VO BOSS

In this episode, Anne is joined by vocal health expert Nic Redman to unlock the key to vocal mastery. Together, they delve into the significance of warm-ups, breath control, and overcoming imposter syndrome. Discover the holistic approach to warming up that saves time, enhances performance, and ensures the longevity of your voice. Explore the vital role breath plays in voiceover and gain techniques to master longer phrases while maintaining the sentence and breath system. Don't miss this opportunity to elevate your voice and take your skills to the next level.    0:00:01 - Anne Hey everyone, welcome to the VO Boss podcast. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and today I'm excited to welcome podcaster, voiceover actor, speaking and recording coach, Nic Redman, to the podcast. Hey, Nic, how are you? I'm so delighted to be back. Yes, i love gosh. I've had you and also Leah from the VO Social podcast voiceover social podcast a couple of times already and now I get to have you all to myself.    0:00:31 - Nic Yeah, we don't need Leah to have a good time. We can do this on our own.    0:00:35 - Anne There we go, and absolutely So. I've been dying to talk to you about your, what I, what I feel is your specialty. You are like the guru of vocal health and I have been wanting to talk to you about that for quite some time, and I know that our boss listeners will have such value out of the wisdom that you have to share about vocal health.    So, thank you, thank you, thank you. So let's start, and actually I will say that you know, i rushed into my booth this morning and I did not warm up. And I am speaking and I want my voice to be in tip top shape and I know that everybody always says well, what you know, what vocal warm up should I do and are they, are they important and what can they do to help me get into tip top performance shape?    0:01:26 - Nic Right. So first thing in the morning there's a couple of things I think are really important and also just a dispel if you miss that kind of put people off, warm ups, i think as well. Sometimes, you know, because people are like oh, i don't have time to warm up. I don't know what to do. Like my voice is fine, I don't need to warm up Like there's. You know, I hear all of the excuses on all of the excuses.    0:01:47 - Anne I'm sure you do. It's like. It's like getting on the exercise bike. Right, i'm going to do what I'm going to do and I know it's good for me, but I don't do it. So let's talk about why we should.    0:01:57 - Nic So the thing about a warm up is it's about preparing you to be like the best you can be as a speaker. That's basically it You might be able to get. I mean, we all speak without warming up every day, like that's just life I can communicate with my husband, i can talk to my child and whatever emotion that requires at the time.    0:02:14 - Anne I can order coffee, You know I can.    0:02:16 - Nic I can do what I need to do And I could. But the thing about a warm up is when you're let's call it an elite vocal performer like all your listeners is that it's good, isn't?    0:02:25 - Anne it, i'm an elite vocal performer. Elite vocal performer? Yes, you are.    0:02:30 - Nic It's that. It's that you kind of find something extra right, and also you've sometimes got to speak in a way that is maybe slightly outside of your habitual place, like if you're in a really excited read or a really kind of sensual read or a video game or a character or something that even requires you, for example, audio book narrators. They have all of my respect.    They have to record for like thousands of hours for like days and then read another book in the evening and then do another book. I mean, like it's insane. So elite vocal performers have to find something else, and I think that something else can just be longevity and consistency, you know, and a healthy voice that will be there for you and sound the same in the morning as it does in the afternoon or the evening, or that something else could be going outside your comfort range to play a really big character, or do loads of grunts or something that's just different.    The thing about what a warm up does is helps you prepare for that. So the main things to focus on for a warm up are the fact that it's like for me, more than about just tongue twisters, and clarity, because that seems to be where a lot of people start like I need to warm up, peter Piper, peter Piper, peter Piper, peter Piper, and like sure, that's that's the first place they go. So what I advocate for because that's what I was trained as as a voice practitioner and as a performer is like a full body, holistic body, mind, breath approach. That being said, still doesn't have to take very long, and so it's all about remembering that you do have a body underneath your larynx, so that needs a little bit of like yes, yeah, i'm well done.    Can you imagine if we were all floating larynxes Like I feel like that would actually be quite nice for me because I love larynx, but I like the visual, I think yeah just a little larynx on feet floating around, just floating.    So it's about getting the body, the breath, even your head, in the game a wee bit. And that's what I love about warm ups is that you can use them. And this is my sort of, this is my current soapbox is that you know when people say, well, I don't have time to warm up, It's for it doesn't have to take a long time.    So five to 10 minutes of the right exercises, because often people are doing things that aren't the most efficient for their voice. And secondly, your warm up can actually save you time. And it does save you time Because if you take five to 10 minutes to warm up before you start, you will trip up over less words.    0:04:51 - Anne So you will have less editing or let's pick up. That's important, so important. Would you see editing, yes, please. Oh my God, i mean really, i think that's all there. I remember when I had my first you know stack, that someone prepared for me that I could apply to my audio file And I was like, oh my God, i just saved so much time. If I can save even more time on me at my editing, oh my gosh, i can do more jobs and be happier, that's for sure.    0:05:15 - Nic So it saves you time because you don't have to do like pickups because you trip over your tongue. She says tripping up over her tongue.    0:05:20 - Anne That always happens.    0:05:22 - Nic I mean the irony of all that, that's my that's me taking the Mickey out of myself. Like you know what I mean posture syndrome. Like you think you're so good at this, i'm going to show you.    0:05:33 - Anne No, you have to give a viable example.    0:05:35 - Nic So I probably the problem.    0:05:37 - Anne And that's interesting because I will say that I know that when okay, before I was a voice actor, I I taught and so I worked at a school and I would do these day long seminars or day long workshops where I would have to use my voice and I would absolutely be feeling it by the end of the day, And I'm quite sure that it is a muscle and that it needs to be worked. And especially because I do a lot of narration I don't do audio books, but I do a lot of e learning, I do a lot of corporate narration And I'm always talking to my students that it is a muscle that needs to be worked And it gosh. It would really help to not trip up so much. Right, I'm always say be more efficient in the booth, So you have to spend the less time editing.    Yeah, that way, get it right in the booth, and so I can totally see that. And I will say that sometimes I'm doing other things like marketing, or I'm coaching or doing other things, and by the time I get to those auditions late at night because I think my, i think all of my agents are in cahoots with one another because they send me these auditions late at night at the end of the day And I am so tired And I will notice sometimes my jaw gets a little bit sore And I'm like there's got to be something here that I'm doing that is not right. That's making my jaw sore, like I'm holding tension somehow somewhere in my jaw.    0:06:56 - Nic Yeah, there's loads of different things that we can play around with to sort of minimize those little niggles that creep up, because sometimes those niggles, over a period of time, become something that's much more sort of Much more of an issue, you know. So, yeah, we can talk to you about John, we can have a little release, but just before we do it, in terms of the warm-up and the why, yeah, save your time, because the tongue trip ups also. Save your time because and, if you like, do some exercises to release tension. Like you said, the jaw, the tongue, the lips, the Throat, the body get the breath moving. Play with your range as well, so you get lots of vocal color and expression in there. Then, when you get to your script and you are thinking about What you've got to say and the lines are there and who you've got to communicate with and all that kind of stuff, all you have to worry about is the words and the person that you're talking to.    You don't have to think about your voice, right you don't have to think about being interesting and changing color and doing weird things with pitch and weird, strange things with the prosody To make it sound interesting. Because that's one of my bug bears sometimes with voiceovers is I feel like they're trying too hard to make Their voices sound interesting, yes, instead of focusing on the listener. So like what? I love about a warm-up is that when you give someone really a really simple warm-up, it prepares them and frees everything up so that their voice goes wherever their intention needs it to in order to communicate the message.    0:08:14 - Anne So I don't see your time. I love that and I and I love the fact that that you mentioned that People they tend to to try to sound like you know, or predict what people want them to sound like. So they're trying to do all these Like vocal acrobatics when in reality, we just need to be, we have to have intention and we and we need that intention to be able to Not betray us when we want to express an emotion. In that, and I feel that, yes, having not to have to listen or worry about your voice, you know, not necessarily being there for you, i think is is amazing. So I love how you've turned it into not like something that's like, oh god, i have to do a vocal warm-up into how it really truly helps your performance and I think, really to be a better actor, right Yeah 100%.    0:09:03 - Nic It's just prepping all the bit so that they're go where you need them to go without you thinking about them.    That's what you know the right kind of muscle memory and prepping everything and also, like my approach is about making it like fun and interesting and nice. So I'm making it quick and easy and something that sort of slots into your routine and can become a habit. And the other thing I said it came across recently as a bit of a warm-up is useful because theory is that, because it works on the body And the breath, and I always advocate a wee mindful minute before you start, just to focus on what your body needs and what your breath feels like it needs And how your voice is feeling is.    It is actually almost like a wee bit of a mindfulness practice or a mental health practice as well. So if you're someone who likes a bit of meditation or body work or breath work in the morning, You can incorporate all that into your warm-up and then you're getting like two or three birds with one stone.    0:09:52 - Anne Yeah yeah, and I think, in addition to the vocal work, the breath work too is so important And that is part of a good vocal warm-up, i assume in your, in your, in your recommendations, because I feel like for me, i, you know, a while ago I had a health issue and had surgery and I wasn't able to breathe as well because it's surgery in my chest area And I noticed that I had to start learning how to really breathe and take Diaphragmatic breaths, like big, deep breaths, and the really cool thing about that is that, yes, i healed, but also it allowed me to really understand how powerful breathing is to my performance and how power especially when you're doing long Format and when the copy isn't necessarily written pretty or written well, yeah, when the copies all over the place and you need to be able to execute that effortlessly That is where a good, strong breath is so empowering, really truly empowering, more so than I ever imagined.    So in a way, it was good that I kind of learned that I needed to breathe and how much power it could really give me for my performance.    0:11:03 - Nic Yeah, I think one of the things that excites me about breath is Sorry.    0:11:12 - Anne I thought maybe yeah, yeah, well, you know, that's what happened, he's fine Breath yes, yes I love working on breath.    0:11:23 - Nic It's one of my favorite things, particularly with voiceovers, because there are some like interesting misconceptions and hangovers from like earlier breath Dementorologies in voice world that that make breathing for that make people who are doing voiceover sort of have to seem like they have to work A bit harder because they don't quite understand what's going on with the breath. Sure, so what? so what I work with in terms of breath is I I don't I kind of get people to forget about the diaphragm completely.    Okay because every breath is diaphragmatic, right, it's the primary muscle of breathing. So you can't, you can't not breathe with your diaphragm. So it's kind of a semantics with the language in one thing.    0:12:02 - Anne But well, maybe I was, maybe I was meaning deep breath. Yeah, exactly, okay, Okay.    0:12:07 - Nic Yeah, so like got it. So what I might? when, when people come to me and they say I need to breathe from or with they're using my diaphragm, what I find they're trying they're trying to, they're trying to do it rather than letting it happen, and what that leads to is people trying to breathe through their belly or Deep and all that kind of stuff, and that leads to engagement of muscles that don't need to be used. Ah, so so what I advocate for and tend to explore is Just is release and flow and movement, because Big breaths are great for, you know, long phrases sometimes and For, sometimes for powerful stuff, if that's what you need. But also, similarly, breath is as much about knowing that sometimes you only need a little breath or you only need a medium-sized breath, because actually what we need is the right amount of breath for the sentence We've got to say no more, no less, and that in itself is sort of an interesting skill to play with in a choir.    So all the work I do around breath is like Diver from be gone Okay, and just work on release of the belly, a little bit of gentle engagement on the out breath and on the voice And just understanding what you're capable of. Really breath like my big love, love, love breath.    0:13:19 - Anne I. So that just that intrigues me, because I I'm always talking about when, when you have that long run-on sentence right, and a Voice talent doesn't necessarily anticipate it, and they run out of breath at the weird part, right at the part where it doesn't sound natural. I'm always trying to get them to kind of you know, read ahead, understand where you might need to breathe in order to make that sound natural. How does that come into play with your breathing?    0:13:48 - Nic Yeah, so. So my thing is making sure that the breath system is responsive enough and free enough to breathe quickly when those little top ups are needed quickly and easily and silently, and silently When those little top ups are needed, because I know that often in voiceover there are various things that get in the way of feeling like you know how much type of breath you even need Right. Or you know you're halfway through ascending and you realize it's four times longer than you thought it was going to be Right, absolutely Right absolutely So.    there's a really interesting thing about breath whereby, when we're talking in conversation to our mates, right, we don't run out of breath. Our body knows how much breath we need for the thought, but when you're working with other people's thoughts, in voiceover you don't know where they fucking end Like in.    Some of them are, like you say, not written very well, so you could be halfway through and you suddenly realize it's like loads longer than it needs to be. But ultimately, as long as we're like engaged and connected to the words and what we have to say, that ascending is going to sort of be as long as it wants. As long as our breath is free and we know which bits to release when we need the breath to come in to top up for us, and you keep that intention of that thought in the background until the end, you can sort of breathe as much as you want. The reason I think this is important and crucial is because sometimes voiceovers push, push, push, push right to the end of a thought, and then everything gets a little bit kind of like tense.    0:15:10 - Anne Yeah, and it's not good for your breath and it feels horrible And it doesn't sound connected. It sounds like, oh my God, I'm going to run out of breath. Yeah, And the list? it doesn't jar.    0:15:19 - Nic It's not nice for the listener. anyway, sure. But, us as, as social listeners, we are used to hearing really long meandering thoughts with our friends and our on our family. Like we're used to people starting a thought and not really knowing where it's going, and then they breathe a bit to top up and then they go off in another direction And we stay with them because we're interested and because their intention is true, like they want to tell us the thing right.    So the theory is sort of the same, with voiceover for me, that the sentence can be as long as a sentence in fact needs to be As long as you are, like, committed to communicating that sentence and the breath system behind it is free to respond and be flexible and and fill it when you need to, then that's okay, so, yeah, so I work a lot with helping people understand how to get the breath in nice and, quickly and silently, how to support the breath when they need to. Also how to know where the point is Sure That they need to top up.    0:16:11 - Anne That makes sense, like the organization of the thoughts.    0:16:14 - Nic Yeah, like we speak.    0:16:15 - Anne I always when I'm, when I'm talking to my students, i'm like look, we don't. You don't hear us breathe when we're talking to to one another. We're basically breathing before we start talking, maybe after we finish talking, and then where there's commas or intended commas, and so that's typically where I say you've got to figure out where that breath goes. If it's super long, just kind of organize the thought and then speak that thought. I mean, that's, if you're in that scene, you'll speak the thought without necessarily, you know, running out of breath in the middle of it. Now I'm so conscious of my breathing right now I'm like it's beautiful And you're doing great because, look, you're alive.    0:16:51 - Nic Yeah, right, that's why you're alive and you're making voices perfect. Yeah, i interviewed Barbara Housman for my for the voice quits podcast one of my podcasts And she's this remarkable voice practitioner I have a massive. I've worked with her on and off for years and I train with her at drama school and stuff And she's amazing And she always says well, this is what she said to me was because there used to be a thought in kind of drama training that was like one breath, one thought, one breath one thought.    And then you look at Shakespeare and the thoughts are like 19 sentences long.    0:17:20 - Anne This is never going to work.    0:17:22 - Nic So she reframed it for me and she said it's not about it being one breath, It's about it being one thought.    So like I can keep that thought going and breathe wherever I need to, because breath is part of the communication as well. Now, i know for some types of voiceover you have to take the breath out and it's like fine, although I feel like with the event, like this AI nod. So this is going on. We need the breath because it's real and human. But that's just, that's just me. But, like you can, as long as you, as long as you really know that you need to say the words, you need to communicate the thing and you need to affect the person listening, you can let the breath come in whenever you want to, as long as it's very easy. So so that's what I work on. I work a lot on making the breath easy, responsive, habitual and kind of instinctive. I try and take people back a lot to noticing breath completely at rest, and then we build up from there and then we build on sound and then we build on thought lengths and things like that.    0:18:16 - Anne So, yeah, love it, wow, breath by breath. So so, in addition to breath being incredibly important when we're talking about performance in an extreme emotion or extreme, let's say, in video games, or we're having something that's highly emotional, where we have to probably utilize our voice more than a normal conversation level, what are your tips for helping? like you know, i don't want to scream the night before I have to record, maybe because I don't want to hurt my voice, or, you know, a lot of times people are like well, don't, you know, don't cough, like try to like clear your breath, or like gently, and there's so many different things that people tell you to do to kind of preserve your voice What sort, what tips do you have for?    0:19:04 - Nic that. So for extreme sessions, definitely a full body warm up And I would also put in place some sort of mid session resets. So two or three minutes of release exercises for the body and the vocal tract, so the throat, the tongue, the lips and the jaw and things every every, you know, half an hour or so. Just ask for a couple of minutes just to reset things so that if any strain has taken place or if any tension is creeping in, you can reset things and release things a little bit. So that's really useful.    Always hydrate, of course, at least the day before, if not, like the week before. Can you hydrate too much? Oh, my god, yeah, you can have. Okay, too much of a good thing. People get a bit obsessed with, like the fact that it needs to be water And they carry these water things around that like petrol cans. Like I got eight litres of water, yeah, yeah, that's like my arm would fall off a and be I'd be, i'm waiting all the time anyway, like the last thing. It is eight litres of water. So the the the general guideline at the moment is Is one mil per calorie burned right per day.    0:20:12 - Anne Is sufficient to keep you hydrated.    0:20:14 - Nic So for for a female that's like 1500, for a male That's about 2000, depending on your exercise. So if you exercise more you might need a little bit less.    Right you're lazy, alfakar, and you're on the sofa all the time, then you'd probably be fine, but it's also about your diet as well. So if again, if you are a Raw food vegan living in a rain forest, you're probably gonna need you're probably getting more water from your food and hydration from your food than someone who, like, lives in the city and eats frozen pizza all day.    But right so it's a whole list, completely holistic thing, like its environment, it's food, it's the fluids you take in. all fluids count towards systemic hydration, so that's hydration of the whole body. So anything you drink that's wet will help you hydrate and counts that even coffee I was gonna.    0:21:07 - Anne I was just gonna say so. I have to have my cup of coffee every morning. You know I have about one, one cup, and people are always like don't drink coffee, it will hot D You know it will, you know it'll dry you out. And I'm like, well, i always chase it with a lot of water.    So I mean that's oh good, that for me it worked. So I really do. I mean, i try not to drink a ton of coffee before a session in the morning. But here's a question Sometimes these days, these days, i utilize the morning hours because my voice just tends to be a little bit lower Before it's warmed up to actually do some voiceover work. Is there a way that you can warm up so that you can maintain that kind of a? and what is that phenomenon? What is that phenomenon where your voice is lower in the morning typically?    0:21:55 - Nic so my hypothesis for this is that you're more released, so the vocal folds to. To change pitch, i e go higher and lower the vocal folds Get longer and thinner to go high Okay and shorter and fatter to go low, and it's also about and then they vibrate. Have different number of oscillations per second right because of the size. The. The higher and lower you, the higher you go. This slightly more stretched, intense the vocal folds get. Mm-hmm the lower they are, the more slack they are. Okay, yep, been asleep on lion flap with your lovely natural breath, you know, not worrying about anything.    All your muscles are released, your throat's released and rested, and lovely, i would imagine in the morning your vocal folds are just a little bit fatter and more released. Ah, no offense, look at those fat folds.    0:22:50 - Anne Vocal foes. Hey, I don't mind having fat vocal folds and I sometimes people pay me for those. For those fat vocal folds, show me a fire in the morning, yeah great, it's great, so I think that's what it is. And then the more you talk during the day, mm-hmm the more your body ticks on.    0:23:04 - Nic A wee bit of tension, the more your larynx takes on a wee bit of the tongue, everything takes on a bit more tension, so it's slightly harder to get those folds to that more relaxed.    0:23:13 - Anne God, the fat place and is there a way to get them back to the fat place outside of? I'm gonna say vocal placement Right, right to do that, or tension release, really Yeah.    0:23:24 - Nic So I'm interesting gentle exercises That encourage a bit releasing the muscles around the larynx and in the vocal tract So you can do tongue release, jaw release, yawns to open and release the the back of the throat a little bit. Okay, Yeah gentle kind of rehab style, glides up and down your pitch on Whatever. A particular semi-occluded vocal tract exercise works best for you.    So semi-occluded exercises are exercises that utilize a sound that sort of partially closes the mouth, so a classic one that everyone knows is a little For some people a little is quite a lot of effort and not the right one for them other versions might be a gentle, puffy kind of Signed and or another one might be just a puffy th, so So, hmm, kind of sounds create a particular acoustic environment in a throat that allows vocal full vibration with minimal input.    0:24:22 - Anne Mmm, and that's a way to release tension. Yes, oh, okay, so do you win? Okay, so You, you work with students independently on vocal exercises, health preparation for. so take me through like what's a what's a typical with you, like, how do you assess my vocal health and my vocal performance? Okay, or just tell me what. you don't have to take me through it. I'm just don't describe what. what's the process of that?    0:24:57 - Nic I I do a lot of ninja listening, so, uh, if the first time you have with me, you're probably like why are we chatting so much and not like just getting started And then I'm like I've been listening to you.    0:25:07 - Anne Uh, but I talk to people. Have you been listening to me so far?    0:25:15 - Nic Like now.    0:25:15 - Anne I'm really piqued my interest.    0:25:18 - Nic So yeah, i do a little. Uh, i don't know if you have Sherlock Holmes, the uh program, like the British program with Benedict Cumberbatch over in America, but he does these like really amazing scans where he looks at somebody and does nose. Everything about him is like so do a cheeky weekend of Sherlock Holmes scan Like voice assessment with that's what part of my training is is being able to listen and go.    Oh, i hear this, i hear that, i hear the other. Um, so I do that while we're having to be, chat and make a few notes. I also collaborate that with why you've come. So you know, someone may have come going. I'm losing my voice and I don't know why. Sure, And I will listen and go. Well, that's this, or someone will go. I'm losing my voice And it's because X, y, z And I will go. I don't think it is actually. I think it's this, or or I'll go. Yes, you're right but, let's all try this.    So so it's a bit of a collaborative process And I I talk a lot about you know what the needs are, uh, what they expect from it, you know how long we've got together that kind of thing, and we just sort of piece together a bit of a strategy. It's very explorative and it's very bespoke and back and forth And I describe it like kind of sadly as a journey. It's like a journey you know, like.    so we like I don't do one to one's really anymore, i do two session, quick top ups or six session kind of packages, because we start together in one place And sometimes by session three we've actually realized it's something completely different and that's often can be a bit disarming or exciting or interesting and you just have to, as a voice, as a voice technique coach, you just have to respond to that. You know I have to teach what's in the room or the zoom.    0:26:49 - Anne Sure That makes sense In front of me Same with any coaching really.    0:26:53 - Nic Um. So you know there's no one size fits all. Right, it's a very back and forwards process. Sometimes I give you stuff I said go away working that for a couple of weeks, give me a shout, how's it going, and we go. Well, this is working. That's not working. And you know, we, we assess it really as we go along. Um, so it's a. It's a really lovely, lovely process. I love one to ones because it's so bespoke. And at the moment I tend to get a lot of people who are like I've tried this, i've tried this coach or that coach or the other coach, and we still can't work out what this is. So, um, and sometimes that's nothing to do with the coach, it's just the learning place the person is in, or you know what's going on in their life.    Maybe they weren't open to receiving certain information you know, but you know some. Often it takes a wee while to find the right coach for you and stuff, and you know people come to me and maybe go someone else, like like that's just what happens, um, but yeah.    I do get a lot of. what's this weird noise My nose makes, or I can't work out what's happening on this cluster of signs, All that kind of or why am I? you know? quite specific stuff. I'm not the moment, uh, Mike, specific stuff, which is what my book's about. It's like, it's it's voice for Mike users.    0:27:59 - Anne Oh, so let's talk about that, because you do, you have a, you have a new book out, i do. And let's talk about that, because I was just going to ask you about um for being on the mic. What are your tips for being on the mic? So this is phenomenal that you've got a new book out. I do.    0:28:15 - Nic It's called on the mic. Okay, straight forward.    0:28:19 - Anne There you go.    0:28:20 - Nic It's called on the mic and it's voice training for voiceover artists, podcasters, speakers and presenters, so basically anybody who uses a microphone, because that seems to be the people that come to me Sure. Sure, absolutely. And yeah it's been really it's been a really interesting and exciting journey, kind of consolidating all my knowledge into what I'm doing, Into that sort of a place, Um, I think, for there are a couple of things with Mike. Speaking is number one. Um, there's a different type of energy that's needed.    So and this again, this can differ from me sat here in Mabouth with this mic to somebody stood on a stage doing an expert speaking gig, Um, so it's about understanding the energy that you need for the space that you're in and the breath that you might need for the space that you're in and I think also as well the style of the delivery is really interesting and how you can use the right kind of voice warm up exercises to get you to a particular space. So if you have to sound conversational for your podcast, there are certain things you can do that are good for that.    If you need to get ramped up and deal with your adrenaline to host a conference, then there are certain things you can do for that. So the whole point of the book is to like go through a lot of scenarios, go through the voice training process that I advocate, which is body, breath, sound speech, and just end up with a big fat, a toolkit of things that you can piece together in a way that works for whatever mic context you need.    0:29:44 - Anne I love it. I love it Now. Is this your first book?    0:29:48 - Nic Yes, I mean, I think I'd written Instagram Instagram captions. I was about it Right.    0:29:53 - Anne Right, well, i know I feel like I've written a ton of blogs and I know you've got a great blog out there too. Um, and I'm part of your newsletter, so, um, yeah, so that's so. It's very exciting. So, your first book, and what was that process like? Did it take? like I I'm, because I, of course, you know I'm, i'm thinking about it, and of course everybody says, and you need a book. So, um, writing a book to me, i'm just, i have so much respect because I know how much time well, i know how much time it must take, so what was the process like for you?    0:30:26 - Nic Um, I really enjoyed it, actually really enjoyed it. The hardest bit was starting like with everything, Right, i did a lot of procrastinating. I did a lot of having my whether you believe in it as not imposter syndrome on my shoulder going what are you doing? Who do you think you are? Um, so I did a lot of inviting my imposter syndrome to sit with me while I while I explored what was happening, i was like come on then.    0:30:48 - Anne We'll do it together.    0:30:50 - Nic Um, as soon as I started each little writing session, I I was great, I loved it, I mean you get to the end of the first draft and then you're like what the hell is this? So, actually, what was more exciting and interesting and fulfilling was the editing process and playing around with it. So my advice is set we, set we taught. Set we targets, we regular targets that are achievable for you. Don't edit as you go, cause I got caught up in that and it took me longer, longer than I wanted to to get to the end of the first draft, but just get a first draft done And you could let you.    and, interestingly, what happened for me was it started as one book and by the time I'd finished the draft it was another book. So you know it sort of had to go back and and, um, change things up a wee bit. But I actually really enjoyed it.    I feel, very proud, but also, you know it's scary, it is a scary thing putting it out there, but you just have to remember who you're writing it for. You know I spent a lot of time as well, you know, basking in the shadows of the greats who've come before me And like there are so many incredible practitioners out there who I still learn from daily and whose books I read and who I just think are remarkable. And I did do a lot of. what if they think my book's terrible? and my business coach was like, who are you writing the book for? And I was like well, my clients. and they're like so does it? like I know what matters to you.    0:32:13 - Anne Do they think you're terrible? Probably not. No, do they care?    0:32:17 - Nic No, they have been asking you for a book, So they're going to be really excited. And do you think those people who you think are amazing are going to look at you and go, ugh, gross, you wrote a book. Or are they going to go?    0:32:29 - Anne that's well done, we've been there actually About time, right About time, there we go, fantastic.    0:32:34 - Nic Yeah, i've had some lovely. I reached out to a few mentors to help me, like, edit a little bit and they were really complimentary, so I'm really pleased with it. I feel it is the first one.    0:32:47 - Anne Well, I am so excited I'm going to rush out and get it. So how can bosses get this book?    0:32:54 - Nic Yeah, so it is on my website. If you go to onthemikbookcom Okay, Onthemikbookcom it should take you to the page we can buy. Perfect, Actually, it'll be. It's on Amazon.    0:33:09 - Anne And it'll be on Amazon as well, yeah, just do that Fantastic. And how can people get in touch with you in addition to buying your book? How can they get in touch with you if they want to work with you?    0:33:21 - Nic Oh well, probably my website, Nicrebinvoicecom. That's probably the best thing I'm also on the island, stern tic-toc and all that kind of nonsense too. So you can probably find me anyway by putting Nic Redman in Perfect perfect.    0:33:35 - Anne Well, Nic, it has been a pleasure. Congratulations. I'm very excited I'm going out there and getting a book now because I and I actually I want to be contacting you because I do have some questions about how maybe you can custom work with me with some of my voice questions that I have. So thank, you so?    much again. Yes, absolutely, bosses. Do you have a local nonprofit that's close to your heart? Well, if you ever wish that you could do more to help them, you certainly can Find out more at 100voiceswhocareorg to learn how. And a big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl. You too can connect and network like Bosses. Find out more at IPDTLcom. Bosses, have an amazing week, Nic. Thanks so much. We'll see you next week. Bye, all right.    Transcribed by https://podium.page

