VO BOSS

  How do you turn a lifelong passion for music, radio, and video games into a successful career in voice acting? Join me as I chat with Jim Fronk, a seasoned radio veteran who transitioned into voice acting, entertaining people with his dynamic performances and engaging characters.  But that's not all, Jim’s talents extend beyond the microphone. He's also a whizz in website development, skills he's utilized to build successful websites for fellow voice actors. He delves deep into the magic of website creation, including the critical elements of a voiceover website and how you can create a one-page website in record time. Get ready to be inspired, entertained, and better yet, educated by Jim's wealth of knowledge and experience in the voice acting industry. Don't miss out! About Jim Jim has always been creative and secretively a tech geek. While working at radio stations, he gravitated towards graphic arts and webmaster duties. Through the years he created websites, not only for some of his ventures but for other radio friends and their DJ/entertainment side hustles. When Jim entered the VO world, he was amazed at how much it cost to have a basic cookie-cutter website built for a voice actor. So Jim created his 3-Hour Learn-By-Doing Website Creation Class. For a fraction of the cost, he teaches you how to create, update, and expand your own VO website as your business expands. Check out www.WebsitesForVO.com for more details. 00:01 - Intro (Other) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss, a V-O boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza.  00:20 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey everyone, welcome to the V-O Boss podcast. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and today I am very excited to be here with a very special guest, our 20-plus year radio vet turned voice actor, Jim Fronk. Oh, thanks for having me. Oh, jim, jim, jim, let me just tell the listeners a little bit about you, oh by all means.  00:40 I'm glad that you were so excited. Thank you for being here, jim. Let me tell our listeners a little bit about you. You've been behind the microphone in your happy place since you were 10, the tender age of 10. And since then, jim has been acting and singing his way into our hearts, doing improv, stand-up comedy, live, announcing, djing on air, and now he's in his very own 5x8 padded closet capturing our hearts. So, jim, thank you, thank you, thank you for being here with us today.  01:10 - Jim Fronk (Guest) Well, thank you, I'm glad that I'm padded, because the funny thing is I got out of radio because it got so impersonal. I started voice tracking and I was on nine different stations, six different states, at the same time, and I was just in a 10x10 room recording and I'm sick of that, so I ended up in a 5x8 room.  01:28 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Now a 5x8. Yeah, somehow that's smaller, so okay, but it's padded, so that's better.  01:33 - Jim Fronk (Guest) And this is my happy place. I love being here, I love playing behind the microphone. So I started at 10 years old singing. My dad always said that I would either be a politician or a radio disc jockey. Because of my gift of gab and the way that I like to spin the truth now and then, what would you sing?  01:50 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That's my question. What genre would you sing? Jazz, you sing in classic rock.  01:54 - Jim Fronk (Guest) Classic rock for the most part.  01:56 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Classic rock yeah.  01:58 - Jim Fronk (Guest) Actually back in 2000,. I was Ed McMahon's nextbigstarcom winner of the rock category. What did you sing? I sang Better Roses by Bon Jovi.  02:07 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh, my God. Of course, at least she sang Bon Jovi. I was just going to say I'm thinking, bob Seeger, I don't know why. I've done some Bob. Yeah, I've done some Bob Seeger, I like the doors, yeah.  02:16 - Jim Fronk (Guest) I like the doors, my go-to when the bands are playing and they're like hey, come on up and sing. My go-to is Roadhouse Blues.  02:22 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh God, if we are lucky bosses, we might get to hear, I don't know, a bar or two.  02:27 - Jim Fronk (Guest) Maybe if you go to Uncle Roy's this year or maybe actually if you went to Uncle. Roy's next year. I'll talk to them.  02:33 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Next year. Oh yeah, hey, I personally have never heard you sing and I would absolutely love to hear you sing.  02:39 - Jim Fronk (Guest) You might be able to YouTube something Just saying there might be some poison out there.  02:44 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Before we talk a little bit more about your journey into voiceover, because you've had such a long history behind the mic, I need to ask you about the 7.36 pounds of shelled blue peanut M&Ms that you requested from me in my little inquiry into hey, you want to be a podcast guest? What do you require? And so you asked me for shelled blue peanut M&Ms, and I could only find the brown ones.  03:08 - Jim Fronk (Guest) And yet they're still not here.  03:10 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Somehow, oh, but they're virtually here.  03:11 - Jim Fronk (Guest) Oh, virtually Okay, great, I don't know. I was just trying to think of something weird to put on there that I need, because I really don't need anything.  03:20 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I'm actually kind of hungry for some M&Ms. But, Jim, it's already been a wonderful five minutes chatting with you. I can't wait to dive deeper into your journey. So share with our listeners how your journey kind of got to be 20 plus years behind the mic doing radio. How did you get there? As a small child you were singing, right. Were you singing classic rock at the age of 10?  03:43 - Jim Fronk (Guest) Well, I was singing what was considered just normal pop music, I guess, yeah, and then classic rock was just music, but I did that. But when I got into school I really got into mixing things and I was making mixtapes before mixtapes were a thing.  03:59 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I made mixtapes. I remember them.  04:01 - Jim Fronk (Guest) I was scratching records so things would skip at a certain point and you put a quarter on top, make a knot skip. No-transcript, Mr Jaws, Dr Demento.  04:11 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh God, yes, I might be dating myself here, but I listen to Dr Demento every Sunday evening. Love Dr.  04:16 - Jim Fronk (Guest) Demento oh my God my favorite show. But they always had Mr Jaws. It was kind of like Mr Jaws, so why are you here? Right now, and then it'd be a song, so I used to try to do those myself.  04:27 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And Delilah. I listened to Delilah too. Delilah yes, yeah, delilah's on the air forever. But then I got into radio.  04:33 - Jim Fronk (Guest) When I was in high school, I was at a party.  04:35 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Okay.  04:36 - Jim Fronk (Guest) I was a senior, it was a junior's party. He was trying to be class president and I was just there being me. I mean, I am your extrovert, you know I talk to everybody, I say hi to everybody. It gets me in trouble sometimes, but whatever. But I was just being me and this guy walked up and said hey, listen, I'm the lawyer of this small little cable radio station downtown Woburn, which is my hometown. He goes do you want to try out? Okay, so I went home the next day. I got my Peter Brady tape recorder. We have to hold down the record and you know what I'm talking about.  05:04 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I know exactly. I used one of those in college when I was recording textbooks on tape. Oh, there you go. I know the realistic. Or it was a Panasonic, I can't remember.  05:13 - Jim Fronk (Guest) I think it was realistic because I did have a radio shack within walking distance and my transistor was in there. Everybody did.  05:19 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Wait, I'm sorry, but we're just going all over the place. So my brothers are very much into Heath Kits, heath Kits, heath Kits. Yeah, building electronics Like we did that from Radio Show. Oh my God, they would just build their own little like transistor radios and stuff.  05:29 - Jim Fronk (Guest) I never got into that but I mean, as I got into radio I did get my engineering junior engineering badge from the engineering people, but whatever. So I went home the next day I had my Peter Brady tape recorder and I had my Precorp eight track player, my stereo system at home, and yes, I'm name dropping here. With Precorp I put in Led Zeppelin and you know I talked out of a Led Zeppelin song and I had to wait because you couldn't rewind eight tracks so you only had one take. Well, you had to wait for the next song. It took me all afternoon to get like three intros and three outros and I ended up getting the gig, which was kind of cool. They made me change my name. They didn't want anybody to know that a high school kid was working at school, but yet they gave me like one of those shiny, flashy 80s type of radio jackets with my name on it and the call letters and I did J at all the high school functions and things. So everybody knew.  06:21 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Can I ask what name they gave you? I was Jumping.  06:23 - Jim Fronk (Guest) Jim Jacobs.  06:25 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) All right, Jumping Jim. This just came to me. Jumping Jim.  06:27 - Jim Fronk (Guest) Jacobs, 935-3378, wlhg. Wow, larry Habar Enterprises. I love it. Larry lives two towns away from me right now. We had lunch about a month ago. The owner of the station.  06:39 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Now explain to me. So you just were fascinated. Did you listen to the radio all the time? I loved radio. And then you were just mimicking all the DJs because the DJs got all the chicks. Apparently that's what it was back in the 80s anyways.  06:51 - Jim Fronk (Guest) Yeah, have you heard of Dale Dorman? He's a Boston guy from KISS, but Dale Dorman and one other guy I forget his name, but they invented top 40 radio. They were at a bar one night and they watched people put quarters in to hear the same 15, 20 songs all night long Sure.  07:05 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That makes sense, so they made that format.  07:07 - Jim Fronk (Guest) And Dale Dorman was also on the local TV station as hey, kiddies, that after school type of thing, and I just loved the guy and I just wanted to be him, I wanted to do what he did and I just set focus on it and I ended up doing it. I met Dale Dorman. The program director of the small station I worked for was the assistant PD of KISS 108 Boston and that's where Dale Dorman was, and she brought us in for a program meeting and God, my mind was just blown at that point and I said this is what I need to do. Got out of high school, I went to college for it, went to school for it, interned, did many, many years, and it was like here.  07:43 I am learning from these people that I think are phenomenal but, they're teaching because they can't make ends meet. So I got out of radio for about 10 years 15 years, and I did stand up comedy and I always talked about getting on the air again, because if I'm doing morning radio, I can't hear them not laughing when. I tell jokes, I just play a soundtrack. So I turned 35 and I said, you know, what Everybody laughs then yeah, exactly.  08:08 I turned 35 and said I have to do this, so I just put everything else aside and I did it.  08:14 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Now let me ask you, because you said most of the people couldn't afford working in radio, so they were teachers. Is that always been the case in radio? Is it always been? Maybe not the best paying gig, but the people in radio love radio. I mean, it's just.  08:27 - Jim Fronk (Guest) It's like being in an abusive relationship. It really is.  08:31 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It slaps you around and I'll tell you. It's like podcasting I'm gonna say because for me, I'm gonna tell you that podcasting is my radio show. In a way it really is.  08:41 - Jim Fronk (Guest) The only difference is I was waking up at 2.30 quarter of 3 every morning to get my butt whipped every day.  08:46 - Intro (Other) But yeah, it's definitely a passion.  08:48 - Jim Fronk (Guest) You hear that word passion with VO. It's the same thing with radio. It was just something that I needed to do. I needed to have that live interaction and as far as the money goes, it's kind of like VO.  08:58 - Intro (Other) It depends what market that you're being planned in.  09:01 - Jim Fronk (Guest) I was doing mornings in Nashua, new Hampshire, which is about 30 miles away from Boston, as the crow flies, about a 40 minute trip. My salary compared to somebody doing the exact same thing on the exact same type of station, they probably were about five or six times more than I was making Just the average guy. Now if you became a star then you're up in the quarter of a million dollars in Boston market but not in Nashua. But I loved it and you got the perks I mean I'd go to concerts, I'd be backstage, at concerts.  09:30 My favorite thing was going on stage and throwing t-shirts out at people and saying, hey, I'm frog from Frank 106 or from 104.9 the Hawk, and people scream and they know me and I just love that. I really love that.  09:43 Just being a part of the community. I was very fortunate that the morning show I did for 106, 3 Frank FM I was part of the community. I would announce football games. My daughter did cheerleading but I would announce the popcorn of football games and I would go and people would know who I was. But I was very active in the community and I'd love that. I love being known.  10:01 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) You were like a local celebrity.  10:03 - Jim Fronk (Guest) Yeah, but I was able to take that celebrityism and put it to good work as opposed to evil Like I did back in the 90s. Oh sorry.  10:12 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And that's another podcast.  10:14 - Jim Fronk (Guest) Yeah, I don't think the ever straining owners are up yet for that one, so we really can't talk about it.  10:18 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, now 20 years in radio, 20 years 20 plus, yeah Now did you say you were doing synonyms, that you were doing radio, and then you went into comedy, or how did that work?  10:28 - Jim Fronk (Guest) I was doing comedy. First I was a wedding DJ, function DJ, when karaoke was all the buzz. I got my own karaoke company. I had like 35 shows.  10:38 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Look at you being a boss entrepreneur at a young age. I mean bosses, and why you to listen to this? All of the people that come on the show, I mean they're entrepreneurs in so many ways, and that was so creative. I mean, jim, first of all, just being in high school right, and going after your dreams and having the bravery to go try out for the radio station and get the gig right At such a young age. And then you've got to be brave. Did you stand up comedy? That's for sure.  11:03 - Jim Fronk (Guest) You know stand up comedy. Five minutes can seem like 20 minutes. Yes, 20 minutes can seem like five minutes. It all depends on the energy of the crowd. But I tell you that first time I got up on stage, the very first time I was hosting a pretty big deal. It was at Berkeley, 5,000 seats. I was hosting it Not really hosting telling jokes, just kind of introducing people.  11:24 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) But I had a couple of jokes. I'm seeing kind of, yeah, I had a couple of jokes.  11:26 - Jim Fronk (Guest) That first joke I told, and when they laughed, that wave that hit me, that became my drug.  11:33 - Intro (Other) That became what I craved.  11:35 - Jim Fronk (Guest) That became what I had to accomplish on a Monday night up in Vermont for a slice of pizza, or a Tuesday doing an open mic night at the KFC in Volrica Mass. I mean, it's just, you did what you had to do, but it was again a passion for it.  11:49 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Now okay. So, passion aside, I'm sure there were some jokes that probably didn't make it, and so did you experience like imposter syndrome. I mean I can only imagine Like I think stand up comedy's got to be one of the hardest skills. I mean it's like improv too. I feel like we all need it and it just really builds our character, because there's just so many things we have to be quick on our feet about. I'm sure that all of this is leading up to a really fabulous career in voiceover, because all of those skills have led up to who you are as an actor today.  12:21 - Jim Fronk (Guest) And as far as jokes bombing, I'm looking for a reaction. You can oh or boo or yeah. Hey, I got a reaction, and if something just didn't work, I really didn't care you laughed at it.  12:31 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh well, that didn't work.  12:32 - Jim Fronk (Guest) Pretty much, yeah, I mean sometimes I'd make a joke about it and take a paper out of my pocket and say our fake paper and say okay, scratch that one off the list.  12:40 Yeah, that didn't work, whatever, yeah, okay, that doesn't work in Poughkeepsie, all right, fine. But yes, everything I've done coming up to this has helped me in VO. You know, the radio, yeah, has contributed the live stuff, the comedy, the improv and all that. I got out of radio back in 2018 because it was just impersonal to me. I wasn't doing mornings, I wasn't doing a talk show. I craved that interaction. I didn't like just talking up 15 seconds of a song coming out, absolutely. I mean, I'm great at trivia, music trivia. You know, you give me 10 seconds of any song from 1960 to 1992 and I can probably tell you what it is, but it just wasn't fulfilling. It wasn't satisfying. I did get into flying drones for a bit believe it or not, a friend of mine, that's random, it really is, but it was a passion, I flew a drone.  13:28 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Radio VO drones.  13:29 - Jim Fronk (Guest) Yeah, well, I flew the drones and I loved it. I got a passion for it. I was making some great money doing cell tower inspections and infrared. At one point I had more money invested in drones than I did in Harley-Davidson's.  13:42 Or in your microphone maybe, or in my microphones. I'm even close. I'm completely. You know how many U87s Like. I sold one of my drones in two cameras and I bought my daughter a brand new Jeep. They were up there but it just wasn't what I wanted to do. I wanted to be behind the microphone. Okay, and a buddy of mine, AJ Duquette Actually I think you were on the show, a buddy of mine, aj Duquette, a radio guy. He's doing VO, and he told me about J Michael Collins and I was driving home year ago, april. I was driving home from New York City on Clubhouse and I think you were on it, j Michael, and I want to say Liz Atherton.  14:18 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh, we've done yeah, we've done a bunch of yeah. And I asked the question.  14:21 - Jim Fronk (Guest) I just got my demos back and I was like, well, how do I know if I have a good demo? Yeah, and J Michael we talked afterwards and he went over it and gave me the good, the bad and the ugly and that just got me on the path of okay. So I'm going to talk to these people. I'm not going to be afraid to approach anybody. I'm very approachable and I'm going to approach as many people in this business that are where I want to be and it's been great. And that's my advice to everybody Don't be afraid to approach anybody, because if somebody's not approachable to you or if somebody doesn't want you to approach them, you don't want them in your circle. Why would you want them in your circle? You know, I like going to Dallas and seeing Ann Ganguza from down the hall and going Ann, and she's like jam. I mean, that's what it's all about Making connections, having some fun.  15:09 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It's all about the relationships, really Absolutely about the relationships. So let's kind of continue on with the voice acting. So you got into voice acting around. You're saying around 2018?.  15:21 - Jim Fronk (Guest) Oh, no, no, no, I got into drones in 2018. Oh okay, excuse me, I actually celebrated two years in VO from when I started in September this past September. So it's been about two years, a month or two, but I got into it. I got some training. I did about five or six months with the training with a great coach, tim Powers, you've met.  15:38 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Tim, actually I know Tim absolutely.  15:40 - Jim Fronk (Guest) Tim has become a great mentor and even a better friend. But from there I got my demos and, like I said, how do I know they're good? And I just started doing the marketing thing. I've since redone my demos. I'm a different animal now, different everything. I kind of went feet first and I thank my wife so much for that. We talk about not making money in radio.  16:01 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) We all know the struggles that actors have, and we are actors Not making money in voiceover.  16:06 - Jim Fronk (Guest) Yeah, I mean just acting alone.  16:08 God bless my wife. She's very successful in the pharmaceutical business. So when the time came, we sat down and talked and she said, when we first met, I was making $5,000 a year less than you and you were in radio. And I'm like I know, but we have flipped the switch. She's gone so far. So she said do what you want to do. Invest what you need to invest. Get the right equipment. You know what you need. You've been in the business. You can build radio stations. Get what you need. So I did. And here I am two years later and I'm getting clients, I'm booking gigs, I'm doing animation, video games, e-learning. It's been great.  16:42 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) What would you say your favorite genre to work in is Because I'm always a big proponent of people bring their experience to behind the mic and I feel like maybe your stand-up comedy, your DJing, your networking I feel like that all works for you in specific genres Well, animation, I love.  17:01 - Jim Fronk (Guest) I love playing in animation. Right now I've got the allergies going on so my voice is kind of right now, but I love being able to just pop into a character and be like my mind is now melted, I'm with 3.0 and I will reveal the world. I mean, just have some fun. Word, of course I will. I am the evil. I am Ludo the evil one. I just love having fun with that. Video games I love the acting.  17:23 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I love the cinematography and the acting.  17:26 - Jim Fronk (Guest) I trained with Dave.  17:27 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Fornoy yes he's amazing.  17:29 - Jim Fronk (Guest) Yes, and once again people say how'd you train with Dave Fornoy? Yeah, I asked, I asked, I went to his website and I booked some sessions. And there we are. Dave's a great friend now, I mean he's become such a great mentor.  17:43 So I love video games. You know what I really love doing and I hate to say it because I have spent, I'm gonna say, $10,000 in training, maybe over the past couple of years, maybe even more. I hate to look at the numbers, but to beat the DJ out of me Every time that I step back into that DJ voice, my coach would say and now up here's the dealbies, just to snap me back. But I love doing tier three automotive.  18:03 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, yeah, tier three, automotive, yeah, and tier of DJ, it's radio DJ delivery.  18:07 - Jim Fronk (Guest) It's what I do in my sleep, so I'm really loving doing that. Absolutely. I've been training with Chris Zellman. He's been great.  18:15 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, tier three, automotive. I do a little bit of that myself, and it's not as easy as we want it to be, because they're really trying to cram a lot of words.  18:22 - Jim Fronk (Guest) But I was also production director of a six station cluster for many years. I was given the commercials away, so you know, so I know, and most of those were that type of delivery, yeah absolutely that sales delivery that hype. You know, no money down and you can. You know it's. Which is so 80s DJ. It's just ingrained in me so I do love that.  18:43 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And so now we all have to be authentic, and maybe not for tier three auto still. However, talk to me about authenticity and how. Maybe your background having a radio show I feel like having a radio show, you know, maybe not by just announcing commercials or announcing what the next song is, but I think if you're doing like talk radio and you're really getting down in personal with your listeners, I feel like that helps you to be authentic and you can kind of call upon that experience to really help you be authentic in your commercial delivery or even narration delivery or e-learning delivery.  19:16 - Jim Fronk (Guest) Before I was doing morning radio it was just that hype. Morning radio was kind of hype but it was a lot more comedy. We did bits. It was always like Frank's place with Jim and so-and-so or you know the Jim and so-and-so morning show. So it was always my animal to drive my vehicle and just to have that interaction was very conversational. And I did talk radio for the last three or four years of my career with radio and that became very conversational. That's just raw me. So when I was able to unlock that again, because we all know talking conversational and just talking like we're talking now is natural.  19:54 You should be able to do that. It's easy. Yeah, it's easy.  19:57 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) But it's not easy when there's a piece of paper.  19:59 - Jim Fronk (Guest) Yeah, when it's a piece of paper in front of you and it's somebody else's words. You have to learn how to do that Absolutely. One of the things that helped and hindered me was my ability for live read. I love being the first guy in workshops. I love reading stuff cold. I can't tell you how many times I'd be on the air and somebody would give me a piece of paper and say, read this.  20:18 And I have the ability to read about five or six seconds ahead of what I'm saying, which was good for that, but I was disconnected from my words. I was on autopilot.  20:28 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Any cold read is you're executing from left to right and you don't know what the story is.  20:33 - Jim Fronk (Guest) But even after I read it once or twice, I would still be reading ahead which hindered me to get that connectivity with the listener, with the client, with the audience. So when I learned to put that behind me and I'm gonna say live in the moment but read in the moment, be in the moment, my conversational game went up considerably and I think that I have a very conversational read when it is asked for that.  20:59 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) No sales, no announcers. That's right, no announcers. And that's getting the DJ and getting the radio beaten out of you.  21:05 - Jim Fronk (Guest) Yeah, but then I get to go back to tier three and have some fun with it. Yeah, and have your fun. Then, exactly, come on down. The price is really.  21:12 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And I have roles in telephony that I can be as. Thank you for calling your call's important to us. I can be that fun, smooth, promo-y sound.  