, you know, it's not me, but I've got friends who are actually this. May I forward them. And I'm like, yes. I love that.
Anne: That's why I'm just grateful. I'm grateful to get the opportunity. And, and I just look at it as like, look at another, I get tons of email. It's okay. I can filter. It's not that big of a deal. Takes me a minute.
Lau: You think like. I think it's just another job and why don't I wanna see a job? I'm gonna keep the script. I'm gonna have it as a reference. It's interesting to see who the producer is. I love it.
Anne: Yeah. You learn a lot. Like, so what if that audition wasn't for me? Oh, that's kind of cool. I like that script. Right? You can just choose to learn. It's like one of the things, just an off topic, but when people say, well, how do I get work in corporate? Right? And I say, well, I go to company websites and I sign up for their mailing list because I wanna see who their audience is and how they're marketing to it. And so if I get the job with that company, I have a background information where I understand who that company is, who their audience is, what their brand stands for. I have all that knowledge that I can then use in a audition for them or in, in correspondence with them. And so the same thing. You can learn a lot. So.
Lau: I'm exactly like that. As business people, as BOSSes, you wanna be inquisitive. You wanna be curious. You wanna know like, ooh, what's happening in that world? Oh my goodness. Who are they talking to and what are they concerned about here? And who are they looking for? I always say like, when you get an audition, get used to hopping on your smartphone, just like really fast. Look up an advertising campaign. See the kinds of actors they're bringing in. What does the company visually look like? What does it sound like right now? Just get a flavor of that.
Anne: Absolutely.
Lau: You may not have time to do massive research, but just to hop on for five minutes.
Anne: Yeah.
Lau: Like we need to be able to do that as business people. If we're gonna work with a new client. Oh, sorry. So don't you hate, Anne, oh, sorry, I didn't have time to go to your website. Sorry. I don't know exactly what you do.
Anne: No, my God.
Lau: It's at your fingertips. Just jump on for five minutes to have a little bit of language.
Anne: If you're a student of mine, and you didn't check out the website, like that is just no.
Lau: Or go on YouTube.
Anne: That is not acceptable.
Lau: What are they doing, you know?
Anne: That is not acceptable, not acceptable that you did not research the company, but like it takes a minute. Takes a minute.
Lau: Yeah. What about this one? I don't, I don't know how to pronounce this. How do you pronounce it?
Anne: Oh my gosh.
Lau: I said, well, go online, go find -- have an actor say it so that you hear what it sounds like. Don't just guess at it or not worry about it.
Anne: We need to act like BOSSes, the BOSSes that we are. So what a great conversation. I love -- this was such a unique perspective. Thank you, Lau, for sharing that with us and sharing with the BOSSes. I think that's amazing. I would like to give a great big shout-out to our sponsor, ipDTL. You too can network and learn like BOSSes. Find out more at ipdtl.com. And also if you wanna make a difference with your voice and give back to those communities that give to you, check out 100voiceswhocare.org to find out how you can give back and have a sense of purpose. All right, guys. Amazing talk. Thanks again, Lau. We will see you next week. Bye.
Lau: Thank you, BOSSes.
>> Join us next week for another edition of VO BOSS with your host Anne Ganguzza. And take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at voBOSS.com and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies, and new ways to rock your business like a BOSS. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via ipDTL.