Anne & Gillian continue their discussion on Boss Equipment Necessities, providing even more valuable insights on what essential audio equipment you need in your booth. They discuss the importance of selecting studio headphones that offer both comfort and accuracy. They also delve into the convenience and limitations of USB microphones, as well as providing a comparison of costs and quality of audio interfaces. Additionally, they share tips on where to get tech support and test gear in person. You definitely don't want to miss this conversation...   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. I'm your host Anne Ganguzza, and I'm excited to bring back to the show today creative freelancer, audio engineer, musician Gillian Pelkonen for another episode in our BOSS audio series.    Gillian: Hello (laughs).    Anne: Hey, Gillian.    Gillian: How's it going?    Anne: It's going great. So we've had some really intense conversations about our home studios. First of all, talking about where to locate your home studio in your home, where good place is, a little bit about sound absorption. Then we had a really cool, interesting episode, I think, on all the equipment that people don't think about that's required to run our voiceover business. Now we're gonna talk about all the obvious ones that I think people always, they love to talk about these, and --   Gillian: This is the exciting stuff.    Anne: I think the other stuff is exciting. I think actually people don't get excited enough about the other kind of technologies. So --   Gillian: I mean, (laughs), we know you're gonna marry the internet.    Anne: Yes.    Gillian: I have a spiritual connection to unboxing Apple products.    Anne: Yes, there you go.    Gillian: But the air quotes exciting stuff that everyone loves to harp on. Yes.    Anne: I dare say that I have a spiritual connection to my headphones, (laughs) to my headphones, and, and I know that people are always asking me, what are your headphones that you wear? Because I love wearing colorful headphones because it's part of my brand. And I actually have like all different colors of headphones right here with me.    Gillian: Wow.    Anne: I've got a lovely deeper blue here.    Gillian: You guys, if you're not watching, go to YouTube right now and you gotta see this.    Anne: Then we've got the royal blue here, which I love, and then of course I've got black. I actually have an alternate pair of the red ones and okay. So I think, can we talk about headphones (laughs)?    Gilliann: Yeah. I mean, let's start.   Anne: I've already started.    Gillian: So we talked computer, you have your computer, you have your internet connection, you have your isolated space, and it's soundproofed to whatever fits your budget and what you need right now to be isolated.    Anne: And your internet connection and website.    Gillian: Oh yes.    Anne: Right?    Gillian: Yes. Oh, and website. Yes.    Anne: And website.    Gillian: That is definitely important. Headphones. So important because you can't, you can't be playing out loud while you're recording (laughs).    Anne: Now here's the thing, there's reasons why we wear headphones. Okay? So what are the primary reasons you wear headphones, Gillian?    Gillian: Well, just in my everyday life, there's the convenience of being able to listen to whatever I want and to be able to hear that. But for recording, when you're recording voice, if you are playing out loud what you are recording, you will get feedback. And I don't think you will on the scale of a small computer, but there are a few studios that I've worked in, and when I was very new and prone to making mistakes -- obviously continue to make mistakes and learn from them — but when we had big speakers and we were recording in the same room, you definitely get a nice ear cleaning with that high pitch feedback. Because having an open source, you're DAW, armed and ready to record, and that -- it just creates a loop of sound, if you think about it, what's going into the mic, coming outta the speaker, into the mic, outta the speaker, and that just ruins it.    Anne: So well, okay. So there's a big debate in the voiceover world about, do you need headphones while recording? Because there's a lot of people that say you do not. It helps you to sound more natural. Okay? And of course you don't wanna have your speakers on either or your monitors.    Gillian: Oh yeah. That's what I'm thinking of. But this is interesting.    Anne: Yeah. So do you have your headphones on while you're recording? Because a lot of times, it's distracting listening to yourself, what you sound like in your headphones. So for me, okay — some people adopt the whole, I'm not gonna wear my headphones at all because it makes me sound more natural. I'm not listening to what I sound like in my ears. Some people do one ear on, one ear off to help that as well while they're recording. And some people wear them. Now I, years ago, started wearing them because I had a lot of sound outside of my studio. And I needed to be able to put my headphones on to hear if it was going to come through in the recording. And some things like my naked ears couldn't hear like the vibration of the truck that was a mile away coming down the road, and somehow vibrationally it came up through my studio. And the jackhammer that was maybe not right outside my door, but down the road because they were constructing new homes.    So for a long time I got used to wearing my headphones just to make sure I could step in the studio to make sure that I couldn't hear those sounds coming through my microphone. And then I just continued to wear them. Now I've done both, take them off when I'm recording or keep them on. A lot of times, if you think of it this way, (laughs), and this is not a popular opinion, I will have my headphones on while I'm recording because I feel that whatever you hear in your headphones is just you amplified. And if you are an accomplished actor that can act like you, without paying attention to what you sound like in your headphones, you can wear headphones.    And for me it's something that, it's kind of on a day-to-day basis. I'll probably wear my headphones more often than not, just because I've been doing this for a very long time, and all I do every day when I coach is tell people not to listen to what they sound like and to just be themselves. And so I wear my headphones. Plus I do a ton of editing, I do a ton of coaching, and so I need to, and I don't have monitors, number one for the very technical reason is honestly I just don't have space. I don't have space to put a nice pair of monitors on my desk. So I wear my headphones when I edit.    And so headphones to me have to be comfortable. And they have to be studio headphones of course. And that should be a given. Anybody, any BOSSes out there that are just starting in the industry, make sure they're studio headphones, and they're not any other type of headphones that's gonna add more base or more treble or that adds prettiness to it. You just need studio headphones so you can hear the raw output.    Gillian: Yeah, it's definitely an interesting conversation. I think my advice is gonna be the same as always. My advice is just try 'em all and see what works. I personally, when I am singing, I do one ear on, one ear off, mostly for pitch, because how you sound in your head, it's all relative and different. I think that there are some things to be concerned about. Obviously if there is extraneous noise coming on your recording, you wanna be aware of that. But if you're connecting to a client, really if there's an engineer on the session, they should catch that. Like, that's my job when I'm working with talent. Another issue, sometimes I hear the movement of headphones, but I've never really asked talents what they're doing. And maybe it's putting them on and off, but there are a lot of moments functionally during a session when a director is gonna wanna get your attention. And so if you're just rocking without headphones, that's something to just consider.    Anne: Yeah. You'll have to hear them. And you just said something, I don't mean to interrupt, but you just said something that made me think the physical sound of your headphones. Believe it or not, if like -- these headphones, the exterior is, there's some plastic components here. As they get older, believe it or not, if I move my head, because we're very physical as voice actors behind on the mic, as I move my head, they make noise. And that noise comes in through my recording. And I, I remember for the longest time there was this tiny little click, and I was like, I don't have a mouth click. Where's that coming from? It was coming from my headphones. And so for me, I found a way to, I actually had bought a new pair of headphones so that they didn't -- they weren't really squeaking, but they were making plasticy noises. And I know that's not a technical term, but it's a noise where like if I do this (clacking nails on headphones) --   Gillian: Yeah.   Anne: — you can hear that. It wouldn't be that loud, but it would be something similar to that. And so --   Gillian: Interesting.    Anne: Yeah. For those of you guys listening to that, I was simply just squeezing the headphone earpiece with the headpiece together --   Gillian: To get that plasticy --   Anne: To get that plasticy sound.   Gillian: — noise sound. Well, there's another thing that I've noticed with headphones that's important to note -- just this is more function than which headphones to get. But, and it could be 'cause people are taking them off. But a lot of times I'll be working with the talent’s audio from a session we just did, and through their recording I can hear everyone else talking. And this doesn't really happen during the recording, but I can hear myself slating things not recorded. So I don't know, if you're taking your headphones off and you're putting them down, you gotta think about, okay, if someone starts talking or if there's other noises, those are gonna get directly into the mic. Or if your headphones are too loud, there's gonna be too much bleed. So just things to think about when we're talking about headphones.    Anne: Two good points. I wanna actually go back on that, right? If you put your headphones down and obviously you're not hearing (laughs) other things, right, other noises can come through them. And also you mentioned bleed. Bleed is important because right now I'm really, really close to my microphone. And depending on the volume that you have your headphones turned up to, and I'm a little older so I might need a little higher volume. And so sometimes you have to be careful that the sound coming through your headphones doesn't bleed back through your mic. And for that reason I have closed headphones. And that's why I recommend closed headphones for most voice actors, if that's the case. If you're gonna be sitting out just doing editing all the time, I don't think they need to be closed backed. If you're just gonna use 'emfor editing.    Gillian: If you're watching us, I have open back headphones. But I just got these recently, these are like the Sennheisers, I think the HD 600s. That's what I thought. And I have these mostly for mixing and I I listen through them 'cause they're really comfortable. But my closed headphones, I also have AudioTechnicas. They were my first headphones, like pro headphones; they're amazing. The pair that I had was under a $100. I've had 'em for years. They're amazing. So whoever is saying that you need really expensive headphones for amazing sound, you don't. There's lower models that are great and then you can upgrade. There's a whole range of AudioTechnicas that get more precise or, or just have different features that you can invest in if you wanna spend more. But there should be no barrier to getting, I think they’re $70 or something like that, which --   Anne: Well, I'll have to tell you about mine that have the color. because people are always asking me. And I do have, I do have a studio gear page off of AnneGanguzza.com and as well as the VO BOSS page studio gear that I recommend. And by the way, I don't put anything on this page that I don't use or have not owned. And I will say that I love AudioTechnica headphones as well. And of course before this turns into an AudioTechnica podcast -- which it's amazing, there's lots of great headphones out there. The one thing that I love about AudioTechnicas is for me they're super comfortable. I literally wear my headphones when I'm on coaching days and I'm coaching eight hours at a shot. I have them on my head eight hours. Because again, like I said, I don't have monitors in my room and plus my husband works upstairs, and so I wanna be able to keep things at a minimum. And so they have to be super comfortable. I have to be able to hear the talent, right, to be able to direct them.    So for me, they are amazing. They're a little more than $100 because of the color, the special additions they are the MX 50s and in whatever color -- I don't believe they make the red anymore, but if you're lucky you can find them somewhere, somewhere out there. There'll be an extra pair that somebody has that's still new in the package. I've bought three pairs of red 'cause red is discontinued. My royal blue has been discontinued. Every year they come out with a new color. And so every year I find it necessary to buy another color just because I'm on the camera a lot and I love -- and they make me happy. Right? If you're gonna have on your head for a long time, they should make you happy.   Gillian: And comfortable, most important.   Anne: Yeah, and they should be comfortable.   Gillian: -- don't need a headache.    Anne: — be accurate as well. Right? So for that reason, the AudioTechnics are my faves, and I do own a pair of Paradynamics. I've owned the Sony, oh gosh, I think it was the 7507s, I believe. And the one thing that I didn't love about the Sonys, although I love the sound, was the actual cable that connects was a twisted cable. And what happened is they never traveled well. They became entangled within themselves. And if you've ever had a coiled wire get tangled in itself, and you try to pull it apart, it's horrible. It just gets twisted onto itself. And so I love the AudioTechnicas 'cause they always have the straight cable that you can use and it doesn't get twisty. And that may seem like a very silly reason to love the AudioTechnicas, but that's one of many reasons why I love that. But it's a viable reason because the twisty turn coiled cables, they're not fun to get them untangled when they get tangled, especially when you travel with them and you're trying to wrap them around --   Gillian: No.   Anne: — the headphones.   Gillian: Definitely not. And something to think about when we're talking, all of these things are essentials. And I'll just tell a brief, brief story, but the other day I was doing a session with a voice talent, and we were having all of these issues. I still don't know -- I was on the session, but I wasn't the head engineer of it. So I don't know exactly what happened. But we think that between when we were testing with the talent to when we pulled the client in, their headphones broke because they magically could not hear us.    Anne: Oh wow.    Gillian: And you need to have an extra pair because you can't be on a session without having an extra pair of headphones. It's super — and I'm sure we'll say, and I know, Anne, you've said before in the past, you need backups of your backups. But definitely even if you have your splurge pair and you have a less expensive pair just to use in case of an emergency, there could be a chance that you're on a session, and in the middle it breaks, and you can't continue the session without the pair of headphones. So just don't forget about having some, a little insurance on your sound.    Anne: Yeah. And you know that, it's interesting that you mentioned that, and I talk about headphones so much because when I'm connecting with students through ipDTL -- and this would be just like me, I would be the studio and they would be connecting through Source Connect or ipDTL — you have to have headphones to avoid that feedback. when you're connecting via those methods. And simply earbuds are not the best because sometimes they don't fit your ear properly. There's bleedthrough and honestly closed back headphones are probably the best for any kind of studio session you're going to have.    And I just say yes, I totally agree with you, Gillian, about the backup. Because I have had people who like all of a sudden they're like, oh, I can't hear you. And I'll be like, do you have another pair of headphones? And at that point if you even have a backup like set of EarPods works but in a pinch. But really have an extra set of headphones in case that happens. Because the last thing you want is for you to lose connectivity with your client to be able to hear what they're saying and to do your job. I mean it is part of your job. So have a backup, and honestly most headphones are not expensive. I, I'm going to tell you the AudioTechnicnas, even these, the new versions that they come out with are about 160 some-odd-dollars. The navy blue ones I just bought were like $169. So they're not tremendously expensive at all. And I know you can get some fabulous head phones for less than $100 for $99. I think that's what my Sonys were that I bought. So well worth the investment.    So in terms of headphones, make sure that they're studio headphones. Make sure -- I like to say close back if you're gonna be using them for any kind of recording at all 'cause you don't want the bleedthrough. If you're gonna sit there and edit all day, yeah, maybe open back or others will work fine for you. Make sure they're comfortable for your head. And especially if you wear glasses 'cause you don't want them to push in on the glasses and then have the glasses give you a headache. That's the last thing.    Gillian: Yeah.    Anne: All right.    Gillian: Okay. Should we lightning round a little bit the rest of some of the other things that we might need?    Anne: Yes.    Gillian: Because I know, I know what I'm thinking.    Anne: Microphone.    Gillian: Microphone. Yes. And we'll do a whole episode on microphones about the different types and and what kind you might need. I personally always say large diaphragm condensers for voice actors. There are amazing -- you know, everyone knows the TLM 103 that's upwards of $1000. There's also amazing mics that if you're a beginner, and you're not ready to invest that much money, that will not sound exactly the same but will be a large diaphragm condenser mic and will do the job, will make you sound great.    Anne: Absolutely. I used an NT1, a Rode NT1 for at least six years of my career full-time before I bought a 416. Actually I bought the TLM 103 and then I bought a 416 as well. So now I have both of those in my studio. But guess what? Also sitting on my desk here, I have a USB AudioTechnica AT 2020, and that works for some of my other connections. Believe it or not, that works for my Clubhouse connections because my Club Deck software doesn't like my audio interface so I have to use a USB mic and it makes me sound a whole lot better. And so those USB mics, they come in handy for lots of applications. Maybe not for your professional recording but for other applications that help enhance the sound of your voice.    Gillian: Yeah. And here's the -- I'm not going to say that people shouldn't use USB mics. I mean the audio engineer and me, always, I love an interface and a mic just because. It's so funny, I wrote a whole blog post on this so if you're interested you can go read my blog about the core differences between like the functionality of what a USB mic or like a USB and interface does, and the pros and cons of both, 'cause there's pros and cons of both. When you have the interface, there's more things to know, there's more things that can go wrong. There's just —   Anne: One more thing in the chain    Gillian: — sensitivity. Yeah, exactly. But if you are interested and you want a USB mic, there's definitely options that will make you sound as good as you need to sound to start out. And I don't wanna get on here and say that you can't book a job or get started in voiceover using a USB mic, because there's so many uses for it. And once you upgrade, if you choose to upgrade to an interfacing mic, then you have that other option to use for things like, like --   Anne: Any mic.   Gillian: Yeah.    Anne: That's what I love about. I think really if you've got, I say for any voice talent in a pinch if you have to, you can use a USB, if you've got a good recording environment, in a pinch, but it's not recommended. I would say even if you're traveling, I've tried it all. I do have, I've got a great Tula mic, which is a USB mic and it's amazing. So if I have a good space, you know, my little Tula can hook up USB, and I can get a decent audition. I wouldn't necessarily use it for any type of work that you wanna send to your client, broadcast type work, but in a pinch, like absolutely.    But for every day kind of voiceover I recommend condenser with an audio interface. And again, you don't have to have the $1000 mic. There's lots of great mics and there's so many discussion rooms and forums on what mic should I get? But I also have recommendations that I think work. It really depends on your voice and your comfort level, and work with a vendor that you can send it back if you don't love it.    Gillian: So important that you can either -- I mean I know in big cities -- I'm not entirely sure ‘cause I haven't done this in a while, but I know I'm in Guitar Center, I went there all the time growing up to play the instruments, and I know that they have a mic room where you can try stuff. I know that -- I'm pretty sure it'd B and H in New York City, you can try mics there, but I love Sweetwater. You can chat with agents there, you can talk to them. I'm pretty sure they have a great return policy because if you get the mic and you're investing all this money and you don't love it for your voice, even though everyone on the forums is saying it's top VO mic, don't keep it. Find something that makes you sound great because no one in the end is gonna know what mic you're using. They're just gonna know how you sound.    Anne: Well, exactly. And I also think though it's worth mentioning that if you get a mic and you want an assessment of what you sound like, Gillian, my goodness, like what you do all the time, the sound assessments, right?    Gillian: Yes.    Anne: Gillian can absolutely give you an assessment of how your voice sounds with that particular mic in your environment. I think there's a lot of things at play here. It's your environment and also the mic, and there will be a difference. So for me, I can say, you know what, I like the way this mic makes me sound, but I haven't recorded a file with it and sent it to somebody. Because again, sometimes if you're just starting, it's very difficult. You don't necessarily have an ear yet. Sending it to someone like Gillian is very important, who is, you know, this is what Gillian does; she's an audio engineer. She listens to sounds all the time and every day so she can make an accurate assessment and also tell you if this suits your voice or this doesn't suit your voice.    And I really believe that you also have to be happy with it. And don't forget, there's some people who mistakenly think that, well, I can use this mic and then I can process my voice to make it sound even better. And in reality as a voice actor, that's not what we wanna do. I mean, we simply wanna be able to give the cleanest recording that we can, and maybe our mic should, like what sorts of things should mics do for our voice? You know what I mean? They shouldn't change our voice, but they should enhance our voice.    Gillian: Yeah, they should -- I think I said this in the first episode we did together, but microphones are microscopes picking up your voice. And so every mic has a different capsule in it. It has a different way of processing, whether you're using dynamic mic or ribbon mic, all the different types of mics, they all react differently to sound. And so some people love singing on ribbon mics because it's quieter, it's more sensitive. I have a super cardioid condenser microphone that I, I love using on my voice and I tried the U87, all these other things. So it's really about, and this is a difficult answer because it's like you need to find what works for you because the mic that makes Anne sound great might not make me sound great. And all the processing in the world — obviously you can EQ it and change it a little bit, but really it's like finding a pair of jeans. Like you gotta find one that fits you and makes you look and feel your best. Maybe not look but jean analogy sound like you.    Anne: Yeah.    Gillian: You know?    Anne: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I don't think that there's any mic that will make you sound better than you. I mean your whole goal is really to make you sound the best that you can sound. And there's lots of mics -- and again, you could have a really like inexpensive mic in a great environment and sound amazing. You can also have a very expensive mic in a poor environment and sound horrible. I remember back in the day before I really had secured my environment sounding as best as it could, I purchased a shotgun mic, and it wasn't a 416, but I purchased one of the knockoffs and I actually hated it. I hated the way it made my voice sound. But I found that once I got the 416 and I had my environment, I love the way it sounds now.    And it's really interesting because before I was like, well I held off getting a -- it's why I got the TLM 103. And for me now I realize for my voice, the TLM 103 is a little bit of a brighter sound. And the 416 will pick up a little more of the bass sound, and that's typically true for most voices. But again, until you try it, you're not gonna really know, and it really has to be up to you. And again I think sending sound audio files to engineers who have the ear, who this is what they do, like Gillian, is really worth an investment to get the overall assessment on yes, this mic is good for you. Or also it will help you to determine if maybe (laughs) like how many times, I think we talked about this, Gillian, somebody might have had the installation of their mic backwards, and they were speaking into the back of the mic versus the front of the mic.    Gillian: Yeah.    Anne: A lot of times people don't sidedress their mic, right? They're speaking right into it. So there's a lot of plosive. So there's a lot of things that, Gillian, you can help talent to assess with their sound. And most people think it might be a mic problem, it may not be a mic problem.    Gillian: Yeah. Sometimes it's really simple stuff. Your room sounds really loud because your gain is up too high and you're not close enough to the mic. So it's picking up everything. Or it's on omni when it should be on cardioid, or you're facing the wrong way. There's so many things that someone listening could hear if you have a trained ear. Before we go, I know we have to go very soon, but don't forget your pop filter for your plosives.    Anne: Ah yes.    Gillian: So important.    Anne: Oh my gosh.    Gillian: I know you have like the pop filter shield sort of thing. That's what it looks like. Looks like you have, if you're using an interfacing mic, you need an XLR cable to connect the two. So important 'cause how are you gonna get from mic to interface from point to the other? So you get your mic, you get your interface, you don't have an XLR cable, you can't work. A mic stand. So important. What are you gonna do do without a mic stand? (laughs) You can't hold it.    Anne: Well, exactly. You really can't. And I think that again, more equipment besides your mic stand, I actually prefer --and this is just me, I always tell my students for me and my studio, I like the boom arms that can be mounted on the wall. Because a mic stand to me, I can't tell you how many times I've heard talent like trip over the tripod-like feet.    Gillian: Oh my gosh. Lemme show you my cute little stand.    Anne: With their mic. Yeah.    Gillian: I have this like, everyone watching, this like cute little baby stand that I just put on my desk. I think that those are really smart, the ones that clip right on. This little guy just sits on my desk and I can take 'em wherever.    Anne: Okay. Well, that's if you're sitting at a desk. But if you're standing and you have one of those tripod-like standing mic stands…    Gillian: They're hard to maneuver. Yeah.    Anne: They're hard. They're hard to fit in a lot of studios. I used to trip over mine all the time, so I basically have boom arms that I mount on the wall in my studio. They save a lot of space at my feet when you don't have a ton of space. And also, like you said, you can't hold it. And then we do need to mention the most important thing from the mic, right, that goes into your audio interface, your audio interfaces, and then everybody has questions. What's the best audio interface? Now I have been through the gamut of audio interfaces, but the main job of your audio interface is to translate the analog signal that comes from your microphone into a digital signal before it goes into the computer. Correct, Gillian?    Gillian: That's what it does. And typically it does both. It does the analog to digital conversion and then most audio interfaces have a headphone jack. So really we monitor off our computers, but you can monitor off of there where it goes digital right back to analog for you to listen to.    Anne: Oh right. Absolutely. I wasn't even thinking of that. You're right, because that's where my headphones are plugged in all the time. I started, gosh, I started with the Personas. And I'm trying to remember, I think I probably at one time had a Scarlet Focusrite, which I don't love those interfaces -- and I know we had a conversation in one of our podcasts about interfaces. I then, when I bought my studio here, I have a Mackey because I was intending to be able to do talk back to people in this booth to rent this booth. And ended up having a technical issue with that, which I sent it, it got fixed, it was under warranty that is now my backup interface.    And then I purchased an Apollo. And my Apollo, I have a mostly love relationship with my Apollo because of the plug-ins that work with it, which I absolutely love. But however, when we talked in our last episode about computer and keeping your computer up to date, well the (laughs) latest version of Mac OS is not up to date with the latest version of the Apollo. So you just have to make sure that you are aware of what's happening. The one that I recommend in terms of like a really great price, and I think works for the majority of people is the Steinberg UR22. And that is like about a hundred and — I wanna say $170. And I had one that I used for years, and it was just a workhorse and I love it. And that does all of the conversion, versus Gillian, if I'm correct, in saying with a USB mic, the conversion happens at the base of the microphone, right? So converting analog to digital. So there's a chip there that's doing that conversion.    Gillian: The biggest difference between the two is that when you use an interface, the mic just gets to be a mic, but within the USB mic it's all happening. And usually you'll see a little headphone jack too. It does A to D and then D back to A conversion.    Anne: Yeah.    Gillian: You pay less and you get everything is gonna be slightly lower quality because you're paying for --   Anne: You gotta fit into a tiny, little --   Gillian: — a microphone — all of the conversion, all of those things in one small device versus, you know, separating them out. So that's kind of where don't use USB mic comes from just because you can get higher quality with the separate.   