21:22 - Jim Fronk (Guest) That's a lot of fun, sometimes absolutely.  21:24 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, for the most part, we're all about the authenticity. Speaking of authenticity, from a few of the things that you've already talked about, you were so into drones, you were into, like, video games I get this feeling, and from talking to you previously, that you are kind of a geek. You are a tech geek, and so that kind of leads you into yet another talent of yours, which is websites, and I wanna make sure that we have time to get into websites for voice actors and talk to us a little bit about your expertise number one and what got you into web development first of all. Then let's talk about what's important in a voice actor website.  22:02 - Jim Fronk (Guest) Well, for the most part with the radio stations. You wear many hats and I was brand manager and web guru and graphic artist. I know enough about Photoshop to get you and I in a lot of trouble, but not enough to really make any money at it. As far as-.  22:16 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Except nobody uses Photoshop anymore. It's all Canva, Both yes. But yeah, no, I get it Photoshop was definitely a skill, I mean for sure, and when I was deciding.  22:26 - Jim Fronk (Guest) When I was getting out of the drones, I was actually going back and forth between VO and maybe going to school for graphic arts.  22:33 I really enjoy that. But I was thinking to myself you know, it's a three-year program, $36,000. I'll be 58 when I graduate. Do I really want to enter that type of field where I'm so far behind technology wise than the kids are these days? I said, you know, my happy place is behind the microphone. So that's what I did. Gotcha, every business that I've had, I've designed my own websites. I've used Wix my whole life. So when I say I'm a website builder, I'm a Wix master, is what I go by. There's just so much that's come along with website development. It's actually very user-friendly, but people need to be taught how to use it.  23:10 - Intro (Other) So when you say I'm a website developer.  23:12 - Jim Fronk (Guest) I'm more of a website instructor.  23:15 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) What.  23:15 - Jim Fronk (Guest) I like to do is I have something. It's a three-hour website. Do it yourself, learn by doing creation class, where we'll sit down together, you'll watch me on the screen and you'll mimic what I'm doing. I'll show you where I'm getting things. I'll teach you how to do things. So by the end of the three hours you should have a one-page voiceover specific website ready to go, ready to be hosted, and I'll go in there afterwards, because I'm always like an admin and I'll go in and I'll tighten things up and I'll put a little couple extra spinny effects and different things to make them happy. But I found that so many people didn't have the crucial items for a website, for a VO website and other people are charging 15, 16, $1,700 to build a website.  24:01 We're in a business. We're not making any money, but you have to have your online you know.  24:05 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) so Sure, absolutely, that's who you're marketing to.  24:07 - Jim Fronk (Guest) Exactly so. I try to help people learn how to do that so that they don't come back to me and say, hey, can you upload my new demos? No, they're gonna know how to upload their own demos. If they have a problem, I'm always here. I will build a website for somebody. It's twice the money, and when I'm done, if you need help, there'll be an hourly stipend to be your web guy.  24:30 I'd rather give you something that's cheaper, that takes me more time, but to teach you something. So that's what I'm doing. You can find that at websitesforvocom. It's very easy. I've designed other sites and gotten really deep, like Dave Fanoy, for instance. Dave has become a great friend, but his website was terrible no downloadable demos granted, he's Dave Fanoy, but still links that went to things that were expired event page that the latest event was 2019, it just wasn't conducive for somebody that's in the business. So I kind of owed him a favor. Dave became a really good friend. He helped me out. We started off by coaching. He helped me out directing my demo. He's helped me out with a lot of coaching. That was unexpected. So instead of sending him a bottle, what's a friend of mine said? Just send him a bottle and say thank you. I decided to a deep dive into his website and I completely revamped it. On Wix all of his scheduling You're a Wix person, I am a Wix person.  25:26 - Intro (Other) I've seen your schedule.  25:28 - Jim Fronk (Guest) I see, don't you love how it's all in the back?  25:30 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) door there. I love my Wix website your scheduling your payments, your tickets your events everything.  25:35 - Jim Fronk (Guest) So, Dave being a techie guy, a web guy, when I went to book my first gig with Dave it took me about 20 minutes to figure out and it was like email me.  25:44 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) There are some coaches out there that like well, email me for pricing or email me to get set up, and that to me is like why would you do that?  25:51 - Jim Fronk (Guest) Go to Venmo and do this here, and then I'll send you my Calendly link.  25:54 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, exactly.  25:56 - Jim Fronk (Guest) So I went in, I took care of Dave's and I taught him how to do it. He's now putting on his own events and he's doing all the ticketing and all the ticket sales and all the marketing, all the social marketing, all in the back door of Wix. So I taught him that. I try to teach everybody that, because there are things you need of your website.  26:12 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yes, what are those things? Let's talk about those critical things.  26:16 - Jim Fronk (Guest) Number one downloadable demos Above the fold. Everything I'm talking about right now is above the fold. I've talked to a lot of agents, casting directors. They don't want to click, they don't want to scroll.  26:29 They don't want to look so right there, front and center, downloadable demos, ready to go. Your name, obviously, something that shows your personality. It's a logo, a picture, something that shows who you are and if we have some fun with it, have some fun with it. Your contact info should always be in the header so when they scroll, if they scroll, your contact info is always there.  26:52 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It stays there it stays there.  26:54 - Jim Fronk (Guest) One of the main things that a lot of people don't have is a call to action button. Okay, I'm on your website, I'm the customer. Look at your website as a customer. I'm a customer, I found your website. I like your demos. What do I do? Now? There's a button there that says request a free audition. What's that all about? I mean, you and I, we all know auditions are free, of course. Well, all audition. You know we're not paying to audition. We're not getting paid to audition, but they don't know that.  27:21 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, sometimes we do, sometimes we do, but they don't know that.  27:23 - Jim Fronk (Guest) But they're getting a complimentary free audition. Send me a 30-second snippet of your script and I'll send you back an audio sample of what it will sound like, performed by me, and I can't tell you six. I've gotten six jobs off of that, so far.  27:39 Contact me is not a call to action. Maybe you offer some other service. I think it was Mark Scott said something about. These are six ways to book me. You know, give them something, something that has some information, whether it's directly related to booking you or VO related, but have that call to action button. Those are the basic things. Everything else after that is fluff. You go to my website. I probably have 15, 16 pages.  28:05 - Intro (Other) I have some people actually write the SEO for me.  28:07 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It's all fluff. It really is. There's nothing there. Let's talk about SEO.  28:12 - Jim Fronk (Guest) It's for SEO. What about SEO lately?  28:14 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Is SEO worth anything at this point? Still, because of, let's say, generative AI, which is generating content in seconds. Now, all of a sudden, it used to mean something with our websites. Right, that we had identifying words and words that could be found, but I feel like that whole SEO pony might be changing a little bit as things start to evolve.  28:35 - Jim Fronk (Guest) It is changing, it's getting simpler for people.  28:38 - Intro (Other) And with a program like Wix.  28:39 - Jim Fronk (Guest) They actually have an SEO and, by the way, I don't get paid by Wix. I'm not endorsed by Wix, it's just what I know. I've tried Squarespace play buttons, a play button, rewinds, rewind, pictures, picture, but I just didn't like how the whole system worked together. Wix was very user friendly. If you can do Canva, you can create a website.  29:00 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Canva changed the game.  29:01 - Jim Fronk (Guest) They really did. They made it.  29:03 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Wix is changing the game and some people might say well, what in VO is changing the game? I mean, we could talk about that if we wanted to.  29:11 - Jim Fronk (Guest) How about that? So much in VO has changed the game.  29:13 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Tell me about a VO actor. How can they change the game to make it successfully in voiceover and what can they do to change their game to make it and not be so afraid of all this technology that people are just, oh my God, the robots are gonna take our jobs away. Let's talk about-.  29:30 - Jim Fronk (Guest) No, they're not. The robots can't act, the robots can't change. What can we do there?  29:34 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) you go. We need to act right. They can't improv, they can't crack a good joke. Well, sometimes they crack dad jokes.  29:40 - Jim Fronk (Guest) Yeah, well.  29:41 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) But yeah.  29:43 - Jim Fronk (Guest) All right, so I got a lot of my dad jokes from chat. No, I'm just kidding.  29:46 What you can do is be authentic. Be human, show your range, show your emotion when you show up for a gig. Be the person that they wanna work with. Don't be the person that they're waiting on. Be fun, be happy. Don't be a nuisance to anybody that is hiring you or that you're working with, because you never know who's going to say, hey, Jim was here two months ago, He'd be great for this spot. You know, it could be the engineer you never know.  30:11 You have to have your online inline, which I try to help people do, because your website may not generate any business for you right off the bat, but you have to have that presence.  30:20 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yes, you absolutely have. It has to be something that's not wixitecom.  30:24 - Jim Fronk (Guest) Backslash, jimfrong55, it has to be Jimfrongcom. Jimfrongvocom, your name vocom. Sure and keep it simple. Keep those domain names simple so you're easily found Exactly.  30:36 I was gonna be Frank the voice. I had all these domain names that I was going to do. Jimfrong was available for the first time in a long time, cause I looked for it back when I was doing standup comedy. Jimfrong was available and I said you know what that's it? That's it. So I'm Jim and Jimfrong, so it's so easy to remember. You're double branding your name Absolutely. And as far as changing the game, talk to people, make friends, go to conferences. A lot of people in this business are introverts, but a lot are extroverts. You know, you get your naked gents, your Anganguza's, you get your Jim Fronks. We're out there saying hi to people. You know, kissing babies, shaking hands, whatever the case is. Get out there and say hi to people and if you're not that type of person, find someone that is, find me, make friends with me. I'm very approachable. You hate me or love me, but hopefully you love me and I'll introduce you to people, I don't care.  31:27 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) There you go, it's absolutely fun. Words of wisdom. Jim, Thank you for that. And actually, Jim, you have offered the bosses a little deal for your website creation class that you have.  31:40 - Jim Fronk (Guest) Oh, I have.  31:40 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yes, you have. Remember you wrote it down.  31:43 - Jim Fronk (Guest) Well, I was kind of upset about the PNNM's not being made.  31:46 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) But you're going to give our bosses 10% off the website creation class.  31:50 - Jim Fronk (Guest) I am absolutely without a doubt. What kind of coupon do you want to get?  31:53 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) We've got that promo called, called VEOBOSS10 at Chicago VEOBOSS10,. Okay, and we'll be putting that on our show notes pages, guys, so when you look up this episode, we will have that code available. Jim, thank you so much. It's been so exciting talking to you. I mean, you have such an amazing history. Yeah, I mean we're actually kind of 10 minutes over. See how time flies when you just have so much fun.  32:15 - Intro (Other) We're going to have to have you come back.  32:17 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) We're going to have to have you come back, jim. It's really been amazing and thank you for sharing your wisdom, your wonderful personality, your fun, amazing, just the fun. Amazing who you are.  32:28 - Intro (Other) Jim Fong with us.  32:30 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yes bosses, I want you to take a moment and imagine a world full of passionate, empowered, diverse individuals that are giving collectively and intentionally to create the world that they want to see. You can make a difference. Visit 100voiceswhocareorg to learn more. And a big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl. You too can network and connect like bosses like Jim and myself, just like Jim has been talking about all episode. Find out more at IPDTLcom. Jim, thanks again. You've been amazing Bosses, have an amazing week and we'll see you next week.  33:05 - Jim Fronk (Guest) Bye, guys, bye, thanks Ann.  33:07 - Intro (Other) Thank you so much Thank you Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, Ann Gangusa, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at vobosscom and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution with permission. Coast to Coast connectivity via IPDTL.   

Get ready to unravel the intricate world of awards in business! We promise, you'll walk away with a fresh perspective on the role and impact of awards in business - the good, the bad, and the downright stressful. We kick off our lively discussion by peeling back the glitzy curtain to expose the challenges and rewards of organizing an awards ceremony. From the high stakes of selecting winners to the joyous recognition of one's hard work, it's a rollercoaster journey. We open up about our own awards experiences and how it can often feel like a numbers game. Plus, we'll delve into the emotional side too, sharing some insights on how to handle not winning or being nominated, and why it's important to savor any recognition you do receive. 0:00:01 - Announcer It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss, a VEO boss. Now let's welcome your host, Ann Ganguzza.  0:00:20 - Anne Hey everyone, welcome to the VEO Boss Podcast and the Boss Superpower Series. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and I am here with the lovely Lau Lapides. Hey everyone. Hey Lau.  0:00:31 - Lau Hey, beautiful, beautiful, right back at ya.  0:00:34 - Anne How are you today?  0:00:36 - Lau Oh, I'm fabulous. I feel like this is going to be a very rewarding show, or maybe a rewarding show oh oh hey. See what I did.  0:00:45 - Anne I see what you did there. It's funny Lau. We just attended an award ceremony and there's a lot of different opinions out there on do we like awards, do we not like awards? Maybe we should have a talk about that Lau. What do you think I?  0:00:58 - Lau love it. I haven't heard anyone really talk about discussing awards like the process, not just the winning of the award, but also like what goes into the entire process. It's really a huge thing. Sometimes takes six months or a year to prep that kind of thing. Yeah.  0:01:16 - Anne Well, I will tell you that. First of all, I guess bosses out there we want to hear how you feel about awards too. I mean, there's so much discussion happening out there, oh gosh, on the Facebook groups and in social media about awards, and are they worth it? Because some awards cost money to enter, some awards don't. In our industry right now, I know of two distinct award shows that go on. However, they are not the only awards that you can certainly enter if you feel the desire to do that.  Lau. I have been a supporter of award shows since the beginning. However, there are many pros and there are many cons to it. Pros is that if you win an award, it's validation. Sometimes it's so difficult to be validated while we sit here in our studios all by ourselves and we don't get a lot of feedback all the time. Gosh, I'm always telling my corporate students we just want to be loved. When you work for a company and you feel underappreciated, I mean, gosh, that's really all we long for is to be loved. I think awards can be a verification of that. But then again, sometimes they may not be, because maybe you didn't win, and then that enters in a whole new mental aspect of. Oh my gosh, I wasn't good enough to win this award. Why did I not win this award? Somebody else is better than me. What are your thoughts about that Lau?  0:02:42 - Lau I think that when you go into this kind of a process, if you're entering into it and really submitting yourself for it intentionally, you have to set your mindset and your psychology to the fact that it is competitive. It is a competition. You may or may not feel like it is, but it really is. It should be based on merit. It should be based on your progress, your process and your product. And sometimes we only have so much control over that right. We manage it. We only have so much control right, that's the big thing.  0:03:16 - Anne And I just said it should be based on merit, and, right there, we could probably spend an entire podcast talking about that. It should be based on merit. However, there is the other side of the coin where, yes, it should be based on merit, but then you have the people who judge the awards right, and we don't always know, first of all, who those people are. Sometimes we do. I'm not a big fan of knowing who judges are. I feel like maybe there's too much possibility for people to maybe try to talk to the judges and influence them, so I'd rather not have judges be known. And then you have to really think about what are the judges qualifications? Because within voice over, we have so many different categories right, and so many different categories of awards.  If you're going to, I would say, present these categories of awards, I think you want to have very vetted judges right Judging the entries. And I am not sure, since we don't know who the judges are all the time, or even if we do know who the judges are, what is the criteria for me, a demo award versus a performance award, and in all different genres, I think it's super important that the people judging those are very specialized in those genres or in that category. So if you're judging animation, I would hope that judges are all experienced either working in animation or doing animation day in, day out and they really know the industry, and so I really would hope that that's the case. I don't know Lau if that's the case with all the judges, because, again, we don't always know who the judges are and we don't know what their credentials are.  0:04:50 - Lau Right, and I can say just from my personal point of view that it's not always the case.  Because at times I've been asked to judge categories which I feel like I can judge them. I can judge them, but am I way off base? No, I don't think so. I think there's a general industry knowledge that you have for years in the industry, but is it my absolute forte? No, not always it's not my forte. We try to get that matching process, but sometimes it's a numbers game, just like the competitors. It's like do we have enough judges? Do we have enough judges in a particular category? Are we getting them in time? Can they get the work done?  0:05:24 - Anne That's right in time, and that's the other thing. I mean, my goodness, judging some of these awards, because I have been a judge myself. First of all, when there's a lot of categories and a lot of entries, who, it becomes like a casting process and right then, and there bosses. I want that to tell you one thing. That means that sometimes right and I'm not going to speak for myself, but sometimes if you've asked a busy person to be a judge and then they have to listen to a thousand entries, they're probably only going to get the first part of your entry listened to before they have to continue on.  So that is something to consider. I mean, if there's a nuance or an acting moment that is at the end of your performance, maybe you want to try to create that clip so that all that great stuff is right at the beginning, because it is a job. It can be a lengthy and timely job, and if judges are not given an appropriate amount of time to do that, or they don't have a lot of time to do that, and they think like, yeah, I can judge that, and then all of a sudden it becomes overwhelming, well, then you get, the judging process becomes a little skewed to be quite honest because either I don't have time or I've heard too many entries.  I'm now overwhelmed. But yeah, there's so many things that go into it, my goodness. And then are the entries anonymous. We hope they are right, because we don't want the judges to be influenced by names or celebrity or that type of thing. But our voice is our product, right? So sometimes I'll tell you what it's hard to hide, because I know a lot of voices out there and I can pick them out like this I would agree.  0:07:01 - Lau And you know this last time, one of the last ones, you and I judged we were under an NDA, which I actually really appreciated I did too Right. It took a lot of stress, because not that I would be necessarily blabbing about that, I wouldn't but it reminded my brain like, separate it, compartmentalize it, because you and I we were a lot of hats, you know casting an agent and coach, and this and that, and so there is sometimes that one or two talent that we know. We do know them, and then could we recuse ourselves?  Sometimes we can sometimes we can't, because they can't move us into another category. So it's great to have that compartmentalization and that relaxation to know, okay, if there is someone in front of me that I know that's a client or a client of a friend of mine, that I am separating that from this hat, that I'm wearing, and then I'm not going to talk about that. I'm not going to speak about that and I have.  I wonder what you think about this. And I had mixed feelings. I have mixed feelings about the awards being given and then the judge's names coming out. It sort of makes me feel like a jury that all of a sudden is being. You hear the names of the jury who's on a criminal case. It makes me feel uncomfortable. It's like why do I need to know that information? What do you think about that?  0:08:21 - Anne That's very interesting and I appreciate that you brought that up because, as I mentioned, I always have been a fan of keeping anonymous I mean for the longest time and this isn't anything that's being judged. For example, I have done the VO Peeps scholarships for gosh 12 years already and when we judge those entries I don't disclose the names of the judges and I don't even disclose the names of the judges after the fact. Because again, what if I want to use those judges, maybe again, and I don't want to have anybody influenced and I don't want the judges, I feel like I don't need credit If I'm a judge. I don't need credit in being a judge. I just want to be able to judge fairly. And I happen to agree with you.  I don't think that judges' names should ever be disclosed really, and I'm not quite sure why the reason is and it might just be that they want to be thanked properly, but it's like when I give a donation, I don't always have to put my name on that. You know it can be an anonymous donation because I did it out of the goodness of my heart. If I'm judging something, I want it to just be the most fair that it can possibly be.  0:09:24 - Lau I'm glad you brought that up, Because when I see that at a ceremony someone who's kind enough to give money towards a scholarship or towards an award. I kind of feel bad for them Because I'm like as much as you are. Oh aren't they wonderful. They don't always want that recognition. They don't always feel comfortable knowing that. It's well-known knowledge that anyone who wins a lottery like they have to be very careful about releasing their name, because then they become a target and people go after them.  So you have to wonder if you're in an award ceremony, could you then become some sort of target that people are either trying to embellish themselves?  0:10:01 - Anne to you or they're trying to knock you down, similar to being an agent Lau. I'm just saying I know nothing about that.  0:10:09 - Lau It's so true.  0:10:10 - Anne It's like they're prostrate themselves to you day and night right.  0:10:13 - Lau I'm not one to really appreciate that. Honestly, I'm very private in that way. Like, if I'm going to give a bunch of money, I'd rather it not have my name in there. But that's just me. Other people do want that recognition. That's fine. That's totally fine.  0:10:28 - Anne I'm going to say I'm not here to shame anybody saying if you put your name on a donation that it's shameful.  I just think there are times when I don't think it's necessary and sometimes, yeah, I mean I'll put my name on a donation if I can add a note to it, to the recipient in wishing them good will, that kind of a thing, and that will be a reason for that.  But I think La one thing I want to really make a point of about awards is when you enter awards. Having experienced both sides of it being a judge and then also entering into awards myself I think you just have to really be made of Teflon number one, because the process is very subjective, right, and we're starting to kind of address all the things that go into the awards submitting and then the judging process and if you know who the judges are, are they qualified and that process. But I think one thing I want to stress to the bosses out there is please do not ever belittle yourself If you do not win an award or if you don't get nominated for an award. I think that, especially in our business, because it's very much a personal part of us, it's our voice, right, it is so personal and if you ever don't feel as though we've succeeded, it can be really, really damaging to our psyche.  0:11:44 - Lau I would agree, I would agree. Do not give a ton of weight to that process. And it's very funny, it's almost like auditioning.  It's like don't give a ton of weight to anyone audition brush it off and leave and go on to the next thing. But yet, when you're actually auditioning, give it the 100% it deserves, completely, commit to it completely, invest in it, completely, appreciate it. So, if you're awarded something or nominated, completely be present, be appreciative, love the moments, enjoy your community, love the attention. But then when you walk away, I really do believe you have the award. You're not going to forget about the award, you're going to utilize it as well in your marketing.  