Anne: You have so many more choices. Right? Because you can have a Focusrite or a Steinberg or an Apollo.   Gillian: You get to mix and match.   Anne: And you can have whatever microphone you want (laughs) connecting up to it.    Gillian: The other thing that I love about that is that there's room to upgrade. So let's say you wanna splurge on a really expensive mic and you're, just, you know, oh, I wanna start with this interface. Or vice versa. You wanna splurge on an Apollo for $1000, but you wanna use a $200 microphone and then say I'm gonna wait a couple years and then upgrade. Personally I've used Apollos, I've used UAD. I kind of struggle with the software issue even though I've used the plugins. They're awesome. I like Focusrite stuff. I like the Scarlets. I think it's great. I think voice actors really only need one input, possibly two. If you wanna have two mics set up just to switch between, you know, a shotgun and a large diaphragm condenser, if you want 'em at the same time. I like Apogee as well. The Apogee Solo and the Duet, those are great too. Those work really well. So those are my faves.    Anne: I'll just disagree with you on the Scarlet only because I've just had a lot of voice talent that have had bad luck, and I think mostly it's -- and I myself have thrown away two of them. And I think mostly a few years back, I think they used a bad chip set. I'm not sure what it was. Or they created these bundles where you got headphones, microphone, and interface all in the same package. And I think they used lower quality parts. And what would happen is voice actors would find, all of a sudden they'd get some sort of a noise or hissing, and nobody knew what it was, and it ended up being the interface. So for me that just kind of, I tossed that one to the side and said, I'm not gonna recommend that one anymore. But Scarlet, typically Focusrite had an impeccable reputation there for a while until I ran into bad luck with it past few years.    I think if you buy a bundled package, (laughs) meaning from a manufacturer or something, especially at Costco, as much as I love Costco, right, there are packages made, packages that are made for Costco. Sometimes they use cheaper parts in those, and sometimes you'll find that the quality won't last as long. Sometimes though you'll buy stuff at Costco, not necessary technical equipment, but you'll find things at Costco that's better (laughs) than you would find at other stores. But that's just my personal experience.    Gillian: I see. I've never had any bad experiences with Focusrite. I've used the larger hardware as well, the professional studio models of stuff. And those sound amazing. I think I've had a lot of friends and myself who've used the Scarlet interfaces and haven't had issues. So, that's my experience. And it's so funny, I've been wondering why people don't recommend bundles because I wouldn't buy audio gear from Costco (laughs). But there's a few places, like Sweetwater is my favorite place to buy gear.   Anne: Yeah, but they’ll bundle individual pieces together. Now, I'm talking about manufacturers that create whole bundled sets of things together.    Gillian: Well, Sweetwater is awesome. And B and H, they also have some great bundles. And with Sweetwater specifically, if there's a bundle you like, but there's a piece of gear you don't like, you can reach out to them personally and swap it around and get a discount from sort of buying in bulk. And they have some pre-made stuff so that if someone was trying to set up their home studio, didn't know where to start, it gives you a little place to get started.    Anne: And one thing I will say before we go, one thing that I love about Sweetwater is you get tech support. Oh my God, that is like unheard of these days. Like if you don't know, if you're having a problem installing the interface, you can call them up and get help. And that to me is invaluable.    Gillian: They're amazing,    Anne: They're wonderful to work with. So.   Gillian: Yeah. Very knowledgeable. I love Sweetwater. It's my favorite place to put my money. I have a few friends that work there as well, and all of their employees are highly trained and they know --   Anne: Very educated --   Gillian: — about the gear. It's like a prerequisite to work there.    Anne: Wow. We could go on forever, but, uh…   Gillian: We could.    Anne: Good stuff, Gillian, thank you so much.    Gillian: Thank you. And for anybody who is interested to get your audio assessed by me, I know we did a few episodes about it, but if you missed them, you can just head to my website, GillwiththeG.com. It'll, I'll be linked down here and I have some audio assessments. I have a little free course on, on setting up your home studio and a few blog posts or a bunch of blog posts just talking about different audio things if you're interested in learning more.    Anne: Awesome guys.    Gillian: So hungry for knowledge, (laughs).   Anne: And Gillian is a BOSS. Otherwise, she wouldn't be on the BOSS — she wouldn't be, she wouldn't be on the BOSS podcast. Anyways guys, here's a chance to use your voice to make an immediate difference in our world and give back to the communities that give to you. Visit 100Voiceswhocare.org to commit. You guys -- oh, and a big shout-out, before I forget, to ipDTL, who is our sponsor. You too can connect and network like BOSSes. Find out more at ipdtl.com. You guys, have an amazing week and we'll see you next week. Bye.   Join us next week for another edition of VO BOSS with your host Anne Ganguzza. And take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at 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.

Join Anne & Lau as they provide expert insights on overcoming self-sabotage and building powerful connections in the voice over industry. Learn to bring your authentic self to every performance, acknowledge negative self-talk, and rise above self-doubt. Discover strategies to take control of your negative self-talk and move past excuses to help you excel in your voice over career. Anne & Lau will also guide you on how trying new things and getting used to small failures can help you break out of a perfectionist rut and take your voice over business to the next level.   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: Hello, BOSSes. Welcome to the VO BOSS podcast and the BOSS superpower series with my ever so special guest,(laughs), Lau Lapides.    Lau: Thank you, Anne. Hello. How are you?    Anne: How are you? Oh, awesome. Look at us. How are you?   Lau: Jinx.    Anne: What is that punch? What is that? Punch Bug. Punch Bug?   Lau: (laughs). Wait, what is that show? Uh, Wonder Twin powers, activate.    Anne: Activate.   Lau: Form of --   Anne: Right? Business superpowers. Activate.    Lau: Activate.    Anne: Activate.    Lau: (laughs) Ooh, I love that. (laughs)    Anne: Speaking of superpowers, activating, sometimes I find that my students have a hard time activating their superpowers, and I'm a firm believer that everybody has superpowers in the booth. However, it takes a lot to get past things so that they can activate those superpowers. It's like they get in their own way. Right? Get out of your own way.    Lau: Yes. Get out of your -- if there were a place, if there were a waiting room that we could leave ourselves in when we go into the booth, or a camera, or an interview, or wherever you're going to do your work, we could leave ourselves there and not worry about it until we come out and get ourselves again — that would be a good thing to do.    Anne: Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's so tough. I think I always go back to what we do is so personal, right? Our voice is such a personal extension of ourselves, and we're being asked to bring ourselves to a performance constantly. But yet, there are times when we cannot do that, right? In reality, we think we're trying to bring the performer, right, to the performance, but in reality, we want you to bring yourself to the performance. And I think that is what most people have the hardest time doing, getting out of their own way so that they can bring themselves to that audition, to the booth, to the read, whatever that is. And so how do we get out of our own way, Lau? I mean, I think it's a struggle that everyone that gets into voiceover encounters at one point or another.    Lau: I mean, I think that this is a struggle that we encounter throughout our lifetime, whether we're a voiceover talent or not, but certainly actors of all kinds are always going through identity crisis, always going through, who am I now, and am I good enough? That old imposter syndrome?    Anne: Yeah. Yeah.    Lau: And one thing that I always do, and I do this for myself, and I recommend this as a coach as well, is self-talk scripting. I think self-talk scripting is really important to do. And you guys, you can do this, and you can do this all day long, and you can even do it in your head. But I recommend you start out by doing it on paper and write down your negative script. That is the thing that you are saying to yourself in the moment that is really negative. And then I want you to convert that into something that's positive and probably closer to the truth.    Anne: I like that.    Lau: Yeah. It just gives you a step.    Anne: And hang that in your studio. Hang it in your studio.    Lau: Yes.    Anne: So you see it. Yes. Absolutely.    Lau: Yes. And so it can be revolutionary in the sense of saying, wow, if I'm moving towards some sort of enlightenment in my personhood and in my career, I have to be authentically who I am, which means I'm flawed. I'm not perfect by any means, and I'm not even close to it. I'm a real person who's interesting and diverse and complex and sophisticated. So when I have something that comes in my way to self-sabotage my success, I have to stop and recognize it. I have to take accountability for it, and then I have to change it.    Anne: And I think number one, for people really just starting off -- I think people that have been doing this for a while, they understand the process. But the first thing that people will do is judge how they sound. And we've talked about this so many times, right? They're like, oh, I don't like the way that audition sounds. And I don't think it sounds like what they want it to sound like. And that right there is your self-sabotage. The fact that you're saying, okay, it needs to sound a certain way, and you're not in any way thinking, how can I bring myself to this read? Or how can I bring my person to this read to make it unique, to make it something that will really perk up the ears of the casting director and really tell the story. That's what gets in the way, I think, a lot of times.    Lau: And even as part of that, like if you're having a piece of copy in front of you, a script in front of you, anything written in front of you, that gymnastics that a lot of times you may go through in saying, I don't know if I wanna do this. I'm not ready for this. I don't really know what this means. And I've never seen — all the stuff, all the excuses we start to come up with --   Anne: Oh, so many excuses.   Lau: -- to procrastinate from getting to the job.    Anne: Yeah.    Lau: Right? I'd love to come up with that first before we even open our mouth. (laughs). Like, what do we say to stop us from getting to the point of doing the job?    Anne: Well, I'm gonna say, stop like talking to yourself and beating yourself up about how you sound and spend that time instead getting out of your way. How can you get out of your way constructively? Well, there's a little thing called Google(laughs). Anne GanGoogle says, Google. Right? Especially if you've got a script and you've got some clues in that script that can help you find out more about what that script, that content is about. Because to bring yourself to that party, you've gotta involve yourself in the story of the script. And the more you know about the story of the script, the more you know about the brand that's involved in that script, the more you know about these little clues that are in the script, these little sayings or nuances, the more you can educate yourself on that, the easier it's gonna be for you to bring your point of view to it.    Lau: Hmm. I love that. And add on to that, have your circle ready to go. Who's your circle? Your coaches, your family, your friends, whatever. Just have people there that you can call upon to remind you about your greatness and your fabulosity.    Anne: Yeah.    Lau: Now, make sure they're not gonna rip you down. Make sure they're not gonna rip you apart and make you self-doubt. Because if they do that, then it's counterproductive. You want people who are going to keep building you up, building you up, building you up, so that you have the confidence to face what you need to face. It doesn't mean they're lying to you. They may not even be in the industry. They may not even have the industry knowledge, but you wanna have that circle of people there for you to call upon to say, you know what? I don't feel great today, or I don't think I sound great. What do you think? And they say, I don't hear anything wrong with your voice. Your voice sounds great. So what's your deal? And it makes you just stop and get out of your head. I would say get out of your head and get into the world.    Anne: Yeah. I love that. I love that. Definitely you need your network, your VO family. And honestly, as we were discussing before, in a weird sense, I'm gonna say you are more than VO. If you just take a look at the words voiceover, right, there's really not much substance to voiceover in words. It's like a voice, but in reality, you are so much more than just that voice. I mean, you really have to start establishing yourself or thinking of yourself as much more than just the voice. You are the actor, you are the entrepreneur, you are the business person.    And with that, I think, comes a sense of something that you can bring to that read or that script that is more than just thinking, oh, it's just about the voice and then stressing yourself out over and over and over again and beating yourself up about how it's not -- what am I doing wrong? Or why is nobody listening to it? What is the feedback? And absolutely reach out to that network, network of coaches, network of accountability buddies that you have to get you out of that funk. Because sometimes it is a funk.    Lau: It is. And much of the time, that's all it is. I would even say, do something. Okay? And what I mean by that is, be active and be in action. The moment you're inside your head oftentimes will be inactive, right? Now if you're thinking you're active, but I want you to be interactive. So meaning the moment you have that thought, you need to cut it off by physically doing something. Whether you move to another room, whether you call someone up, whether you go out and take a walk, whether -- whatever you do, you need to break that also with physical energy. It's really important. Because that heady stuff weighs us down and we actually get cut off from the rest of our body.    Anne: Yeah. What a great piece of -- we can go home now, Lau. That was a wonderful piece of advice. (Lau laughs) Absolutely. Sometimes just getting up, taking a breath and deep breathing, getting out of the studio. I always like to pet my fur babies. Go see my hubby. Or just do something that gets you out of that, out of that funk, out of that mental -- and you're right, physical can really be a wonderful way to get yourself out of that funk. And when you get out of that funk, and you can actually start to get into the story, get into whatever it is, the dialogue, whatever it is that you are working on in your booth, magic will happen.    Lau: I love it.    Anne: I always say to people, when it's right, you feel it. You don't hear it, but you feel it. And that's where I think, every once in a while, when you get that script and you just feel it. And it's like, oh, damn. You don't know quite how it happened, but you felt that it was right. And I wanna say that's what we should always strive for, right? Just that feeling that, yeah, I hit that, that worked. And then even if you, let's say, don't get that audition or don't get that gig, be proud of the fact that you have evolved. That's such a beautiful, wonderful feeling, when you're like, oh yeah, that was good. That was really good. And you can feel proud of yourself for that.    Lau: Yes. And do a little VO feng shui, meaning do two things. I want you to think up a new idea and learn a new technique that is the implementation of the idea. So it could be something very simple like, oh, today I'm going to, oh, I wanna reach out to this company or these people. I'm gonna reach out to these people in this way. And then I have a new technique for doing that, because I'm gonna do a drip campaign. So that to me is a little feng shui of the spirit of you and your business. You don't have to do exactly the same way every day and get into a rut. You can really say, this week I wanna try something new. And I sat with Anne, I sat with another coach or whatever, and I learned a new idea, a new technique, and now I'm gonna try it.    Anne: Well, I love that you just brought it out of the booth and into your business, which is great. So getting out of your own way doesn't just mean performance-wise in your booth and acting wise; it also means in your business. So getting out of your own way in your business. And I cannot tell you, there's so many things, Lau, that a lot of people in their business don't like to do because, number one, maybe they're not familiar or they're not educated, they don't know how to do it, and so therefore they don't do anything. Or they will simply just say, oh, I can't, I just can't possibly do that. I don't either have the money or I don't have whatever the excuses are. And I've heard them all, right? And money is a big one, and I get it right, as BOSSes running a business.    Lau: Yeah.    Anne: I totally get the money thing. And we've had multiple episodes about money. But I will say is that you have to open your mind for abundance and open your mind for the fact that you need to invest that money and also save that money so you have money to reinvest in your business. And that can help you. Just that alone, money, get out of your own way. Right? Get out of your own way with money. Get out of your own way with marketing. Get out of your own way with all the things, maybe cold calling or whatever it is that can help to grow your business.    Lau: I'm feeling an Eleanor Roosevelt quote coming on (Anne laughs), and I have to release it --    Anne: I love it.    Lau: — so I don't explode.    Anne: Release it, please.    Lau: Here it is. Here it is. I just have to do it. Okay? It's like, do one thing every day that scares you.    Anne: Oh God, yes. Oh, I love that quote.    Lau: Okay. And I'm not saying, God forbid, don't jump off a building. I'm not saying that. I'm saying within the framework of who we are as talent and as business, do one thing that kicks you a little bit, to do something that's a little uncomfortable that may even really scare you and see what happens on the other end of it.    Anne: I'll tell you, that's hard. That's not an easy thing to do. And especially if you've been doing this for a long time. And there's so many, and I'm sure, Lau, you get this a lot too. I hear from a lot of students how they're, they're stuck in a rut. Or I'll do consult calls. So people will say, I, gosh, I've been in voiceover for years and I'm in this rut. I need help. And this is great because you're reaching out. Right? But when you reach out for that help, you then cannot say to me, okay, I can't do this because of this, or I can't do this because of that. Or can you give me the quick 15-minute answer? No, that's the other thing. In a 15-minute, 20-minute consult call, I can't give you the answer to all of life's issues. Or how to run your VO business. However, I can say, here's what I suggest to help you to get out of your own way.    Lau: And if anything, grab a buddy. Grab accountability buddy. Preferably someone in your business because they get what's going on. They feel it too. They're living it too.    Anne: Oh yeah.    Lau: And move through the tougher experiences together.    Anne: So powerful.    Lau: Like hold each other accountable.    Anne: Yeah.    Lau: You know, have that coffee together weekly or biweekly. and say, you are gonna do this and it's a lot of money. And it's kind of scary. Well, did you do it? So let's do it together.    Anne: Yeah.    Lau: Sometimes we need that collab. We need that ensemble thing to get us going. I know I'm a creative, I love ensemble. I need that team oftentimes.    Anne: Yeah. Yeah.   Lau: I don't think you have to apologize for that. We're not an isolated being; we don't have to just work alone. We have wonderful people. Like you're on another whole coast, 3000 miles away, and we hold each other accountable to showing up, to giving our all, to caring about our audience, to being awake, to throwing on our lipstick. I mean, that's all hard work. It doesn't look like it is, but it is, because so many would rather lay in bed. They'd rather watch TV. They'd rather go the easy route. Go the difficult route.    Anne: Absolutely.    Lau: You know, challenge yourself; there's a lot better stuff waiting on the other side of that.    Anne: Yeah, absolutely. And I wanna come back to, again, what you said about writing things down. I'm a big believer -- I love that you said to write down the negative thoughts and then cross it out and write, like write the absolute opposite of that.    Lau: Yes.    Anne: Turn that around. And I love that because I'm the person that likes to write and cross things out as I accomplish them and get them done. So if you have those negative thoughts, write them down, cross it out, and turn that thought around. And also with anything that you've done in terms of not just negative thoughts, but in terms of accomplishments, I think writing down your accomplishments can really work wonders for helping you to gain confidence and to get out of your own way. 'Cause I think a lot of times when you get in your way, it stems from fear and it stems from a lack of confidence. And reading something that is solidly written down, an affirmation, or even like meditation every day, right, can really help to beat that negativity out of your brain.    Lau: Hmm. Oh, these are great. And I do, one thing I love that I learned from a wonderful coach that I worked with, do a brain dump. Try to do it every day if you can. It's just a five-minute sitting at your table, your desk, in your car, and I want you to write, write, write, write for five minutes, time yourself, five minutes. Don't pick the pen off the paper. Write, write, write, don't edit, don't critique. Get everything in your head out on paper. And that's gonna feng shui your head, that's gonna empty your head and leave room for focus.    Anne: I love that. Feng shui your head.    Lau: Feng shui your head.    Anne: That's a quote, Lau. Feng shui your head.    Lau: Feng shui your head.   Anne: And get out of your own way. (laughs).    Lau: Because you don't ,believe it or not, you don't have to believe everything that comes into your head. You know? We get backed up. (laughs)    Anne: And the biggest -- ‘cause I took a feng shui course, by the way, back in the day and it was one of the best things I'd ever done, is that clutter? Right? If you have clutter in your house, you have clutter in your brain. And if you have clutter in your brain, I love that. Do a brain dump so that you can then start to think clearly.    Lau: That's right.    Anne: And then start to really focus on what you need to do to get out of your own way, to make that marketing effort, to create that website, to go ahead and get that additional coaching, to audition for that job that you're scared about and out of your comfort zone. Wow. All that good stuff.    Lau: Yeah, 'cause we don't wanna hold so much in our head and be balancing all of that and then try to give output that is like high productivity. It's very hard for us to do that. We have to release certain things and get them out there that are not priority for us or that are sabotaging us. We gotta get it out. Sometimes you even just like clean your desk or rearrange something. You know?    Anne: Absolutely. Or when you come into your studio, clean your studio, or do the brain dump before you do your auditions for the day. I love that.    Lau: It’s awesome, it's awesome.    Anne: A lot of times when we're in the middle of an audition, if we're stressed out about other things that are happening, that's coming out in our voice, right? And so we really just need to (breathes), you know, do a brain dump, do a few breathing exercises to relax, and really focus on the story at hand, which is not gonna be like, I don't know, what you need to finish up or when you have to start dinner or what you have to do at home, or what's stressing you out.    Lau: Yeah. And how the things in front of you, whether they're affirmations or mantras, or you just write a little sticky note to yourself to remind yourself -- like one of my famous sticky notes that I love is that I'll just look just for a second and it'll say, you're enough.    Anne: Yeah.    Lau: Stop trying to be perfect. Stop trying to be too much. Stop trying to be everything to everyone. You're enough, you're enough. And it's just a quick reminder. Like we need those quick reminders when we're busy and all of that, to not overload ourselves with stressors that are not necessary. They're really concocted stressors that ultimately tear us down and get in the way of our productivity. It stops us.    Anne: And I think also when we meet people, new people, right, I feel as though, I mean, hopefully anyways, I'm a fairly good judge of people, I think. I use a lot of gut instinct and intuition, and I feel as though that personality that I meet when we meet for the first time, if I initially connect to that, that is what I think you need to get to that level in your booth or in your business. Right? That this is who you are, this is your personality. This is, and I always like to say that if your personality comes from a place of service from the heart, I really feel as though that can benefit your performance, that can benefit your business.    If you are coming from a place that doesn't have a bunch of stressors from here and there. And it's really just coming from a place of, let me service this copy. Let me be the best business, let me be the best voice that I can be, and let me network with my client to see how can I help? Instead of coming from a place of what is my talent? I'm not talented enough, or my voice isn't good enough, it needs to come, like, how can I best service my client? How can I best serve my business by bringing myself and my heart of service to it?    Lau: Hmm. Oh gosh. I just love that. That gave me tingles. I love that. That's great. I would even push that even farther. And I would say, find a moment that you can sacrifice or give of yourself in a selfless way, because we wanna be selfish. We wanna be self-centered. We wanna get, get, get. Find a moment where you can authentically give. And that is a moment that when you start doing that, it's kind of painful. But then you get used to it and you say, wow, I got so much in return. So like for instance, when I was a working talent all the time, before I became an agent and a coach, I was working talent, I would talk to people and create all sorts of relationships with casting, and they'd say, you're just not right for this, Lau. I mean, you're just… I'd say, well, right, okay.    Anne: Yeah. And then worry about it ever again.   Lau: Guess what I'd come back with? I had so much chutzpah now that I think about it. (Anne laughs) I'd come back and I'd say, you know what? That's okay. I'm gonna get you the right person. Who do you need? And they couldn't believe I said that to them. They'd be like, well we're, we're looking for this. We'll send you the breakdowns, and maybe you can find some -- I, I always, always would put in referrals.    Anne: And then when they need you, you're the first person at the top of their mind.    Lau: And the funniest part about for me was it became much more satisfaction than getting it for myself. So (laughs)   Anne: Isn't that so telling now that you're an agent?   Lau: It's telling.   Anne: And that's what you do. Right?    Lau: Yeah. It literally built a whole career for me because I started that habit.    Anne: That is so interesting because before my career in voiceover, I used to place students in internships and teach, of course. So everything for me is very telling. I coach now. And I also, I love to place my students on rosters. I love to recommend jobs to them. I love to do referrals, I love to cast. And so I feel like there's that match, right?    Lau: Yes.    Anne: When we know our students or we know our clients and we can put those two together.    Lau: That's right.    Anne: Yeah.    Lau: And sometimes, and this is where you and I have spoken about, be interactive, don't be passive about it. Sometimes they're not coming to you. Like sometimes you're just observing that there are people around you that they need to know they need to meet. You know, something about your friends or your talent. Because remember in business, anytime you make a referral or recommendation, and it works out, it makes you look great.    Anne: Oh, absolutely.    Lau: Like you become --   Anne: Oh my gosh, yes.    Lau: — someone that they can't live without. Right?    Anne: Absolutely. So they trust you.   Lau: They trust you.    Anne: People buy from people they know, like, and trust.    Lau: Yes. So don't be afraid and think, oh, but I'm --   Anne: I’m giving a job away.   Lau: — myself.    Anne: I'm giving a job away.    Lau: No, no, no. Because you know what? If they really wanna work with you, they'll work with you.    Anne: Yeah.    Lau: If it's not meant to be, it's not meant to be. But that doesn't mean you're out of the picture. There are many times, especially in live circumstances, where you can do introductions, you can do referrals.    Anne: Sure.    Lau: You can do this and that and just plant the seed. And they may not go for it, but a lot of times they do.    Anne: Yeah.    Lau: And they go, oh my gosh, Lau, you introduced me to this person. This person's amazing. We signed a contract the other day. Do you take a percentage of that? I don't.    Anne: But Lau, you don't. But then sometimes you can.    Lau: So that's a whole job unto itself. (laughs)    Anne: Well, there you go. So look, I'm not gonna say I try to get a dollar for everything, but honestly like that when, when we're talking about the referral and the agenting and then getting other people work, when it turns out to be something profitable, it can also mean profit for you and your business. Now, I'm not saying everything should turn into that, but I mean I've had instances where I've referred clients or I've referred — and I've been offered and I'm like, no, no, no. But it has been insisted by the client that I get some sort of a fee for that. And so, and I think I am worthy. Right? That was a good referral. And both client and talent are now making money off of that or they're being fairly compensated. So I don't entirely dismiss the idea saying, oh no, no, no, no. If somebody's gonna say here, no, I am going to pay, I'm a business short. That's awesome.    Lau: Absolutely.    Anne: And how else can I help you (laughs)?    Lau: Well listen, if you get really good at that and you start doing that a lot, there's all different ways to frame that, whether you do management, whether you do fee for service, whether you do — there's all sorts a way to frame that matchmaking thing that some of us are really good at.,my point is, is like, like just give, just give. Don't worry about giving. You'll get enough back in return.    Anne: Well Karma.    Lau: Karma.    Anne: It's karma. I mean, VO BOSS was started from giving. Literally, if you remember, I tell my story over and over again. I was trying to give up my VO Peeps brand and I was gonna roll it into VO BOSS, 'cause I wanted to continue educating. I wanted this to be a resource, an educational resource for the community. And it turned out to be so much in addition to that, really.    Lau: Yeah.    Anne: Look, I got to meet you. And I mean there's just so many wonderful things that have come from the place of giving, and I really feel that every business needs to have that aspect to — which is a very popular trend these days with businesses too.    Lau: You just brought up a mouthful. The BOSSes would love to know about, without naming any names or titles of anything, you and I met doing an online panel together.    Anne: Oh, yes, we did.    Lau: But here's the thing I want the BOSSes to know. I can't speak for you, Anne, but I didn't make a penny on that.    Anne: No, I didn't. Yeah.    Lau: And that was A-Okay by me because that was education to that company and that community. And I love that. I love that. But look what came out of this.    Anne: Oh yeah, absolutely.    Lau: Look at this relationship that was built out of that.    Anne: Absolutely.    Lau: And this is the example of what we're saying, like karma.   Anne: A place of service, a place from heart.    Lau: Look at this. If we hadn't done that, if we said, look, I'm at a place in our careers, we do make money for everything we do, whatever, we wouldn't have met, we may not met.    Anne: That's true. Very true.    Lau: Isn't that amazing when you think about that.    Anne: There you go. And what a great story. What a great story to end on.    Lau: Very heartwarming.    Anne: Good stuff. BOSSes, get outta your own way. You can do it. Get rid of the clutter that stops you from being the very best you that we know you are. And we know you are the BOSSes. So, all right. Lau, thank you. It's been great.   Lau: Do your thing, thing.   Anne: Yes. It's been great. And so speaking of giving back, right? As individuals, it can be difficult to make a huge impact. But as a group, we can contribute to the growth of our communities and give back in ways that we never thought before possible. Visit 100voiceswhocare.org to learn how. And a big shout-out to my favorite sponsor, ipDTL. You too can network and connect like Lau and myself like BOSSes. Find out more at ipdtl.com. Guys, have a great week. We'll see you next week. Bye!   Join us next week for another edition of VO BOSS with your host Anne Ganguzza. And take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at 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.

Are past mistakes holding you back from achieving voice over success? Join Anne & Lau on this episode of VO BOSS, where they discuss how to turn missteps into valuable learning experiences. From investing in a voiceover demo to navigating social media mishaps, discover the importance of apologies, accountability, and self-compassion in personal and professional relationships. Learn how admitting to our mistakes can elevate connections with others and avoid the pitfalls of impulsive responses on social media. Tune in to embrace growth, mindfulness, and self-compassion on the journey towards success. Bosses, don't let past mistakes hold you back.   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, hey everyone. (audio blip) VO BOSS podcast and the BOSS Superpower series. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and I'm here with my BOSS co-host, Lau Lapiedes. Hey, Lau.    Lau: Hey everyone.    Anne: Yay!    Lau: So good to see you, An Happy Saturday.    Anne: Yes, Lau, happy S-- (audio blip) Lau, guess what happened to me this week?    Lau: What happened, Anne?   Anne: Lau, I made a mistake.    Lau: Oh no. You never make mistakes.    Anne: Well, no Lau, actually, I make mistakes all the time. (laughs)    Lau: Don't believe her --   Anne: (audio blip) Do. And you know what? Of course, nobody wants to make mistakes, but I'm glad I made this mistake because I learned a whole lot, Lau about how I can maybe not make that mistake again, or take (audio blip) when I was making the mistake and make it better and improve it. And I get students that come to me, new students that come to me quite a bit, that say, gosh, I wish I knew then what I know now. And I would never have done that.    I'd like to address that because let's take one example. One example is students that come to me and say, I never should have made that demo. And I had somebody listen to it and they said, no, no, you were not ready to make that demo. And they just come to me with all (audio blip) shame and remorse, and I get that, but I don't think it's worth anyone beating themselves up over, because honestly, we learn, you know, if we always take a look at what we do in life, and we learn and we made a mistake, (audio blip) so you know, so much better (laughs). And you can then progress and move forward.    And so I want all of those students who ever, ever came to me or ever came to Lau and said, oh God, I wish I hadn't have done that. I spent all this money and it was just a waste of my time. And (audio blip) don't beat yourself up over it. Because honestly, I think that there is such a value of information, just such a value in it. And consider it, like we were talking before, Lau, consider it an investment in the real grand scheme of things. (audio blip) been a few thousand dollars. But if I were to sit back and look at where have I spent a few thousand dollars in my lifetime, house, car, those kinds of things, I mean, honestly, consider an investment. Lau, what are your thoughts?    Lau: I couldn't agree (audio blip). I would even argue is there such a thing as a mistake? Because when you really think about that, we give a name and label to something that happens from us, to us, with us that is superbly uncomfortable and then (audio blip) toward us in our perception, it punishes us. But was that thing an actual mistake?    Anne: Sure.    Lau: I don't know how to answer that because I do feel there's lessons to be learned in the process of the, I'll give it air quotes, the mistake (audio blip) more painful than others, but really, really necessary as we journey through life. Like if we didn't do that, we wouldn't know what rewards really are.    Anne: Right.    Lau: We wouldn't know how to really build our business. We wouldn't really know that. Right? So comparatively speaking, (audio blip) and oftentimes as you know, when you make those mistakes, they're fantastic. Like you're hired for them, you're celebrated for them. It's like, whoops, I did that in my business. How could I have thought that? Oh my, wow. People love that. They want that. Right? (audio blip) I would venture to say, take a step back and really say what is a mistake and what are the mistakes in the mistake that make it a mistake? That's really important. But getting back to your investment on demo, I'm with you all the way. I do not (audio blip) corner and cry over a demo.    Anne: Yeah.    Lau: Process, process, process. Your first demo, your first demos --    Anne: Yes. We all started somewhere.    Lau: They're never gonna be super, super high level pro because guess what? You don't have the experience yet. You're moving towards getting that experience. (audio blip) Like if you went to college or grad school or trade school or you were an apprentice, you are working on working. So the working to get the working is never a waste of time. It's always, what are you putting into it? What are you getting out of it? How has that (audio blip) work for you? Rather than saying, oh, everything's got to be about that one demo. It just isn't. It's like a work in progress. Your whole life, your whole business is a work in progress.    Anne: Right? And it's very much like you don't know what you don't know. And so you cannot (audio blip) blame yourself for something that you didn't know. Now, maybe if you're just starting out and you're lucky and you're listening to our podcast, the BOSS podcast, you'll hear this discussion and you'll say, oh, okay, so maybe I'll wait a little bit before I make that demo. (audio blip) truly believe that sometimes when you make an expensive mistake, it's a mistake that you are not apt to repeat ever again or quickly. That is for sure.    I know sometimes, like I used to pay money to a personal trainer, right? Because it was the only way I knew (audio blip) go and work out right and do the things that I really needed to do to move forward and to progress forward and to really improve myself. So in a way I was like, yes, I'm gonna pay to kind of get a little beaten up. So, it's okay. It's okay. And I just don't (audio blip) into this to, to ever feel regret about anything because there's always those lessons as you mentioned that you learned. Maybe you learned about a process that did not work for you. Right?    And so now you'll move forward and you will (audio blip) to work with longer so that you can improve upon your performance before you go ahead and record another demo. And again, like I said, when it comes to demos on our performances, we're always improving. We're like those continuous students, like the never-ending student (audio blip) learning our craft and enhancing and improving it. And so at any point, you're never quite as good as you'll be today. So unless you're gonna make a demo every single day to keep yourself refreshed on that, I would say take it with a grain of salt. Take it as a lesson. And (audio blip) also maybe it was a demo that did not represent the genre very well, or it was maybe a, a demo that didn't have today's standards or current relevant scripts. Or it just might have been something (audioblip) done it and had somebody listen to it and they commented on it. Guess what? That's another learning experience. So.    Lau: And guess what? Doing a demo as one example is like a little work of art. It's a vocal portfolio.    Anne: Yeah.    Lau: So there is artistic vision. There's (audio blip) no matter who you're working with, whoever your team is of engineers and coaches, some care, some don't care. Some are experts, some are not experts, and there's everything in between. It's like working with an expert painter or working with an expert dancer. There's all (audio blip) that go into unlocking your potential, unlocking your talent. Maybe they're great at that, maybe they're not great at it.    Anne: Yeah.    Lau: Maybe they're mediocre. Whatever the case may be, it really is on us you meaning you to put (audio blip) to your process. Because when you walk away, it's your process. It's not really theirs.    Anne: Right.    Lau: They're not gonna claim it anymore. It's your process to say, what did I do? Did I put it in time?    Anne: Sure.    Lau: Did I rehearse? Did I practice? Did I take it serious (audio blip)? Did I do all the due diligence boxes and check that off to bring out the best outcome? Or was I learning how to do that? I wasn't quite there yet. As a lot of people in school, in college, in grad school; sometimes they don't show up. Sometimes they fail tests. Some (audio blip) and they're learning how to discipline themselves, how to commit to a process and who they're identifying as a talent. What is a talent, what is a business person, what is a VO? I mean, they're learning all of that. So you gotta give your (audio blip) to learn.    Anne: Yeah.    Lau: You can't be perfect. You can't know everything. There's gotta be space. And as you said, we're students over a lifetime.    Anne: Yeah.    Lau: We're not just students for a first demo. We're students. And if those of us who own a business, and I know many listeners own a business, you are always learn (audio blip) that one. Just when you think you know as much as you need to know, then the whole script flips on you.    Anne: Yeah. And you know, I don't mean to make light of people's investments, so I don't want any of the BOSSes out there to think that I'm making light of a few (audio blip). But I will say that when you compare that to, you've beaten yourself up over and over and over again. And maybe it even deters you from getting into what it is that you've always wanted to do in your lifetime (audio blip) that's a higher price in a lot of ways. And I think that of course, before you make any investment in anything, not just voiceover, I think that you have to come at it with an educated point of view. You have to educate yourself as much as possible before you make that inve- (audio blip). Just, I think if we all kind of take that lesson, right, with anything, I think it at least helps us, so that we know that we've investigated what other common mistakes in voiceover.    Maybe people buy the wrong equipment, right? Or they (audio blip) doesn't suit their voice. Well, this is why you can return a lot of things. So if you made the smart investment, if you've educated yourself and purchased with a vendor that allows you to return within a certain amount of time, then you have that option. If it does not work (audio blip) that you can then return it to get your money back.    And there's always selling. I mean, I made many mistakes with my equipment, especially my travel equipment. I tell this story over and over again. I bought every new gadget that there was that was tiny and small so that (audio blip) I could have a convenient, tiny little mic. And whenever I would go, I could never get it to sound worth anything. I could not do that. And I spent so much money. But here's the deal. I spent the money, but then I was able to sell the equipment that if you (audio blip) I was then able to sell it or donate it. And so lesson learned.   Lau: Lesson learned. And there are even much more sophisticated mistakes that we think we're making. And that is in human communication. Now, I won't even say the business of it. I'll say the com- (audio blip), that's in the emails you're sending and receiving.    Anne: Oh yes.    Lau: That's in your invoicing, that's in your sales, you're building of rapport when you're live at a conference. All of that stuff has layers of nuance and layers of sophistication to it. (audio blip) if you are present and focused, when you've said something that just doesn't land right on someone. Doesn't mean you're offending them. It doesn't mean it's inappropriate. It just means you're not tracking, you're not on the same track. And how do I fix that? How do I --   Anne: Yeah.    Lau: — turn around and pivot from that. I don't believe it's a mistake, but in your perception, it feels uncomfortable. Like, why did I say that? Or why did I respond in that way? Or how come I didn't get back to them in seven days when they wanted me to get back to them in a day?    Anne: Right.    Lau: You know what I like to do, Anne? Very uncomfortable. And then I learned how to do it. Just fix it right away.    Anne: Yes.    Lau: Just like you're gonna gimme a shot at the doctor’s, you're gonna do whatever that's uncom- — just do it. Just do it. Don't hold off and think about it. Right?   Anne: And when you do it, be human about it. Something you said didn't land right. Say, for me, I'm always like, you're human. Right? I'm sorry.   Lau: Yeah.    Anne: Maybe I should have said it this way.    Lau: Yeah. And you know what? When I apologize like that, which I do a lot because I perceive that I did something wrong --   Anne: Yeah.    Lau: Oftentimes the response is, please (audio blip) sorry, Lau. You were busy and rightly so, and I'm not first on the list. And sometimes it brings out the humanity in other people, when you're, you're not lowering yourself. You're actually hiring your vibration by saying, I am a (audio blip) I'm a person that is far from perfect.    Anne: Yes.    Lau: But I'm a person that wants to connect with you authentically. So if you can understand and forgive that perception of something that wasn't done that was comfortable for you, then we can continue on. And nine times outta 10, they're not(audio blip) of it. They love you for it because if you're being real with them. You're not saying, well, I didn't know, I didn't do anything wrong. I'm taking accountability. I'm not a -- no. I want them to feel like I'm like you. I'm not better than you. I'm like you in a lot of ways. And that means (audio blip) oh.   Anne: Right.    Lau: Like what the right thing is right now. Could that be a mistake? I don't know. That's all in the perception, I think, is that a mistake or am I learning from that? Are they learning from that?    Anne Right, right.    Lau: Are we deepening the relationship and communication? I'd like to think we (audio blip) really a mistake. It's more of a mishap.    Anne: Yeah. And if there is a mistake that has been made like that, and you have offered an apology or an explanation, or your attempts to fix it did not fix it, then I think sitting back and then just trying to take a deep breath, and (audio blip) maybe that wasn't meant to be in this particular timeframe, or maybe it just wasn't meant to be. I mean, I've had relationships where I don't know what happened. I've tried to go and be human and apologize and just work (audio blip) just didn't work out.    Lau: And that's okay.    Anne: And that's okay. I mean, that's going to happen. And I think what we need to really focus on is not necessarily the fact that it happened, but how can we move forward? How can we grow? How can we feel okay? I think (audio blip) oh, I either feel bad or I feel ashamed, or I feel stupid for a lot of that type of emotional baggage and beating up, that's where I want to feel better about myself. What do we do then?    Lau: Well, I'm a big fan of express. I think expression is so, so important. It sounds a little silly to say that because our whole field is about expression, but so much of the time, especially as performers, will mask up who we really (audioblip) official thing versus say, let me quickly get in touch with how I'm really feeling, and maybe have a sounding board. So if I have a few safe people that I can talk to about it, that can sound me out quickly. Like, get me in my right mind again, so to speak. (audio blip) move on from it quickly rather than holding onto it and letting it fester. And I find solving it relieves the stress. It relieves the heaviness. Like, why did that go wrong? I was terrible. It was a -- no, let's just fix it and let me talk about it and express it to the right (audio blip) who can offer me sound advice, no pun intended. Sound advice.    Anne: Yeah, yeah. And I think also, when we're talking about perceived mistakes in either face-to-face networking or relationships, but also on social media, did I post something? Oh my gosh, that was (audio blip). I can't erase it. I can't take it back. I, I can't delete it.    Lau: Yep.    Anne: How do I backpedal, or how do I recover from that? I think that the written word, we've all been using it long enough that we have to approach that type of communication with a little bit (audio blip) forethought. Right?    Lau: Yeah.    Anne: A little more thoughtfulness before we type, before we press that enter key, just stop, take a breath. I've had to really learn to do that in the last 10 years, I would say. Because there have been times on social media where I've been triggered (audio blip) to like type something is a fast response and, and I literally have to just get up and walk away. And I find that that is the best cure for me is to get up and walk away. Take a big deep breath. And a lot of people, as you know, have chosen, they, they get off the platform for (audio blip), and I think sometimes that's a very smart thing to do in terms of before you type something that you might not feel good about later on.    Lau: Agreed.   Anne: And there are ways though too, if you have to try to type your way back into good graces, I (audio blip) ways that you can do that. But you have to be careful. And sometimes it's best to just get up and walk away. And then give it a few hours, a few days, whatever, take a breath and then go from there. Really.    Lau: I agree. I think the time that we spend beating ourselves up (audio blip) mistakes is time not well spent. It's really, if you wanna reflect, if you wanna say, I'm gonna journal about this, I'm gonna express this, and work it through, and come to something that's meaningful, something that's useful, and something that is potentially fixable, that's (audio blip) versus sitting there and stewing in, oh, I'm upset, I'm uncomfortable. It was awful. And they don't feel -- and oftentimes, here's the funny thing, you and I spoke about this recently.    Oftentimes that thing, that circumstance is turned around quicker than you think (audio blip) together again. All of a sudden they're asking you about whatever is, if it never happened, and you think, wow, did we have that conflict? Wow. Were they upset about this? Because all of a sudden they're coming to me for something else. So sometimes our perception as creatives is (audio blip) proportion. It's very histrionic, it's dramatic. It's larger than life. And someone on the other end does not perceive it that way oftentimes.    Anne: Sure. Absolutely. Absolutely.    Lau: It's much lighter and less to them. Now if they go over the top, and they're crazy in histri- (audio blip), you're noticing that you're saying, okay, there's a lesson in that this may not be the right client relationship, colleague or friend.    Anne: Sure.    Lau: Because this circumstance does not warrant that response.    Anne: And I think you bring up such a good point, especially when we are dealing with (audio blip) to us in our voiceover bubble, right?    Lau: Yes.    Anne: We have certain things that are very important to us, right? Things that like I need to hear back. When will I get paid? All of those. There's lots of those things. When in fact, a lot of times your client (audio blip) things on their plate. And so if you're not hearing back any feedback, if you're not getting paid within a certain amount of time, there are usually things that are going on that we are very unaware of. And I know that a lot of times, I'll have to even sit back and just (audio blip) -- there are some clients, believe it or not, that you think you didn't get paid and that was a mistake, and you wanna make sure that that is made right. But in reality, they have a 90-day net terms. And so really I think that it's one of those things that if you can (audio blip) and communicative, that will absolutely help anything that might lead to a mistake, or you just saying something that, or accusing that they haven't paid you and it's unjust. I think that that is something that we all need to just sit back, take a break (audio blip) and communicate.    Lau: Thank you for saying that one, Anne. That's brilliant. Don't assume the worst in people.    Anne: Yes.    Lau: Assume the best in people.    Anne: Yeah.    Lau: And even if it is the worst, live in that great river that in Egypt we all love. And that's “de Nile,” a little bit in denial. Willie Wonka land and Wizard of Oz teaches us something. It's like, assume people are good. They're not evil, they're not out to get you. They're busy, they're crazy, they're forgetting, they're this or that. Now what if they are pulling something into (audio blip) what? It's okay. Forgive them, move on. It taught you something. It taught you don't work with them. That's what it taught you.    It taught you to look for signs in others that they taught you what those signs are of danger, of unsafety (audio blip) ever. God forbid, nothing serious happens to your person, if they're cheating you outta money or whatever. It's a bad thing. It's not to lessen or lighten that. And it's a terrible feeling to feel victimized in that way. But move ahead of it and say, okay, that made me feel bad (audio blip) and unethical, but what did I learn in that, that I can then install in my business, in my tactics, in my profession, and teach others so that that doesn't happen as much as possible? It happens once in a while, but we can alleviate it (audio blip) in the signs of it.    Anne: And you know what, Lau, in my over 15 years of working in voiceover, I have never not gotten paid. And so always trusting the good in people. And also, when I vet my clients, I do have a, a certain set of standards that I (audioblip) make sure that there is somebody at the other end that I'm communicating with. And it's not just a person through email that is inquired, how much will this job cost? Or can you do this job by tomorrow? Here it is. I have policies that I have in place where I demand payment upfront (audio blip) clients that are new.    And what's so interesting is when I have that in my terms of services, that I demand full payment upfront, I get it. (laughs)I've gotten paid within the first five minutes of securing a job before I've even recorded it. (audio blip) I've been very fortunate, I would say, but I also have been what I consider to be, well, I've taught myself to be savvy in terms of who my clients are, in making sure that I'm gonna be working with someone that is going to reciprocate. If I provide (audio blip) they will reciprocate and give me payment. And so thankfully and gratefully, I can say that I've not encountered any mistakes because I think I've always been open with my communication, and I think that's an important thing. And had I not been open (audio blip) communication, I would've found out right away things might be different.    Lau: And that's experience. That's time. It's being seasoned, it's experience. And it takes most people, including myself, time to work through that, learn that, (audio blip), see what the best practices are for you. See if you can be a psychologist and really listen to people, watch people, watch for cues. Focus in on it. Don't just get lost in your own head or your own services, your (audio blip). Listen, because oftentimes you can pick up these cues before something bad actually happens.    Anne: Yes.    Lau: And oftentimes the mistake is simply like, I'm just not paying attention.    Anne: Paying attention.    Lau: Yeah. Let me be honest. I could have caught that if I was really in (audio blip) with what they were saying and doing. But what I was doing was, and women are notorious for this, I was lying to myself. I was saying, oh, it'll be okay. Oh, that didn't happen. Oh, they mean this. Oh -- I was interpreting it in a whole way that it (audio blip) way, and then when the boom hit, and I said, wow, that really happened, I look back and I say, well, could I have caught that earlier? Most of the time it's yes. Most of the time it's me sugarcoating the situation. So there's that. There's that in that mis- (audioblip) to happen because I need to learn that lesson. Give people the benefit of the doubt. Be good to them, but also don't sugarcoat things too much and see them for what they are when they reveal themselves to you.    Anne: Exactly. Exactly.    Lau: Right? Oh, fantastic. We're turning into psychologists. (laughs)   Anne: Mistakes are good. Mistakes can be very good. Mistakes are learning experiences. And I think really, BOSSes out there, I think to become even better BOSSes, right, we need to make mistakes. We need to learn and we need to grow and move forward. (audio blip) else do we want for our businesses? Right?   Lau: There it is.    Anne: There it is.   Lau: You wanna learn and grow and thrive. And we have to go through that process in order to do it.   Anne: Good talk, Lau.   Lau: The best, as always.    Anne: Ah, you know, BOSS (audio blip) mission, big impact. 100 voices, one hour, $10,000. What is Anne even talking about? Oh, four times a year. By the way. Visit 100voiceswhocare.org to find out more. All right. Big shout-out to our sponsor, ipDTL. You (audio blip) can connect like BOSSes, like Lau and myself. Find out more at ipdtl.com. You guys, have an amazing week and go ahead and make those mistakes, and we'll see you next week. Bye.   Lau: See you next week. Bye.   Join us next week for another edition of VO BOSS with your host Anne Ganguzza. And take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at 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.