0:12:23 - Anne Oh, absolutely, but don't hang your hat on it. That's another positive.  0:12:27 - Lau Absolutely, don't hang your hat on it Like I'm the best, I'm the expert, I'm finished. No, it's a recognition that your work is at an industry standard that people want to appreciate, but there's a lot more to go.  0:12:40 - Anne Absolutely, absolutely. And I think that it's wonderful to get an award and it's wonderful to get nominated. I mean, if I want to make a distinction between being nominated and winning an award, I feel that the nomination is an award in and of itself because, listen to this award nominated, award winning, I mean honestly, they still start with award and so if you're going to use that to market, I mean gosh, just to be like sometimes narrowed down and be put on the shortlist, you can be proud of that to be nominated, and I really, really do believe that that can be celebrated as a win. And again, even if you're not nominated, understand that your work has value, you have worth, you have value and just because you didn't get the nomination or get a win doesn't mean that you are any less of a professional or accomplished and successful individual. I agree totally agree.  0:13:30 - Lau I'd love to talk, too, about the length of awards ceremonies. I think that that is either thought about or it's not thought about, maybe it's thought about, maybe it's not thought about, but they could run three, four hours in length, sometimes Absolutely, and I wonder how the audience feels about going through that kind of process and sitting through that process. We did an awards not long ago, you and I, where we literally sat in a chair for three hours.  There was no break. There was no moment to take a breath, walk around, nothing, and I thought that that was a very strange choice on the part of the organizers to keep people in a seat for that length of time and expect that focus to really stay there and be there late at night. What do you think about that?  0:14:20 - Anne I'm just thinking about all the awards ceremonies that we've become accustomed to on television. If you watch the Emmys or the Golden Globes, and there's always either food or drink at the table. Number one that helps If you're going to have to be planted or seated in an audience. I think that that works. And what if you have to leave to use the restroom right?  And then they announce your award. Hopefully you want to have like a series of events and when are they going to announce this category? I happen to know a very good friend of mine who was caught in the bathroom when they won and, yeah, it was not able to come to the stage and give their acceptance speech. But I think that sometimes sitting through the awards ceremony can be laborious if there's not any kind of entertainment kind of interspersed in there and or some sort of a schedule of events. And I know that that's difficult and sometimes they want to keep it a surprise for the people, they want to keep people in their seats. But yeah, it can get tiring. I will say that my tushy got a little bit sore and I've been to longer ones Okay, I have been to longer ones than the one that you and I were at, which we're really excruciating just because of the length and not all categories were called up to the stage.  0:15:30 - Lau So no, no, they need to sell cushions like they do it at the stadiums.  0:15:34 - Lau Buy a cushion.  0:15:36 - Lau you have to sit on the cushion and that would make a lot of sense, though I did think of a shortcut because I'm an organizer myself events, and one of the shortcuts I don't think anyone would ever do, but I think makes total sense. There were a handful of people at a few of the ceremonies that you and I intended that one more than one award One in particular. I can remember he won three. Okay, lovely, good for him. Why did they spread that out and why did he need to come up three times, have three spills in which he ran out of things to say? He was telling jokes by the end of it. Why not house those categories One, two, three. They have a sense. Maybe he's gonna win, maybe.  0:16:16 - Lau I don't know I mean they're preparing?  0:16:18 - Anne No, I don't know who's preparing the envelopes, remember they?  0:16:20 - Lau well, yeah, they're preparing the envelopes.  0:16:22 - Anne It's under lock and key right. So nobody knows. So that's theoretically. Somebody knows.  0:16:27 - Lau That's theoretically. Somebody knows Theoretically?  0:16:28 - Anne somebody knows. But again, but then I don't think Lau you'd want the audience to expect right that the next category he would be the winner as well. So there'd be no right. No, but if you think about it that way, right, if they know he won in multiple categories and then they called the second category once they did a series of right, the audience would expect it so. I don't think you can do it that way, and I think he handled it well.  0:16:50 - Lau Personally, listen, I think theoretically, it's true, but you and I know most of the audience was dying to get out and get a hamburger. You know what I mean. Like if I could get some french fries and cut this a little bit shorter, I'm all over the nuggets. You know what I mean. Like I'm ready to go. I don't need it to be that extra hour.  0:17:07 - Anne Well, I think that it could be maybe addressed at the amount of categories, maybe. Maybe, but then they wanna make sure that they're covering everybody, so I can see where organizers have a big job here.  0:17:19 - Lau Yeah it's tough, you know, there's a lot.  0:17:20 - Anne You know everybody wants to be represented. As a matter of fact, I am like all for let's have the best medical narration demo. I want that because you know that's something that I do and that's something I would love to submit for, and there's no category anywhere for that, so I can see where they have to.  0:17:37 - Lau Of course it's entertainment as well, so they have to pad the whole evening with different kinds of entertainment and videos and jokes, and that pads it with another hour or another hour and a half. So I get that, but I totally get that.  0:17:52 - Anne I'm gonna say what do you say Lau about? Like cause, I'm okay with the words. I'm okay with the words because over the years I've learned a little bit more about how they work. And I've won, I've lost, I've not been nominated. I've been nominated. I've been through it all myself, the emotional swing that it can cause, right. And I'm still okay with the words because I can understand them for what they are.  And so, bosses, I hope that this helps you to just kind of get a better grip on what they are and not that it determine your value at all. If you choose not to enter or not support award service, that's entirely fine. You can still be a boss, absolutely. But I don't think that this kind of back and forth war that we have about awards, I think it gets a little bit divided and for not really a good reason. I don't think. If you want to enter, go ahead and enter and don't shame people who enter awards. I really am a big fan of that. I mean I don't love negative talk on social media for people who enter awards or get awards or that kind of a thing.  0:18:54 - Lau I am so with you on that. And that would extend too to people who do not come to the awards, who for many reasons, can't, won't or don't want to come to the awards. I think that's fine. I mean, if I'm being nominated, I'll go because I'm very honored and I'll buy the dress and I'll do the thing and I'll enjoy it. But there are others that say no, it's not my scene or I can't afford it.  0:19:18 - Anne Yeah, oh yeah, I don't want to because I'm in Florida. It can get expensive. I mean, you're talking about, typically, people like to dress for these things. So you're talking airfare, maybe, travel expenses, hotel expenses, dress expenses or suit? Yeah, absolutely, and for me, I had makeup and hair, but I always liked to have an excuse to have it make up and hair.  0:19:40 - Lau But You're so schmelzy that way. Well for me.  0:19:44 - Anne I'm telling you, for me it's a little spa day.  I mean, if somebody can just handle that for me I can think about like what I have to do I always talk about when I present. I like to have hair and makeup because then I don't have to worry about those things, that I can concentrate on my presentation. So while I'm somebody who's doing my hair, I am like doing notes for presentations. For me it's just an investment, but it can be very expensive. Awards can be very expensive and sometimes you have to buy the award after the fact and that is also expensive. So there's a lot of, I think, pros to it but yet a lot of cons, and I don't want you bosses out there to feel any less than worthy or valuable just because you do or don't enter an award show.  0:20:26 - Lau I'm with you on that Ann and. I would say no matter how you take part, I would urge people to take part in some way, whether you're a witness or you're submitting or you're just congratulating someone who won and just support the community in any way that's best and comfortable for you because it is ultimately, I would imagine, there for the people and for the community and for the recognition and we don't want to completely lose that. We want to preserve that, you know. However, you take part.  0:20:57 - Anne And also I wanna just say, unless you're organizing an award event, I think if you could maybe steer clear of criticism. I just I mean, I just I think that if people criticize people who hold events and they say, well, it's all about the money, or they try to figure out, oh, how many people times how much the cost of a ticket, wow, they're making a lot of money. And then they make assumptions on the fact that, oh, they're just doing that because they're greedy or whatever reason you have. I think, honestly, just having a husband who does events and myself I've done events live- YouTube events like.  I think, anybody that can sit back behind a keyboard and criticize about an event if they've not organized one themselves, especially one that's in a hotel, where you have to pay probably a big chunk of fees to a hotel for food, for the space. Just to do that is not a cheap thing at all. And so what event organizers charge for their event? I mean, I just steer clear of any kind of criticism because I know how expensive it can be very expensive, Very, especially in this day and age.  0:22:05 - Lau it's the most expensive it's ever been.  0:22:07 - Anne Oh yeah, absolutely so have a little mercy and understanding on event organizations.  0:22:11 - Lau And then the other thing too and I wanted to say not just about awards, but we're talking about awards right now is like don't look the gift horse in the mouth in regards to, like, the people who organize a range direct all of that deserve the profit they make oftentimes.  0:22:29 - Anne Oh, absolutely, because they are going through such stress.  0:22:33 - Lau It's beyond a full-time job. No one realizes that unless they're involved with that kind of work.  0:22:38 - Anne Well, my husband does it as a full-time job, I mean, and it's crazy because even people that he works with don't understand what it takes to prepare for an event.  0:22:46 - Lau It is crazy, but I love that you said please have compassion, I'm backing you up on that.  0:22:51 - Anne I'm backing you up on that, because it's not easy to do something like that.  But yet it seems so easy for us to sit behind our keyboards and just make assumptions. And I think yeah, and so don't make assumptions about, I think, awards, events, the event organizers or even the judges, or even if you agree or don't agree with awards. I really feel like just one of my favorite sayings is to mind your own business, and I don't mean that in a mom way, I mean that my VO business is my business. And if I feel that maybe entering an award competition will maybe help my marketing, I'm going to do it and I don't want to be criticized for that or looked upon badly for that. But again, and I will try not to cry if I don't win, because I think anybody that knows me knows how darn competitive I am- Ooh, I am competitive, you are, I've got a box of tissues for you.  Thank you, so you don't need to worry about that at all. See the Lau.  0:23:41 - Lau that's why I want you at my side at all at all times I'm ready with a tissue, a handkerchief whatever, a shoulder and a turkey sandwich and a turkey sandwich at all costs A turkey sandwich, and that's what support is like.  0:23:55 - Anne I love that, that kind of support. Right, we need to lift each other up, and so, if awards are your thing, support the people in the community, like Lau supports me with a turkey sandwich and a box of tissues. I love that right, it's so true, it's so true. And Lau. And if I can get you a turkey sandwich at any time, I will do so, and that's why I love you back because we're all about getting of the turkey sandwich.  0:24:23 - Lau It's not even Thanksgiving, that's the best part.  0:24:25 - Anne Bosses, you might be wondering what are they talking about? Well, at one of the last conferences, it happened to be late at night and I had been presenting and had gotten out of like multiple panels and X sessions or whatever it was, and by the time I got to the restaurant to eat they had closed. It was like after 10 o'clock and everything had shut down and I was starving. I literally was like I need something and there was no door dash that could be quick, and so Lau to the rescue. Who actually went and secured me a turkey sandwich that magically appeared from behind the desk Late at night.  0:25:05 - Lau Behind the front desk. Yes, I was like the Ooma Thurman in the Kill Bill series. I just jumped over the desk, I tackled the woman behind there and I said how could you not be?  0:25:17 - Anne open and it was fresh and I ravaged that turkey sandwich. I did, I literally did, and it was, the bread was flying, the turkey was in my mouth and I ate it like a caveman. I mean literally, it was beyond Quentin Tarantino stuff. I didn't even have utilities to eat it with. I ate it with my hands, I know I didn't even have a sword.  0:25:35 - Lau I just used the verbal sword play of my mouth and my words.  0:25:39 - Anne But that's the story of the turkey sandwich and Lau how she came to save me. Okay, so everybody needs a Lau, right, Everybody needs a Lau on their side.  0:25:47 - Lau So, Lau.  0:25:48 - Anne I mean, what a great conversation. I mean, I hope bosses, you guys always know your value, whether you are winning awards or not. Winning awards, you guys, you are gifts and awards in our hearts, and so make sure that you feel that way about yourself and, of course, others in the industry, and let's lift each other up. So I love it.  0:26:08 - Lau We love you if you win, and we love you even more if you don't win, because it's all about your process. There you go.  0:26:15 - Anne There you go, and, speaking of awards and making a difference, you guys can use your voice to make an immediate difference in our world and give back to the communities that give to you. Just like Lau gives me turkey sandwiches, so you guys visit 100voiceswhocareorg to commit and big shout out to IPDTL, our favorite way to connect Bosses. You, too, can find out more at IPDTLcom. Have an amazing week, guys, and we'll see you next week. Bye.  0:26:47 - Lau Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host and Ganguza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at vobosscom and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via IPDTL.  0:27:17 - Anne This time a little more conversational. I'll give something I actually give something really, really conversational once and they're like oh yeah, give me a little more conversation and I'll give it completely conversational. They'll be like oh Hmm, how about a little more energy? And you know, when they ask for more energy, that usually means they're looking for a little more cell, yeah, if you're not anywhere near it, oh yeah maybe a little more smile, a little more smile, a little more smile, a little more energy that gives you the cell back.  Transcribed by https://podium.page

Gain a fresh perspective on the evolving casting landscape. Whether you're a newbie or an industry veteran, this episode will equip you with knowledge on how to market yourself to a specific niche. The Bosses cover the importance of understanding the language and mindset of your clients. Don't miss this enlightening chat where Anne and Lau share the emerging trends in casting, especially the push for diversity and authenticity. They emphasize the importance of staying true to your individuality, advising actors to embrace their unique accents and regional characteristics, as more companies are seeking authentic representations. Transcript: Anne Ganguzza: Hey everyone, welcome to the VioBoss Podcast. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and I'm here with the lovely and most wonderful Lau Lapides. Hello, welcome to our Business Superpowers series. Lau Lapides: Mmm, so excited Anne Ganguzza: Woohoo. Lau Lapides: to be here as always. Anne Ganguzza: And you know, we always need to really up our business superpowers, don't we, Law? Lau Lapides: We do, Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: always, every day. Anne Ganguzza: And I think probably one of the most common things, questions that I get asked as a coach, and also you must as well as an agent and casting directors, what are the current trends in casting? And so how can I better prepare myself to evolve my business to keep up with the trends in casting? So I thought it would be a great opportunity to talk, especially with you, who casts on a day-to-day basis. What are you seeing in terms of casting trends these days, Law? Lau Lapides: Mm, trendy trendy, yes. Well, what's been going on for quite a while is diversity casting. Like Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm, Lau Lapides: we're Anne Ganguzza: mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: always in need of more diversity, more representatives, both accent-wise, language-wise, Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: delivery-wise, culturally. ethnically, I mean, this is all in the mix right now and kind of at the front of the line, Anne Ganguzza: Yeah, Lau Lapides: which is exciting Anne Ganguzza: yeah. Lau Lapides: to see such an international mix of Indigenous peoples that are really representing their country, their region, their, you know, their profile, so to speak. So we're always looking to certainly up our roster, up our game in our roster, finding authentic talent from all over the world, even just Spanish talent. Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: I'm totally in need of authentic Spanish talent of many dialects. Accent-free is fantastic, but then if you're not accent-free, dialects are wonderful if we know specifically where you're placed, because we really have to go with the real deal. Anne Ganguzza: Sure. Lau Lapides: It can't be an actor who's just really great at sound or accents. It really has to be the real person representing. Anne Ganguzza: Well, I'll tell you what I love about it is... not just diversity, but authenticity. I think authenticity all the way around, which has been a trend just coming through the years, and especially now, people are just looking for other people to be authentic. And Lau Lapides: Yeah. Anne Ganguzza: so when it comes to my students who originally used to be there, they're like, can you please take away my accent? Or I wanna be good at narration, so should I have this neutral accent? And I'm like, look, as long as I can understand you, number one, important. I mean you don't want to have necessarily you know maybe a speech impediment that would inhibit me from understanding what you're saying. However when it comes to accents I don't think it's as critical as it used to be. It used to be that thing that you had to have absolutely neutral accent whatever that might be these days. But I'm having people in you know embrace their authenticity and if their authenticity is regional right and they have an that would really, you know, work with that. And, you know, I think we've always tried to do that, but even more so now, I feel encouraged to tell my students, don't worry about that. We really just want you to be, I want you to bring you to the party first. That is the most important objective that I have as an educator and as a coach to get you to be authentic. And that really is what I think casting trends today are all about. Lau Lapides: Mm-hmm. If you can be the best version of you and really Anne Ganguzza: Yeah. Lau Lapides: bring that to the table authentically, that's what we're looking for. Anne Ganguzza: Yeah. Lau Lapides: If you can also neutralize it a bit, you know, round it out a bit, Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm, Lau Lapides: that's great too. It just gives Anne Ganguzza: mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: you more options. But Anne Ganguzza: Yeah. Lau Lapides: I fear for clients that come in, or I should say talent that comes in, especially at a certain stage, you know, once you hit Like even 30 or 35 or 40, it's very, very difficult to authentically change your Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: dialect or shift your accent. It just is. It's not impossible, but it would take a lot of work with a dialectician to do something Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: like that. And I don't think it's necessary. I don't Anne Ganguzza: Yeah, Lau Lapides: think it should Anne Ganguzza: yeah. Lau Lapides: be an objective for you. It really Anne Ganguzza: Oh, Lau Lapides: should Anne Ganguzza: gosh, Lau Lapides: be Anne Ganguzza: it, Lau Lapides: like your vocabulary. Anne Ganguzza: yeah. Lau Lapides: What is it, Anne Ganguzza: I mean, Lau Lapides: right? Anne Ganguzza: work with a dialect coach if you want to Lau Lapides: Yeah. Anne Ganguzza: maybe consider other dialects for characters, maybe. Lau Lapides: Yes. Anne Ganguzza: But I don't think it's to remove your dialect these days unless, of course, you have a very heavy regional accent, in which case, if you would like to maybe try to lessen that a little bit, I don't think it's necessary to remove it at all, actually. So many companies embracing that authenticity. And now, of course, in the casting specs, they're looking for talent who are authentically from particular areas and regions. And now, if you kind of had that fake accent or that generic accent, that I don't think is needed as much anymore. Is there such a thing? What was it the other day I was on a panel? What is it with the authentic, Midlantic accent, I think. Lau Lapides: Oh, right, Anne Ganguzza: Is that even Lau Lapides: right. Anne Ganguzza: a thing anymore? Lau Lapides: I don't know, Anne Ganguzza: I think Lau Lapides: I Anne Ganguzza: really Lau Lapides: mean. Anne Ganguzza: it's just, they want to have some sort of a, maybe of a dialect where you can't really tell where you're from. I'm not sure. So Lau Lapides: Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza: guys, embrace your authenticity. I think that's so important. And first of all, that's a tall order law Lau Lapides: Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza: to embrace your authenticity. Lau Lapides: Yes. Anne Ganguzza: That I think as actors is really one of the hardest things that we have to do many times I encounter talent who want to sound a particular way or they Lau Lapides: Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza: feel it should sound a particular way and again bringing their authentic selves to the copy is so very difficult. They're either able to you know do that if the copy is written maybe in a dialogue format but when it's not it's very difficult to do that and also I find that a lot of character actors law like Lau Lapides: Mmm. Anne Ganguzza: their characters seem authentic, but yet when you ask them to bring themselves to the table, that becomes an immense challenge. Lau Lapides: Huge, huge challenge. Anne Ganguzza: Yeah. Lau Lapides: I would say too, in regards to the Superpower show that we're Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: working on right now, like one of your superpowers is being a really great business person. Anne Ganguzza: Yeah. Lau Lapides: So a trend I've seen over the last few years is, how qualified are you as a business partner? in terms of your correspondence, in terms of your timing? Are you timely about your responses? We're casting something really big right now with a client and one of our talent, not her fault at all. But our records were just, they either weren't updated or whatever Anne Ganguzza: Mm. Lau Lapides: the case may be. The email never reached her in regards to availability. And so I called her on the phone, I reached her. She said, that's actually not even my email. That's person lets me know when they get my emails. There's something in the system Anne Ganguzza: Mmm. Lau Lapides: that defaults. So my point is, like, are you on top of your records, your Anne Ganguzza: Yeah. Lau Lapides: emails, Anne Ganguzza: Oh. Lau Lapides: your back? Are you flagging your people Anne Ganguzza: I would be Lau Lapides: that you're reaching out Anne Ganguzza: kicking Lau Lapides: to? Anne Ganguzza: myself if that were the case. You know what I mean? If there's one thing that you can prevent, right? In terms of what can you do to help get yourself cast more. Lau Lapides: Right. Anne Ganguzza: It would be making sure your agents and all your, you know, rosters have the most current relevant information and demos as well. Lau Lapides: Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza: Yeah, and demos as well. Lau Lapides: And making sure it's easily accessible. You expedite really well and really quickly. And, like, being on top of those trends. Like, when we went to a recent conference, you and I, I found that less and less people were giving out actual physical business cards, even though I still Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: love them. I'm old school that way. I like to hold something in my hand. They were doing QR codes. They were Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: on their phone going, you know, take it right off my phone onto your phone, boom, it was fun, it was done, it was quick, I got it. My point is, do the physical business cards if that's what you love and do, but know what the trend is for the online business card Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: because that shows you've got your finger on the pulse of technology Anne Ganguzza: Yeah. Lau Lapides: and what's going on in our industry. Anne Ganguzza: Yeah, and I think casting trends in terms of, yeah, making yourself available, understanding what your agent expects from you communication wise, I think, is very, very important. And also, I'm going to go back to the sound slash demographic. One thing that I want to make people aware of is a lot of times demographics and casting is based on, and trends in companies selling products to a specific demographic. So there are a lot of companies that may have an older audience, or there might be companies that cater to moms, or products that are catering towards young people. I think there's a lot, a lot of times we see the trend going back towards millennial young, because there's so many companies that are just trying to expand their market. So understand guys, I think sometimes we don't think about it. think about casting in terms of, oh, did I, was I making it sound correct, right? Was I the right sound for them? But sometimes you're not the right demographic, right, for the product. And so just remember that if, you know, the next time you get really disappointed that you didn't land that big gig and think that you didn't perform to your ability, a lot of times it's because it's a demographic, a sales demographic, right? It Lau Lapides: Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza: wants to cater to a particular age group. And Lau Lapides: Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza: that would be another thing, La I wanna talk to you about. In terms of casting age groups, I see a lot younger, but also middle-aged. What about older? What about the older demographic? Lau Lapides: We're Anne Ganguzza: That's Lau Lapides: getting Anne Ganguzza: always, Lau Lapides: more. We're Anne Ganguzza: okay, Lau Lapides: getting more Anne Ganguzza: okay. Lau Lapides: and more of that. I mean, probably, Annie, now more than ever, we've had the more Anne Ganguzza: Mmm. Lau Lapides: mature demographics. So the senior in the industry is known as like 50 to like 65. Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: 50 to 64 would be a young senior, and then a more mature senior would be the 65 and up. Anne Ganguzza: Okay. Lau Lapides: So we're seeing more of 50 and up for sure, whether Anne Ganguzza: That's Lau Lapides: it's Anne Ganguzza: good. Do you Lau Lapides: health Anne Ganguzza: know what Lau Lapides: or travel. Anne Ganguzza: type, yeah, I was gonna say health, Lau Lapides: Yeah, health, Anne Ganguzza: travel. Lau Lapides: travel, Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: finance, you know, even software is seeing more and more of that coming through. Anne Ganguzza: Okay. Lau Lapides: So Anne Ganguzza: That's actually Lau Lapides: I think there's Anne Ganguzza: really Lau Lapides: a Anne Ganguzza: good. Lau Lapides: lot to look forward to. Anne Ganguzza: Yeah, that's really good because I know for a while there, it's tough sometimes, you know, because what products do we have that cater towards, you know, that 55 and up age group? You really have to start thinking about it. And I would always encourage bosses, you know, I do a lot of work in corporate, I do a lot of coaching in corporate and just researching companies in general, researching what products are out there. for what Lau Lapides: Yeah. Anne Ganguzza: age groups and as a matter of fact, I'll always have my students, they fill out one of their very first forms and in the vocal branding form is, let's talk about brands you're familiar with for babies. What are brands you're familiar with for teenagers? What brands are you familiar with for middle aged, for seniors? And really try to come up with the brands that you hear being talked about today for these different groups. And understand, just understand that there is a sound in a demographic for each group, and it's all based on sales. So the next time you don't get that big gig, it could just be for the, and we discussed this during our audition demolition, multiple times, Law, that the person might've nailed the performance, but they just didn't have the right demographic. Lau Lapides: Yes, yes, Anne Ganguzza: Mm. Lau Lapides: actually, that is so much of casting, whether Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: you're just, you know, you're a voiceover on camera or both. So much of it is based off of things that, you know, you just is out of your hands. It's out of Anne Ganguzza: Mm hmm. Lau Lapides: your hands. So Anne Ganguzza: Yeah, Lau Lapides: you Anne Ganguzza: yeah. Lau Lapides: have to understand that the profile of who you are, your bio, your background, your is sometimes we can't do much about that. We are Anne Ganguzza: Yeah. Lau Lapides: who we are. And that's why accepting who you are. being the best version of that is Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: really, really important. Anne Ganguzza: Oh, yes. Lau Lapides: You Anne Ganguzza: Yeah Lau Lapides: know, and finding Anne Ganguzza: Amen. Lau Lapides: what is your strongest Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: suit? Like, what Anne Ganguzza: Yeah Lau Lapides: is your strongest, most competitive value proposition? And really putting that at the forefront Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm, Lau Lapides: so that Anne Ganguzza: agreed. Lau Lapides: you're spending a lot more of your energy in that direction than Anne Ganguzza: Yeah. Lau Lapides: in 10 different directions, Anne Ganguzza: Yeah, Lau Lapides: right? Niche it. Niche it down. Anne Ganguzza: it's wonderful to have versatility. I'm all for versatility. However, you need to be able to market yourself, right? Lau Lapides: Yeah. Anne Ganguzza: Niche it down, right? To specific niches. Lau Lapides: Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza: And I found that myself as well, right, in terms of voiceover-wise, right? Where would my voice fit in? Where was I getting hired the most? And Lau Lapides: Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza: I think that bosses out there, depending on how you're being cast, you're gonna be able to find that and also do work to develop that more and to really push that, go for auditions that speak to that strength. Lau Lapides: Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza: Now, I'm not saying that you should not audition for anything else. I truly believe that every once in a while you surprise yourself and you audition for something that maybe you don't feel is in your wheelhouse and all of a sudden you'll get cast because you never quite know where that company is headed, right? Maybe they want to switch directions and maybe their demographic is... maybe an older sound, and then maybe they've decided they wanna go more middle-aged, or maybe they wanna, I don't know, speak from a millennial point of view. And so you're never really gonna know. I mean, just like we try to cater to the people who will hire us the most, we can also, every once in a while, give ourselves that surprise. Audition for things that you feel maybe you're not. well suited for, but maybe the company will have a change of heart. Lau Lapides: And also, too, Annie, to piggyback onto that point, is you can, when you're going after your own client base, your own prospects, right, outside of casting director, outside of an agency, outside of all of that, you can mold a little bit of what you do Anne Ganguzza: Mmm. Lau Lapides: and who you are in a couple different directions, Anne Ganguzza: Sure. Lau Lapides: but it has to be based on the target demographic. So for instance, if you're going after... as a talent, I'm going after the medical field, I want to do some medical reads, I'm excellent at that, I'm wonderful at technical language. I want to put that out there in my cover letter or at or in my website so that they can point right to that and Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: see, oh, there's my there's my technical reads, I can do medical Anne Ganguzza: Sure, Lau Lapides: reads, Anne Ganguzza: sure. Lau Lapides: I'm understanding healthcare, I get that. Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: So speaking the language and understanding the lingo of a prospect client is going to go a long way. versus them sitting and listening to four Anne Ganguzza: Yeah, Lau Lapides: demos. Anne Ganguzza: absolutely, Lau Lapides: Oftentimes Anne Ganguzza: absolutely. Lau Lapides: they won't do it. They wanna Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm, Lau Lapides: see where are you coming from? Where's your mindset Anne Ganguzza: mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: and where's your language actually coming from? Does it match Anne Ganguzza: Sure, Lau Lapides: the Anne Ganguzza: absolutely. Lau Lapides: type of work that we do? So I would say go on the website, go on the YouTube channel, look at who they are and what they do before you approach them. Anne Ganguzza: Yeah, absolutely. And then have a portion of your demo or have your demo catered to that. You know, I'm a big believer in, let's say, in a lot of corporate demos that I do or long format narration demos. I'm always looking at the different industries that hire voiceover and making a spot for each one of them. So therefore, if you want to cater to an automotive company and you're going to be maybe a narrator on a walkabout or a new sales video, can cater a spot on that demo that speaks the language of the people that you are going, you know, you are selling to. Lau Lapides: That's Anne Ganguzza: And just Lau Lapides: right. Anne Ganguzza: like they want to, you know, a company wants to sell to their demographic, you want to sell your voice that is specifically suited to a particular genre or a particular industry. Make sure that you have samples and you have demo. material that can be sent to these people so that they can hear it right away. And it doesn't, they don't have to listen to like, oh, I listened to your entire commercial demo or your entire corporate narration demo and it was the sixth spot. And I didn't know, you know, from the get go, if it was even in your demo. So Lau Lapides: Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza: you have to really start catering. And I talk about target marketing a lot in my business. And I like to create target marketed demos because I think that helps you to get cash. easier. And now, Law, I'm going to talk to you specifically on the commercial aspect of things because you cast a lot of commercial work. How important is the demo in the commercial work or is it the audition that's most important? Lau Lapides: It's Anne Ganguzza: What Lau Lapides: both. Anne Ganguzza: do you think? Okay. Lau Lapides: It's both. Of course, first it's going to be the demo because I may not have met you or Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: may not have heard you yet. Until you're in our roster, you Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: know, we don't know what you do. We don't know what you're capable Anne Ganguzza: Right. Lau Lapides: of doing. So the first thing that we're going to look at is the demo because chances are great we're not going to do a live audition. Like we never Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: do a live audition when we're listening to people to bring them in as talent to the Anne Ganguzza: Right. Lau Lapides: roster. It's always from a demo. It just Anne Ganguzza: But your Lau Lapides: is. Anne Ganguzza: clients, however, are they going to want to hear a demo or an audition? Lau Lapides: You know, it's a good question and there's some guesswork in that. It's Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: shifting. The trends are really shifting. I think less and less clients are listening to demos and Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: more and more just for time's sake. They want an audition Anne Ganguzza: the audition. Lau Lapides: with a copy from their specific job. Now, that's not to say that if they're considering five people, that they're Anne Ganguzza: Yeah. Lau Lapides: not going to quickly go and listen to the demos. And here, have you done that kind of work before? I'm sure that they Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: do. But I think upfront, time seems to be always of the issue and they just want to get people in. They want to get them reading and they want to get, so they're relying on us to Anne Ganguzza: Sure. Lau Lapides: have listened to the demo. We have the demo. We've vetted the demo. They're relying Anne Ganguzza: Mm. Lau Lapides: on us that we don't need they, that we don't need to listen to the demo. Anne Ganguzza: because Lau Lapides: The Anne Ganguzza: you've Lau Lapides: agency Anne Ganguzza: already Lau Lapides: already Anne Ganguzza: done it. Lau Lapides: listened Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, Lau Lapides: to it. Yes, Anne Ganguzza: right. Lau Lapides: yes. Anne Ganguzza: Now, I asked you that question specifically because we were talking about commercial or things that typically Lau Lapides: Yeah. Anne Ganguzza: are broadcast, right? Now, let's talk about non-broadcast, which I like to think is one of my specialties, right? Lau Lapides: Yeah. Anne Ganguzza: Non-broadcast, yeah, your demo's gonna be an important part of it, as well as your audition, okay? So you may get those auditions from an agent, right? I get a certain percentage of corporate work from my agent, and I know that you cast as well. But probably the majority of what you do is commercial work. But for me, corporate work, I get cast either on my audition, but I also get cast quite a bit from my demo. And so it is very important that demo is strategically target marketed towards the market you want to sell to. And so it's good Lau Lapides: always. Anne Ganguzza: to have that demo, because I've been hired off my demo multiple times Lau Lapides: Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza: in a non-broadcast. Lau Lapides: Yes. Anne Ganguzza: market multiple times and my spots on my demo have been able to be split up if I needed to send an independent spot to You know to a particular client to showcase a particular talent They're also on my website kind of they are they are always split apart so that people can see the industry and they can also Listen to the spot and they can say oh, that's automotive and it is You know informational and Inspiring believe it or not. It could be inspiring to be automotive. Lau Lapides: Absolutely, absolutely. Anne Ganguzza: And so both are very, very important. So for me, I'm always a big proponent and a big fan. And I know I, yes, I'm a coach and I do produce demos, but I really believe because I have had personal experience and I know a lot of people in non-broadcast get hired off their demos quite a bit. Lau Lapides: Mm hmm. Anne Ganguzza: So Lau Lapides: Yes. And Anne Ganguzza: it's important. Lau Lapides: I just want to impress upon your bosses, your listeners, that you could get hired in all different realms and for all different reasons. Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: I've gotten hired so many times just during lunch, like Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: just having a lunch meeting with someone just talking to them as I talk to them. And and just recently, I don't know if you even know this, but we're where producers in an audio drama that we're recording in the fall with some big partners out Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: in New York and some amazing names coming into that. And I was producing a preliminary rehearsal table read before it was even cast. Anne Ganguzza: Yeah. Lau Lapides: And I was reading one of the roles because we needed another voice for one of the roles. And the producers came to me and they said, Yala, we kind of want you to play the role. And I said, oh Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: wow, really? Anne Ganguzza: Well, that's Lau Lapides: And Anne Ganguzza: that Lau Lapides: they said, Anne Ganguzza: personal. Lau Lapides: yeah, we do. And that's Anne Ganguzza: That's Lau Lapides: the Anne Ganguzza: that Lau Lapides: personal Anne Ganguzza: personal, Lau Lapides: relationship. Anne Ganguzza: the personal relationship, personal network, which Lau Lapides: Yeah. Anne Ganguzza: is really important, guys. Lau Lapides: Really. Anne Ganguzza: And casting trends, I think this has always been a trend in casting, is that relationship. Lau Lapides: Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza: And gosh, when I went to Amsterdam, you know, to teach at one of the retreats there for J. Michael, I met up with a studio in Amsterdam, who just because they saw me on my website, listened to my demos, and then I met them in person, a working relationship with them. And is it because, am I the absolute best female voice they've ever heard in their life? Of course so, but no. But really, do you know what I mean? Like, Lau Lapides: It's... it's... Anne Ganguzza: it's all about that relationship, right? That relationship. And I, Lau Lapides: Yes. Anne Ganguzza: look, I am not proud, guys. I, my ego does not get in the way. If I get the job, I get the job. You know what I mean? And I'm like, look, this is a business to me. For me, my ego doesn't need to be the best, be labeled as the best and touted as the best female voiceover ever legend. Because gosh, it's all subjective. We know this over and over again. But because I worked on that relationship, I had things in place. And I was ready, willing, and eager to help. and lend my thoughts when they asked, hey, what's it like in the States in hiring for this type of work? And because I developed that relationship and I did that work, bam, I got the job. Lau Lapides: Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza: And that is absolutely a valid, successful way to get cast. Lau Lapides: And sometimes it's not, it's very pure. Sometimes your Anne Ganguzza: Yeah. Lau Lapides: intention is literally not to get cast or get the Anne Ganguzza: Yeah? Lau Lapides: job. Anne Ganguzza: Yeah. Lau Lapides: It's really to get the relationship. I always Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: like to say, I would rather get the relationship than the job because I'm building a career. I'm not working jobs, I'm building a career. And there are two different things. So if I'm gonna sort of lose the battle, but I'm gonna win the war, so to speak, I'd rather do that. In other words, I wanna make myself invaluable. So if I'm not the voice, as a voice talent, I'm going to find you great Anne Ganguzza: Yeah. Lau Lapides: people that are the voice. I'm going to recommend friends of mine. Anne Ganguzza: Oh, absolutely. Lau Lapides: I'm going to recommend Anne Ganguzza: Now, Lau Lapides: other agencies. Anne Ganguzza: law. way Lau Lapides: Right? Anne Ganguzza: back in the beginning, it's one of the reasons why I wanted to start the VO Peeps networking group. Because I started the VO Peeps because I wanted to have a collection of like-minded people, but then I said, what am I going to do for them? I want to provide an educational resource. So I started interviewing, right? I started interviewing all of my idols because I Lau Lapides: Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza: wanted to develop that relationship. Lau Lapides: Yes. Anne Ganguzza: Okay? And it wasn't coming at them in a hire Lau Lapides: Yes. Anne Ganguzza: you know, a very different format where I just wanted to, I was interested in them and I wanted to share their resources with my community. And because of that, I became known. And once you become known, right, over the years, then you become top of mind for referrals. Lau Lapides: Yes. Anne Ganguzza: And that absolutely is where that relationship work comes into play. Lau Lapides: And there's no, or at least there shouldn't be any desperation surrounding that. I don't know if you'd call that a trend. Anne Ganguzza: Yeah, Lau Lapides: I think that Anne Ganguzza: yeah. Lau Lapides: was always the case. Anne Ganguzza: Well, I like Lau Lapides: But Anne Ganguzza: to Lau Lapides: now Anne Ganguzza: say Lau Lapides: so Anne Ganguzza: casting Lau Lapides: more than Anne Ganguzza: trends, Lau Lapides: ever Anne Ganguzza: this Lau Lapides: is Anne Ganguzza: is just Lau Lapides: like, Anne Ganguzza: a casting like known, Lau Lapides: yeah, Anne Ganguzza: it's a Lau Lapides: if Anne Ganguzza: known Lau Lapides: we're talking, Anne Ganguzza: fact. Lau Lapides: right, it's a fact. Anne Ganguzza: Why Lau Lapides: If Anne Ganguzza: do Lau Lapides: we're Anne Ganguzza: you get Lau Lapides: talking Anne Ganguzza: cast? Lau Lapides: to people like, like quiz yourself, if Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: I'm in an event or if I'm talking to someone on Zoom, am I thinking the whole time, oh, I want them to hire me. Oh, I want that Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: job. Or am I? really actively listening to what they're Anne Ganguzza: Yeah. Lau Lapides: saying to me and offering value to them in points that make the conversation invigorated and alive and then following up after that and doing Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: the due diligence to follow up after that. Am I doing all of that or am I just Anne Ganguzza: Right. Lau Lapides: thinking oh I want I would love them to get that get me that job and I really want Anne Ganguzza: And Lau Lapides: to Anne Ganguzza: yeah, and a lot of times, you know what? You'll get the job because you have proven yourself to be reliable, to be focused and intent on serving that client's needs and or agents needs. I can't tell you how many agents I interviewed first and then they got to know me and guess who got put on the roster? Just saying, right? As long as everything is in place. Right, we have that. And again, I know we're talking casting trends, but I think we would be remiss if we did not mention the importance of, maybe it's not a trend, but the fact that the relationships account. And that's relationships between you and your agents, and relationships between you and your direct clients. Lau Lapides: Yes. Anne Ganguzza: And of course, agents are all dependent on relationships with their clients to get you work, right? Lau Lapides: Yes. Anne Ganguzza: It all just kind of feeds into the system. Lau Lapides: Yeah, and I think the trend part comes in, Annie, where we say, okay, we all know this, we want real voices, casual, relatable voices, we want that. Well, how does that transcribe to the real world? Well, as I'm making the relationships, building the relationships, really talking, really conversing, really paying attention, I'm showcasing and demoing what I do for my real Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I love that. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Lau Lapides: in like now the last couple years are gonna say, ooh, I'm listening to them. I like the way they sound. Ooh, Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: they sound really cool. And they're going to assume, they're gonna run on the assumption Anne Ganguzza: that Lau Lapides: that Anne Ganguzza: you Lau Lapides: you Anne Ganguzza: can Lau Lapides: can Anne Ganguzza: do Lau Lapides: then Anne Ganguzza: that. Lau Lapides: bring that into the booth. Anne Ganguzza: Yeah, Lau Lapides: Yeah, Anne Ganguzza: yeah. Lau Lapides: so that's Anne Ganguzza: That's Lau Lapides: where Anne Ganguzza: a Lau Lapides: I think Anne Ganguzza: huge, Lau Lapides: the trend is. Anne Ganguzza: that's a huge assumption guys. So bosses, I want you to be prepared for that. That means, right? The fact that you're gonna bring that authenticity, that connection to you in the booth. What does that mean? That means you need to be the actor. You need to be an actor. You can no longer, no longer is it. And maybe back, I don't know, in the 60s, it was okay to have that announcer-y voice and make it sound a particular way, but it is no longer the case where you can just go in and make it sound pretty. You just can't. You just can't. You've got to be able to bring that connection, and that requires acting. And if you do not have the acting chops, then you need to get the acting chops. And I'm a big believer that you can train. You can train to get this. You can train to... have that connection and that authenticity to the story. Because again, how important, how many times do we hear, we are storytellers. And you, you know, I don't know if I've heard that phrase over and over and over again, but sometimes it's like, yeah, okay, I know I'm a storyteller. But really, am I a storyteller when I'm doing an e-learning module? Yeah, you absolutely are. You've got to know how to Lau Lapides: Yeah. Anne Ganguzza: take those words and make them sound meaningful and make them come alive. And so that is being able to tell a story, being the actor. So casting Lau Lapides: Yeah, and Anne Ganguzza: trends, Lau Lapides: it's- Anne Ganguzza: be the actor and showcase that to whoever will listen. And that's what's going to get you cast. Lau Lapides: And we Anne Ganguzza: Right? Lau Lapides: don't equate story with fiction. Story Anne Ganguzza: Yeah. Lau Lapides: is connection. It's really Anne Ganguzza: Yeah, yeah, Lau Lapides: sharing, Anne Ganguzza: yeah. Lau Lapides: sharing an experience, sharing a happening, sharing an event Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: with another or with a group for information, for persuasion, for entertainment, for whatever purposes. It doesn't necessarily mean it's false or fiction or fake. It Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: means it's very well could be real and fact-based. but it's in a story form, it's in a narrative Anne Ganguzza: Yeah. Lau Lapides: form. And understanding how to handle that in very real and authentic ways, exactly the trend of the industry today. Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Wow. I know we just kind of, I feel like we went off, but I mean, honestly, the whole, Lau Lapides: Ha ha! Anne Ganguzza: what's important? Diversity, Lau Lapides: Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza: authenticity. It's not so much about having that perfect sound. It's about the connection you have, and the connection you have not just to your material and the fact that you can actually vocalize that, but the connection you have with your agents, with your. your potential clients, because that is what's going to get you cast. Lau Lapides: Absolutely. Anne Ganguzza: And knowing yourself and knowing where you fit in this, knowing yourself enough to go for those areas that you excel in. Lau Lapides: and staying bright and hopeful and positive and humorous. Anne Ganguzza: Mm, Lau Lapides: That Anne Ganguzza: yes, Lau Lapides: is a Anne Ganguzza: yes. Lau Lapides: trend of like, whether it's Anne Ganguzza: Cause Lau Lapides: we're Anne Ganguzza: I Lau Lapides: looking Anne Ganguzza: wanna work Lau Lapides: for, Anne Ganguzza: with somebody like that, Lau Lapides: yeah, whether Anne Ganguzza: yeah. Lau Lapides: we're looking for a standup comedian or we're looking for a mom Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: sitcom type, or we're looking for, we want pops of humor and pops of humility in your work. Anne Ganguzza: Oh, love Lau Lapides: And Anne Ganguzza: that. Lau Lapides: that's real for us, that's Anne Ganguzza: Puffs Lau Lapides: real, Anne Ganguzza: of humor and humility, Lau Lapides: you know. Anne Ganguzza: I love that. Yeah. What a wonderful topic, wonderful topic. And Law, thank you for lending your ultimate wisdom in Lau Lapides: Mmm Anne Ganguzza: what you do and what you love every day. And again, we appreciate you so much, Law. Lau Lapides: I appreciate you tremendously. Anne Ganguzza: Well, you guys, I want to ask you, you know, as individuals, right, it's difficult sometimes to feel like we're making a huge impact, but as a group, we can absolutely contribute to the growth of our communities in ways that we never thought possible. Visit 100VoicesWhoCare.org to find out more and to learn how. Big shout out to IPDTL. I love connecting with law and all of you bosses. Find out more at ipdtl.com. You guys have an amazing week, and we'll see you next week. Mwah! Lau Lapides: See you next Anne Ganguzza: Bye! Lau Lapides: week. Mwah!

 

The stage is set, the mic is on, and the cue is yours. In this episode, stand-up comic and voice actor Tom Sawyer shares his golden nuggets for aspiring voice talents hoping to benefit from the power of comedy. From the importance of having fun in the booth to taking a well-deserved break, and the power of belief in oneself, Tom is a reservoir of invaluable insights. We talk about standing out in a sea of talents, catching the ears of the right casting person, and the art of continuous learning. But remember, feedback is the breakfast of champions, and as Tom says, it's all about enhancing your performance. Get ready, it's showtime!