Anne is joined by special guest, Ian Russell, a multi-award-winning voice actor. They discuss his career in the voice over industry, including his journey to success. They talk about the importance of social media and authenticity in character creation. He advises aspiring voiceover actors to be careful not to violate non-disclosure agreements and to use social media to support their profiles. Anne and Ian also discuss the importance of respecting specified ethnicities and the limitations of casting notices. They highlight that authenticity and believability are essential in video game casting, and that having an acting background is a serious advantage. Tune in to hear the full conversation.    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: All right. Hey everyone. Welcome to the VO BOSS podcast. I'm your host Anne Ganguzza, and today I am so excited to bring very special guest Ian Russell to the podcast. Hey Ian. Yay.   Ian: Hey, Anne.   Anne: welcome. For those of you BOSSes out there, we'll tell you a little bit about Ian, and then he's gonna continue on telling us about his journey, he is a, a multi-award winning, seasoned voice actor working in commercial, corporate, video games, audiobooks. His voice can be heard for companies including Coca-Cola, MasterCard, Nestle, Heineken, Club Med, Phillips, and a bunch more. He was the recipient of the One Voice Male Voice of the Year 2020 award. And also in that year, he was also best character performance. Is that correct?   Ian: Animation, yeah.   Anne: And then continuing in 2021, he won Gaming Best Performance for One Voice Awards. And in 2022, the SOVAS Outstanding International Audio Description, Museums and Cultural Sites. Wow. That is fantastic. Ian, so honored to have you here on the show to talk about your journey and your wisdom. So , let's start.   Ian: Well, good luck with that.   Anne: Well, let's start telling people about your journey. How did you get into voiceover, a little bit about yourself and how you got into voiceover.   Ian: It's a long and winding road, which is a Beatles reference, but the first ever voiceover I ever, ever did was for a radio station in Liverpool. And it was a friend of mine worked at the radio station, and they had a pre-recorded interview for Paul McCartney when he bought and set up the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts in Liverpool. It was his old school. And rather than having a boring interview where it was just Paul McCartney and some radio guy , he asked me. I was, we were in a local acting thing together, and he asked me to be the voice of Paul McCartney's teacher.   Anne: Wow.   Ian: When Paul McCartney was a kid. So we linked the questions, you know, and it  was like, oh yes, that McCartney he was always playing around with a guitar. He'll never amount anything. So it was that kind of -- we made it funny. I didn't even know what voiceover was, but I did it anyway. And it was fun. I didn't get paid or anything. I was doing it for a mate, but I still have the magnetic cassette tape, shows how long ago it was.   Anne: Yep. There you go. .   Ian: And then 30 years go by, and I get married, and my wife's stumbling around for what she can buy me. And we, because you know --   Anne: What happened 30 years though? That was a long time.   Ian: Oh, sorry. I, I went off and got a real job. I was, I was working in sales and sales management in the northwest of England and in Belgium and Holland and in and around Oxford.   Anne: So International for sure. Yeah.   Ian: Yeah. That's a whole other story, which we could get into another time. But that would use up our 30 minutes, would be nothing left . So anyway, so my wife's like, oh, well what do I buy him for Christmas this year? And I had done a bit of sort of community theater stuff as a young man, just explained with the Paul McCartney thing. And so she found a one day introduction to voiceover.   Anne: Uh-huh.   Ian: In London. It's a place called the Show Reel. And she bought me that for Christmas 2012. It's 10 years almost to the day.   Anne: Wow. Yeah.   Ian: And then two years later, we've had the credit crunch and the bank -- I was working for a bank at the time and they were trying to offload people, and I had to reapply for my own job multiple times. And in the end I'm like, I volunteer as tribute . Let me go, you know, I'm done here. I'm older than all these young guys. I don't want to be rushing around half of the UK seeing multimillionaires coming home at night, barely seeing my kids, writing reports 'til midnight, and then doing the same rinse and repeat tomorrow. I'll have a heart attack and die. Let me go. And two years later, they eventually let me go. And so my wife's American and we said, well, what are we gonna do now? ? Well, let's sell everything and move to America. Be near my dad, says my wife. So that's what we did.   Anne: I love that. Let's do it.   Ian: And I said, well, what am I, what am I gonna do?   Anne: Let's sell everything and move.   Ian: I'll give that voiceover thing a go. And I went to the guy in London and I said, does anybody get hired for this? And he went, yeah. And I said, would anybody hire me? And he went, I don't see why not. And that was the ringing endorsement that I had to come off and start. So 2014 I started properly, I would say.   Anne: Wow. Wow. And so when you started, what was it that -- I assume you, you got coaching, you got a demo, and then you started working, and so you started working and were successful in which genres?   Ian: I think I'm a product of the internet age. You know, I live in the metaphorical middle of nowhere. And everything I do is via the internet, pretty much. So I started probably the way a lot of people start. I didn't know anybody and I didn't know anything. I had some experience, life experience that helps for sure, the sales and having done a bit of community theater and all that. But I knew no one and I knew nothing. So I started searching on the internet, and I paid money down to online casting and, and started throwing mud at the wall. And I think in that market you do a lot of explainers. You do a lot of corporate. You do a lot of e-learning, e-sort of things that, that sort of thing.   Anne: And of course in the States now, you know, that accent of yours doesn't hurt you. I had a very good friend when I started and she was hired all the time for e-learning. Because I think for us listening, and you gotta have some sort of interesting -- like an American accent is, we hear it all the time. But a British accent might be something that, oh, that makes it more interesting. And so she was high in demand for e-learning and, and those explainers and corporate things. And she was always so wonderfully like natural and conversational about it. And it was just a pleasure to listen to her all the time. And I remember thinking, gosh, I wanna aspire to be that relaxed and that friendly in my voiceovers. And so I can totally see where that just, it lends it. It's also a very large market. And so everybody kind of gets there, and it's a good, good place to start off. And I know a lot of students that I work with, they start off in corporate or e-learning.   Ian: Yeah. There's masses of it. And it's relatively easy to find.   Anne: Exactly.   Ian: You might not get the best rate, but it's relatively easy to find.   Anne: Now, you won these awards, but these awards were not for corporate or e-learning. It was for gaming and character performance. And so let's talk about, 'cause I know when people start out, they're very concerned about you know, what's my niche? Like, where do I start and how do I know what I'm good at? You evolved into becoming an award-winning voice talent in gaming and characters.   Ian: Yeah, I know.   Anne: So let's talk about that.   Ian: How does that happen?   Anne: Yeah. How does that happen?   Ian: I'm gonna say I got lucky, but we all know that that's hard work meets preparation and all of that. But in 2015, so a year after I'd started, I booked a role in a significant video game called Payday 2. And the role is utterly -- it's this South African mercenary. He speaks like that, he's Locke, his name is Locke. And I have been performing Locke for Starbury Studios for seven years now.   Anne: Oh wow.   Ian: And it was the performance of Locke that won me the video game award last year. And we're still making content. And at the end of this year, we have Payday 3 coming up.   Anne: Ooh. Get ready, BOSSes.   Ian: And so there's a lot of chatter around who's gonna be in Payday 3. You know what it's like with a lot of --   Anne: NDAs.   Ian: -- casting for voiceover. It's --   Anne: You can't tell --   Ian: -- NDAs -- Well, well, if I knew something, I'd be able to tell you, but voice over casting often happens right at the end. So nothing, I can't say anything. I don't know anything. So.   Anne: So seven years.   Ian: I'm like a mushroom.   Anne: Wow.   Ian: Yeah. So, so that was my first video game thing. And I think a lot of younger folk, they're growing up now with video games and animation and it's a very aspirational genre for people to get into. And I think I got one, and I'll keep the story very short, but Locke, the character, has his own Twitter account, which now has almost 12,000 followers.   Anne: Do you have input into that account?   Ian: It's mine.   Anne: Okay. Okay.   Ian: It's all mine.   Anne: Now, was that something that maybe was requested of you through an agent or the company or --   Ian: No.   Anne: -- you just created it? That's a very interesting marketing um   Ian: Well, it was suggested to me because I went on a charity stream as Locke for Payday, and the guys that were running it said, you might want to set up a separate account because you don't want your personal account flooded with teenage boys --   Anne: Yeah, that makes sense.   Ian: -- swearing at you. Frankly.   Anne: Yeah, yeah.   Ian: Asking you about Locke, you know, what's your favorite color, that kind of thing. So I set up a separate Twitter account for him then; that was 2017-ish. And that, that's kind of just grown from there. And I don't just use it for Locke. I use it for Locke. But I, all my video game stuff I promote on there because they're all video game players. So they're interested.   Anne: I love that I'm talking to you about this right now because I wanna know, is the content monitored at all by the game company or the people that hire you at all? Or if you were to say something that maybe wouldn't be appropriate for your character, I would imagine that that's kind of a line that you walk.   Ian: For sure, it is. I'm pretty sure there have been several occasions where I've written something, and I've had the wherewithal to go, no, don't do that. Don't say that. That would be silly . The only thing that Starbury said is, because they own the character, they own the IP of the character, that I can't monetize it for myself. I have run charity fundraisers and things like that, but if I'm gonna do anything out of the ordinary, I go through them and say, hey, I'm thinking about about this; what do you think? I don't think they've ever said, no.   Anne: That's something that's so interesting for those BOSSes out there that are thinking about getting into video games or character animation. I mean, there really becomes -- it can have a celebrity attached to it, and that becomes more than just voicing. Right? That is voicing. And then also it becomes a marketing effort. It becomes something that is outside of your voiceover persona that is of concern, I would think, for you to make sure that you're not gonna say the wrong thing or make sure you're not gonna do something that spoils any new things coming out or disturbs any NDAs.   Ian: Yeah. I just basically assume that everything I've ever done is under NDA until it's public.   Anne: That's very wise, very wise.   Ian: I really don't, you know. It's just, it's easier to do that than to go, oh, I've been cast, I can't...   Anne: I think no matter what we do, we should consider that, even doing a lot of corporate work and e-learning, it really all should be considered.   Ian: It is one of the challenges with video games, because whilst we get cast often towards the end of the process, it can be months before the game is actually shipped. And I have got the list, but I've got games coming out this year with my voice in them, and I am burning, burning up with desire to tell people because I am so excited about it. And I just can't. And it's just really, really one of the hard things, you know, that you have to bury that.   Anne: Yeah. Yeah. So you got hired for this one game, it became something --   Ian: Yes. So the thing about the Twitter was, so a little while after that I had auditioned for a role in a Warhammer game called Inquisitor Martyr for one of the -- there were only gonna be three player characters. It was one of the player characters. And I got shortlisted, and they asked me for a second audition and I did that. And then they came back and they said, okay, it's down to two people, so can you do a third audition? I'm like, I almost didn't want to know. You know, me or the other guy. And if I don't get it, I know the other guy got it. And I'm like, I was so close. But , what I did say was, look, you must make the right casting choice for your game. But please know that I have a Twitter account with 10,000 followers who are all game players. And I promote any game I'm in on that Twitter account. So I just want you to know that.   Anne: I like that.   Ian: Don't let that influence your casting decision in any way at all, but know that I've got it.   Anne: Hey, that 27 years in sales, I think it served you well. I think it served you well. That's fantastic. I love that.   Ian: So I booked that. I don't know that, that's why I would like to think it was just because of my awesome acting talent. But it taught me a lesson that you can use these things to help support your profile, particularly in a high profile thing like animation or like games. You see like the anime guys that are doing that; they're always at cons promoting themselves. And you know that the anime companies are loving that. Because that sells more anime. And the video games is the same. So.   Anne: Now would you say that your award also was something you were able to use as a marketing for more characters and more work?   Ian: I'm gonna put it the other way around. I can't draw a direct line to -- I won this award in August last year in video games, and then suddenly I get cast in a lot of games. What I think happens, this is what I think happens, a lot of casters in video games are younger people. I mean, there are older ones as well, but they're very tech savvy. And I think that you --they get their auditions in, and if you get shortlisted, and you may not know you've been shortlisted, but they're gonna create a shortlist, and I think they pop over onto Instagram or onto Twitter --   Anne: Oh yeah, absolutely.   Ian: Right?   Anne: And look at your profiles and --   Ian: They wanna, who's, who is this guy? Is he an umpti or whatever. And they see the awards and they see the interaction with a game community from my case. And they go, oh, he knows what he's doing. He's obviously done it before. You know, and you can say that til you're blue in the face in a pitch proposal, but nobody reads them, I don't think. But when they see it on Instagram or they see it on Twitter, it makes a difference.   Anne: Yeah. It's validation for them.   Ian: Yeah. It's that whole trust.   Anne: Right? That maybe they're picking somebody that has that little bit of trust. Yep. That you've got these experience.   Ian: Well, and you think how many -- as, as the game studios get bigger, how many multimillions of pounds they've got invested in a game. And it has to ship successfully, otherwise the company goes pop.   Anne: Absolutely.   Ian: That narrative story to a two or three talent generally telling the story is a big decision for them. So I do think they check. I have no evidence directly for it, but I absolutely think they check.   Anne: Especially I think as a lead character. Right? I mean, there's more responsibility than just the voicing of it, because like I said, there's a persona attached to it, that can be attached to it, and the potential for that character to be able to sell more game, new releases of games.   Ian: I kind of figure if I can help sell 10 or 20 or 30 copies of the game, I'm getting out someway towards paying my own fee.   Anne: Now -- right? Now, lemme ask you though, in terms of, let's say compensation for games, right? What are your thoughts about that? I mean, do voices for big games get paid better? There's really no royalties, residuals, like that kinda sucks.   Ian: No. It does. Yeah. If I was being paid union royalties for Payday 2, I'd be a wealthier man.   Anne: Yeah.   Ian: It's just the, that's the way it is, Anne. I don't have any control over it. So all I can do is negotiate the best fee I think I can for each individual one. But that's the other thing you've got, if you like AAA games at the top of the feeding frenzy, and they can afford to pay a great deal more. And at the bottom, you've got one guy with a 40-watt light bulb who's making a game, and he wants to get a voice in it, and he just doesn't have the budget. So you have to ask yourself then, is this a game that will further my profile? Do I want my -- you almost, you talk about the celebrity element of it. Do I want my name attached to this game?   Anne: Absolutely. Yeah.   Ian: And there are games I want attached. There are a lot of games out there that the content is marginal, should we say? Not safe for work is the phrase. . And there is no value to me as a talent in attaching my name to a game like that, because it would impact -- if I wanna be in a big AAA adventure game, I think it taints a little bit, my profile. So I, there are games that I will avoid and I will ask. There's one game I'm in and they have a safe for work version and they have a non-safe work version. And I said, uh, nothing to -- if you want this character in both versions, count me out. But they said, no, we can just write you into this one. So, they did that.   Anne: That's great. Look at that. That, you know, and that's interesting that you bring up these things that I never would've thought of, because obviously I'm not doing video games, but I love that you brought that up.   Ian: But you could, Anne.   Anne: Well, I could if I wanted to. I mean, you did it. So what made you, I'm gonna say, what made you audition for that first game? Did somebody suggest it to you? Did they say, oh, we're looking --   Ian: The Payday one? No, it was an open audition. It said South African mercenary.   Anne: And you said, oh, I can do that. Right?   Ian: Yeah, absolutely. I was so naive that I thought I could do everything.   Anne: So you said, I could do that.   Ian: Yeah, I can do that.   Anne: Okay. So I have to tell you my little story.   Ian: They cast me so great.   Anne: That's fantastic. I have to tell you my story. My story was a long time ago, like when I first started, I was on one of the pay-to-plays and they had a audition out, and they said it was for a phone system and it was for a British accent. And I thought, well, I can do that. I was naive , and I got it. And literally I worked for that company for 10 years. And it wasn't until like I actually spoke to somebody on the phone, because we had communicated, got jobs from them all the time onto this. And then it became not a cool thing to do because what accent am I doing? And it started to become that sort of a thing. Well, you're not a native. They didn't know. They said, oh my God, we thought you were native --   Ian: Oh, really?   Anne: -- British. And, and it was because I just, I didn't know any better, and I made the mistake. I didn't read that where it said they wanted native. And I said, oh, I can do that. I'll give it a shot. I'll throw my audition in. And I got it. And they employed me for a good 10 years before it was like, oh, now Anne, we just need your English. You know? Not, not your British. So, but it's so interesting that you kind of on a whim just did it. And I think that really speaks to having the confidence to kind of just put yourself out there, and even for things that you don't think you're good at, because they think when people get into this industry in the beginning, they're so concerned about, oh my God, I think I should do this, and I'm no good at character, or I'm no good at -- and I think that really, you don't really know until you try.   Ian: Well, let me share another quick story for you.   Anne: Sure.   Ian: So I auditioned for another game called Road Redemption, which is a motorcycle game. And you drive along the road and you have an iron stick and you're trying to hit other people off their motorbikes. And I auditioned with a sort of a Ray Wins, yeah. Come over, we all gonna hit you with a steel bat, you know, that sort of thing. And I thought, yeah, that'll work. And they decided that they liked my take on the character. So we got together on Skype . Who remembers Skype? And we are chatting, there's three of them, and there's me here. And they're like, what's your Australian accent like? Alright, where's that, right out of left field.   Anne: Where'd that come from?   Ian: Where'd that come from? And he said, because it's this sort of Mad Max kind of feel to the game. And they said, you know, what's your, and I said, very bad. I said, any Australian will immediately notice. You know, I can put another prawn on a barbie kind of thing. But everybody will, they will know, he's not from Australia anyway. So then we're on Skype and you hear tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. And they've sent me a line on the, in the chat. Read that in your Australian accent, whatever it was. Hey, I'm gonna hit you in me iron bar, mate, you know, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. Read that one in your Australian -- yeah, this shrimp's gonna really get you, you know, anyway. And at the end of it, they said, yeah, okay, we're gonna use you for the game. And I said, okay, do you want the Ray Winston thing or do you want this? Oh, we want the Australian thing. Okay. Well, I, like I said, they went, yeah, but Australia's such a small market for us. We're not worried about that.   Anne: We're not worried that people in Australia are gonna complain . Well, it's true.   Ian: Right. And Locke's the same thing with his South African. And where it led me to in my head was video games, even if they're sort of set in an earth-like environment, are fiction. And I think a lot of game makers now particularly, but certainly back then as well, the acting performance of the character outweighs --   Anne: Is more important.   Ian: -- the absolute accuracy of a given accent.   Anne: Very interesting. Especially now because now it's a casting thing. Are they casting a native UK or a native Australian? And I think that we are all in a spot, like are we going to audition for that? Ian: Well, with that rider of there are accent issues and there are ethnicity issues.   Anne: Yes. Absolutely.   Ian: You know, I absolutely would not put myself forward for a British SWANA or MENA or -- I can't say African American because that's American.   Anne: Yeah, no, I get, I get that.   Ian: British Black, I think.   Anne: I think if they're, if they're specifying -- yes. If they're specifying ethnicity, then I think, yeah, absolutely. It's something that we respect.   Ian: PGM, person of global majority.   Anne: Yep. Absolutely.   Ian: That's, that, that works well for me. So there are things that I just will walk past now that maybe 10 years ago would've been acceptable.   Anne: Sure. Yeah. Things have definitely changed over the past just a few years.   Ian: This could be quite controversial, but I've seen casters ask for a minority ethnicity, and then in the sides it makes reference to, I don't know, America or Great Britain or whatever. And you're like, the ethnicity of of this character does not match the character in the script that you are portraying. And I fear a little bit, what's been the motivation for that?   Anne: You know what, interestingly enough, I know that you say that that's a very inter -- I had that with an e-learning, believe it or not, they had the characters, it was a character based e-learning, and they were all different ethnicities. And mine was a mixed ethnicity, but then they said, don't perform it in any kind of accent. And so I thought, well what is that there for then? You know what I mean? And that was a few years back now. I would kind of hope that if they're specifying ethnicity, that they try really hard to get that so that there can be authentic and genuine. Yeah.   Ian: Yeah. And at the top end, some casting directors at the top of the market will challenge that sort of thing. They'll go back to the studio, they're in a strong enough position to go back to the studio and go, really? Does that work? Are you sure? And they will challenge that if you like the mass market, often the person hiring the voice and directing the voice is a part of the studio itself. So. Johnny at the back, go and get a voice actor, will you, for this character. I think a lot of that is kind of left to the voice actor to work out for themselves. If you have an any kind of an acting background, and you are auditioning for particularly indie video games, you are already streets ahead because the guys in the studios have never hired anyone before. They don't know who to hire really. It's kind of like, we'll know it when we hear it kind of thing. So if you can make a performance, if you can create a character that's believable within the universe of the game, you are already streets ahead.   Anne: It's very interesting that you bring up the casting directors for video games. And you know, it's not necessarily, I think, the talent agents of today that you think of for commercial and broadcast. For video games, you do have to make it authentic and believable. And these people may only be casting for their game, and maybe they've never cast for another game, or they don't have a lot of experience . But that's a great point. And so I think that even more so now, the marketing that you employed, having followers on Twitter, maybe putting your awards on your website so that it's out there and it's known, that definitely has an impact. Because your casting directors may or may not be as experienced as somebody who's casting like 10 commercials a day. Right? That's all they do. That they listen for voices and they cast, whereas games, they're so into their game that they know their characters, and they're listening for just that character to come alive, what they believe the character is like.   Ian: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. I had a beautiful testimonial from an indie guy, he put on Twitter, it was on Twitter, his casting notice. And he said, the character is 60 and British from the southwest of England, and he's got early signs of dementia. And he said, but there aren't many older British actors. You know, I've always found it a struggle to cast older actors. So when I wrote to him, I said, , I am 60.   Anne: I'm old. .   Ian: So anyway, so I got cast of that surprising, surprise me though. He actually cast me as a second character that he was struggling. I said to him, you said you were struggling to cast this. Have you've got anything else that you're struggling to cast? So he sent me, said, yes, I'm struggling to cast this. And he sent it to me, and I thought, I can have a go at that. So I sent it back and I said, do you mean something like this? So I didn't put it as though I was auditioning. I just said, do you mean something like this? And he went, oh great. Was that you? And I went, yes. He went, okay, yeah, you are hired.   Anne: I love it. I love it.   Ian: I booked two characters. But he said, you might just, it's a real kind of bigging myself up, but you might be, he said, the best actor I've ever auditioned.   Anne: Awesome.   Ian: And I'm like, aww.   Anne: What a wonderful, what a wonderful compliment.   Ian: Oh. That is on my Instagram. If you check -- care to go.   Anne: Yeah. There you go. . So I love that.   Ian: Oh, and I know, what did I wanted to say about, you talked about casting directors. So Bianca Shuttling, who's one of the big casting directors in LA, she goes looking on Instagram. She's very open about that. If she's not got someone in her little pool of people where she goes, she gets -- she doesn't go to agents, she goes to Instagram.   Anne: Wow, there you go.   Ian: That's where she goes.   Anne: There you go. I love that.   Ian: There, you learnt it -- you heard it third or fourth here. .   Anne: So let me say, because I really think that there's that business savvy that you have, which, BOSSes out there, do not discount the value of being business savvy and marketing savvy. Because I think that that's gonna get you opportunities that otherwise you would not already have. But I do wanna address the acting part of it because you don't just get these roles over and over again if you're not a great actor. So what do you attribute your acting prowess? Have you, just because you've been doing it for years, have you been working with coaches or what do you attribute it to?   Ian: I owe it all to my mum.   Anne: Ah, okay. Well, there you go. , I'd like to thank my mom and my .   Ian: Well, yeah. But in this case, my mom was a very prolific community actress herself.   Anne: Got it.   Ian: So my first living memory is a smell, and it's not the smell of the grease pain. It's that kind of musty damp wood smell that you get backstage in an old theater. And I have the image that follows it, but -- and I must have been maybe around two or three years old. There's no words involved in this memory. So I basically grew up --   Anne: In the theater.   Ian: -- in the backstage. Yeah. One of those things. So it was happening all around me all the time. And I did try and become a proper professional actor as a young man, but I couldn't figure out how to earn money doing it . So.   Anne: Same thing when you start off doing voice acting, right? It's kind of hard sometimes. How do I even get money? How do I even get started? Yeah.   Ian: Yeah, yeah. It took me another 27 years of sales and management --   Anne: Well, there's your overnight success. Right? And I love telling that to people. They're like, you're so successful. Like, how did you do it? And people think it's overnight, but I think obviously you've evolved so nicely into your success, and it well, well deserved.   Ian: And now it pays two -- pays me and I hired -- my wife works for me now.   Anne: There you go.   Ian: So that Christmas present 10 years ago has employed both of us now.   Anne: Yeah. So that 10 year overnight success in voiceover, I mean actually, actually it was a little less than that.   Ian: Yeah, that's interesting. Because I got my first nomination, and I was --   Anne: In 2020, right?   Ian: -- 2019, I got nominated. I didn't win anything that year, but I thought I was ahead of the curve at that point. You know, and then it all went a bit quieter after that. But the last two years, so years nine and ten, or if you count it from 2014, years seven and eight, really have my career, iIt just looks entirely different now. And it is for the people out there, the BOSSes out there, you know, if you are three, four, and five years in and you're making your way, keep going. Because it is my view that in another two or three years, if you are booking regularly, suddenly something will click, something will change, and bam, away you go.   Anne: I was just gonna ask you what's your best advice? But I'll tell you what, that was a golden nugget of wisdom right there . I think so many people, they give up so quickly, and they get their demos, and they're like, well, why am I not working? And they get so frustrated and down and yeah.   Ian: Took me three months to get my first booking. I worked for three months for nothing.   Anne: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, Ian, it has been such a wonderful pleasure having you in here.   Ian: Are we done?   Anne: Yeah.   Ian: Already?   Anne: Well, I, I can probably talk to you for another three hours, for sure. But I appreciate you coming and sharing your journey. I think ,BOSSes out there, you can learn a lot from this wonderful gentleman. And thank you so much for being here with us today.   Ian: You're very welcome, Anne. Anytime.   Anne: I'm gonna give a great big shout out to my sponsor, ipDTL. You too can connect and work like a BOSS. Find out more at ipdtl.com. And then also I'd like to talk to you about 100 Voices Who Care. It's your chance to make a difference in the world and give back to the communities that give to you. Find out more at 100voiceswhocare.org to commit. All right, you guys, have an amazing week. Ian, thanks again, and we'll see you next week. Bye-bye.   Ian: Bye-Bye.   Join us next week for another edition of VO BOSS with your host Anne Ganguzza. And take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at 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.