In a world dominated by templates and a constant push for efficiency, Anne and Lau are serving up a fresh perspective on using creativity for business success. In this episode, The Bosses dissect the art of brainstorming, the power of accountability groups, and the role of improvisation in expanding your horizon of creative thinking. Hear about our unique take on how a business coach can help you conceive novel ways to stimulate business growth. Anne and Lau also break down the process of taking a raw idea and creating a tangible vision for it through research and education. 0:00:01 - Intro It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss a VO Boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza.  0:00:20 - Anne Hey, hey everyone, welcome to the VO Boss podcast. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and I am here today with the lovely and most talented Law Lapides. Hey everyone, ah, law, it's a wonderful day today. A wonderful day today. It is. Yeah, I am feeling a creative spark in the air Law.  0:00:43 - Lau I felt that too. I wonder if it's change of season or with the new fall rush coming on, I don't know. There's a little mixed with vacation-ish August. We've got that spark going on. I feel it too, Anne.  0:00:56 - Anne And you know what? I just got together. As you know, we just got together with a bunch of creatives and there's nothing to help spur your creativity rather than being with more creatives. Right, I think we should talk about ways to expand your creativity, because expanding your creativity is going to help you in the booth, it's going to help you create your characters, bring something new to the table and just, I think, get a lot of fulfillment and joy out of what you do, as long as you can find the creative angle. And I'll tell you what I get so many people that want to come into the voiceover industry because they say I'm creative and I don't feel like I'm able to express that creativity. And I'm always of the belief that, no matter where you are, you can find your creativity. You just have to sometimes be a little more, maybe, resourceful than at other times, but I always feel as though you can express creativity or expand your creativity by just digging in a little deeper and thinking a little bit outside the box.  0:01:57 - Lau Absolutely. And why do they call us creatives? We're creatives because we create. We love creating. We should be creative at all times, even if we're resting or on vacation. There's all different ways we can be creative, whether you're trying a new food or a new restaurant, or you're going down a new street to look at architecture. How are we expressing our creativity in our worlds that then we take into the booth and in the studio and in the office. That directly informs the kind of business and the kind of process that we create. And you know what's funny? One of my pet peeves was you know, when you get asked on a forum what are your hobbies? What do you like to do? I don't know. I don't know how to answer that. I don't consider myself having hobbies and yet I'm a very creative force and love doing a lot of things. I just never categorize it as a hobby. I always feel like it's integrated with my identity and who I am.  0:02:55 - Anne Yeah, and it's integrated on what you do on a daily basis. And I'll tell you one area where I think that expanding your creativity or knowing how to delve deep into that part of you will help is that I have many students where you know I'm teaching acting for long form narration and a lot of times, long form narration doesn't have an obvious story to it. So I will oftentimes and I know you'll do this as well for your actors You'll tell them to create that scene, and we are constantly needing to create a scene, and I can't tell you the amount of times that I've had students say, well, that doesn't make any sense, I don't, I can't know. And I'll say give me the scene, what are you doing? What's the conversation? And they'll just be like well, this is hard.  Well, your creative brain is a muscle, guys, and so I truly believe that you can exercise that muscle on a day to day basis and you can come up with scenes.  You can come up with things that will allow your voiceovers to be believable and authentic and really relate to your audience that you're talking to. So one of the things that I like to do to delve deep into my creativity is I used to have this little jar where I had all these little creative ideas and it didn't have to be creative ideas for voiceover, although I think I could tailor it to that right and you would pick one idea out of the jar and it'll say create a character that is based on your favorite aunt or uncle and record a five minute monologue. Okay and so right there, it really requires you to delve deep in and focus and focus. I think focus is one of the most important things to really start to dig deep and find where your creativity is and to think about all the possible ways. Law what are some tips you have for delving deep into that creativity?  0:04:43 - Lau Ooh, what a good question. And it's like if we can make it a real thing, a technique, a process, then we could be more mindful, potentially, of doing it every day to help balance our health and our mind and our body and everything. I think that's fantastic. I would give one tip and I would say that mindfulness is something that you have to structure. So I think people think, oh, it's an aesthetic and it's sort of impulse or knee-jerk reaction.  When I think of it, I do it, but really I feel like the strategy and the structure comes, the habit that you do over time and then goes from creative technique into a business strategy. So, even if it's a small thing, like every day, I wake up and I mindfully do a brain dump and I do it on paper, I speak it out loud to empty my brain. To me that's a very creative thing to do, because I could not only feel better and feel more neutralized, but I also may make discoveries about what's in my head that I didn't actually realize was there. It's subconscious stuff that's kind of rolling out and I find that very useful. Especially you and I are idea people. We're like advertising agency people, like we have to come up with ideas just like that, whether it's for a script or a delivery that helps come up with ideas.  0:06:04 - Anne I love that you segwayed so lovely into that, because I was gonna say you have to have an end goal in mind, right? I also used to scrapbook and that was one of my passions. And I say I used to, I feel bad because I really want to scrapbook. Still.  Other things started taking up my time, but it used to be that I would see a picture of a scrapbook page that I thought was gorgeous and it was just a layout and I said, oh, and it was a layout of, let's say, the first date with my husband or the wedding, or it could be my hobby, where I used to ride horses, and so it would be maybe a page or a layout that I saw about that, and it would be a creative spark and that would allow me to go and delve deep into like, okay, let me go find my pictures, let me go write something about that, because in scrapbooking it's very much about journaling and one thing that I love the most about scrapbooking and I know things have gone digital, but I'll tell you what there's nothing like looking at a paper scrapbook and just thumbing through those pages of memories, looking at pictures and reading, and I absolutely it was going to capture those memories and I love just looking back on that. And so I still believe that there's something to the writing it down on a piece of paper and having something tactile that you can touch and feel, and I think the end goal can be something to start with and then kind of work backwards to think about how are you going to reach that end goal? So, perhaps in voiceover, maybe you want to create a new character, right, and your new character would be maybe some like give it a characteristic, right, you want to have that funny, dorky character? Well, okay, work backwards from that, okay. And so who is it in your life that's funny and dorky? What do they say all the time? Write that down. Those could be funny lines that you could then practice and just really shape your character to that. I think that's one good way to do that, and I love your brain dump in the beginning in the early morning, because that's great, just getting all that stuff out and then maybe setting a long-term goal for your creative Like creativity can also be. It doesn't just have to be let me create a character voice.  Creative is let me get better at telling stories. So how am I going to develop my creative style to be able to tell stories better? And I want to be able to tell stories better on, let's say, really dry material. Well, I got lots of that for you because I do tons of long format narration. I can help you with that. Just go find some really dry material out there and let's figure out what's the storyline, figure out how to break it down. And again, I think number one is have that end goal. Number two is educate. Gosh, I'm such an educator, right, I mean I love education. I think along the way, if you can educate yourself. You can certainly Google storytelling, key steps for storytelling, and you can also work with someone as well to help you develop key steps for storytelling. But educating yourself like that, I think there's just nothing that can beat that.  0:08:53 - Lau You know. It's so true. When you get it down on paper, there's something that becomes real about it. To get it out of your head and do, the process of writing it down or typing it out becomes real, and then even speaking it to someone becomes even more real. Before you manifest these ideas as actual events, I'm gonna give a tip too, and I'm gonna call it alchemy.  So I always feel like what we do in our craft and in our art and in our businesses as bosses is create alchemy and meaning taking nothing and creating something out of it. Unlike a magician, which I always think of magic as something where we're making something disappear or removing something or we have an illusion going on. This is a little bit different. I think of this almost more scientifically, like nothing is there and then all of a sudden, something is there and it's very real and you did it and you manifested it so creatively. Do anything you can do where nothing is there and then you create something.  So, for instance, take a blank canvas, create a visual, take clay and then create something out of the clay. Or take a seed and plant it and then there's a flower, so that you can manifest the idea that my ideas may not all come true, they may not all manifest, but because they're there and they're present and I'm allowing them to come out into the world that there is a chance that alchemy can happen from that process. And that's that risk that we talk about, that's that falling off the cliff and saying, oh, sometimes things actually happen and are created out of process. So, creatively speaking, I think that's a tremendous hobby, if you will, to just practice that, practice creating something out of absolutely nothing. And now where?  0:10:40 - Anne do you go for ideas? That's a good question, right, gosh. I just say the internet is at your disposal, right? And also other creatives, right? Other creatives doing brainstorm sessions, you know those accountability groups. I mean I say take five, 10 minutes and talk about, hey, what can we do to expand creatively? And there's lots of things that can help you to expand creatively too. That's within the realm of voiceover. One of the biggest I can think of right now is improv. Right, improv is creative. Take a conversation and go with it and run with it.  0:11:10 - Lau That's the best of Alchemy, actually. Yes.  0:11:12 - Anne Exactly and just create that, but I think also getting together in brainstorming. I do have a business coach that I have had for the past gosh 12 years and I absolutely love my business coach and we brainstorm, we brainstorm. Once a month we have a session where we brainstorm and we say where is it that Anne wants her business to go? But that is a creative brainstorm and what can we do? And I'm constantly evolving. I think we had an episode on either parallel streams of income or what is your plan B, right? You should always have that backup plan. And so what else will you do to grow your business right? And that's a very creative endeavor. And for me, I'm going to tell you that the VO Peeps and the VO Boss podcast the very podcast that you're listening to, bosses was a creative endeavor because one of the things I saw was an end goal of like, oh, a podcast that sounds really cool, I wanna do that.  And then I took that one idea. That was really nothing and I had said, okay, now what do I have to do? What are the steps that I have to take in order to create that right? And the first step was what's the vision for it? What is it that I wanna do, or what is it that I want to conceive and will other people and it doesn't always have to benefit other people, but for me, I wanted it to be a resource. So that was within the realm of my project scoped. Okay, I want this to be an educational resource. Now, how am I gonna get there? Right, what am I gonna do?  Well, first step started brainstorming it with somebody and then educating myself on the process, and I did that a lot. When, as a scrapbooker as well, right, I saw a scrapbook page with paper flowers and I'm like I should be able to make paper flowers, like there are some really beautiful paper flowers out there. Right, there's techniques, there's things that you can do, there's all different patterns and kinds of paper and techniques, and you can crumple the paper first and then you can put layers of that with a different pattern paper. It's amazing, and I think, even if you're doing creative things that don't have to do with voiceover or don't have to do with your business, they will absolutely, number one, bring you joy if creativity is what you are seemingly lacking in your life, but it can also open your mind to doing things to propel yourself forward personally and professionally.  0:13:26 - Lau Ooh, I love that. So you're really looking the fine details, the really small little minutiae in what you're doing, rather than just the big task of it. But look at the little moments that happen, that really are like sliding doors. They really change the trajectory of where your piece or art or business is going to go based on those little tiny details. I think that that is phenomenal. I would even motivate people to be very visceral and very kinesthetic about it every day, meaning don't stay online, go outside, do something outside, like I love to go into a little bookstore and see what's in there that inspires me, that makes me excited or happy, or go get a massage or go to a movie or go I've been bike riding lately and outside Go shop yeah.  I don't know. Do something that's physical and visceral bike riding, walking, whatever you're doing. Go to a restaurant, go to a diner, go sit and have french fries so that you can really observe people, look at human behavior, watch the servers smell the cooking, feel the table, and it sounds insane. But it's like we forget how to do that when we're inside too long and we're locked in too long. And that is my hobby. That is like my hobby.  0:14:45 - Anne I love that. People, people, people. Can I just reiterate people. And again, because Law-U and I just came back from a conference gosh, being around other creative people, just soaking up the energy. Not even you don't even have to be discussing things that are creative, you just have to be around other people that have that creative energy and observe them and see what they're doing and then be inspired by them and be motivated. So be open to that instead of let's say maybe I don't know, being at a conference and being I don't know like sad or feeling bad about yourself or not feeling like you're enough. I went and saw the Barbie movie, that kind of a thing.  I actually always thought that for me, creatively watching wonderful media, great movies, listening to great music was always such a wonderful experience to bring out the creativity in me and to relax me, to get me thinking, to get me outside of myself, because sometimes we're so stuck inside ourselves that we cannot get out of it. And I'm gonna say this for those people who say I am so miserable in my job Okay, I get it. If you're maybe miserable in a situation where maybe you've got people around you, that it can become toxic. You're not happy, you're bored, whatever that is, I think that there's always a way in your mind creatively to get out of it, okay. So here I'm gonna get a little bit philosophical. Maybe I was the youngest child and I had three brothers and one of the things was because obviously I couldn't share a room, right, I was on my own quite a bit and my brothers would do off doing their things, having fun and doing their brother things, and I would very much, a lot of the time, be alone playing by myself. And that play time right, playtime guys, we should have playtime even as adults right, that playtime allowed me to be creative. And of course now I'm thinking of the Barbie, that I would play with my Barbies and I would play with lots of toys. I did all sorts of things with my imagination to create scenes. So it's absolutely in every one of us. I think we just have to revisit and give ourselves some time so that we can have that time for ourselves. And if you're miserable in your job, I think there's always a way to find a part of your job that you can become creative in. I say that I mean I worked gosh, I was in a couple of different industries, right, I was an educator.  I loved being an educator number one because I loved learning. Learning meant that nothing was ever the same and I was able to educate. But also, in that way, I was creative. Right, I was creating classes. If I thought this was a really cool technique, I would create a class and I would teach someone. When I worked in the medical industry, you know, I was an engineer, I was trying to solve problems, and when I worked in technology and networking, I was trying to solve problems that people had, or create something so that people wouldn't experience the problems that I did. I mean, one of the reasons I created the VO Boss Blast was because I didn't have time to do a ton of auditions and I wanted to be able to direct market, and so I said I need something where I can just put my name out there to the people who might be able to hire me. And so I created the Boss Blast for myself initially, and then I said, oh my gosh, wouldn't it be great to be able to share this Boom yes, there you go.  0:18:08 - Lau In essence, you're satisfying your needs as a business owner while satisfying others' needs. Is that not perfect? I think that's a perfect alchemy right there, and a whole bunch of stuff came to my head, like go bowling, play games, collect shells on the beach, like, do stuff, do stuff, do stuff. Not only will you find what feels good and meditative and right for you, but you're really gonna make these discoveries that you can't necessarily make sitting in your room or sitting in your booth. It really is about your environment. How are you reacting to your environment and how are you informed by your environment? I know I love to dance, like I was at this conference with you, annie, and I was up half the night dancing and I couldn't move the next day because you know like my hip and my this.  0:18:57 - Anne I was insane.  0:18:58 - Lau I was a crazy person.  0:18:59 - Anne I saw you and I thought oh my God, look at her go. I loved it. I know People are like do ages dance. It made me so happy, Lau. I meant to tell you that and I was like look at her, go. She's having such a good time, and I think everyone on the dance floor that night right, it was just expressing themselves, having a good time letting go, and, again, that's something that can really help spark your creativity.  0:19:22 - Lau Yes, and there's an honesty about it, there's a purity about it. There isn't a motivation in it that we all have to do this or think this or say this, or there isn't like that we have in business, because ultimately we're trying to please the client and give them what they need. This is really not only for yourself internally, but it is for your community as well, so it satisfies both needs. And sometimes you know who your community is and sometimes it's just the world and you don't know who the community is. And it's important, I think, to relate easily and fluidly with all of that to then bring that realness to the script and bring that familiarity and authenticity to your scripts, because you've had a lot of these sensory experiences, sure you know just for yourself.  0:20:09 - Anne I think a lot of it is the creative in your brain, but it's the creative outlet as well, right, and I say outlet because that means you've got to let it out. Right, it's in your head, it's floating around. You're either gonna let it out by writing it down, by talking to someone about it, by creating something like a piece of music or a beautiful piece of art, and that is the outlet, that is the expression of creativity and that, I think, is the step that's going to come back and really give you that sense of satisfaction, fulfillment, joy, and just make sure that it gets out. I have all sorts of ideas floating around in my head. I love that. I like to think, well, okay, I've got these great ideas, now how am I going to execute that idea? Right, and again, that comes to writing it down, maybe setting a goal, working backwards from that, creating that list of things that you wanna do, talking about it to people, letting yourself go and allow yourself to be free from other garbage that's in and out of your brain. That can be bitterness, tiredness, anger, anything that's not bringing you joy. However, you release that.  Again I go on a bike ride. It's really done wonders for me and I remember it was silly because for many years during the pandemic I did not do that and I just was work, work, work, work, work. And it became stressful. And I remember for 18 years this is my husband and I. I met my husband. He was my spin instructor, so I would go spinning with him three to four times a week and that was after a day's worth of work and it was such a wonderful release for me to get rid of the tension, the stress, the annoyances of the day if I had any and then it allowed to free me up to just feel joy and start to grow and be creative again.  0:21:58 - Lau I love it, and you took the words right out of my mouth I was just about to say. The ultimatum of the day is that if we don't do this for ourselves, we really run the risk that we may have self-destructive or self-sabotage tendencies, as a lot of creatives we kind of have at building.  A lot yes so much the smoke coming out of the ears, the brain that hurts, the part that's pulsating. So being able to not only release that, but give yourself permission that it's really okay to take time for you and your world, and it's going to inspire you and make you healthier. It's really necessary to do otherwise. It can all be internalized and then start working against your process.  0:22:38 - Anne And you mentioned something so important self-sabotage, gosh. That just happens so much to us, doesn't it in this world?  Yes, because I think we're constantly trying to judge ourselves by our perceived success and success is defined in so many different ways and I think that we have to fall down and brush ourselves off and get back up and really consider that a success and not just, oh, I've booked the gig or I got that national spot or whatever that is because that self-sabotage is destructive and we had a whole episode on that but it is so self-destructive. Am I enough? Do I belong in this industry? I felt them all, by the way, at one point or another and I think, as a human being, I think we can all say that we've probably had self-sabotage creep in to our lives at one point or another, and how you get yourself out of that can be a great testament to becoming successful understanding how to release the negative and bring in the positive and bring that creativeness back to you, your product because you are your product right and your performance.  0:23:47 - Lau I love that. This is so inspiring to me. So fuel yourself with feel-good stuff that really invites invigoration and them invigor. And if you really feel that you're being drained by it you're not your best self, it's destroying you then look elsewhere, because you're going to know the difference between something that inspires your work and fuels it and something that drains you and steals your focus. Love it.  0:24:15 - Anne Well, that's another podcast, right? How do we remove ourselves from a situation that is not bringing us joy and is not bringing our ability to create, right? So what a great conversation, law. Thank you so much. I love talking to you, law. My pleasure, I think, between the two of us. Brainstorming, I mean, we do that all the time right? We are helping one another to become more creative, and bosses, you can do that as well. So I want you to now imagine a world full of passionate, empowered, diverse individuals that are giving collectively and intentionally to create the world they want. It's exactly what we've been talking about, and you can find out more at 100voiceswhocareorg. All right, big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl. You, too, can connect and network like bosses and bring that creativity out in all of us. Have a wonderful week, guys, and we'll see you next week. See you then, bye.  0:25:13 - Outro Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, Anne Gangusa, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at vobosscom and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution, with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via IPDTL yeah.  0:25:46 - Lau Yeah, yeah, you know, okay, just why don't you try something else? No, I don't know, just take a chance, I don't know, surprise me, surprise me.  0:26:02 - Anne Surprise me with something different, and at that point it's always like walk out of the room.  0:26:07 - Lau Okay, I don't walk out of the room.  Transcribed by https://podium.page  

So you're thinking about hiring a virtual assistant... Ever wondered how to hire the right person for the job? The Bosses have got you covered. In this episode, Anne and Lau lay out the importance of understanding the job scope and setting realistic expectations. From sifting through rates and fees to seeking referrals and testimonials, we discuss it all. We share insights on how to prioritize, make substitutions, and be resourceful to afford the luxury of investing in your business. Remember, when hiring, the focus should be on what's best for your business, not just personal preference. So tune in, and let's build a successful business together, with a commitment second to none. Transcript Intro It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss a VO Boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza. Anne Ganguzza: Hey everyone, welcome to the VioBoss Podcast and the Boss Superpower Series. I'm your host, Ngan Gusa, and I am here with my amazing, wonderful Boss co-host, Lau Lapides. Lau Lapides: Oh, and I'm so thrilled to be back as always in the booth. Anne Ganguzza: In the booth with the bosses. Lau Lapides: What happens in our booth stays in our booths. Well, not Anne Ganguzza: Well, Lau Lapides: really, but I Anne Ganguzza: but Lau Lapides: don't Anne Ganguzza: wait, wait. So wait, we also Lau Lapides: know about Anne Ganguzza: project Lau Lapides: that. Anne Ganguzza: that, we also project that out into the global universe there. Ha Lau Lapides: We'll have to change that tagline, I think. Anne Ganguzza: ha ha. Oh man, I'll tell you what, look, I have been so busy this week and I cannot split my time up anymore. I am one person and I'm telling you, I literally have no more hours in the day. So everybody knows that has heard me go on and on and out about. the fact that I outsource and I do have a team, I think maybe we should really talk about that because I might need to increase my team because right now I'm feeling like I don't have any more time and so how am I going to do the things that I wanna do and grow my business if I don't have the time to execute the daily tasks or whatever tasks are needed to do that law. Lau Lapides: That sounds like what my dad would always say a really good problem to have. We Anne Ganguzza: Yeah. Lau Lapides: all want to have that problem where we're growing a company, we're outgrowing what we're doing and how we're doing it, and we're Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: not spending our time wisely. We're not working smarter, we're just working harder. And really, how do we do both? Right? Anne Ganguzza: Yeah. Lau Lapides: How do we get to that next level? We call it leveling up in the biz. How do we actually do that, Ann? What Anne Ganguzza: Yeah. Lau Lapides: do we need to do? Let's talk about that. Anne Ganguzza: Well, first of all, I think it's important to note that there's a lot of people that are just getting into voiceover. And they may think to themselves, oh, my gosh, I can barely afford to be in voiceover, right? I just got in. I'm not booking gigs yet. Or maybe the gigs that I'm booking are few and far between. And so how can I even begin to think about hiring somebody or getting help? Because I can't even get a job. first. And Lau Lapides: Right. Anne Ganguzza: so guys, I want you to really this is where I think it takes courage, it takes boldness, and it takes some, I think some street smarts and savvy to really strategize how you might be able to make this work for you. Because, well, you know, while somebody might be doing some of the more maybe mundane tasks that take up a lot of your day when trying to acquire work, I mean, half of the time it's we're trying to acquire work, right, Law? Lau Lapides: Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza: And it's the acquiring, that getting out there, that marketing, how do I acquire, you're either auditioning or you're marketing, right? And you are the expert at auditioning, right? Maybe you're not the expert at marketing. And so therefore, if you could have someone help you with the marketing, right, it would give you more time to be the expert in auditioning and perfecting your craft or honing your performance. Lau Lapides: Right, and the truth is, whether you're a solopreneur and you're working alone, just starting out the first couple of years of your biz, or whether you're growing and starting to think about adding team members, we're all at that level. All of us are at that level of thinking about, we're marketing, we're constantly reaching out and going out and figuring out how we're gonna get our next prospect. So you never grow out of that, no matter what Anne Ganguzza: Oh, Lau Lapides: is happening, you never grow out. Anne Ganguzza: amen, Lau Lapides: But Anne Ganguzza: amen. Lau Lapides: you do have to time it well. everyone and Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: at the beginning stages I wouldn't do anything prematurely to make you know Anne Ganguzza: Agreed, Lau Lapides: go broke I Anne Ganguzza: agreed. Lau Lapides: really want to make sure you Anne Ganguzza: But Lau Lapides: have Anne Ganguzza: I Lau Lapides: a Anne Ganguzza: would Lau Lapides: little Anne Ganguzza: start Lau Lapides: bit Anne Ganguzza: strategizing. Lau Lapides: of capital Anne Ganguzza: I would Lau Lapides: start Anne Ganguzza: start Lau Lapides: strategize Anne Ganguzza: strategizing Lau Lapides: yeah Anne Ganguzza: because I think just having the thought of, or the thought that, yes, I'm going to need help at some point, you're manifesting the fact that you're going to be getting the work. I'm a big believer in the manifestation of getting work. And also, I think you're never too early to kind of plan or strategize what type of help you might need. And just, you know, it takes time to find help. It's not something typically you can get in a moment's instant. And it is something that you will have to kind of, I would say, educate yourself on in terms of, well, you know, is there a service out here that can help me to do this? Is there someone who can help me to, I don't know, write emails to prospects or maybe generate leads? What type of work could you use? I think if you start by really assessing your business. Breaking down on a piece of paper, how much time do you spend on each thing per day? How much time do you spend auditioning? How much time do you spend researching? How much time do you spend practicing? How much time do you spend on social media? I think that's a good place to start. And then find out if there is. And of course, I totally agree with you a lot with the make sure that you've got a little bit of a nest egg that you can invest. When you need somebody to help you because again, I think we've said this so many times if you want to make money You know you need to spend some money Lau Lapides: Mmm. Absolutely Anne Ganguzza: Hmm Lau Lapides: no doubt about that one. Second that notion. And I would say take a step back and look at your psychology Anne Ganguzza: Mmm. Lau Lapides: and really keep it real, really keep it real. Despite the name of our wonderful series here, you do have to realize that no one is a true superhero in doing everything yourself. And we like Anne Ganguzza: Oh Lau Lapides: to Anne Ganguzza: god, Lau Lapides: think we Anne Ganguzza: yes. Lau Lapides: are, especially us ladies like to think we are. Anne Ganguzza: Outlaw Lau Lapides: We can do everything and we're a failure if we don't. Anne Ganguzza: Can I, oh my God, can I just like say yes Lau Lapides: Amen, Anne Ganguzza: to that? Lau Lapides: amen, Anne Ganguzza: Amen Lau Lapides: say yes. Anne Ganguzza: to that. I am the biggest control freak that there is. Lau Lapides: Me too! Anne Ganguzza: And no, if you wanna get it done right, I'll just have to do it myself. But I'll tell you what, that gets old pretty soon. Once you really wanna grow, I mean, I found that I couldn't move if I didn't outsource and I didn't hire. And I kept thinking, oh God, but maybe I won't have the money. Maybe I won't have that steady stream of income that I can pay them. And I'm here to tell you that it can work if you strategize and you're smart about it. And you really take a look at the money that you have coming in and the money that you have going out. I think that really, Law, is another sit down and really look at the numbers. Number one, how much are you spending on, you know, your marketing. How much are you spending on? And when I talk about spending on marketing, if you're not hiring anybody to do your marketing, you're spending your time. And your time should be worth X amount of dollars per hour. I like to say that I am worth so much per hour. Now, if I want to break down what I do in a day and then say how much it costs me, if I'm spending an hour doing marketing, that's, you know, it's my hourly rate. And so really taking a good look at how much is coming in. how much you're putting out. And sometimes in the beginning, that's gonna be a little unequal. I'm gonna say that I had to invest a little bit more in the beginning than was coming in. And I just needed to make sure that I had a good handle on how much I could put out to be safe and still be able to pay the mortgage. Lau Lapides: And you don't want to go in and with a blind faith, you want to have Anne Ganguzza: Yeah. Lau Lapides: some real strategy behind how you're going in, especially if you're at a place typically within the first three to five years of growing a new business where you really are not making an actual salary just yet. Anne Ganguzza: Yeah, Lau Lapides: You're really Anne Ganguzza: yeah. Lau Lapides: not making the return on anything just Anne Ganguzza: Sure. Lau Lapides: yet. And that's expected. And I think in our culture, North American business culture, I think we're sort of trained in a way that is more mythical than realistic and that is we should be making profit as quickly as possible in the Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: first five years. That's a real myth that just, Anne Ganguzza: Oh gosh, Lau Lapides: it very rarely Anne Ganguzza: it Lau Lapides: exists Anne Ganguzza: so is. Lau Lapides: that you find someone who's starting any business that in the first five years, sometimes longer, Anne Ganguzza: Yeah. Lau Lapides: is making any kind of a Anne Ganguzza: Yes. Lau Lapides: profit, right? Anne Ganguzza: Please. Let's Lau Lapides: So Anne Ganguzza: say Lau Lapides: going Anne Ganguzza: that Lau Lapides: in Anne Ganguzza: again. Lau Lapides: realistically, Anne Ganguzza: Let's say that again. How Lau Lapides: yeah, Anne Ganguzza: long, Law? Lau Lapides: going in. Anne Ganguzza: Five years, if not longer. Lau Lapides: If not longer. Anne Ganguzza: If not longer. And I will tell you, for me, it was longer. You know, it was longer than the first five years. I mean, I came from a job where I was making a particular salary, and I was like, oh, I want to be able to make this salary. You know, and I always ask my students to put their goals on a piece of paper of what they want to do in the first year. after they get their demo from me and that sort of thing. And I have a lot of people, they have very high goals of basically making that six figure salary in the first year. And I'm here to say, not to crush your dreams, but I'm here to say that it may take you a little bit longer to get to that point, but that's okay, I mean, that's very normal. And as long as you are okay and you have that little kind of nest egg there that you are strategically pulling money out of investing wisely, you're going to be okay. I mean, but it's very, very normal to not make any kind of money back in the first, you know, years of your voice over business. And especially now, it's kind of a little bit crazy these days. It just Lau Lapides: Mm. Anne Ganguzza: keeps getting more and more. more and more people in the industry. And then there's a lot of hype around, you know, advancing technologies and, you know, I do believe there is, you know, are we going to have jobs in 10 years? That kind of a thing. But again, I'm very much of the mindset that we create our work, we create our businesses, and we evolve. And Lau Lapides: Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza: I believe we will always have a need for our human voices in Lau Lapides: Yes. Anne Ganguzza: any aspect in the creative entertainment educational spectrum. Lau Lapides: Yeah. And I would second that. And I think that creative energy coupled with the entrepreneurial resilience Anne Ganguzza: Mmm. Lau Lapides: is really the thing, capital T-H-E, the thing that's going to help make you successful in our businesses, being able to pivot, being able to be Anne Ganguzza: Mmm. Lau Lapides: resilient. And I did want to qualify one area you brought up that I absolutely totally agree with and adore is that it's not that you're not making money Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: in your first five years. investing and reinvesting Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm, absolutely. Lau Lapides: in what you need to have for your studio or have for your marketing or have for yourself. And you need to do that and in order to make money back, you need to invest money in order to make money. It isn't it's not just let me do things for free or get things Anne Ganguzza: Yeah, Lau Lapides: as cheaply as possible Anne Ganguzza: absolutely. Lau Lapides: and make as much money. Business just doesn't work that way. Anne Ganguzza: Yeah. Lau Lapides: Right? Anne Ganguzza: And I think you made mention of get things as cheaply as possible. You know, we all want I think we all we all shop for a bargain. Right. Lau Lapides: Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza: I know I do. And so you have to understand the market as well when people are shopping for a bargain that may include your voice. Right. So I think, you know, the fact that you mentioned even that law is something that we have to take into consideration. The investment that you make into your business, sometimes making it all about the amount of money you're investing isn't necessarily the object or even necessarily a wise strategy. Because I would say if you're trying to maybe skimp on demo creation or coaching or workshops, that kind of thing, I truly believe that they are worth their weight in gold for you, because that is developing your product. Lau Lapides: Yes, Anne Ganguzza: Right? Lau Lapides: yes. Anne Ganguzza: Your product is, I mean, if you don't have a product, you don't have a business. Your product is your voice. Your voice is, you know, physically, you can't, well, can you buy a new voice? Well, maybe. I mean, I don't know, but not really. I can't buy, like, I can't buy your voice law. I wish, you know, I mean, your physical voice for me. So all I can do is develop my own and Lau Lapides: Yep. Anne Ganguzza: learn how to use it. more effectively and perform my job to my client's specifications. And that investment, I think, is a wise investment. And I don't think that there isn't a cheap, good way of going about that, really. Lau Lapides: No, Anne Ganguzza: There's Lau Lapides: I had... Anne Ganguzza: less expensive, but I don't think if you go cheap, you get what you pay for. Lau Lapides: Yes, it's bringing up one of those little signs, those funny, cute characters, aluminum signs that one of my friends and former engineers bought for me on a birthday. And it was like a mechanic, you know, in front of a car. Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: And it said, good work ain't cheap and cheap work ain't good. Anne Ganguzza: Yeah. Lau Lapides: And I never forgot that. I was like, it's so Anne Ganguzza: Yep. Lau Lapides: cute and kitschy and silly, but yet it really bottom lines it. It's like you do get what you pay for. So pay wisely, invest Anne Ganguzza: Yeah, Lau Lapides: wisely, Anne Ganguzza: yeah, absolutely. Lau Lapides: and just know that you want to spend money in the most researched and educated and referred areas that you can, because you know it's gonna grow you. So getting back to that growing your team. Anne Ganguzza: Sure. Lau Lapides: It's like, woo, all right, let's say we're ready to grow the team and take Anne Ganguzza: Right. Lau Lapides: on a VA, a virtual assistant, Anne Ganguzza: Sure. Lau Lapides: or take on an accountant or taking on a marketing specialist. What are the steps that we need to be thinking about strategically so that we're staying conservative, we're staying frugal, but we're unafraid, we're coming from abundance, not fear to grow the business Anne Ganguzza: Sure, Lau Lapides: knowing that Anne Ganguzza: absolutely. Lau Lapides: I'm going to look for a return. Anne Ganguzza: Well, I'm gonna say number one, I think, you know, I think number one of everything is education, right? Educate yourself on the things that you are going to want to have outsourced or want to maybe hand off to someone else to do. If you've done them yourself, you know how much time it takes, right? If you know how much effort it goes into the creation of content, you know what can be done and what... maybe can't be done by a virtual assistant. And so I feel as though you've got to really research. I think in a lot of cases, you have to find someone who really understands you and understands your business and understands your voice. If you're going to have them help you, let's say, craft emails or generate leads or do social media, they still have to kind of understand who you are and what your brand is about because they're going to be representing you. If they're gonna be just doing something like, you know, the monthly numbers, you know, like my accountant, that's not as necessary, but still she has to be educated about, what are my expenses? Who am I paying? Who's a vendor? Who's, you know, what, you know, what is this expense for? So there will be some time, I think, that you'll spend, first of all, in educating yourself about what it is that needs to be done and the scope of that job, because that's the scope of the job that you will be having to provide anyone that you hire. And then that is going to then either there'll be a price for that and you'll decide if that price is worth paying for their services and what can they do that's realistic and what can they do, what can't they do. There can be a lot of people out there that will promise you the world, I'll do all of your social media. Well, okay, that's a pretty blanket statement. Does that mean you're going to actually... content for me on TikTok? Are you going to create videos? Or if you're going to do that I'm gonna have to provide you with videos that you can then edit and so that's another step that you're gonna have to keep in mind in the process. What's Lau Lapides: Absolutely. Anne Ganguzza: your part? What's their part? Lau Lapides: Yes, yes, and I mean, when I think of some of the mistakes that I made when I was hiring the first year or so, I won't I don't want people to make those mistakes. So think like a chess player. Think Anne Ganguzza: Mmm. Lau Lapides: like a strategy game player where you're thinking three or four steps ahead. So just because you're hiring someone in a particular area that either you are not qualified to do yourself Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: or not mean that you don't have to know what needs to be done. Anne Ganguzza: Oh god yes. Lau Lapides: So it's a very fine line of knowing as much as you can without actually becoming that Anne Ganguzza: Yes, Lau Lapides: expert Anne Ganguzza: absolutely. Lau Lapides: and not micromanaging that expert, but also being three steps ahead of that expert. So the expert... never is bored, they never are left with nothing Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: to do, and they know exactly where they're going for the next month or the quarter or even the week. Sometimes, like for instance, I'll have what I call stand up Zoom meetings at the beginning of the week, and sometimes those will continue all week Anne Ganguzza: Yeah, Lau Lapides: where we'll Anne Ganguzza: yeah. Lau Lapides: jump on Zoom and we'll have coffee and we'll talk about our goals and we'll have a laugh and then we'll get right to it. And it has a very, it has a team cohesion to it. Anne Ganguzza: Sure, absolutely. Lau Lapides: that I find a lot of people really love and crave Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: that connection, Anne Ganguzza: Oh, absolutely. Lau Lapides: but Anne Ganguzza: I have Lau Lapides: it Anne Ganguzza: a team Lau Lapides: also keeps on top of people, Anne Ganguzza: Yeah, Lau Lapides: right? Anne Ganguzza: I have a team Lau Lapides: That... Anne Ganguzza: meeting as well I have a team meeting as well once a week with you know Not everybody but once a week and then you know if I have like my accountant of course we meet you know At a particular time she doesn't have to be with the team of social media But I do have a general team that handles social media and all communications by behalf or some communications on my behalf. And so we meet once a week. And usually it's a two or three hour meeting. So it's not a short meeting. And of course I pay them for their time at that point as well. I think it's important to note that, oh gosh, finding the cheapest, you know what I mean? Assistant is not always the best solution. I really believe, again, you've got to research, look for testimonials, look for referrals. Because, you know, There's a lot of people can promise things. And I'm always very wary of people that I don't know, that are maybe outside of the industry. And so, I know Law, you and I have spoken about it. You interview, you interview people. And I do the same to make sure that I get a good feel for who they are. And if they are from the same industry, you also have to kind of keep in mind, well, is there a conflict of interest? Or is there, you do have to kind of think about that. I mean, I hate to say that, but you do. You've Lau Lapides: Yeah. Anne Ganguzza: got to think, is there a conflict of interest, or is there something that you're doing that they may be also kind of taking what you're doing and then utilizing it for themselves, which is absolutely fine in certain cases, but in other cases, it may not be fine. So, Lau Lapides: so important Anne Ganguzza: yeah. Lau Lapides: and so you have to think about this stuff. Anne Ganguzza: Yeah. Lau Lapides: Also, not to downgrade in any way services that do provide voiceover talent that become VA's. That's really great Anne Ganguzza: Oh yeah, no, yeah, Lau Lapides: for Anne Ganguzza: absolutely. Lau Lapides: the talent themselves. That's a great side hustle for them. But my strategy is a little bit different. I actually do not want that. That would not Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: be something I would be looking for. for reasons that you're saying, but also, I actually find that people who are in the non-creative space, if there is such a thing, I Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: don't know, I think everyone's creative, but consider themselves a non-creative. They're more business-oriented, administrative, Anne Ganguzza: Yep, they have a different Lau Lapides: more Anne Ganguzza: perspective. Lau Lapides: numbers, Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: they have no emotional Anne Ganguzza: Attachment. Lau Lapides: investment or attachment to what we are doing, and I actually Anne Ganguzza: Agreed. Lau Lapides: like that better. Anne Ganguzza: Yes, Lau Lapides: because we Anne Ganguzza: yeah. Lau Lapides: are the emotional ones. We are the hypathos. We're what I call the crazy Anne Ganguzza: Oh, law, Lau Lapides: creatives. Anne Ganguzza: really? Are we really that? I'm Lau Lapides: We Anne Ganguzza: not a, Lau Lapides: are, Anne Ganguzza: I'm Lau Lapides: and Anne Ganguzza: not Lau Lapides: I'm Anne Ganguzza: a, Lau Lapides: one of them. Anne Ganguzza: I'm not dramatic or emotional at all. I'm just Lau Lapides: I Anne Ganguzza: saying. Lau Lapides: fully admit it. So I actually don't mind and really enjoy the other side Anne Ganguzza: Yeah, Lau Lapides: of Anne Ganguzza: yeah. Lau Lapides: that coin. People who can come Anne Ganguzza: Well, Lau Lapides: in Anne Ganguzza: mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: and they're very consistent. Their personalities are not up and down. They have Anne Ganguzza: And they, Lau Lapides: nothing in it for them personally. Anne Ganguzza: well, that's it. And they bring a very different perspective. And they also can reach possibly people that you don't have access to, right? Or have, you know, in terms of, you know, it could be reach people for marketing or even reaching people for helping and doing other things. right, and you would never have been able to find them. So I actually, law, I am like, I'm between, I actually utilize both. I utilize some people in the industry, and then I utilize people outside of the industry because for that reason, exactly for that reason, law, the one thing that I run into when I look for people outside of the industry, because, and I'm just gonna say this because I've been doing this for so long, selling into this industry. When you sell into a creative industry, right, we're all starving artists. So it always seems like, okay, I don't have a lot of money to invest. I don't have a lot of money. I'm sorry, I don't have the money. I don't have the... And so what happens is when, you know, if you are that starving artist and you're trying to outsource to somebody else who's a starving artist, right, there's gonna be that, well, I don't have a ton of money. And then again, remember, you get what you pay for. I'm a big believer in paying people what they're worth because that's what I speak about and I think we should all walk the walk, right? And talk the talk, walk the walk. You should pay people for what they're worth and they will want to do a better job for you. You have to make them excited to work for you and excited to wanna be at work. And so if you're always trying to get the cheap, right? Or you can't pay a lot of money, then you may not get the performance that you're expecting out of people. as well. Lau Lapides: Yeah, I agree, and I'm gonna take issue with this. rhetoric that floats out there in the artist's crowd, that I don't have the money. I'm gonna challenge Anne Ganguzza: Yeah, yeah, Lau Lapides: that because Anne Ganguzza: please. Lau Lapides: I would sit you down and believe me, I'm not a financial advisor. I do not give financial advice. But I know from living the life that I've lived, that if I sat you down even over seven days and really documented everything you're doing, everything you're spending money on, Anne Ganguzza: Oh, yup. Lau Lapides: what's your fixed costs, what's your variable costs, it would kind of blow you out of the water to see Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: how much money you're spending in directions that are luxury, you don't need, Anne Ganguzza: Oh yeah, Lau Lapides: they're not necessities, Anne Ganguzza: absolutely. Lau Lapides: or that you're just throwing away and unaware of that could be invested. right into Anne Ganguzza: Yeah, Lau Lapides: your business. Anne Ganguzza: totally Lau Lapides: That would Anne Ganguzza: agreed. Lau Lapides: be what I call Anne Ganguzza: Totally Lau Lapides: found Anne Ganguzza: agreed. Lau Lapides: money. That's like that's like coins under the couch, right? Anne Ganguzza: Yeah, Lau Lapides: And Anne Ganguzza: totally Lau Lapides: as you're finding Anne Ganguzza: agreed. Lau Lapides: the coins under the couch, Anne Ganguzza: Yeah. Lau Lapides: say, Wow, well, before I claim poverty, and before I identify with not having money, let me take accountability 100% with the money that I earn or that I'm saving Anne Ganguzza: Yes. Lau Lapides: and how I am spending it. Anne Ganguzza: Yeah, that's why I say over and over again, you're right, you're so right on that. You've got to sit down and look at the numbers. It is, take a hard look at your numbers and don't just do it once, right? Revisit it, like revisit it monthly, revisit it weekly. I mean, really revisit it. I have, you know, I installed the, oh my gosh, I forget the name of it, the app on my phone, the financial app on my phone that tells me what I'm spending money monthly on. And you will, oh, Rocket, I think it's Rocket Money. So Lau Lapides: Yes, Anne Ganguzza: I invested Lau Lapides: great. Anne Ganguzza: in that, because now that's something I spend monthly on, but Rocket Money tells me what I'm spending every month. And so there could be those unknown subscriptions that I'm paying for. And I totally agree with you, Law, that there is that constant, I don't have the money, I don't have the money, I hear it all the time, trust me, I do. Because I sell services to the voiceover, I sell events, I sell coaching services, I sell demo production, I constantly hear the I don't have money. And it's... It's really a thing you have to understand that if you are going to hire outside of this industry people will be charging accordingly. Meaning, it's not like you may be surprised at the hourly rate that these other services, marketing services in particular, social media services will get for these things. And So, you know, that might be a nice eye-opener or maybe not a nice eye-opener. It is something, though, to be aware of, though, that in our industry, I think we're so used to hearing each other going, well, I just don't have the money, and, you know, we're trying to, like, skimp and say. But yet we speak about charging what you're worth all the time. And so consider that from all... all areas, right? Don't just consider like, well, you know, I'm charging what I'm worth, but you know what, when it comes to hiring a virtual assistant, well, you know, I can only pay you like $5 an hour. No, that's just not going to cut it. Lau Lapides: Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza: Just, you know. Lau Lapides: Yes, totally. And really, okay, I'm about to say the C word. I think this audience can handle it. Commitment. Anne Ganguzza: Oh! Lau Lapides: Are you willing to make Anne Ganguzza: Yeah. Lau Lapides: a 100% deep dive commitment, which means you do have to sacrifice. Anne Ganguzza: Yeah. Lau Lapides: Sacrifice Anne Ganguzza: Mm, Lau Lapides: goes hand in Anne Ganguzza: yep. Lau Lapides: hand with commitment. So I may want to go to the movies all weekend. I may want to go to the amusement park. I may want to take long drives to New Hampshire. But guess what? I may not be in a financial position right now to do that while I'm building my business Anne Ganguzza: Yeah, Lau Lapides: or Anne Ganguzza: yeah. Lau Lapides: while I'm leveling up my business because now I need a CRM tool. I need a Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: marketing VA I need it. Okay, so maybe I don't want to take that vacation next month. Anne Ganguzza: Yeah. Lau Lapides: Maybe it isn't absolutely necessary to eat out all weekend and get Grubhub. Anne Ganguzza: There's a big Lau Lapides: Maybe Anne Ganguzza: one. Lau Lapides: I can pick Anne Ganguzza: Yep. Lau Lapides: up my food or cook my food or there's so many ways to cut Anne Ganguzza: I can Lau Lapides: your Anne Ganguzza: give up the Starbucks. Lau Lapides: cost. Anne Ganguzza: Oh, I just said Lau Lapides: Right? Anne Ganguzza: that. Oh my Lau Lapides: Hello. Anne Ganguzza: God. I know, Lau Lapides: And what about Anne Ganguzza: even my virtual assistant, she's a Starbucks Lau Lapides: I know Anne Ganguzza: lover. Lau Lapides: I was like, Anne Ganguzza: She's gonna be like, what? Don't Lau Lapides: what? Anne Ganguzza: you say that. You know, Lau Lapides: Right? Anne Ganguzza: hey, Lau Lapides: And what? Anne Ganguzza: look, it's all in where your priorities are. And that's fine. Lau Lapides: Totally Anne Ganguzza: I'm not saying Lau Lapides: totally Anne Ganguzza: you can't go to Starbucks. I mean, that Lau Lapides: no Anne Ganguzza: can be, that's like me. I have my priorities. I will Lau Lapides: right Anne Ganguzza: always pay for. this, and this, but I make substitutions, right? So that I can pay for this, I will also do this, or I will work an extra hour, or I will try to market myself in this way, Lau Lapides: Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza: so that I can afford that luxury. Lau Lapides: Yeah, Anne Ganguzza: But, Lau Lapides: you have to Anne Ganguzza: you Lau Lapides: be Anne Ganguzza: know, Lau Lapides: resourceful. You have Anne Ganguzza: yeah, Lau Lapides: to be resilient Anne Ganguzza: yeah. Lau Lapides: and you have to be creative and you have to make a commitment and be willing to sacrifice. You know, some people are doing a four, five, $600 gym membership every month. Well, could I replace that possibly with a bike or with walking or with anything at home just for the time when I'm building my business? There's so many ways. And again, we're not financial advisors here, but we could sit you down and spin your head around Anne Ganguzza: Sure, Lau Lapides: ways to be Anne Ganguzza: absolutely. Lau Lapides: creative about saving money, not spending money, and then reinvesting that right into the business. Anne Ganguzza: Oh yeah, yeah. Lau Lapides: And then all of a sudden you can get that great microphone Anne Ganguzza: I schedule. Lau Lapides: or that great coaching. Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. I schedule that review, actually. I schedule that review. It's on my calendar, you know, monthly. Because especially, you know, lately, it's been a little tough, the economy out there these days. And, you know, I don't know if, you know, I don't know where it's necessarily going, right? So I want to make sure that I'm spending my money as wisely as I can. And that includes, you know, my team and, you know, making, you know, necessary do, which is not something I love to do. But it's something that, again, I have to make sure that I've got the strategy there Lau Lapides: Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza: to make sure that I'm investing my money wisely in what services I am paying for and what I'm doing to grow my business. Lau Lapides: And I would say too, as you grow your business, to document Anne Ganguzza: sure I understand. Lau Lapides: what you're doing. Anne Ganguzza: Oh, Siri doesn't understand. Lau Lapides: I would say to grow your business, I would document what you're doing, whether you're writing down or video, Anne Ganguzza: Yeah. Lau Lapides: what you do during a day, like record it on Zoom, record it on Anne Ganguzza: Yep. Lau Lapides: Loom, record it so that the new people coming in can either train each other or they can be watching the videos of what you've been doing because you'll forget, you'll forget half the things you're doing because you're doing so much. Everyone's multitasking. So you really have to be documenting everything you're doing as your business builds. That way the learning curve for the people coming into your business is very quick. You don't want Anne Ganguzza: Yeah. Lau Lapides: someone on a month's learning curve. You want them on like a three Anne Ganguzza: Oh yeah, Lau Lapides: day learning Anne Ganguzza: yeah. Lau Lapides: curve so they can get to business, Anne Ganguzza: Yeah, Lau Lapides: right? Anne Ganguzza: and you will have to train them. That is absolutely, you do have to understand and be prepared for that. You will have to train them. They are not gonna know your brand immediately. But you can make it easier for them to learn your brand as Lov was just mentioning. What a great conversation, Lov. Lau Lapides: Great stuff. We could Anne Ganguzza: Yeah, Lau Lapides: go Anne Ganguzza: good stuff, Lau Lapides: on and Anne Ganguzza: we could. Lau Lapides: on with this. I mean, I got one more tip. Don't hire people that you necessarily like only. Hire people Anne Ganguzza: Oh yeah. Lau Lapides: that are good for you Anne Ganguzza: Yeah. Lau Lapides: and good for your business. Not everyone is a growth person. Some people are great people. They're great to have around, Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Don't Lau Lapides: but they Anne Ganguzza: hire Lau Lapides: may Anne Ganguzza: your Lau Lapides: not Anne Ganguzza: friends Lau Lapides: grow you. Anne Ganguzza: necessarily. Lau Lapides: They may not grow your business. Anne Ganguzza: Yeah, exactly, Lau Lapides: Yeah. Anne Ganguzza: exactly. Lau Lapides: Know the difference between your friends Anne Ganguzza: But Lau Lapides: and your business partners. Anne Ganguzza: I think you do have to be in a good relationship with the person that you are working with. That is Lau Lapides: Yes. Anne Ganguzza: for sure. Yeah. But yeah, they don't have to be your best friend. So yeah, and that could be a whole other discussion for another day. But. Lau Lapides: Yes, for Anne Ganguzza: I'm Lau Lapides: sure. Anne Ganguzza: gonna give I'm gonna give a great big shout out to our sponsor IPD TL you two can connect a network like a boss find out more at IP D TL comm and Also, I want to ask you guys a question. Do you have a local nonprofit? That's close to your heart. I know that I do You can make a huge impact as a group and contribute to the growth of our communities in ways that we never thought possible. If you wanna find out more, visit 100VoicesWhoCare.org to learn how. All right, bosses, you have an amazing week and we'll see you next week. Lau Lapides: See Anne Ganguzza: Bye. Lau Lapides: you next time, bye.