Anne and Gillian discuss setting up a home studio space and the necessary equipment for it. A home studio space should have proper sound absorption, emphasizing the need for high-quality audio recording equipment and internet connections for efficiency & consistency in their work. They mention the importance of finding a quiet area with proper sound absorption to minimize noises from in & outside of your home. Anne & Gillian also discuss the importance investing in a good computer, as it is a foundational technology that helps run your voice over business. For more insight and recommendations, tune in!    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 guys, welcome to the VO BOSS podcast. I'm your host Anne Ganguzza, and today I am excited to welcome back once again to the show audio engineer, musician, creative freelancer Gillian Pelkonen for another episode for our BOSS Audio series. Hey Gillian, how are ya?    Gillian: I am good. How are you, Anne?    Anne: I'm excellent. So I thought we had a great conversation about picking your home studio space. And I think we should expand upon that a little bit in this episode and maybe get into a little bit about the equipment that we have into the space for our home studios.    Gillian: Yeah, I think totally a necessary point at the conversation because if you didn't listen to last week's episode or whenever it was, the last BOSS audio episode, you gotta go back and catch up because we talked about finding a space in your home for your voice setup. We talked about a little bit about treatment and how to get your space sounding a little bit better, whether you're at the pro level or if you're a beginner. And then we also had the conversation of what's it like to work in a professional studio versus home studio. And now we're gonna dive into getting that home studio, what you need for it and perfecting the sound a little bit.   Anne: What you need and what you don't need necessarily, right?   Gillian: Yeah, definitely.    Anne: Especially because of your experience working in professional studios where I get overwhelmed looking at the equipment there because I'm like, ah, I'm just a voice actor and (laughs).   Gillian: I'm just a voice actor.    Anne: I'm just a voice actor. I'm not an audio engineer, but I do audio engineering. I know what I know, and I know just what I need to know for that. And I'm very happy, Gillian, to give people like you my business when I need something more from my engineering. So just a little bit backtracking on the absorption factor or the sound factor of your studios. We had talked about finding a quiet area in your home, in an area that maybe isn't near a window or open doorways or places that you can't close off from external noises. So there's external noises coming into your booth, and then we've got the noises within your booth possibly, right, that get reflected back into your microphone. So there's external and then there's internal noises that we want to protect against and have some sort of absorption. And one thing I did wanna mention, and this was a misconception that I had, is that, is there a way to 100% soundproof anything (laughs)?    Gillian: Yes. You know, it's so crazy. This is a slight tangent, and I don't know the details so it's gonna be a half story, but there is a room --   Anne: I know where you're going with this.    Gillian: There's this room where they've completely soundproofed it. And supposedly, I mean, I, I just got out --   Anne: You could go crazy in five minutes.   Gillian: You could go crazy in it. And I feel like I'm in a quiet space right now, and my Apple Watch is telling me that there's 73 decibels of sound going on.    Anne: Oh my God. You have that on your -- see, you are absolutely an audio engineer.    Gillian: I love to know.    Anne: I cannot tell you how many decibels right now on my watch, no.    Gillian: I can tell you from my watch because it's important to -- oh my gosh. We could do a whole episode on ear health and keeping your ears because that's very important.   Anne: I agree.    Gillian: Which is why I have it on there 'cause -- I wish Apple would sponsor us, 'cause I just talk about them all day. But there's a ton of ways to check and make sure that your hearing's not being damaged both by --   Anne: Oh, fantastic.    Gillian: — what you're listening to and the environment you're in. That's super interesting and really important to me, near and dear to my heart, because this is my livelihood, like your voice.    Anne: Absolutely.    Gillian: The way you care for your voice, I care for my ears. But there is a place where they completely soundproofed it and supposedly people can't stay in there for more than five minutes.    Anne: Yeah.    Gillian: It's so uncomfortable. It's so quiet --   Anne: Yeah.    Gillian: — you can like hear your blood moving in your body.    Anne: So I'm sorry I have to tell you about this. So a while back, my ear got perforated. I had a head cold, and I went to a doctor who wasn't the best doctor, and they said, well, we can't see in your ear because you have a buildup of wax, so we need to take care of that. And they took a syringe to clear out my ear and I said, well, that typically doesn't work for me because I've really tiny eardrums. And they're like, no, no, no, no. And so they flushed my ear out and proceeded to poke a hole in my eardrum when that happened. And it was really scary, number one, because my equilibrium just got completely thrown.    I had to sit down for like 45 minutes, and I should have, this could be a whole ‘nother episode, I should have probably sued them (laughs) because I told them not to do it.  And so, they punctured my eardrum and I know because I could taste the fluid going down my throat once the syringe went. I know it's gross. Sorry. But anyways, I will tell you about the recovery period. So when you have a hole in your eardrum, your eardrum performs many, many important functions, right? Keeping sound out and also sound in. And so when you have a hole in that (laughs), the sounds that you hear are incredibly different.    So for a good year after that happened, if not longer, I would hear wooshing sounds in my ear because it was literally fluids in my body that I could now hear. And it was like I could hear when I had sinus issues. I could hear when it was an allergy day, and it would get very loud. And this white noise I call — like it wasn't a white noise 'cause I couldn't stand it. It was like whooshing, whooshing in sounds that were constantly, I couldn't go into a room full of a lot of people talking because my brain couldn't process all of the sounds. And it made me very confused and very foggy. It was very upsetting. So for a long time, while my ear was healing, and it still hasn't completely healed, my brain had to get used to the fact that I could hear noises both from inside my body and outside my body. So it does not surprise me that if you had 100% pure quiet in a room — and by the way I think that's like miles like below the earth, that room that you go down into, and they've soundproofed it -- it makes a whole lot of sense that you would go crazy, because I was able to hear all sorts of noises, my heart beating. It was incredible.    Gillian: Uncomfortable.    Anne: It's very uncomfortable. Very unsettling.    Gillian: Yeah.    Anne: So (laughs) in terms of --   Gillian: No, you should not want to get a completely soundproofed room.    Anne: Yes. But, and that's why also they have signs in studios, shh, recording. Because you cannot possibly really 100% soundproof. Like if you're gonna run screaming down the hallway in a studio, I think still you'll be able to hear some of that sound coming through a door. Maybe not, depends on how loud, you know, you still don't wanna make any extraneous noises that you don't have to.    Gillian: Well, it is interesting because a lot of the studios that I work in, there are certain things that will really help.    Anne: Yeah.    Gillian: And I learned in school about the things that you do. You do floating floors, which is like the regular floor and then another one. So that --   Anne: On top of it.    Gillian: And then just basically rooms within rooms, which is what --   Anne: Oh, I was gonna say --   Gillian: — a booth is. Same thing.   Anne: A room in a room. And that's the protective like walls on the outside that protect the sounds from coming in.    Gillian: Well, they also, when they build them, it's like double paned everything. And the doors are really heavy. I mean on important rooms that need like the control room where we blast music doors are, they've gotta be like a hundred pounds of those doors just to, and solid wood to keep everything out. Even the glass, there's like double paned glass and it's slanted, like kind of like we talked, you don't want complete parallel surfaces anywhere, 'cause that just creates for reflections everywhere.    Anne: And what's interesting is that I've not had a window on any of my booths. Now I know a lot of the booths that are pre-fabricated, you can buy with a window, and it and it's cool looking and it's pretty. But when it came time to designing this particular booth, I said, oh I want a window. ‘Cause I never had a window. And Tim Tippetts said to me, do you really want a window (laughs)? He said, did you have a window in your last booth? I'm like, no. And he goes, so the window kind of brings up a whole ‘nother set of things that you have to protect against because it's a different surface. Right? It's not the same as a wall. And so it's a pane of glass so you also have to protect that. So when I was recording he said, really you need a sound panel to put over it when you record to keep all of the noise out. So I just said, you know what, I don't need a window. I really don't.    And my door, by the way, which has always been a really heavy part of my booth -- I have double doors here. So not only do I have double walls, but I have double doors, and that's to help keep noises from the outside from coming in. And now in terms of inside, I also have sound that's traveling inside this booth. My booth is probably built at a very tiny angle. It's not like a huge angle, it's not visible at all. But the walls are not completely perpendicular to one another. And also I have these panels that are the acoustic panels that are on the walls. Again, any of the sound that right now is in my booth will bounce around and get absorbed by these panels.    And I mentioned before that they're slightly offset from the wall. So like by a quarter inch maybe? I'm looking right now. They sit off the wall a quarter inch so that if it hits that wall, it has space to travel back through the back of the panel and then get stopped again before it could travel back into this microphone. And that's typically what you're trying to do is to stop the sound from reflecting and reverberating off the walls and coming back into the microphone as feedback or some sort of echo. So that's a little bit more on the absorption part. But now once we're in the studio, (laughs) and we're recording --   Gillian: Once we’re in the studio that you've built and whatever says…   Anne: — there's equipment. And of course we could probably talk about microphones all day. But I, I really think that there's other pieces of equipment that I wanna focus on today, and maybe this will even go into another episode, in regards to what's important for voice actors. I'm gonna start the conversation with your internet connection.    Gillian: Yeah. And we kind of talked about this a little bit last time. Like internet computer, without those two things, you don't have a job. You can't connect with anybody.   Anne: So true.    Gillian: I mean it's different when you're in a recording studio 'cause that's all there for you and you don't think about the fact that they have the computer, they have the recording equipment, especially since as a voice actor just standing in front of the mic, putting on the headphones. Like those are things that you think about. But we worry about that all the time, and less the internet connection, which we've had to do that and configure things to be on Zoom with people to send audio that way. But it's definitely very important. And my computer is my, I don't wanna say baby, but kind of (laughs); more important than my phone, it is the most important thing in my professional life, and I spent a ton of money on it to get the most updated one and it, it hurt.   Anne: It's an investment.   Gillian: It hurt a little bit.   Anne: (laughs) There was some physical pain when you invested --   Gillian: Emotional pain.    Anne: — but it's an investment.    Gillian: I have someone that I work with that we talk about this all the time 'cause we both have, you know, brand new Macs, iPhone. What -- I don't have the newest one, but when I upgraded I got pro Macs, the best phone. Because why would you not invest in something that you use every single day and that you use every single day for work?   Anne: Yeah.    Gillian: Like you're paying to have less trouble issues, be faster. I think that’s a worthy investment.    Anne: Well, I'm gonna go back, I'm gonna backtrack a little bit because I'm adamant about the internet. I love the internet and it's always been said that I would marry the internet if I could (laughs). Like, like Vince Surf is like one of my heroes, okay, the inventor of the internet. And so I guess my point is I have some people that say when I'm connecting to them for their sessions and I use ipDTL to connect exclusively with my students for their sessions because of the fact that it's a high quality audio connection. It allows me to hear them better so that I can direct them better. We can record our sessions. There's lots of wonderful advantages to using ipDTL. Also source connect, all the other methodologies that people use to connect to each other, to their clients and to studios, you need to have a quality internet connection.    And sometimes when I have students say, well, my connection -- yeah, well, I think we have like a 300 connection, 300 speed. Most people don't necessarily know what speed connection they are connecting to the internet. And I think that it's important for you to know as BOSSes, first of all, what speed is your internet connection? And if you have the capability of getting a gig or a faster speed, why not choose the top of the line speed for that internet connection? Because your business, not just your audio and connecting with clients, but your entire business runs on the internet and the communication. Because we are pretty much an online business. Right? And we're connecting globally to people. So why on a daily basis -- I probably am on the internet, oh goodness, 8 to 10 hours a day, possibly more.   Gillian: An embarrassing number of hours a day. (laughs)   Anne: Well, yeah, because we watch our televisions now, which are, you know, everything is fed through the internet. And so if you can get the fastest speed, absolutely, it's an investment in your company. I just say that over and over again. And as a matter of fact, when I said this before on an episode, when I moved here to my new house, I actually checked and said, what speeds are available in my area? If I cannot get fiber to my house, I will not move here. I will not move here.    You know, it's one of those things they say, oh, fiber's coming, fiber's coming. But you know, if it's years until fiber's coming, and I know how important that connection is to my business, the livelihood of my business, I actually chose where I was going to live based upon my internet speed. Because again, until I retire, guys, this is it. This is where I make my money, and I know how important it is. So, alright, I've stepped down off my soapbox for the internet, but get the fastest speed, guys. It's an investment in your business and write it off. Right? It's your business. Okay. Now Gillian onto the computer thing. So.   Gillian: Well no, no. I feel like this doesn't get, and maybe it does get talked about. I'm not hearing it, so we're talking about it (laughs), but like --   Anne: I'm rambling on and on about it. (laughs)    Gillian: Computers, XLR cables, like these are not exciting purchases. A microphone is an exciting purchase to some degree.    Anne: Well, I think they're exciting. Gillian. I'm sorry. I was gonna marry the internet, remember?    Gillian: That's true, that's true. That's true, in love with the internet. But I think that there's a ton of things that make your space great that are not flashy --   Anne: A microphone.   Gillian: Or exciting. I mean, unboxing my computer was like a spiritual experience. I loved it. It was like so awesome. I just, when I got my Apple Watch last week, I took a video of the unboxing because I was like, oh my gosh, it's so aesthetically pleasing. (laughs). I mean --   Anne: Wait, did you say that to yourself? This is so aesthetically pleasing. I love that.   Gillian: I said it in my head. Yeah, of course.    Anne: I love it. I love it.    Gillian: Everything with Apple. I made my boyfriend hover above and take the video while I unbox it and I was like, don't move.   Anne: Wait, wait. Get the lighting. Get the lighting perfect. I would do that too though. I'm such a geek about things like that. I really am.   Gillian: You only open an Apple box once. Once it's opened, it's not the same. Anyway sorry, little BOSSes; you're listening to us ramble about Apple. All of you PC lovers, I'm sorry.    Anne: Yes.    Gillian: You just will never, never understand (laughs). Or maybe you will.    Anne: Well, they have their own unboxing, so that's absolutely fine. You can get excited about -- but I know a lot of people that build their own computers, and that's exciting.    Gillian: Oh yeah. That's an activity. That's fun.    Anne: That's definitely a very cool thing to do. So your computer, again, it's part of your livelihood. Now there are people out there that say for voice acting, you don't need to have a very powerful computer, and no, you don't necessarily for the actual physical audio recording of one track perhaps. I'm gonna say that, yeah, you don't have to have a billion megabytes of RAM or, or a ton of space. But honestly, everything we do combined together along with the audio recording -- I am connecting with clients. I am looking things up on the internet, I'm researching, I am doing so many activities on that computer for my business, marketing, connecting with clients, audio recording, audio editing — why wouldn't I want it to be as optimal as it could be?   And so there might be people that are using multiple computers. Like one is just for recording my audio. That's fine. Whatever works works there for you. However, there's still -- I think Gillian and I were discussing this a little bit earlier, and we can continue this discussion about the speed of your computer, when you're recording, your audio does play a factor in the quality of what you're getting out. And you certainly don't want your computer to be an ancient piece of equipment that can't handle your interface or it keeps crashing. Like I know for a fact -- Gillian, you use Adobe products?   Gillian: I do. Yeah.    Anne: Right? I mean, just any Adobe product for me has always been a little bit of a memory hog. And so if you've got Adobe Audition running in the background and you're recording and you've got it on a kind of an older computer and you don't have a lot of RAM or you're running out of space, whatever it is, it can cause that to crash and cause many, many frustrating problems. So as good as your performance is, right, if your DAW's gonna crash time and time again…   Gillian: And there's nothing worse than being in the middle of an edit, and it crashes and you lose all of your hard work on an edit. That's happened -- I mean, not as much with ProTools. There's always like automatic save. So I'll just go back to previous version, but it's happened enough --   Anne: Or a good take. Right? You could be actually recording like, and you've got the best take of your life, and then something, you know, happens. I mean, that would suck.    Gillian: Yeah. So it's interesting because computers become important when you're doing everything off of it. Kind of like we're saying, you're sending emails, you're uploading auditions places, you are, I don't know, creating your post for social media in Premiere, you're recording, you're editing, you're -- all of these things, they take up space and why would you not — obviously don't go into debt for a computer.    Anne: Yeah.    Gillian: I mean, do what you want, but --   Anne: But it's an investment.    Gillian: Again, it's a worthy investment, and I think people always -- from my experience of talking with voice actors, people would be much more willing to jump to buy another microphone or another, something that's, in air quotes, fun versus, you know, really splurging on the super important things.    Anne: So true. Like a foundational technology that helps you run your business. You're absolutely right. And not to say that microphones aren't important, but again, no, you don't need like the U87 (laughs). Well, I kind of want one, but(laughs), I still am holding off on that one. But microphones like, I feel like the microphone technologies, they last a little bit longer than — you don't have to worry about updating them. It's not like you're upgrading the OS on your microphone, right?    Gillian: No.    Anne: Or upgrading the RAM, uh, microphones, they work and they just work unless you're gonna beat it up.    Gillian: They're completely different.   Anne: And pour water into it. Yeah. It's a completely different, it's a piece of hardware that…   Gillian: It's a piece of hardware. I mean five years and who knows, but five years down the line, at least for me, I'll trade in my, yeah. Mac for another Mac through Apple. That'll be great. But if you have a microphone, you can sell that at any point. If anything, it's probably gonna go up in value the longer you keep it and take care of it. And yeah, I mean, I'm kind of a U87 hater. I don't like them. I don't like them at all.    Anne: That could be another episode. I'm not sure how many people would disagree with you there.    Jilian: I think, I don't know. I don't know how much of it is just, it's a -- I mean I've used it, I've done shootouts with mics for myself for other things where you just line them all up and you sing into them. And the one that I'm using now is my favorite from a lot of mics that I've tried within my budget. My favorite mics are like $20,000 ones that I can't afford and don't need to afford, because why would I? But producers, clients, nobody's gonna know what your gear is. They just care about how you sound. And so I don't personally think that everyone needs to spend upwards of thousands of dollars on gear. I think there's really smart ways to make less expensive gear sound great when you're starting out.    But then the expensive gear is room to grow within your business, within your voiceover experience. And isn't that like something to look forward to or know that, you can resell your gear to someone who's starting off and then upgrade to something bigger, and just all of these big purchases are investments. And they are important.    Anne: And another thing that, I'm just gonna say that like equipment that you don't think about for your voiceover business, your online storefront, hello, your website. Oh my goodness, I cannot tell you how many people want to -- and I'm not saying you can't do it on your own. However, look, I worked in technology for 20 years. I did websites back when they were easy. Okay? They're not -- when you could write HDMI Notepad and it was simple. And then all of a sudden like CSS came out and I was like, I was overwhelmed. I was like, okay, no, I just know what functionality I want in the backend of my website. I'm not a graphic designer. I'm a functional person, so I know what I want, and I know what functionality I want.    And so at some point I said, okay, I am not making my own websites anymore because it is a face of my business. And so I wanna pay someone who actually does this eight hours a day, if not longer. And that's what they were trained to do. And a lot of people try to skimp on that. And I hear that constantly from voice actors. And I guess my question is, back in the day when there was more brick and mortar things, like actual studios, Gillian, you know, you go to them all the time — you used to have to front the bill for leasing once a month. If you had a store, you had to stock it with inventory so there were all these like monetary investments you would make.    And then all of a sudden when things became easy from technology and easier from technology and online, all of a sudden people think that, well, it's so easy, I can just do it and cheap out on it. It frustrates me. Like that mentality -- I understand that yes, doing anything online at home is a great business to start, but you have to still invest in it. And there's so many worthy things to invest in, and your storefront, if it's not brick and mortar, it's online. The impression you make is so, so important in order to be successful in this industry.    Gillian: And there are just ways to -- I love my website. It's very important to me. I've gotten like compliments on it that it looks really professional, and I didn't make it. I hired someone to make it for me. Obviously the content that I fill it with is mine. I do that. But I would've never been able to make the website that I have now. Both from how it looks and a functionality standpoint, I feel like people are not really using their websites in a functional way where you could, you know, manage contacts and, and communicate with people that way.    But for me, I mean, I work with voice actors, I do sessions with them. Every once in a while I will have to look someone up and the first thing I look for is a website. And if I can't find a website for someone, I kind of don't know what to do. I'm like, if I can't find you and listen to your demo right away — and if it's not easy for me, and especially like if you could get your demos online, easily downloadable for anybody in casting, anybody working at a studio that kind of gives you a leg up. It really like, it just does because you're easier to work with, you're easier to find. And I kind of know who you are. I'm like, okay, this person is a legit voice actor. Which might not be the right answer, but it's what I do.   Anne: Well, and a professional voice actor. Right? So, again, there are people who, well, you know, do I need to buy a domain? Do I need to, you know, I can do my own website right now, and I can upload my files to a pay-to-play. But honestly, when I shop and I shop a lot online, hello? Gosh, I can't remember the last time I was at a mall. Although I do love getting out and seeing people. But honestly I do a ton of online shopping. And so for me, the trust factor and the value factor has everything to do with the website. And when I first get an impression of somebody, when I go to the website, right, I can tell, oh, are they trustworthy? Are they professional?    And if you've got a website that you made and you don't do that for a living, right, it's gonna look homemade. Here's an old school thing. I always talk about business cards, right? If you walk up to somebody and they hand you a business card, which still happens these days, not as much as it used to, but then that business card was printed on a printer in your home versus something that was professionally made, you can absolutely tell the difference. Same thing with a website, right? You can absolutely tell the difference, but there's just a level. It's like a movie and a B movie, (laughs). It's like, it's absolutely a level of professionalism that comes with something that's been professionally designed.    Gillian: And unfortunately it's kind of all the aesthetic versus, and that analogy is incredible. I mean, I've never really lived in a business card world. I know (laughs), but when I was like 10, I had professionally made business cards for my babysitting business.    Anne: There you go.    Gillian: So I kind of did. And those were --   Anne: It made a difference, right?    Gillian: I, I don't know, I still have them, but I got work probably 'cause people were impressed that a 10-year-old had business cards.    Anne: Right?    Gillian: But for me, I mean I'm in my 20s, I first look at people's website, and off the bat there's just a different pro versus not pro vibe that I immediately, it just goes off in my brain. And same thing. And then if I can't find them immediately, the next thing I look for is Instagram. And if I can't find you and see that you're doing any sort of voiceover work, then I'm kind of confused. You know, if you have a great voice, I'll email you, but it's a different world.    Anne: So that's interesting. So you go Instagram, what about TikTok? At what level is TikTok or other social media channels for you?    Gillian: Um, it really is for me. I use my Instagram, it's like professional now. Everyone that I meet on a session, artists that I work with, I connect with everybody on Instagram. And that's like the way that I keep up with what people are doing and what people are up to. I personally don't really use LinkedIn. I did when I was in less creative field, but nobody that I work with uses it.    Anne: Right. But our potential clients do. That's why I'm just gonna say that for us.    Gillian: Well, yeah. I think it's different for what I do versus what you guys do. But I, I think I'll go to LinkedIn as a last resort if I can't find somebody. But for the most part, like Instagram and websites. TikTok, I don't really use for work. That's like fun for me. I would never like look for someone on TikTok or like look for voice actors on TikTok. But I do know that there's definitely --   Anne: But if there were creative voice actors, I was gonna say if there's creative voice actors that are doing something entertaining on TikTok, you'll take notes.    Gillian: Yeah. I'm also not a client. I'm coming at this from a strictly studio perspective. I do, every once in a while some voice actors will come up on my feed, or I know there's some people that I know that are like voice actors and musicians and they talk about stuff like that. Um, so I can't say that I know too much about it, but yeah, Instagram is like the thing for me that I can check if someone's legit or not.    Anne: I think the last little, I'm gonna call these the soft equipment requirements. I'm gonna talk about how before it was a voice actor, always, well I've got a face for radio, that kind of thing. I loved voice acting initially because there weren't the requirements of being on camera. I thought, well, I can act and I can be behind that microphone. However, it has evolved and times have changed. And I do believe that there's a video element and there's a face element because people wanna connect with humans. And so for us as voice actors, there are the times when we need to connect with others as humans. And a lot of times I'll have live sessions where they'll wanna connect and watch me via Zoom. I don't always have the camera on. Sometimes I will always to say hello.    For obviously my podcast, yes. I do this and I do some, if you were going to do some social media posts, I have a YouTube channel called my Teachable Moments. So the other equipment purchase that people don't necessarily think about is a good camera and good lighting. And then also I hire a video person to help me to actually create videos and edit videos. So again, it can present to my online clients. My online presence can be of a more professional nature. Again, I don't do video production, but I do know lots of people that do. So I think camera and lighting so that you can look professional. And then if you have videos that you upload, make them look professional and have people who do video editing. And so what a good conversation. And we didn't even get to the hardware yet, really.    Gillian; I know, I'm sorry, guys. There's one more --   Anne: Or the microphone or the headphones and, and all that. So that's for our next --   Gillian: Sorry, guys.   Anne: That's for our next episode.   Gillian: But I got, one more thing I got for you. It's so interesting because obviously I'm learning about the voiceover industry. I know about audio; I record it, but learning the ins and outs of the industry or what people are doing, sometimes it's confusing to me because sometimes stuff goes like against what I would think or things that I think are obvious, people aren't doing. But for voice actors, I feel like, and this is my take, you can tell me if I'm wrong, I feel like it'd be easy to be yourself on social media because anything that you do with you talking, just being yourself. It's your voice. And that's --   Anne: Uh, yes, it's true. It's so true.    Gillian: Wouldn't that make so much sense? I'm on social media a decent bit. I'm on TikTok. People are always like, this is my morning routine, this and that. All these videos with voiceover. And when I make my tos, I do voiceovers. I don't do voiceover, but you know, I'll talk in them, but really, I hear a lot of people getting hung up on like, I have to be talking about my booth or voiceover. But really anything that you're doing --   Anne: Anything you're doing.    Gillian: — using your voice is showing off your voice --   Anne: Who you are and your brand.    Gillian: Yeah. But then if, if you're being yourself, then it's kind of like sneaky, you know, it's like I'm just being myself. People are getting to know me, and they're realizing that I have a great voice and a great sound. So that's what I always think about and I don't see a lot of.   Anne: Yeah. And people buy from people they know, like, and trust. And I've always said this podcast, I have gotten so much work from this podcast. There's so many people that come up to me and say, oh my gosh, I feel like I've known you for years because I've been doing this podcast for years and, and I'm pretty much myself on this podcast. And ultimately that is a really wonderful way to get your brand out there and to have people know, like, and trust you. And then, when they do come to you, they're ready to purchase. And that just becomes a really cool thing. So yeah, guys, so this has been a great talk about the soft technologies. I don't even know what to call them. The soft technologies or the technologies that most people don't think about, right? The hardware people don't think about.   Gillian: Or just things that people don't think about that are not the --   Anne: It's not the microphone --   Gillian: — exact gear. I'm sorry, guys. We're just leading you on. I'm so sorry (laughs). But there's just not so much to say.    Anne: Next episode. All right, well, thank you, Gillian. It's been fun. We're gonna talk next time about maybe some equipment that people have been thinking about. Well, what about my headphones?   Gillian: I know.    Anne: So good stuff. So BOSSes, as individuals, it can seem difficult to make a huge impact, but as a group, we can contribute to the growth of our communities in ways that we never thought possible. Visit 100Voiceswhocare.org to learn how. All right. And a big shout out to our sponsor, ipDTL. You too can network and connect like BOSSes. Find out more at ipdtl.com. You guys, have an amazing week and we'll see you next week.    Gillian: Bye.    Anne: Bye.   Join us next week for another edition of VO BOSS with your host Anne Ganguzza. And take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at 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.