This week, Anne and Lau discuss the importance of side hustles to your VO career. A side hustle can be anything from pet sitting to retail work, or offering computer consulting services. Side hustles provide more than just an extra income - they teach you to set priorities and work towards your goals. They can also provide transferable skills, and that is why the Bosses believe in the transformative power of side hustles in career development. Side hustles equip you with the skills to be trusted leaders and provide the practical knowledge to run your own business. More importantly, they offer the chance to pursue your passions and reach your goals. So, are you ready to embrace side hustles and level up your life and career? Transcript Intro It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss a VO Boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza. Anne Ganguzza: Hey everyone, welcome to the V.O. Boss podcast. I'm your host, Anne Gangusa, and I'm here with my lovely boss co-host, Lau Lapides, hey, Lau. Lau Lapides: Hey, Anne, you look super disco sexy. 70s, maybe 80s. Anne Ganguzza: Why, thank you. Lau Lapides: You want to do the hustle? Anne Ganguzza: Do the hustle. Do, do, do. Lau Lapides: I just turned into John Travolta for Anne Ganguzza: Hey, Lau Lapides: a second. Anne Ganguzza: who said we don't have fun here in Boss Land, in Lau Lapides: We Anne Ganguzza: Boss Lau Lapides: do Anne Ganguzza: Land? Lau Lapides: we do. Anne Ganguzza: You know, hustle, hustle. I think that's the, that is like the word for my business, is hustle, hustle. Lau Lapides: Mmm. Anne Ganguzza: And you know, I think I've been kind of a hustler all my life. Lau Lapides: Me too, in a good way, Anne Ganguzza: In Lau Lapides: not Anne Ganguzza: a good Lau Lapides: a Anne Ganguzza: way, Lau Lapides: negative way, in a Anne Ganguzza: in Lau Lapides: good Anne Ganguzza: a good Lau Lapides: way. Anne Ganguzza: way. And I think it probably helped me to get where I am today, really, all those little side hustles. I think we should take a, let's take a journey. Let's take a journey back in time and talk about our side hustles. And I'll tell you what, bosses, there's no shame in a good side hustle, that's for sure. Because Lau Lapides: Mm-mm. Anne Ganguzza: I think it helps build your character and get you to where you are today to become a resourceful and entrepreneurial boss. Lau Lapides: Yeah, there's no shame in that game. Let's go down memory road and Anne Ganguzza: Mmm. Lau Lapides: I'm willing to share. I'm actually proud of working really hard to get to the day where I was able to open a studio. Anne Ganguzza: Yeah. Lau Lapides: I think that there's a whole long path leading up to that the public doesn't see and doesn't know about that really is the building block to getting to your business end. So Anne Ganguzza: Yeah. Lau Lapides: take me way back, take me back to like even Anne Ganguzza: Way Lau Lapides: your teen Anne Ganguzza: back, Lau Lapides: years Anne Ganguzza: okay, my Lau Lapides: of your Anne Ganguzza: teen Lau Lapides: first Anne Ganguzza: years. Lau Lapides: jobs. Anne Ganguzza: Okay, Lau Lapides: That Anne Ganguzza: okay, Lau Lapides: counts. What Anne Ganguzza: so Lau Lapides: were your first Anne Ganguzza: all Lau Lapides: jobs? Anne Ganguzza: right, I, all right, so I am trying to remember, I grew up in New York State, upstate New York. And so, you know, there was a legal, you know, working age. Lau Lapides: Okay. Anne Ganguzza: But I started Lau Lapides: Which you Anne Ganguzza: very Lau Lapides: ignored. Anne Ganguzza: early. I started very early. I started at the very young age of 12. And, but I wasn't working for cash, I was working for writing lessons. So, Some of Lau Lapides: Oh. Anne Ganguzza: you may, that follow me on Facebook, may have noticed that I've been spending an awful lot of time on the weekends going to horse shows. Well, that is just a blast from my past. And it just, I'll tell you what, when I was young, horses were my passion. I mean, I wanted to grow up and become a professional horse rider. And I, you know, had a couple of horses growing up, and I showed growing up. And I'll tell you what, that is not a cheap hobby. And so I used to work at the barn from the young age of 12, shoveling lots of manure and taking care of the horses, grooming the horses. Oh my goodness, I spent Lau Lapides: Bye. Anne Ganguzza: probably seven days a week at the barn. And I would do that in trade for my riding lessons. And yeah, it was really, and riding of course is a whole, like I can have a 30 minute podcast on what riding taught me. I think that the lessons that I learned from my horses were just invaluable in helping me to shape who I am today and to be fearless, because I had a lot of fear. I was afraid. I mean, I was thrown off my horse multiple times, you know, and I just. was taught to get back up on that horse and face those fears. And oh, it was a wonderful, wonderful time in my life. And my mother loved it because she knew where I was. You know, I wasn't hanging out. I wasn't hanging out in the bank parking lot, you know, drinking Lau Lapides: Yeah, Anne Ganguzza: beer. Lau Lapides: right, Anne Ganguzza: So Lau Lapides: right. Anne Ganguzza: that was Lau Lapides: And Anne Ganguzza: my Lau Lapides: the horses Anne Ganguzza: very, yeah. How Lau Lapides: know you. They Anne Ganguzza: old were Lau Lapides: love Anne Ganguzza: you when you got Lau Lapides: you. Anne Ganguzza: sick? Lau Lapides: They Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: know your voice. They're so emotional and creative. Anne Ganguzza: Well, that's it. It was such Lau Lapides: Right? Anne Ganguzza: an emotional connection. I mean, outside of like, Lau Lapides: Yeah. Anne Ganguzza: it's not just a physical ride. It's very much a mental ride because animals sense every, you know, every essence of your being. They can sense when you're nervous. They can sense when you're afraid or fearful. And really just becoming one. And you know, it amazes me, and I'll just, I'll shut up after this, but it amazes me because I used to jump, that was, I wrote English and I used to jump, that you take a beast. that is, you know, 2,000 pounds, and you point it towards a fence, and he willingly goes over it. Sometimes they don't willingly go over it, but usually that's, I say, operator error. You haven't brought them Lau Lapides: Hahaha! Anne Ganguzza: into the fence properly, so they can safely jump the fence. But I'm telling you, just, the animals, they're just amazing, beautiful, kind, wonderful beings that here, I'm gonna point you at this fence, and I want you to jump over it, and Lau Lapides: Mmm. Anne Ganguzza: I'm gonna be on your back while you do that. And you know, I'm going to continually ride around these different fences and courses And you're gonna just willingly do this for me and it just it amazes me the kindness and the and the Connection you have to have with that horse to really have that be a thing Lau Lapides: So it sounds like a very profound way of teaching a moral lesson to our listeners that you learn a lot of hardcore skills when you side hustle, Anne Ganguzza: Mmm, Lau Lapides: right? How to Anne Ganguzza: absolutely, Lau Lapides: build trust, right? Anne Ganguzza: absolutely. Lau Lapides: How to go on the ride and Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm, Lau Lapides: trust, Anne Ganguzza: mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: how to get up into fearful heights and fall and get back Anne Ganguzza: And you make, Lau Lapides: up again, Anne Ganguzza: yeah, when you make a mistake, Lau Lapides: right? Anne Ganguzza: you know, get right back Lau Lapides: Love Anne Ganguzza: up again. Lau Lapides: that. Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: Love that. Anne Ganguzza: So Lau Lapides: Love Anne Ganguzza: much. And Lau Lapides: that. Anne Ganguzza: that was not necessarily for money, although I used to groom. I mean, that was a side hustle after I would work at the stable. I would also groom as a side hustle. Then I would make cash Lau Lapides: Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza: for the horses that I braided and groomed. I would do that. I would go to horse shows and groom for people. And Lau Lapides: You Anne Ganguzza: oh Lau Lapides: braided. Anne Ganguzza: gosh, it paid for a lot of my... my professional riding gear, my Lau Lapides: Ah, Anne Ganguzza: show Lau Lapides: so Anne Ganguzza: entry Lau Lapides: good. Anne Ganguzza: fees, my jackets, my boots, horse tack and equipment. Ugh. Such a good time of my Lau Lapides: So Anne Ganguzza: life. So Lau Lapides: good. Anne Ganguzza: that was my very first. What about you, Law? Lau Lapides: Well, you know, besides the typical before 12, which I did like babysitting and I did mowing lawns and all of that Anne Ganguzza: Mmm. Lau Lapides: delivery Anne Ganguzza: I mode lawns Lau Lapides: of Anne Ganguzza: too, Lau Lapides: stuff, Anne Ganguzza: mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: those were not prolific to me, even though I was doing skills. The first one was when I was 15, 15 years old. Think about that, 15 years old. I think I was a freshman in high school. I had a shoe store across the street from my high school, a family owned shoe store, and they trusted me to be a manager. gave me Anne Ganguzza: Wow. Lau Lapides: keys to the shoe store and that changed my entire life because I suddenly realized that I had the ability I didn't think in this way but I had the abilities and skill sets to be trusted and to be a leader and so I would literally open up the store close the store man it was a shoe store Anne Ganguzza: Wow. Lau Lapides: managed the store at 15 and I and I think back on that you know 40 years ago and how those little bits and pieces really built my life built my Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: whole mindset over a lifetime. So that was the first, I think, prolific side hustle Anne Ganguzza: Yeah. Lau Lapides: for me. What's your next one? Anne Ganguzza: Well, let's see. So I was constantly, I probably did that all through high school. And then in addition to that, I was like, well, I gotta make some cash, some cold hard cash cause I like to buy clothes and or other things, just back then it was like, or records or CDs. Actually it was records, CDs weren't in college. So now I'm really dating myself. But Lau Lapides: Ha ha! Anne Ganguzza: yeah, so then it became, I worked at a department store in retail. So I worked at Sibley's. Lau Lapides: You learned Anne Ganguzza: And I Lau Lapides: so Anne Ganguzza: also, Lau Lapides: much doing that, right Anne Ganguzza: oh yeah, Lau Lapides: Anne? Anne Ganguzza: I worked Lau Lapides: So Anne Ganguzza: in retail Lau Lapides: many. Anne Ganguzza: in the kids department and I also worked for a gas station kind of mini-mart, which there I had the keys and I had to like lock up at night, I was working that nights. And yeah, I mean, those were like, you make the minimum wage and I worked, God, however many hours I could. And believe it or not, I'm gonna go one step further and I'm going to say that, In high school, they had a work study program, so I had enough credits by the time I was literally at the beginning of junior year to graduate. So I elected for my senior year to do a work study program, where I came to school for, I think, just the morning hours, and then in the afternoon, I worked. Lau Lapides: Mm, Anne Ganguzza: So Lau Lapides: great. Anne Ganguzza: I had to just put in a certain amount of hours per week, which I'm quite sure I did 15 to 20. But most of that was encompassed just me going to the stable. and working. And so that was really kind of great. I mean, the work study and I just I absolutely loved all my little side jobs that I did and you know, waitressing, you know, which was again, you know such a such a learn those life lessons that really help you to you know When you are running a business and owning a business that can really help you in a multitude of ways I mean that was the customer service aspect, you know Which really helped me in my job today What about your next one? Lau Lapides: I tell you, it's so subliminal. You Anne Ganguzza: Right? Lau Lapides: don't even realize for many years how it gets ingrained in your core and then it comes out in really important ways as a business person and as a business owner. I too was a server, Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: I too worked in retail, Anne Ganguzza: I was a bus Lau Lapides: but Anne Ganguzza: girl. Lau Lapides: you're a bus girl, I was a Anne Ganguzza: And Lau Lapides: waitress, Anne Ganguzza: a waitress. Yep. Lau Lapides: right? But the next prolific job for me was at 19. I was in college. and one of my professors who was actually teaching me singing said, you know what, we're going away on vacation. Can you stay at my home and take care of all of my animals? And I was Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: always a huge animal lover like you, like my Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: fur children. I said, okay, I'm happy to. And she said, how much do you want me to pay you? I said, you're gonna pay me Anne Ganguzza: Ha Lau Lapides: to do Anne Ganguzza: ha Lau Lapides: that? Anne Ganguzza: ha! Lau Lapides: What do you mean? I said, I don't know, pay me. And she paid me, so I was, changed my world. I launched a pet sitting business at 19, Anne Ganguzza: Oh, nice. Lau Lapides: and I did it for 10 years, and it brought me through Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: all of my professional performing through my 20s and through my college Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: years and bought me a new car. and savings for what would soon be later or later in my 20s, my graduate school career. So Anne Ganguzza: Oh yeah. Lau Lapides: that side hustle was major and it set me up for the next whole piece of my life and I loved it. It was like Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: if I didn't do what I did, I could have easily gone in another direction of creating like a multi-million dollar animal business or Anne Ganguzza: Sure, Lau Lapides: something like that, Anne Ganguzza: absolutely. Lau Lapides: which turned into that. And the skill sets were amazing because I already knew like you knew how to have keys in my pocket and be totally trusted Anne Ganguzza: Yep, Lau Lapides: with someone's Anne Ganguzza: yep. Lau Lapides: property. So I was like a janitor. I had huge Anne Ganguzza: Mmm. Lau Lapides: sets of keys of houses all over my area that I'd be going into and taking care of. I loved it because I'm a very pragmatic person. I love taking care of things. I like things that are purposeful and I love my animals. It was like check, check. Anne Ganguzza: Nice. Lau Lapides: And the money was terrific even at that time, which was a good you know 30 years ago now. time I was a young kid pulling in 25 or 30 dollars per animal and could take up to 10 a day. Do the Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: math! It's Anne Ganguzza: Yep. Lau Lapides: like oh my goodness I can do my theater, I can finish my bachelor's degree, I can love on my baby pets all over the place because I'm trusted and where's that gonna lead you see? Anne Ganguzza: Yeah, Lau Lapides: And that was Anne Ganguzza: yeah. Lau Lapides: started out of a accident side hustle. Anne Ganguzza: Wow, I'm gonna Lau Lapides: Mmm. Anne Ganguzza: say, okay, college Lau Lapides: Witchers. Anne Ganguzza: then next for me Lau Lapides: Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza: was, okay, so I started off doing, and this is my preliminary voiceover. So I started reading textbooks onto tape for disabled students Lau Lapides: That's Anne Ganguzza: at the college. Lau Lapides: nice. Anne Ganguzza: And okay, so I'm gonna set the scene for you. I was reading physics and calculus books onto like, tape recorders, like with the cassette tapes. Lau Lapides: I remember Anne Ganguzza: So when Lau Lapides: those! Anne Ganguzza: I had to record, I pressed play record at the same time and I would be reading the actual questions in the back of calculus problems. So I had to understand what all the symbols meant. And so if I made a mistake, I had to stop, rewind, and then record the whole thing all over again. And that paid for my single room. I had a single room in a suite, which was great. And I was also an RA, I was a dorm guard. So that also paid for my room at the college because I basically kind of paid my way through college by doing things like that. And also that was when I continued, I was a singer in high school in musical theater and choir and then continued that in college. and met up with a person where we started singing at weddings at venues. So we were like a little bit of a singing team. We would do duets at weddings. And so I made money Lau Lapides: Oh. Anne Ganguzza: that way. Lau Lapides: Why did I not know you were a real singer? How come I didn't know Anne Ganguzza: Uh, Lau Lapides: that? Anne Ganguzza: you know, it's, I'm not, I mean, I, Lau Lapides: What was your favorite song? What was one of your favorite Anne Ganguzza: oh my Lau Lapides: wedding Anne Ganguzza: gosh, Lau Lapides: songs? Anne Ganguzza: we're talking Lau Lapides: Ah! Anne Ganguzza: about the wedding songs that were back in the day. We used to sing like theme from Ice Castles, you know, we Lau Lapides: Oh! Anne Ganguzza: used to have like those kinds of things. Lau Lapides: Oh my god, Anne Ganguzza: Um, Lau Lapides: the Carpenters! Anne Ganguzza: Ave Maria, oh yeah, but all those, you know, all of those things. Um, so, but it was cool because she had a 12 string guitar and we would sing harmony. Lau Lapides: Oh my Anne Ganguzza: And Lau Lapides: gosh, Anne Ganguzza: so yeah, it was Lau Lapides: so Anne Ganguzza: one of my favorite Lau Lapides: good. Anne Ganguzza: things to do. Although I can't say that I'm a singer today, but I can carry a tune, that's for sure. Lau Lapides: That's amazing. Anne Ganguzza: So, and that's a lot of my musicality comes from my singing as well as, you know, I played piano for, you know, eight years, I took piano lessons. So again, that's another core, I think, a core skill that I think is so important that contributes to my business today and what I do today in voiceover. It's very musical for me. So, Lau Lapides: Totally. Anne Ganguzza: yeah. Lau Lapides: And I'll share my last, I think my last side hustle in my life, which actually became part of my career. And that was when I was 28 years old. I was still pet sitting, because I was a huge multitasker, but I fell Anne Ganguzza: That doesn't Lau Lapides: into Anne Ganguzza: surprise Lau Lapides: teaching. Anne Ganguzza: me. Lau Lapides: I fell into teaching and I started teaching in a modeling agency. Anne Ganguzza: Mm. Lau Lapides: And I Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: absolutely fell head over heels for teaching while I was trying to get into grad school. And it took me about four years to get into grad school. And I was doing my pets my teaching and doing my performing. Anne Ganguzza: Yep, Lau Lapides: And Anne Ganguzza: yep. Lau Lapides: then I got into grad school. All of that stopped. I moved to California and started a whole new life. But the teaching became Anne Ganguzza: Mmm. Lau Lapides: an integral part of my whole career and my whole program. So I don't know if it's a side hustle or not, but at the time it was. And it just seemed fun. It seemed like something cool to do and something to... challenge me and my knowledge Anne Ganguzza: Yeah. Lau Lapides: base. Like, you don't really know what you know until you have to teach it to someone Anne Ganguzza: Isn't that true? Lau Lapides: else. Anne Ganguzza: Yeah, Lau Lapides: You know what Anne Ganguzza: yeah, Lau Lapides: I mean? Anne Ganguzza: because you have to learn it like 20 times more. I'll tell you what, Lau Lapides: Yeah. Anne Ganguzza: my after college, my teacher kind of came out of me because I went to work in the corporate world. As people know, I was a design engineer for an orthopedic company and I was designing hip and knee prosthetics. However, I used to go for training. I used to go up to Massachusetts, used to go up to Boston. And I used to go for computer training because I did a lot of my design work on a CAD system. And I'd go for training frequently up to the Boston area because that's where the company was. And I met my 2B boss there at a computer class. And he said, hey, I need somebody to teach this, you know, CAD at my school. Would you be willing to do that at night? And that became a side hustle for me. at night and I said sure I'd love to and I started teaching at night and boy I'll tell you what I fell in love with that and I should have known because back in the day when I was a tiny girl before I was 12 and you know working in the stalls and shoveling my manure every day I was teaching my dolls you know flashcards so I feel like I always had teaching in my blood I started teaching at night and then I ultimately you know went to work full time for the school did that for 20 some odd years. And then ultimately that was my last career before I decided to, well, I went into voiceover part-time while still working in that career and then decided to go full-time into voiceover. And I just loved the teaching. I continued the teaching, started coaching in voiceover. And Lau Lapides: Me Anne Ganguzza: while Lau Lapides: too. Anne Ganguzza: I was working my way through the corporate world, I also consulted on the computer end of things so I would work for companies. setting up their computer systems or you know doing you know whatever system admin type of deals so I Constantly, I think I worked like oh my god 60 to 80 hours a week since I was you know 21 since I got out into the working world I mean the real working world after college and interestingly enough I remember setting my priorities. I was like, you know what? I hate cleaning houses. I mean, I'm a clean person, but I hate having to clean my house on the weekends because that was the time that I had to do it since I was working full-time. And I said, you know what? I'm just gonna work overtime so that I can pay someone to come and Lau Lapides: Hmm. Anne Ganguzza: clean my house. And I said that at age 21 and I've had that happen ever since. I mean, there's Lau Lapides: You've Anne Ganguzza: maybe Lau Lapides: delegated. Anne Ganguzza: a time when I stop it, but I was like, I will always make sure I make enough money. That's how, when we were talking about priority setting, right? Lau Lapides: Yes. Anne Ganguzza: I will always have someone to clean my house because I'd rather work the overtime than clean my house. I mean, not that Lau Lapides: Yeah, Anne Ganguzza: I'm not a clean person, because I Lau Lapides: yeah, Anne Ganguzza: really am. Lau Lapides: no, that's Anne Ganguzza: I do Lau Lapides: delegating. Anne Ganguzza: all the clutter and yeah, Lau Lapides: No. Anne Ganguzza: that exactly is what Lau Lapides: Listen, Anne Ganguzza: it is. Lau Lapides: listen, just because you're capable and really good at doing something doesn't mean you should be doing it. Anne Ganguzza: Yeah, Lau Lapides: Right. Anne Ganguzza: it's really so Lau Lapides: Sometimes Anne Ganguzza: true. Lau Lapides: you have to take that time. That's what we were talking in our in our last podcast about building the team. It's like, well, You have to be the head of the ship, the captain Anne Ganguzza: Yeah, Lau Lapides: of the ship, which means Anne Ganguzza: yeah. Lau Lapides: you have to steer the ship. You can't be doing all the jobs on the ship, even though you may know how to do Anne Ganguzza: Sure. Lau Lapides: them, you shouldn't be doing them because you need to steer the ship. So it's the same in this case. It's Anne Ganguzza: Yeah. Lau Lapides: like you are already smart enough and mature enough to understand that, oh, I can do a great job cleaning my own house and I don't mind doing it, but I wanna spend that time really building my career and Anne Ganguzza: Yeah, Lau Lapides: really Anne Ganguzza: absolutely. Lau Lapides: putting that into more Anne Ganguzza: And Lau Lapides: important things. Anne Ganguzza: that's so you're so right, because that's actually what I was doing. I was building my career and Lau Lapides: Yeah. Anne Ganguzza: moving up in every aspect of my career. Whatever I was doing, I made it a point to grow and to move up, to get promoted and, you know, and do what I needed to do. And a lot of that included, you know, spending time educating myself. And Once I got into my last job, which was at the school teaching, but actually I was on staff as a tech person, but I also taught all the IT electives, I taught at night and ultimately did phone installs, which is where I ended up being the voice of the phone system. And that got me into voiceover. Then I did that part-time, right, while I was working full-time at the job. And then ultimately when I decided to go full-time into VoiceOver, I then had another side hustle because then I wasn't, you know, full-time, I didn't have the clients built up yet. So I was like, whoa, gosh, there's no money coming in. So I need a side hustle. And so again, the side hustle for me for that was I literally worked. for a chiropractor. I went to a chiropractor and he needed help and I was like, you know what, I need to bring in some cash to help pay the bills. And he needed an office manager and so I became an office manager for just about, gosh, I'm gonna say it was a while, maybe it was the first five years of my business. I worked 20 hours a week. I got free adjustments, which was great. And that's what I did. And I just remember my mother. God bless her. She was always like, so Anne, when are you going? Because I'd had all these career jobs and promotions and titles. And she's like, so Anne, when are you going to get a real job? Lau Lapides: Nyeh Anne Ganguzza: And Lau Lapides: ha Anne Ganguzza: I'm like, Lau Lapides: ha! Anne Ganguzza: mom, I am building a business. I'm an entrepreneur. And Lau Lapides: Good. Anne Ganguzza: so yeah, but I had side hustles. And I always encourage students that are just coming into the industry to do the side hustle. Take the experience from life, from your work. and utilize that to continue the revenue stream while you build your business. So Lau Lapides: Yeah, Anne Ganguzza: important. Lau Lapides: and make sure it's flexible. It has Anne Ganguzza: Yeah. Lau Lapides: to be flexible in nature so that you're not putting your career and your education on hold. Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: You don't ever want to side hustle to take up so much time and energy Anne Ganguzza: Exactly. Lau Lapides: that you're not building the more important building blocks you want it to support, but not to take up all of your. your time and your energy Anne Ganguzza: Yeah, Lau Lapides: and focus Anne Ganguzza: yeah. Lau Lapides: and make sure it's something you kind of like. You don't have Anne Ganguzza: Yeah, Lau Lapides: to be in Anne Ganguzza: absolutely, Lau Lapides: love with it, but Anne Ganguzza: absolutely. Lau Lapides: make sure it's not something that's causing anger, disdain, grief, because then you're gonna bring that into your career and Anne Ganguzza: Sure. Lau Lapides: into your education and you're not gonna be successful there and sabotage the thing that you wanna build. So you have Anne Ganguzza: Yeah, Lau Lapides: to kind of think the Anne Ganguzza: absolutely. Lau Lapides: whole thing through and don't be afraid to switch it out. If Anne Ganguzza: Yeah. Lau Lapides: it doesn't work, switch it out, you Anne Ganguzza: Well, Lau Lapides: know? Anne Ganguzza: that's the cool thing when you're in business for yourself, right? You can, you Lau Lapides: Yeah. Anne Ganguzza: know, it's like, well, try it. If it doesn't work, you can try something else. And I can't tell you how much my own experience has helped me to become, you know, I'm also a business, I have business mentorship programs that I work with my students that has helped me to help my students. I mean, and the fact that I'm like, hey, I was an office assistant, you know, and my mother's like, Ann, you know. Lau Lapides: Hahaha Anne Ganguzza: I'm like, there's nothing wrong with being an office assistant, right, or an office manager. In reality, it's, you know, again, it's people serving, and I, you know, had developed a lot of skills doing that, and I was very organized and wonderful. And at the time, it was just enough hours so I could bring in money to contribute to the household expenses, and yet gave me time to be able to audition, you know, and it was close to where I live, so I could run home and audition during the day if I needed to during a break. It was wonderful. I mean, I cannot, I cannot talk enough about the benefits of the side hustle. Lau Lapides: and there's Anne Ganguzza: And, Lau Lapides: probably hundreds of them. Anne Ganguzza: yeah. Lau Lapides: that you could really get your hands on and learn from and enjoy, Anne Ganguzza: Absolutely. Lau Lapides: make money at, learn skills. And don't look at it as you're wasting your time or you don't want to do it Anne Ganguzza: Yeah! Lau Lapides: or you resent doing it. Look at it as, no, this is part of my education. This is Anne Ganguzza: Yeah. Lau Lapides: part of my investment into Anne Ganguzza: Yes. Lau Lapides: my education and career. I have to do this so that not only I build money and capital, but I learn things. I learn how to take care of someone else, something Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: else, build trust. you know, learn skills, selling skills, dealing with money, all of that. Anne Ganguzza: It's so funny, I think education has always been in my blood. I mean, again, I say it how many times a day, La when people say, what is your purpose in life? It's to educate. I truly, truly believe that from being a small girl teaching flashcards to my stuffed animals, to the V.O. Boss podcast was a whole resource for education. The V.O. Peeps was, when I got out of teaching full time, I was like, oh God, I miss teaching. So let me have a group. you know, that I can provide educational resources to. So I say follow that passion in all aspects of your hustle and side hustle, really. And you can't go wrong. And I think education is such an important part of just continual growth and building and growing your business Lau Lapides: Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza: as a boss. Lau Lapides: And be proud of it. Anne Ganguzza: Yeah. Lau Lapides: If you're not willing to share it or talk about it, if you're hiding it, if Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: you're embarrassed by it, it's probably something you shouldn't be doing. So find things that you can add to your resume, that you can chat about at an interview, Anne Ganguzza: Yeah. Lau Lapides: or that you can be proud of and make some good connections through. Anne Ganguzza: Yeah, absolutely. And that's like the biggest thing that I'm always promoting too, when people are just getting into the industry. What are your skills? What is your life skills? What are your job skills? What have you done? The more things you have done, the more you can bring to this side of the business. Lau Lapides: That's Anne Ganguzza: I mean, Lau Lapides: right. Anne Ganguzza: it is, I mean, think about it. What we do is we have a product, we sell it, right? We sell it to companies. It's not just, I mean, it's creative. Yes, it's creative, right? And it's artistic, of course. But think about what you really, you have a product, your voice, that you are selling to companies. So all of your life, you've probably worked in some form for a company or for a business that you've gotten paid for. So you can bring that experience to the table to enhance your business, to either side hustle it, have what I call the divisions of your business or the tendrils of your business. And it's funny because even now that I'm in full-time VO, for many, many years now, I now still have many divisions of my business, which I consider to be my side hustles. And you yourself, Law, have multiple divisions of your business as well. Lau Lapides: Mm-hmm. And they're growing. It's not Anne Ganguzza: Yep. Lau Lapides: static. Like, you're never done. You're never saying, okay, this is my business, and that's where I cap it. Like, you should always be saying, what's my projection for the next year Anne Ganguzza: Yeah, Lau Lapides: or five years? Where Anne Ganguzza: yeah, Lau Lapides: do I want to go with this? What Anne Ganguzza: absolutely. Lau Lapides: do I have to do in order to figure out how to do it? And maybe that's a professional side hustle, Anne Ganguzza: Yeah. Lau Lapides: you know, that you have to do or you have to hire someone to do in order to figure out how to grow. Anne Ganguzza: Oh, I'm constantly thinking of I love that I'm constantly thinking about that again, as we move through, you know, changing and evolving markets right in voiceover. Is there an opportunity for you to continue to take these skills into even something else. Let's say if you wanted to do something else in addition or parallel with voiceover. What skills do you have now that you can evolve into what's going to happen in the future. for this industry. It's always good to try to look and really predict what's happening in the future. And that might be another podcast episode for us, Law. What's Lau Lapides: of Anne Ganguzza: going Lau Lapides: it. Anne Ganguzza: to happen to voiceover in 10 years? There's a lot of people asking that question. And there's a lot of people that have ideas and theories. And I've got my own theories. But it doesn't stop me from thinking about, if this were to happen, what's your plan B? What's your side hustle? How are you going to evolve or maybe shift into something else? Or? maybe not something else, maybe something in addition to. And I think it's always something that it's wise and strategic for you bosses to be thinking about. I mean, if you are not thinking about it, then you might wanna rethink being in business for yourself, Lau Lapides: Yeah, always Anne Ganguzza: right? Lau Lapides: have your backups ready to go. Anne Ganguzza: Mm-hmm. Lau Lapides: Have the safety nets there for you. Anne Ganguzza: Yep, Lau Lapides: Just Anne Ganguzza: yep. Lau Lapides: know your plan A, B, and C is always gonna work for you. I think we are gonna go back to that hustle, right? Anne Ganguzza: Yeah. Lau Lapides: We're gonna go back and do the Anne Ganguzza: Yeah, Lau Lapides: hustle. Anne Ganguzza: we're all so well. Now I have to go see if we can lease the music. Right. Lau Lapides: Ha ha ha! Anne Ganguzza: Anyways, so yeah, bosses do that hustle. It has been a wonderful conversation. Boss, I love love, love talking to you. Law, I called you boss law. Yeah, I love I love our conversations Lau Lapides: And Anne Ganguzza: and Lau Lapides: I love you right back Anne Ganguzza: yes. Lau Lapides: to pieces. Anne Ganguzza: And and it just thank you so much for continuing to be by my side here. Lau Lapides: It's just Anne Ganguzza: Uh, yeah, for- Lau Lapides: a joy and we're coming up on our year's anniversary. Anne Ganguzza: Oh my God, oh my God, we're gonna have to celebrate with a big party. Lau Lapides: Yeah, yeah, Anne Ganguzza: Big party, big party guys. Lau Lapides: party! Anne Ganguzza: So, bosses out there, simple mission, big impact. 100 voices, one hour, $10,000. Four times a year. Gosh, do you even know what I'm talking about? Well, if you wanna find out more, visit 100voiceswhocare.org to join us and join in on the giving. Big shout out to our sponsor, IPDTL. 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 Lapides: next Anne Ganguzza: Bye. Lau Lapides: week. Bye!