Anne & Lau answer a question many have about the voice over industry: "how long will it take?" The truth is, becoming a successful voiceover artist takes time, discipline, and dedication. There is no set timeline for success, and it is important to have realistic expectations. Investing in coaching and training is essential, but it is equally important to be selective about where and how to invest. Building a recognizable brand identity and having a viable business is important. Respecting the voiceover industry as a business is crucial. Hard work, commitment, and effort increase the chances of success, but there are no shortcuts. Success is not only measured financially but also in time and commitment to your voice over business.    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 the BOSS Superpower series. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and I'm here today with the lovely and most wonderful BOSS, co-host, Lau Lapides. Hey BOSS.    Lau: Hey BOSS. How are you?    Anne: I'm doing great. How about yourself?    Lau: I'm doing good. Feeling BOSSy today.    Anne: Today I think we should answer a very common question that is asked, I think, both of myself and you, I can imagine. And that is for people just starting out in this industry, how long will it take for me to become a voiceover artist? Or how long will I have to spend coaching or training so that I can do voiceover?    Lau: Hmm. Gotta get my calculator out for that one. So I can just do different variables, different scenarios, right?    Anne: Yeah.    Lau: Variations on the theme. That's a biggie.    Anne: Is it gonna take me, okay, in three months I wanna be able to make $10,000 a month, and I want to be able to secure 20 new clients, right? So it's very hard for people when they're first starting out. Again, we had another podcast all about this, like, you don't know what you don't know yet. So how long will it take? Well, let's see. Where's my crystal ball?    Lau: (laughs) Where do you start? Where do you start?   Anne: Where’s my crystal ball? How do even I start?    Lau: Where do you start?    Anne: Boy, it depends on so many things, Lau.    Lau: Mm. There's tons of variables involved with that. That's not even possible to answer that question. One could Google and look up, okay, voiceover talent, 2023, North America, what's the average? But it's really not going to tell you what is going on in individual scenarios and situations that can cause a tremendous amount of loss and a tremendous amount of gain.    Anne: Yeah. Well, maybe let's start with how long will it take if somebody's just starting out in the industry, right?    Lau: Wait, can I do my theater moment? Can I do my like, wait, give me six months. I gotta do jazz hands. I will give you a VO career.    Anne: Woohoo!   Lau: Did you like that? Did that sound credible to anyone?    Anne: Wait, I'm sorry. I couldn't hear you. I was running fast and far away from that.   Lau: (laughs)    Anne: From that claim.    Lau: You know, I had a colleague one time, he told the greatest stories, and he said, listen, would you go to a dentist who did a weekend workshop? Or who even did a one-year certificate program to become a dentist? Would you do that? And everyone laughs at that.    Anne: Would you get your tooth drilled from that dentist? Mm.    Lau: Probably not. Probably not.    Anne: Yeah.    Lau: Because not just about the physical pain of it, but the idea that, how could they become a dentist in six months or one year? There's a lot to learn. There's a lot to delve into, right?    Anne: Oh my gosh, yes. Absolutely. Such a great point. And I think that's like one of the first things that I'm always saying. My gosh, we go to school for years to learn a craft. Like doctors go for eight years minimum, I think, right? Dentists as well. And maybe not even doctors and dentists. I mean, just back in the day, okay, now I'm starting to sound my age, but I had a four-year program in college that I went to for a bachelor's or a two-year program for an associate, whatever it is, right? We go to elementary school for so many years to learn all of these things.    So why is voiceover any different? Like, I'm not saying we need to spend 12 years, but in reality, we probably are continually honing our craft and spending our entire lives being a student. But why would you think it would only take two months or three months even, or even a couple of sessions before you're ready to make that demo? You have to just sit back and does that make logical sense?    Lau: I think it could only make logical sense if I am really invested in the media blitz of our society and having very quick images and sounds about being in entertainment, being in the entertainment industry, which looks to us on the outside as very fast and very polished and very rich and very quick. When we know on the inside, on the other side of it, it takes years and years oftentimes to get to that place of what you're seeing in that media image.    Anne: Sure.   Lau: So I mean, that's kind of like the collateral damage of being in this whole entertainment industry under that umbrella is that you have whole generations now that think and feel like, if I jump on TikTok or if I jump on this social media channel, I'm instantly this, I'm instantly that. It's like stir and mix, you know? Pull it off the shelf, stir and mix, and you're instantly a star.    Anne: Yeah, yeah.    Lau: We have to combat that because we know for longevity in careers, it's just never that. It's always a, an investment, a creating, a recreating, a re-envisioning throughout your life. This is a craft.    Anne: Yeah. And it doesn't happen overnight, for sure. Does not happen. If it looks easy, well, yeah, it probably took us, what if that overnight success was 40 years in the making?    Lau: Yes. We were a 40-year overnight success. You like it? (laughs)    Anne: And everybody is different. Now, of course, you might have a different story. Maybe you've been an actor all your life, and you've turned to voiceover, and you got hired because maybe you're a little bit of a celebrity, right? And people know you and they know your brand, and so you were able to lock in a big video game right away, or a national campaign. And so that is where I think people, they look at it and go, oh my gosh, I should be be able to do this. You know, if I set my goals, I should be able to do this in three months or six months. But honestly, BOSSes out there, I mean, to really be a BOSS, I think that there has to be some longevity. There has to be some due diligence. There has to be some hard work, some sweat, blood, tears, mistakes. We just had a whole podcast on mistakes -- that really make that career a possibility. And it does not typically happen in two to three months.    So with that being said, the other question is, how much is this going to cost? Well, it's going to cost, right, whatever you're going to invest in your coaching and training. And I don't mean to be impatient, but it's so many times I get people who come to me thinking that it'll cost them much less to get that demo so that they can get working and be successful as a voiceover actor. And somehow they're thinking, well, just a few hundred dollars, maybe a thousand, and I'll be good to go, and I'll be able to make some money. Lau?   Lau: I almost don't know what to say to that though. We always have to have something to say to that.   Anne: Right? We do. We do.    Lau: One of the first things I always say is, what you put into it, what you invest is exactly what you're going to get out of it. So be careful how you invest. And how much you invest and what you invest. You have to really sit down with a master plan and think, okay, maybe I don't know much. I'm in my first year. Now I'm in my third year. I know a lot more. And you have to invest and reinvest in, what are my goals per quarter? What do I want to achieve? What is achievable? What is realistic? I always joke with my clients and say, I may want to be a 22-year-old Scandinavian supermodel, but that ain't happening.    Anne: (laughs)   Lau: Can I just say? And I'm glad it's not happening, ‘cause that leaves me room to be what I can be, what I want to be, and what is possible for me.    Anne: Love it. Sure.   Lau: So I don't look at that as a limitation. I look at that as opening the door to spending the energy and time and everything that I should be investing in.    Anne: Yes.    Lau: Just because I have money and I can invest doesn't mean I should invest in that. I have to be very specific. I have to be very goal-oriented, and I have to be reasonable. I have to be realistic and pragmatic in my goal. There's a difference between a dream and a goal, right? Who is the famous person who said this? I have to look this up. A goal is just a dream with a deadline. But it's more than that. It's something that is realistic for my talent, for my skillset, for my time, for my money. It's like a whole portfolio. You sat down with a financial advisor, they're not just gonna say, hey, how much money do you have? No. They're gonna look at you and build a portfolio on who you are, what your background is, what you're capable of, what you want, and really come up with scenarios and variables that are reasonable in terms of it not being a gamble, but being an investment, a calculated risk.    Anne: Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. I feel like we say this so much, but I feel like we, we need to say it. There is an investment here. There is an investment here. It's not going to come — can you learn voiceover on YouTube? Can you learn voiceover from reading books? Can you learn voiceover from Googling? There's a lot that you can take from that. But then there's also so much more that you can garner by investing some money into a good coach. This is all about you and your voice and your acting. And so it really helps to work with someone who specializes in taking your voice and teaching you techniques and principles of acting so that you can showcase the very best for your potential clients. And so that's going to cost money.    And I always think, if you are invested enough to want to create a business selling your voice, well, you have to also understand that as a business, you respect other businesses, right? Other businesses, coaches are out there. They have to charge for their services. It's not like I can exist just on my good heart, which I do have a wonderful heart, and Lau, you too.    Lau: You do. You do.    Anne: I can't just spend my hours every day giving away voice lessons. And so there has to be some semblance of a business there. And I always have to say to myself that I need to present a good example of a voiceover business. I've got policies. If they can't make their lesson, if they don't notify me in a certain amount of time, I can't fill that spot again. So that costs me money. So there are things that need to be enforced in business, which I think as a student, right, or as somebody entering into this industry, wanting to be a business, that you also have to learn about and also respect and understand.    Lau: You said a total mouthful too, when you said, you know, respecting the businesses that are in your business. I mean, we wanna respect everyone in the world, but when we're talking about our industry, like be respectful of others’ businesses that are working alongside you, with you, and for you to help you create and grow a business. Their time is valuable. Their time is money, in essence, right? We don't like to think of it that way, but we never wanna apologize for having value monetarily. You have to have value.    Sure, you can do pro bono work. Sure, you can do projects without getting paid. Sure, you can do all of that. But it has to live alongside a paradigm of career and really building something that is viable, meaning I'm getting my return, and I'm also investing, and I'm also having some luxury of profit. And that is called building a business. And so when we come out to people, we say, oh, well, how much is this gonna be? Well, that's expensive. Well, I can't afford that. You're automatically unintentionally disrespecting that person's not just time and effort, but their education. You're paying for their history, their value --    Anne: Their experience.   Lau: -- their schooling, all the connections they have and know, their studio. I mean, on and on it goes. You are paying for that. It's not just about a product; it's about a a process. And so really just making sure people understand that. If you feel like someone is charging you too much money, that's fine. Then walk away from it and don't spend it. But just know they're basing their value off what they think their value is based in all those areas. It isn't just, oh, I'm slapping on a price tag of this. It's like I'm bringing this to the table and guess what? I'm not 20 or 30, I'm 50, I'm 60. So I'm bringing you all those years of knowledge and wisdom.   Anne: Experience. Absolutely. Absolutely. And yeah, respect the business. Respect the people that are in the business that are helping you get into the business. And also expecting things to be easy or cheap, I would say educate yourself enough about the industry to know that with anything, right, you're going to have to make an investment. I wish that there weren't people out there selling the dream, but I think you're gonna have that for just about anything, not just voiceover, right? There's gonna be, I'm gonna sell you the dream. Gosh, there were so many and there probably still are infomercials on, come to my seminar. You too can flip a house and make thousands of dollars, and you can make thousands of dollars in, in a short amount of time. So that whole selling the dream, if it seems too good to be true, typically it is.   Lau: (laughs)   Anne: And so that's something to be aware of. So how long will it take me? This is the other question, how long will it take me to get a return on my investment?    Lau: That's a really tough question to answer. It really is. And I, I just have to say to your point for people to remember --I had a colleague that gave me this really adorable sign one time from my birthday. It was like a mechanic with this old fashioned truck, and he was fixing the truck, and it said on it, good work ain't cheap and cheap work ain't good.    Anne: Yeah.    Lau: And I never forgot.    Anne: Yep. I love that love.    Lau: I don't know if I have the signs still, but I never forgot that. I thought it was funny and kitchy, but it's so true. Like you get what you pay for oftentimes. You really, really do. Not always, but much of the time, that principle is really true. And to be perfectly honest with everyone and all your peeps, I'm gonna be honest with, I don't feel I can give you an answer to that question of what am I gonna make and how much time I'm gonna make it in, and when am I gonna be successful? That really is an individual's journey and choice as to how much time, effort, investment, heart, soul, blood, tears, whatever you're gonna put into this. The harder you run at it, the more you put into it, the more you focus and intensify, the more opportunities tend to come because there's that work breeds work kind of energy that you're putting into the world. Like, I'm working, I know you're this way, Anne. If someone says, are you busy? Are you bored?  Say there's no such thing. Bored is not in your vocabulary.    Anne: Never, never.    Lau: Because you're always working, you're working. Whether you're being paid or not, you're always working. And that energy, that mystical energy goes into the world, and people are attracted to that. There's an attraction to that. It's not just being busy, it's being engaged, it's being excited. It's being enthralled by things. People want to magnetically latch onto that. So I would say in order to get that success, whatever that is that you're looking for, get busy. Get busy on being busy and get engaged. And the more you're engaged, the more potential outcomes that are pleasing you are gonna happen.    Anne: Well, I think return on your investment, okay. So investment, usually when people say that to you, or they're asking you that question, when will I get a return on my investment? They're talking about their money. And in reality, what you've just wrapped all into, besides the money, is your effort. Right? And your time and what you put into it. So in reality, when you're asking me, when will I get a return on my investment? Well, I will come right back to you and say, well, how committed are you to investing your time, your energy into making this a success? And a lot of it does depend on you.    Now, if you're gonna sink a few thousand dollars into some coaching and a demo, then you expect to get a job how long after? A lot of times two people will say, all right, now that I got my demo, how long will it take for me to get my first voiceover job? And again, that really shows up into your effort in terms of how are you going to go out and get that job? Because you can have the best voice in the world, you have the best demo in the world, but if nobody knows about it, they can't hire you, and they can't pay you for it.    Lau: And aren't you and I constantly breaking down the map biology of, okay, I will answer that question with a question, which no one likes, but okay, let's break down your day. Can we break down your week? Can we look at actually what you're investing day to day and week to week? And then all of a sudden, the door opens of knowledge, and sometimes it's like what you don't wanna see of Pandora's box coming out. Like, oh, I'm only doing this. I don't have time to do this. Or this is harder for me.   Anne: Or I don't have time to do the homework. I give my students homework. And I'll be like, okay, so I saw that you were able to record a couple of pieces of copy , and I'll just say it like that. Okay. So they'll be like, well, okay, so am I ready for my demo? And I'll say, well, I noticed that you only recorded two out of your 20 pieces of copy. And so if I'm giving you too much homework, you just let me know. But I will say that you need to invest the time in doing this, and I give you homework not to make you cry or not to overwhelm you. It's to kind of get you in a discipline where you can be working.    This is what it's going to be like to be working every day. This is what it's going to take for you to record this, edit it, prep it as if you were doing an audition, and just store it in that Dropbox and name it appropriately. Right? So all of these things that I'm giving for homework are really lessons in, here's what a voiceover artist does in their day. I'm submitting an audition, I'm naming it correctly, I'm uploading it on time. And so, most of the time I'll come back and say, I really need you to put in this time. Or they'll reschedule lesson after lesson after lesson, and then it will be like six months before I see them again. And I'm like, we've lost the momentum.    Lau: That's right. And it's like, can you see the forest through the trees?    Anne: Yeah.    Lau: Like is there logic to your line of, is there reasoning even to your line of thinking?    Anne: Yeah.    Lau: Like one of my coaches recently, an anecdote, one of my coaches said to me, I'm frustrated because this person wants to get on the demo track and wants to do the demo and is quickly, doesn't have money, da, da, da, but is not doing the homework and is coming to the table and just using a lot of excuses as to why they could not prepare for the session.    Anne: Yeah, exactly.   Lau: And he said, said simply, he was frustrated, but he said, do they realize they're going into voiceover? Do they even know what that profession is? And I said, no, they haven't made that connection yet. It's for us to do the teaching moments and making the connection that what you're going into is extremely demanding, and very fast, and crazy hours and blah, blah, blah, all this stuff. But a lot of our clients, Anne, I think you could say the same thing, right? They're not seeing the forest through the trees where they're seeing this overview of what they think the industry is, but the weeds, getting really into the weeds of what it is the coaching is simulating, trying to simulate what a work experience might be like. So if it's hard for you to do your homework, then it'll be near impossible for you to do the auditions and jobs.    Anne: Yeah. Oh, I teach a lot of long format narration, right? So when I give homework, they are the full spots. They'll be two to four minutes, sometimes even longer if it's e-learning. And they'll say, okay, but that was a really long spot. And I'm like, well, that's the reality of it, right? And so I need to make sure that you as an actor are completely committed to that script three quarters of the way through. Three minutes in, are you still as committed as you were in the beginning? And I want you to edit that entire thing as if it were an audition. So they're like, well, do I have to edit? And I'm like, I'm kind of giving it to you all at once so that you can understand what it takes, right, to put out a job that is a four-minute job. How long will it take you to edit that? And I want you to get better at it. I want you to get faster at it.    Lau: It's a simulated journey of --   Anne: Exactly.    Lau: It's a journey that you pay for to invest so that you can go with very little to no stakes. Right? To go into a high stake situation.    Anne: Yeah. And if you're working with me, right? And you wanna know how long it will take before you can do voiceover -- I mean, if you're just gonna meet with me once a week, then that's an hour out of your week that you've spent doing voiceover. You're gonna progress an hour at a time. And if you're gonna ask me 10 weeks later, I'm like, well, you've spent exactly 10 hours with me. And in a given workday, we might work eight hours a day or 10 hours a day, or we work a 40-hour work week. You've only worked with me for 10 hours total of your lifetime, and you wanna know if you're ready for a demo. Now, does that make sense? Does that make sense?    Lau: There's no sense to it. But then again, there's no understanding of the logic of what actually goes into it. Right? Like they literally may not get just yet what goes into building a career and building voiceover. And if someone is coming to me, which I get a lot; a client saying, I'm frustrated Lau because I'm already doing an hour or two a week of this. I can't put any more time into it, this is where I have to be kind and say, um, I get that. And you're busy and you work full-time, you have — I get that. But just continually regroup. And is your vision clear, understandable, and realistic about what you're going into?    Anne: Sure. Absolutely.    Lau: Because what you're going into is going to demand that you give as much as you can to it.    Anne: Yeah. Yeah. It is the hardest thing. And I will be the first to admit, because when I worked part-time and voiceover when I was working a full-time job, a family, a full-time job, and voiceover is tough. There's so much focus that has to go into voiceover. Because remember, people, this is our business. It is. We are entrepreneurs. And unless your full-time job is your other full-time business, and it's yours, you are typically also navigating an unfamiliar world of, oh, I have my own business. I have to generate my own business. I have to market myself. I have to put on a trillion different hats. And so there's more than just getting in the studio and recording and editing. Now there is all the marketing, there's all the --I've gotta have a website. I've gotta be able to do auditions so that I can present myself with opportunities so that I can get work. So there's a lot, in addition to just doing voiceover in your booth.   Lau: We're like one man bands. One woman bands. We really are. It's like putting on hats, hats, hats, hats. You have to own a lot of hats to be in this profession, because you're always gonna be shifting your hat. Any kind of business owner, if you're a solopreneur and you work alone, you're always shifting the hats. I think also too, Anne, we're fighting against the new mantra of teaching business leaders or teaching people who wanna be BOSSes that you can work for two or three hours a week and then sit on a beach for the rest of that time. That's like this new mantra that's out there in marketing. Like make six figures, make even seven figures. Lay on that beach with your children and just work a couple hours a week.    Anne: Couple hours a day. Yeah. If that, yeah.    Lau: I'm not gonna say it's a lie. I'm not gonna say that, but I am going to say there's a slight fabrication, maybe even an embellishment in that, because I know for a fact that even the tech billionaires are working all the time. And why are they working all the time? Because people who own stuff, run stuff, and lead stuff are innovators. They're inquisitive, they're interested. Whether you like what they do or agree with it is another thing. I'm just saying, they're invested in it. Their whole life is that. Even after they sell it sometimes.    Anne: Entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs, that is the definition.    Lau: Entrepreneurs.   Anne: Of an entrepreneur, Lau.    Lau: Yeah. We have a very, very well-known furniture company in New England that has been around for ages like 40 years. And they were run by two brothers, and they were constantly on TV together, constantly. The face --   Anne: Oh, who? Do I remember them?    Lau: Jordan's Furniture.    Anne: Oh yeah. Okay.    Lau: One of the brothers sold his piece years ago. Well, guess what? We never see the brother that owns it. We only see that brother on tv. And he's constantly there. And I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, I believe he's the one who still has the shares. I mean, they sold the whole company now. They've been in business for a long time. But the point is, I still see him. He's on all the time because he's the face of the company. He's the feel of the company. He's much older now. He still does all the commercial campaigns. He could say, hey, I'll be on the beach. Good luck. Good luck. He made his money, he made millions.    Anne: That's true.    Lau: Doesn't matter. His heart and his feel as a human being is to wanna stay connected to the company, to wanna stay connected to where it's going. So my point is, is like, are we ever laying back doing nothing to build a company? No. That's false.    Anne: Yes. Yeah. My return on investment, I mean, honestly, right? Investment is so much more than money. So I want you guys to really think in terms outside of money -- blood, sweat, tears, effort, practice, and of course money when you're investing money too. But that investment falls not just in your wallet, but in your time and in your commitment. And how long will it take? I think that that really is entirely up to you, (laughs). How long will it take to get a return on investment? And will you get a return on your investment?    I wish I could guarantee people things. And I always say, honestly, if you put the work in and you're committed, and as long as I can understand what you're saying, right? There's so much out there. Do I have the voice for voiceover? We all do. We all have our own unique voice, and it's beautiful, and it's beautiful to people in different ways. And so yeah, sure. It's not about the voice, to be honest with you. It's not really about the voice.   Lau: And sometimes there's just no real rhyme or reason. You could call it fate, you could call it mystical, you could call it whatever you want, as to what jobs are coming to you. In the same day, I mean, when I do my agent work, I'll get a $400 job in perpetuity with nothing residual or whatever, and okay. And then in the same day, I'll get a $15,000 job, which doesn't take a whole lot more time to record or a whole lot more effort. It's just the nature of it is very, very different. And the usage is very different, and the client is very different. And how they came to me and us, sometimes it's just fate. And other times it's the hard work of your branding, your marketing, your staying with it year after year that your name just floats into the universe and they get it.   Anne: Sure. And it just becomes a known brand. Yeah. So how much will I make (laughs)? Will I get a return on my investment and how long? BOSSes, it's up to you. It's up to you. So, and we have all the faith that you can absolutely do it. So, ah, good conversation. Good conversation.    Lau: I love that. I love that. So empowering.    Anne: So BOSSes, here's a chance, not only to be a BOSS at your own business, but here's a chance for you to use your voice to make an immediate difference in our world and give back to the communities that give to you. Visit 100voiceswhocare.org to commit. And a big shout-out to our favorite ipDTL sponsor. You too can connect and network like BOSSes. Find out more at ipdtl.com. You guys have an amazing week, and we'll see you next week.    Lau: See you next week, bye.   Anne: Bye.   Join us next week for another edition of VO BOSS with your host Anne Ganguzza. And take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at 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.

To create a successful voiceover performance, authenticity is key. This can involve using props, physicalizing the script, and infusing in personal experiences to deliver a realistic & engaging read. Anne & Lau emphasize the importance of intention, nuance, and understanding the corporate story & mission. Just as a chef must gather and prepare ingredients before cooking a delicious meal, hard work and effort are necessary before reaping the rewards.Want to improve your performance? Try taking notes, emphasizing key words, and using aids like pictures & videos, and of course, tune into VO Boss! We'll guide you through it.   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 the BOSS Superpower series. I'm your host Anne Ganguzza, and I'm here with my amazing special guest co-host, BOSS lady Lau Lapides.    Lau: Hey, hey. Hey, Anne.    Anne: So Lau, I am very excited that it's early morning, and I have my coffee.    Lau: Me too. What would we do without it?    Anne: I know. So many people have contacted me and said, it sounds like you and I in the booth in our podcast are just sharing a cup of coffee and shooting, shooting the breeze, having a conversation,    Lau: High balling the water, which you gotta do in between the coffee.    Anne: That's right. That's right.    Lau: Just to wash the vocal folds out.    Anne: Let me share — there's my big old water bottle with the coffee.    Lau: And then I'm gonna show everyone, I think everyone already knows this about us. Watch this. We're gonna do this as well.    Anne: (laughs). I love your lipstick. Oh, so here's mine.    Lau: Wonder Twin powers activate!   Anne: Right? Wonder powers activate. So, yeah, my red. But you know what, guys? Maybe one of these days I'm gonna switch it up.    Lau: Hmm. Ooh, you should. You should.    Anne: Oh gosh.    Lau: Naked lips. Let's see what naked lips look like without the red. That would be fun.    Anne: I feel like I'm so pale. (laughs), but I feel like I'm so pale.    Lau: You are pale. But that's your beauty.    Anne: Pale without my lips. Well.   Lau: But you know what I just noticed, Anne? You know what I just noticed? Literally, I just observed this, that we just used like three props. Three props.    Anne: Oh my God.    Lau: In our world.    Anne: We totally did.    Lau: And we were talking all the way through that, as we always do. And we had no problem using the props, talking and connecting, getting our points across. And that suddenly just dawned on me, like, that's a part of our world in finding connection --    Anne: That's what we do.   Lau: — and authenticity with each other.    Anne: That's what we do in the booth. Interesting. So let's chat about this. Let's take this apart, because you know, I do this a lot when I'm trying to talk to students about being authentic and believable with the script. And I think what just throws the whole wrench into it is that we've got these words in front of us, and all of a sudden we don't know how to make them a part of us. And interestingly enough, like we just demonstrated, and BOSSes out there, you just heard it, even if you're not looking at us on YouTube, we were able to pick up objects and share ideas, and have a conversation, engage with one another, and not miss a beat. And we weren't even thinking about it. But what I want you guys to do is let's take a look at, a more in-depth look at this to kind of figure out how we can take what we do in real life and translate it into the booth to be believable and authentic. Right? Bring that real life into the booth.    Now, one thing, I think that was first and foremost, we talked about props, right? Ah, I always have my trusty lipstick or my cup of coffee, or probably most of you have one of these, a phone or even just a mouse (laughs). Like you must have something in your booth.    Lau: I mean, it's endless what we have really with us. And doesn't that make us feel comforted and taken care of? And we identify with that brush in a lot of ways. It's part of our life.    Anne: I'm bringing all my makeup out. I've even got jewelry in here, but (Lau laughs), in case I --   Lau: I think a man's gonna pop up all of a sudden. (laughs),    Anne: Gosh only knows I have tons of these, the headphones in there. So now, if you're trying to sound authentic and believable, one thing that we've covered multiple times in our podcast is there's not a perfect voice. Right? There's all sorts of imperfection in our voices, and a lot of that can translate -- I mean, not that — everybody has a beautiful, wonderful voice all on their own. You don't have to perform behind the mic, right? It just is beautiful when we're engaging. And so props can help us to bring that scene to life, right? I know I just had a really wonderful workshop with the amazing Ellen Dubin, and she was talking about video game acting, and all of it was about blocking, get up, move around, change your position. Do that, because that's gonna add that reality.    And I'm always telling people physicate behind the mic, because that's gonna make our vocals not perfect for some reason. If we sit silent and straight behind the booth, and we just read these words, hello everyone, and welcome to the VO BOSS podcast, and the BOSS Superpower series, right? So I'm just reading, but I'm not moving, that physical part of having a prop, having somebody to talk to 00 expressing, expressing with our bodies.    Lau: I love this. You know, you had me physicate. Like I have never heard anyone use that word. So I'm stuck on physicate. But yeah, I would love voice actors to take it a step farther and just Johnny Depp it out. Like take their script and go somewhere. Go to a store, go to a Starbucks, go to a library, go be in your car, and I want you to deliver that. Deliver the line as part of your universe.    Anne: What a great idea.    Lau: Yeah!   Anne: Yeah.    Lau: Right? Doesn't the booth at times sort of pen us and it becomes boxy to us in our minds where we can literally move it outside, move it, and see how it flows and works, and physicate in that environment. Like, if I'm ordering a drink or I'm getting food, or I'm sitting at a table, or I'm da da -- how would that line live within that universe versus only within the universe of the booth? I mean, ultimately, we can't do that on every script, but as part of your actor's work, it's well worth the time to do that so that you can bring that imagination back into the reality of your beliefs.    Anne: Sure.    Lau: And relive that, you know, relive those moments.    Anne: What I like is, even if, alright, let's say you've got a very dry corporate narration script, right? Maybe a company talking about their corporate responsibility, which may not be the most exciting stuff that you'll ever hear in the world. So for me, I'm always telling people, in order to kind of make it sound conversational, and it may not be written conversational at all, or authentically, or it's basically like here, this is stuff that you would typically read. You wouldn't necessarily say it out loud. You would typically just read it and then understand it as information that the company has provided to you. Take that script and put it into your own words. So you might have this long run-on line that's talking about corporate responsibility and all of these things about what we are doing to promote corporate responsibility in the workplace. And so take that, those words, and just put it into your own words.    And when you can take that sentence, which sometimes most of the time is a run-on sentence and formulate your own speech about it, or your own personal conversation about it to someone else, explain it to someone else, that's gonna give you the idea behind the melody and the point of view that you wanna take. And then all you do is, when you get in the booth, replace it with the words. But you have the intent, you have the point of view, you have the thought of, here, it's this idea, and then this idea, and then I'm gonna combine it with this idea. And then that's the finished sentence. So it's kind of allowing you to regroup the information that's presented in the sentence in a very structured way and creating it in your own authentic way.    Lau: That's right. And you have to think of your work like you're layering a cake. You have the cake; to some degree, you have the cake. Even if you're at the beginning of your career, you still have some sort of cake. It might be a demo, it might be a beginner level studio, whatever it is. But I have to layer that over time and make it more interesting. So for instance, if I were to take my pen, my trusty prop, and talk about my corporate responsibility script, I might take a note on that. Because if I'm working in corporate, I'd be writing down minutes, I'd be taking notes as I went. And that puts me in a mindset, a frame. It gives me a framework to work by that when I'm corporate -- and this is just my choice, it's not the right choice, it's just my choice — when I'm corporate, I always tend to write a few notes. I tend to take a moment to write things down. That changes my sound, it changes my pace, it changes everything.    Anne: So that physical action of writing something down — also, the fact is, is what would you write down? Right? If you had that big, long run on sentence, right? What are the notes that you would take? Right? Typically, those notes are the most important parts of the sentence, right? Those are the notes that you as an actor want to probably linger on a little longer. So when we talk about being authentic, and Lau, and I, when we're speaking, our pacing isn't the same. Sometimes I, I pause, like I just did, and sometimes my words are longer. And usually the ones that are are longer the ones I want her to hear more. And so when you're creating those notes, right, you're creating, this is an important point that I wanna express to someone. So that word can be a little bit longer than maybe the word the (laughs) or the word at the beginning. At the, at the, or just tiny little words that connect. Beginning is an important word. So at the beginning, notice how at the becomes almost like a, I don't know, a 16th note in melody if I was speaking vocally, but in the beginning, beginning is an important word, so I'm gonna linger on that.    Lau: We can emphasize, you need to linger on that, right? If every word is the same, and every word is important, nothing's important. (laughs).   Anne: Right? It sounds monotonous and robotic.    Lau: Like what's important if every word is important, right?    Anne: Right.    Lau: But if I take that pen -- and to me this is a corporate moment or a business moment, or whatever you wanna call it-- I think maybe I'm gonna do bullets, how I would do in my life. I’d take a sentence, I'd take a thought, and I'd pull a word or two out of it that are my emphasis words, my bullets, and do like little bullets. and say, wow, out of that sentence, I got coffee. That was the word of the day for me, coffee as a bullet. So that when I go back and I review that for my speaking, I can remember, I can mark that coffee, that the word coffee or the name of the coffee is really an emphasis for me.    Anne: Sure. Absolutely.    Lau: This helps me with that. Like, because then I'm gonna say coffee, like Starbucks coffee.    Anne: Right.    Lau: And I'm gonna use this.    Anne: And the other thing too that I think is super important to remember is that we talked about you taking the script and going out into the real world with it, right, and start practicing with it and playing off of maybe someone else. Notice how you said, well, let's play off of someone else. I mean, when we started this podcast, you and I were talking to one another. We were engaging with one another.    Lau: Yep.    Anne: Well, when we're sitting here in our studios behind the mic with a script, you cannot be alone (laughs) just saying. In your head, you must be the person that is speaking. And you must also have your imaginary friend that you are speaking to. And so you want to make sure that you are engaging with that audience member or that listener. And so you must talk to them, and they will have reactions for you or questions or comments. Right? And you cannot just start talking to them like, oh gosh, have you ever had a friend, Lau, that you can't get a word on edgewise? Like, and it's basically all about yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, ya. It's all about them. Right? All about their monologue.    And so when you're behind the mic, don't let it be all about your monologue. Let it be about you engaging with your listener and allowing that listener a beat to acknowledge, to respond, to have a question, whatever that is. And I'm not talking about you have to time things, but that's an imaginary beat where I've said something, and now Lau, I'm looking for you to respond, right? You just shook your head, right? You just went, mm-hmm. So that's where I think we need to also invite that into our script, right? And invite that real life into our script.    Lau: You have to do it. It's so important. And have cheaters if you have trouble reaching that at times. Like in our daily life, we're not always great conversationalists, or we're not always in the mood for a talk or whatever. So you have to have those cheaters, whether you're talking to your kid or your dog, or a photo or a video or something that stimulates you into thinking, this is part of my daily experience. This is part of a reality of my life that I can connect to right now, that I can make real. Because I may not be in the mood or in the mindset every single day to connect to that particular audition or to connect to that particular product.    Anne: What I love is like literally like now that I've sat here, and I'm taking notice and, and BOSSes out there, really, let's watch the YouTube video on this, because I was just watching you, Lau, and everything you said, you had your hands, everything you said, and I was responding. I was shaking my head, I was going, mm-hmm. So that's the parts that you have to play in your script. And believe it or not, even in a mundane medical narration script or in a telephone prompt, believe it or not -- I'm always imagining, here I am and I'm talking to the listener and they've got their thoughts about me (laughs). Because maybe they don't wanna listen to an automated attendant. Maybe they're angry, maybe they're frustrated. But yet I will still talk to them with a tone where I'm like, I know you're frustrated. I know that you don't wanna listen to my voice, but let me help you. Okay? And so that point of view, that intention — all of a sudden, I'm speaking about intentions so much lately -- I think that intention, before you even approach voicing or opening your mouth, I think your intention is so very important.    Lau: So very important. And you know, in the script, in this context, it would be an actor's intention because you're in a false reality. You're not in your real reality; you're in this technical reality.    Anne: Sure.    Lau: But then you have intentions or purpose, or whatever you call it in your daily life and thinking about, wow, how much do I care about things? How much do I connect? How much do I try to make action happen and go well? Well, I have to bring that intention into the booth. I have to bring that into the booth. And I think if we were honest, we would say, in our daily life, half the stuff we do is crap. It's like chores. It's like, I have to go to the dump because I have --   Anne: I don't want to go to the dump.   Lau: -- bring my trash. Right? (Anne laughs). But how do I have a joyous life still being able to go to the dump? Well, I keep the intention alive that it's not about me hating to go to the dump. It's about me wanting to have a clean and wonderful household.    Anne: Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely.    Lau: That's really what it is. So it's the same with the script. if I have a disdain or I have a dislike for the delivery or for the language, or for the content --   Anne: Or the message, maybe. Right? Yeah.    Lau: — then I'm skirting the intent. What's the intent? Oh, the intent is to get you to understand how this new product worked, or, or how the new program is gonna help your lifestyle. That's really what it is. It's like a, in acting, we call this the super intention, the super objective.    Anne: Maybe this is the wrong way to phrase it, but I think intention can change throughout the script. So you don't come at the script in the first couple of sentences with a particular intention and it stays that same intention. Because a lot of times, right, we're there to tell a story. And so intention point of view changes along with the storyline. And if you're not necessarily reading that, right, or understanding that, then you're not doing a good job at telling the story. Lau, at the beginning when we were talking about coffee, I was like, oh, thank God, coffee. I was, was that sense of relief. And then we started talking about, well, my lipstick, I get excited, right?    Lau: Yeah.    Anne: So I have a different, and it may not be an extreme change in my emotion, but I talked about my lipstick. I'm like, it made me smile. Right? And so that was a different intention. And as we flowed with the conversation, our point of view changed. Our intention changed to help us to go along and flow with the storyline.    Lau: Yeah, exactly. And I think that if you BOSSes listening in can have fun, you know, treat it like a board game, have fun with your actor friend, or your accountability buddy, or even with your husband — have fun and take a few minutes and say, okay, what are all the things I'm using in my world here that can be helpful to the delivery of the read? But, oh, wait a second. What's the intention? What's the intention of this? Why do I take a moment and put this on? There's a reason for it, there's a purpose for it, whatever that is. Why do I pick up my water bottle and drink it? Sure, it makes me feel good and it's delicious. But the intention is what, to hydrate.    Anne: To be healthy.    Lau: To to be healthy, right? Why do I drink my coffee cup if I'm delivering a script, right? It's not just for Anne to see that I'm drinking coffee. It's for me to feel energized, to feel warm, to feel connected. Coffee's a big psychological connector for a lot of people. Right?    Anne: And notice all of the emotions that go along with that. I mean, that is something to really think about. I think that, you know, I'm always telling my students that there's a purpose for every word. Even if you don't agree with all of the words that are there, there's a purpose for them being on the paper. Somebody somewhere at some point thought about what they wanted to communicate, and all of those words have meaning. So to just read through them as if they didn't have meaning or any point of view, I think is a disservice. It's a disservice to the copy. It's a disservice to the story that you're telling. And so, no matter how nuanced it is, right? You don't have to be like, oh my God, I'm so happy! And then, oh, I'm very, very -- you know, it doesn't have to be that to be dramatic. Nothing has to be dramatic. As a matter of fact, the more nuanced you are, I think, the more you, you can really connect. And the people that are listening, they'll get that. And sometimes I feel like nuances mean more. I really believe that.   Lau: Nuances are life.    Anne: Yeah, exactly.    Lau: Right?   Anne: And it can really, really have meaning. And so I say look for the meaning in the point of view. And the point of view to me is synonymous with bringing yourself to the copy. Bringing an emotion to the copy that is reflective of how you feel the company would like to bring that emotion out to the potential client.    Lau: Anne, hold on one second. Hold on. I'm coughing. (laughs).    Anne: All right, no problem.    Lau: I love nuances though. I wanna say something about that. My intention (laughs).    Anne: Now see, there's a real world moment there where Lau is actually having a little bit of a coughing spell and(laughs), see, and I've reacted to it. Show a little bit of concern.   Lau: I don’t mind if you show that too, Anne; I don't mind if you keep that in, because the intention sometimes changes with the same item. So we don't have to stay static on our intentions, is exactly what you saying. The nuance of being hydrated is important. We do it and we know it's important. But see how my intention changed? I had to get myself out of the coughing fit by dealing with the vocal folds quickly so that I could continue the conversation. So it deepened, the stakes got higher. It became much more important that I drank the water.    Anne: Oh yeah. Absolutely.    Lau: So the prop in itself changes. It changes, the intention gets deeper. You change it. You have the power, you have the superpower to take your environment and have it utilize it in your favor to solve your problem or to fill your need.    Anne: And I think also -- so it goes beyond just like a surface — here are some words on a piece of paper. Let me read them and let me try to figure out what this company is saying. Like what we've done is we've actually brought in so many components of our real world experiences to help us to tell this story better. And I think it warrants, BOSSes, it warrants a little bit of time from you before you run in your studio and do your audition. I say this all the time, I feel like there's this, I don't know, a long time ago, there was like, somebody said, you must do this many auditions in a day. And all of a sudden we become like, I must get 60 auditions out a day in order to be successful in voiceover.    And in reality, like getting 60 auditions out a day probably does nothing for your performance in terms of, if you're just so intent on rushing through them, and you're not thinking about what's the story? How am I going to bring this to life? And I believe it takes a few minutes of your time -- not a ton. You don't have to spend hours breaking apart a script. But you do need to spend a few minutes really kind of reading, rereading, trying to find out what is the true message. And again, I'm always saying, sometimes we will get auditions, and I'll be like, I have no idea what this is even talking about. Now when that happens, that means that Anne has to look at the script again and again, and really try to read those words. Do my Google, Anne GanGoogle, do my Google to find out what I can, if the product is listed or the company is listed, or even any phrase that seems like it might be a tagline, Google it. God, we are so lucky, right, to have that?   Lau: So lucky.    Anne: And to just try to understand what is the story? Because again, somebody was paid probably a good deal of money to sit down and write that story. And you just may not be privy to what product it is or what company it is. But you have to understand what that story is. And I think a lot of times, it's probably purposely vague because they wanna see who the actors are. (laughs). They wanna see who can bring those words alive and tell the story. And that requires our imagination. And every time I ask somebody to think about corporate and what's your moment before when you're gonna do this corporate responsibility -- everybody's like, what? Like, what do you mean? What's my moment before? Why would I ever say this?    And you really must, because to somebody at that company, it's their heart. Like they're responsible, like their corporate responsibility is, this is their purpose. This is something probably that came very deep within, or I wanna say this, I mean, unless you're an evil company, right? I mean, but (laughs) for most companies, like my company mission, my company purpose, come from a very deep, deep within my soul because I formed that company because I believe that I had a product that would help someone. And that's what I like to believe about all corporate scripts. And that helps me, by the way, to get into a purposeful and positive mind frame, to be able to voice just about any corporate script. Because that's how I, I assume every founder or owner of a company must feel at some point like, I'm gonna form this company 'cause I have this great idea. This is gonna help people. And yeah, of course, maybe I can make some money too off of it. But I like to always consider the heart mission of a company or a product that.   Lau: Love that. Because it's so easy to flatten out and just perfunctory-ize -- I think I just made up a new word. Perfunctory-ize, meaning just not come with any sense of joy, energy or imagination to something that you don't care about or you don't know about. But to understand, and this is to me the true empathy factor of nuance. Like to me, the more nuanced person -- like you're a tremendously nuanced person because you have a depth of understanding and knowledge and empathy --   Anne: Empathy is huge.    Lau: — and what someone else is going through and living through.    Anne: Yeah.    Lau: And you don't have to necessarily know or have experienced it yourself. You just have the knowledge and the history behind you to know it is a truth. It is their truth. And so I have to take a little bit of time to find intention to represent their truth. And that's nuance right there.    Anne: Yeah. Yeah. I feel that. If somebody asked me what's the most important component as a voice actor that you can have? Or what's the most important thing to think about as a voice actor to be authentic and believable and real when you're voicing a script? I would say empathy. And empathy toward your listener. Who is your listener? What are their joys? What are their pains? How can you help them? And how can what you're saying make them feel better, look better, I don't know, make more money, make them healthier — whatever it is, come from a place of service?I just really believe that empathy is the one word that everybody should just have in their back pocket for a great read.    Lau: Well, the more you give the more you do get. And sometimes the get is really like this inner true feeling, whatever that feeling is, that you then connect to the experience. And so you can bring that back to the experience. And so that's why I believe, you know, as actors and as vocal actors, we get addicted to the work, because we get addicted to the feeling of that authentic getting back. So the more we give, the more we potentially can get back. But we have to give true and authentic intention. And if we don't, then it's flat and it's kind of boring, and we fizzle out quickly; we get exhausted.    Anne: Sure, sure.    Lau: It's actually depleting.    Anne: And I think, you know how I can always tell I have, I have a really great read is when I feel it. When I feel it.   Lau: When you feel it. Right.    Anne: But I feel it.    Lau: Right.    Anne: Because sometimes things just happen and it's just like, I don't know how that happened, but it just did.    Lau: It just did.    Anne: It was amazing. Right?   Lau: That's the magic.    Anne: That's the magic. And I wish that I had that for every single read that I do. And I think that as an actor is what I try to achieve, right --   Lau: Yeah.    Anne: — is the feel it felt right. It felt good, it felt authentic and it felt believable. So I always try to tell people to just feel and not listen. And it's so hard to not listen because I think from a very young age, when I got behind the mic and all of a sudden my voice was amplified from that mic, right? Then I felt like, ooh, now I have to sound even better. And interestingly enough, that's not what we're looking for. We're looking for just the you that is amplified louder by a device that sits in front of you on a day-to-day basis. We're really just looking to connect with you.    Lau: That's right. And I, I would say be careful of chasing the high. 'Cause a lot of people come in and whether it's the money or the feeling of excitement or whatever — don't get addicted to chasing the high or the dopamine kick. Just know it will be there at times for you. But you gotta like -- think of my analogy of like, you gotta take the trash to the dump. There's a lot of work, there's a lot of groundwork that happens in order for you to come back to the clean home and go, ooh, smells fresh. And I'm feeling good. So you can't get one without the other. You can't get the reward without the real work put in.    Anne: Absolutely. What a great analogy, Lau. Like honestly, like we could just, just all go home now. Like take it to the dump (Lau laughs). BOSSes, take it to the dump, then come back.   Lau: Take it to the dump.   Anne: Take it to the dump and come back refreshed. I love it. Lau, what a really cool discussion. Thank you so much.    Lau: My pleasure.    Anne: BOSSes as individuals, you know, sometimes it can seem difficult to make a huge impact, but of course we've been talking with Lau today and how we can make an impact. Well, if you ever wished that you could make more of an impact with your communities in ways that you never before thought possible, find out at 100voiceswhocare.org. And thank you so much to ipDTL that allows Lau and I to connect and have these amazing conversations. Find out more at ipdtl.com. You guys, have an amazing week and we'll see you next week. Bye.   Join us next week for another edition of VO BOSS with your host Anne Ganguzza. And take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at 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.