What would it look like if you could harness the energy of a conference and convert it into effectiveness? What would it feel like to be your own boss in the voiceover industry? Our esteemed guest, Tom Dheere, joins us as we unravel the answers to these thought-provoking questions. We share valuable insights on setting the right objectives, maximizing conference experiences, and the commitment required to become a full-time voice actor. Plus, we examine the liberating perspective of entrepreneurial freedom offered by the voiceover industry. 0:00:01 - Anne Hey everyone, welcome to the VO Boss podcast and the real boss series. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza and I am so happy to bring to this series Mr Tom Dheere. Thank you so much, tom, for joining me on this.   0:00:15 - Tom Yay, thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited about this. This is going to be great.   0:00:19 - Anne Oh, tom, first of all, it was so awesome to see you at the One Voice conference.   0:00:25 - Tom Yes, likewise.   0:00:27 - Anne I know we just had. You were just a guest on my podcast and, lo and behold, like two times I see you within the span of a month or two, which is really incredible, right?   Sometimes we have to go to conferences to just meet in person so whew, I was exhausting that conference, but super motivating, and I know a lot of people who went to that conference are all revved up and ready to go, motivated, inspired. We took amazing classes and so I think it's a good time to talk about. You know, what do we do with all that amazing energy that we just absorbed in that conference? Because I'm revved up, I'm motivated, ready to go. What can we do to, I guess, keep ourselves or keep the momentum going, tom?   0:01:16 - Tom That is a fantastic question and I know you've been presented at dozens and dozens of conferences over the past 10 years, and so have I, and we go and we meet wonderful people and we present and we also attend workshops and panels and we learn a lot and we get to commiserate with our peers, voice actors and coaches and other producers and stuff like that. And then there's this glow.   0:01:42 - Anne There is a glow. It's wonderful glow. There is a glow.   0:01:46 - Tom And then you go home and then for the vast majority of people that go to these conferences, it's like whew.   0:01:53 - Anne And then life sets in right. I have laundry to do. Yeah, family, yeah, right Bills and auditions and stuff like that.   0:02:02 - Tom So it's great. Conferences are great for, obviously for education. They're great for networking, they're great for renewal of purpose, refocus, re-energizing. The trick is how to take all that positive energy and inspiration and revved up-ed-ness and coming, taking it home with you and turning it into effectiveness. Because the positive attitude, while great it can only get you so far, it's not going to get you home. You're going to run out of that momentum and now there's work to be done.   0:02:37 - Anne Interesting, tom. Before we went to the conference, I think somebody had actually created a note sheet of like here are the I guess the talks that I want to go to, here are my goals, or here's what I got out of it, and I thought it was a really great way for people who like that type of thing and they take a lot of notes to write down your objectives. What are you hoping to get from that? And then what do you hope to do once you get, maybe once you get home, to put those lessons learned in place? And so I think that maybe everything should start even before we go to the conference in terms of writing things down and what is it that you hope to get out of this conference. And I'm a big planner, so I am a big proponent of yeah, you guys should plan out what sessions you want to go to, look at the schedule multiple times and just see how you can get the most out of the money that you've spent on that ticket of yours.   0:03:33 - Tom Yeah, absolutely, and different people at different points in their voiceover journey go to different conferences for different reasons, if it's. I've never been one to been one to one before, and I just want to. I haven't even produced a demo yet. I just want to see what this universe is like.   0:03:47 - Anne Great.   0:03:48 - Tom If it's, this is my 15th conference. I've had all these demos done, I've gotten all this work. What am I going to get out of it this time? Or some people go because they specifically want to meet you, or they want to meet another coach or demo producer to see, I want to get in the same room with this person and see if we click because I may want to work with you as a coach or a demo producer. Um, you know, and some go purely as presenters and you know, and then they, you know, do their stuff and then they get out of there and yeah, which is which is which is cool too.   0:04:19 - Anne I think there's such a, there's such a momentum to be gained by just joining forces with like-minded people and, just you know, renewing um relationships, and that just keeps you going, because it's so isolating sometimes just what we do and yeah and I will tell you, though, that the other day I was I don't even know what it was that made me think of it, but I I think I was getting ready to, you know, start.   I had a full day of students, and I said, I don't know what made me think about, oh god, what if I had to go to work for somebody?   um, you know, back in my days of corporate and I'm like I I could never do that again. So boss is out there. This is just a little segue. If you, if, if you know that this is what you want to do and you end up pursuing it full time, I don't say rush into it with your, you know, with your eyes closed. But, um and Tom, we can talk lots of strategies about that, but once you make that decision to go full time, I don't do you know anybody who's actually gone back because they've been unhappy being their own boss um, I know lots of people who have gone back to a regular job because they just couldn't book enough right they needed the money.   0:05:24 - Tom Yeah, exactly, it was purely financially, like I've been trying this and I just, I just can't get enough work to sustain myself and they've come gone back. Um, I can't think of anyone specifically, but I'm sure there are people out there, because there are people who just like to be told what to do, because then they don't have to think about it and there's a level of security in that and I totally that's sympathize with that.   0:05:45 - Anne I'm not one of those people, I can't. I don't, I don't think I could, I could not go back to taking now, I think, now I can take. I can take instructions from my client. Sure, I can be directed um, and then I want to get paid and be done with it. I think that's really it's. It's an interesting. It's an interesting, it's a different dynamic, because that's a, that's a, that's a business to business thing where you and the clients are on equal footing there's no high. There's no hierarchy.   0:06:10 - Tom It's it's you and the client trying to make this finished, great finished product, which is, you know, the audio files that you're gonna send to them or their, their source connecting you through. But with what? When it's a, I am in charge of you and. I'm telling you what to do, and this is when you can go to the bathroom and stuff like that it's like ah, I don't know if I could.   0:06:29 - Anne I don't know, I don't think I could go back to that it makes me think of okay, it's similar to I know I just went off on that on that weird tangent, but that happens sometime, bosses, sorry, um, but it was just a weird like. It just came to me. I was like I could not work for somebody now, so I will do everything in my power to make my business so that I do not have to do that. I think that also was leading into that.   But I think isn't that similar to, let's say, I, I pay my money, I get my ticket, I go to a conference, I take these classes, I'm inspired for a new genre, I'm inspired to work with a new coach, and then we come back and, oops, we're by ourselves, right. So now, yeah, it's very similar to what now, you know, we're gonna be talking about is we've got to take the reins and we've got to do the work and it's, it's now up to us, and we're not necessarily having that coach or that director saying, okay, do this, do this, do this. Now we've got all of this energy and this motivation. How do we cement that and you know, and and start to just really move forward on that?   0:07:27 - Tom right. The trick is if you want to be the vo boss you need to learn how to be your own boss. Yeah, yeah, you know it's empowering to like be the boss. Yeah, I'm a tough boss. I'll tell you that my boss is a jerk my boss, I would say my boss is a bastard oh, I just said that oh. I had another word in mind, but I didn't use it.   0:07:49 - Anne I'm not sure if we'll bleep that out, but yeah woo, I'll tell you what. I've never worked for a harder boss, but isn't that true?   0:07:57 - Tom yeah, yeah, I'm hard on ourselves. I'm pretty real, I'm I'm often pretty relentless and I have to be because I have this bad habit.   0:08:05 - Anne It's called eating and and having a roof over my head, yes, and not living in a cardboard box, yes, yeah, you know.   0:08:14 - Tom So yeah, the motivation is like there's no net yeah, you know what I mean. If I don't audition for this, there's a 100 chance that I'm not gonna book it well, yeah, and I think that's what propels me for sure you know what I mean to get work done, I mean right the fact that I need right.   0:08:30 - Anne I need to be able to pay the mortgage right, and that's the, and that's a.   0:08:33 - Tom That's a great point, anne, is that different people need to find different motivations. To stay motivated when you are alone in your booth talking to yourself? You know, so that's a big part of you know I talk about effectiveness. There's a difference between talent and effectiveness. There's a lot of talented aspiring voice actors out there with interesting voices but like I have an interesting pen, it doesn't make me an author, you know.   0:09:02 - Anne I own a wrench. It doesn't make me a plumber, so having talent, voice doesn't make me effective. Yeah absolutely.   0:09:11 - Tom You know, because no one's going to get discovered, you're not going to get your big break. It doesn't really work that way.   0:09:16 - Anne It's what you do with that pen that matters. It's what you do with that voice that matters.   0:09:20 - Tom Exactly and consistently. Yes, absolutely so when you get home from that conference and you've got all that positive attitude. That's great If you can bottle it and put it on a shelf for later.   0:09:30 - Anne That's great.   0:09:31 - Tom But when you get home, it's about what can I do to be effective today, tomorrow, next week, month, quarter year, two years, five years? And I'm not necessarily talking about writing a business plan, which is something I do do as the, as the video strategist, but it's about how do I think about myself to stay motivated. How do I think about and understand the voiceover industry? So there's a reality, because that's the other thing and, as you know, people coming into the industry have no idea what the industry is. They just have this odd preconceived notion of what it is. Oh yeah, I talk interesting. I got to just get an agent and then they'll just throw Saxa cash at me.   0:10:10 - Anne Exactly and I think, yeah, you don't know what you don't know right.   0:10:13 - Tom You don't know what you don't know.   0:10:15 - Anne And especially not only that is it a new industry for a lot of people, but it's also the fact that there's a lot of people who are very unhappy in their current job situation and get out of that work for somebody else, but then working for yourself is a whole different animal and that really is, I think, where the double it's.   The double whammy comes in for those people new to the industry, because not only are they trying to acquire the skills to be a good talent, but now they also have to have good business skills as well, and they're not used to working for themselves or having to go out and market themselves and get work and all those hats that they've got to put on.   0:10:58 - Tom Yeah, I had a maybe 15 years ago here in New York City. I had a 10 minute meet up with an agent I don't remember which one but he said tell me about yourself. And I talked about all the things I do. He's like, wow, you got a lot of hats.   And I'm like, yeah he's like but you only have one head and I'm like, yeah, so you kind of to be an effective voice actor, you need to kind of be the Dr Seuss Bartholomew in 1001 hats and have all those hats stacked up on. Some of them, some of them, you can take on and put on and take off, but a bunch of them you have to have stacked on your head at the same time, because there is no job description for being a voice actor.   I mean, there is, but nobody knows what it is, until you get here and it's like unlocking these doors and you know, moving these hedges aside and going oh, I need to do, I have to do that. You know it's like. It's almost like a maze, which is the logo of the VO strategist. Now that I think about it helping you navigate the voice over the industry, absolutely. So, navigating the maze of what it means to be an effective voice actor, and staying motivated at the same time. Because, yes, invoicing.   0:12:08 - Anne Staying, staying motivated when you're doing something like accounting.   0:12:12 - Tom Like for me.   0:12:12 - Anne I mean, well, I'm not. I mean, there are some people who love accounting, right, so there's accounting for me. How do there you go See for me? I'm like, oh God, actually I will tell you, tom. So for me, staying motivated while I have an S corp, right, and an S corp is creating all of this paperwork for me and for me, I can't, god it's, and it's just like I need to, either just, you know, be educated about, you know, the entire S corp thing, or I outsource, right. So I think if I had to do all that paperwork and try to understand it all and to stay motivated, it would be very, very difficult for that to happen, and it may discourage me from wanting to have a voiceover business because of this paperwork that I continually have to supply to the government, to you know, support this business, but I, you know, for me one of my solutions is to outsource that right.   And make sure that I have somebody that I trust and can go to if I have any questions, that can handle that aspect for me. So if I'll, I know, constantly get mail, mail, snail mail saying you need to provide this information, or you owe us this amount of money, or you need to prepay this or you know whatever that is, and so I literally will just be like, oh my gosh, this is a lot of paperwork. So I will literally scan that in and send that to my accountant, which, by the way, I will say to the to to my dying day, I will say my accountant was my very best investment for this business. I just I can't. I can't do the numbers.   0:13:45 - Tom Right, well, and that's that's a very important point, and is that if you're getting into the voiceover industry, obviously you need to understand what does that entail on you know soft skills, hard skills, hardware, software, marketing, money and all that stuff, and you need to know, you need to have an understanding of what your S corp is, or what this is, where that is, and then you can decide okay, this is a skill I need to just understand, but I'll outsource it and this is a skill like, for example, using your DAW.   0:14:14 - Anne You have to know how to use your DAW.   0:14:17 - Tom You need to know how to audition and you need to know how to record and clean up and save and, you know, deliver audio file. Some stuff is non-negotiable. You know what I mean.   0:14:27 - Anne But managing your S corp, you know right, that's another thing.   0:14:31 - Tom Or if you're an audio book narrator or a long form e-learning narrator, do you want to hire an audio, an audio engineer, to clean up your clean up your audio or do you want to do that, Do it yourself? Or do you say do it yourself first to understand how it works and why it works and then outsource it? And I'm sure some of your bosses are thinking I don't have that money. To outsource yes, I don't have the money to outsource.   0:14:54 - Anne You need to invest your money to make the money. That's what I always start by saying invest the money to make the money, but and maybe not try to put yourself wholeheartedly into the business until you do have money that you can invest, because that would be, from any perspective, any business. You have to have some investment money.   0:15:15 - Tom I mean it's not just voiceover, just some.   0:15:17 - Anne for some reason it became this like oh, we just talking to a microphone, how easy is that. I don't need to have any money or be prepared, or maybe I just got to buy a mic.   And that, I think, is where, where in the problem lies, where then you start to have, you know, predators in the industry that will sell that dream and people who will get taken for that dream and without the realization that, yeah, they have to put things in place and make investments to do that. So let's, let's kind of go back to we've gone to a conference and we've gotten motivated, and even it doesn't have to be a physical conference, it could be a virtual, online, you know, workshop or whatnot. I just went to a workshop called Unstoppable you. It was a Tony Robbins thing, which was all about the motivation, all about the motivation.   But yeah, now that you've, now that you're motivated, you've got to do the work and you've got to maybe take a look at the hard like really take a look at the the hard questions and and then make concrete steps to move forward. So it's like I can ask the hard questions. I can maybe, I can maybe get through the answers and they might make me cry, some of them Right, they right and so I can do that, but now I have to actually do the hard part, which is moving forward. So what, what would be the first thing you would recommend? Let's say, somebody that comes back from a conference or, you know, a workshop or whatever, and maybe a meeting with a coach and they're they're inspired, they're motivated. What's the first thing that you would have them do?   0:16:46 - Tom The first thing that I would have them do is write down in severe detail what they're perfect.   0:16:51 - Anne Severe detail, not just detail. Severe detail, severe detail.   0:16:55 - Tom What their perfect voiceover day looks like.   0:16:58 - Anne Oh, okay, okay. Follow me with just work with me for a second.   0:17:02 - Tom What time of day are you waking up? What time zone are you in when you wake up? Are you waking up in a house, a cabin, a condo, a space station?   a bunker, a submarine Like? Where are you waking up when it's time to start doing voiceover? Does the limo pick you up? Are you walking downstairs into the basement? Are you getting on a bicycle to go downtown? Are you going into your backyard to your custom built booth? Are you going into the attic? Are you taking a bus or a train? And then, when you get there, what are? What kind of? What kind of bookings are you doing? What genres or subgenres of voiceover? One or more? How much are you getting paid? Obviously, we all want to get paid as much as possible, but what is that actual number that you need to cover all of your voiceover expenses, all of your personal expenses? Manage your debt, save for retirement, save for that college education for your kids, save for that car and have enough to have a little fun.   0:18:01 - Anne And this is before. You're a working talent, right, this is still a, really, if you're just new to the industry and you want to get into it and you're let's say, you're in the process with a coach and you're making demos.   You want to project what genres? First of all, if you're working with a coach, you should probably have a genre in mind already yes, right, and with a genre specific coach. So you kind of know where you want to go. But putting that down, right, even if you're not actually doing the work as you were mentioning okay, this is the work, I'm going to be doing these auditions, even if you don't have audition opportunities yet and you're still just working. Put down that on the list because you want to make sure that you have the space for it and the time for it. Right, right, right. And then the goal, steps, the steps.   0:18:42 - Tom Right, exactly. And once you have that perfect day realized, written down in severe detail, you walk that backwards to the day to the moment that you're writing that list. What are you missing between right now and that perfect voiceover day? What money, how much money do you need? What training do you need? What tools do you need? What marketing acumen do you need? All of the things big and small, knowledge, hardware, software, tangible, intangible mindset to get you where you are and figure out what are you missing and what you need to do to fill those gaps. So when you come home from a conference, all motivated, try to figure out what the practical application of all the wonderful information that you just collected is. We go to all these workshops and listen to all these panels and take all these notes and some of the knowledge is immediately actionable and others are, for you know, I took this genre workshop. I'm gonna keep these notes and maybe I'll be ready for it in a year or two.   And so on and so forth. Organize, organize everything, because you need to figure out how actionable and practical everything that you need is to do to get you to that perfect voiceover day and use the glow and energy and momentum of the conference that you just got home from to kind of build that foundation, build that scaffolding, create that structure. So, when you get back into the day to day grind of trying to build or develop or nurture your voiceover business, you have effective systems of thought and effective systems of execution.   0:20:23 - Anne And let me interject also what I think is important is, of course, yes, you took that workshop on animation or whatever promo, imaging, whatever it is, you know, medical narration, I say because I just did that, love it or corporate.   I think that you always have to keep your eye on the market. I gosh, I feel like sometimes we become so blinded by our own like performance because we're like, oh, I want to get really good at animation or I want to get really good at, you know, whatever commercial or corporate. But I think we always have to keep our eye on the marketplace because if there's not a demand or if the demand is not as big and I'm always telling this to my students about corporate, it's a huge market, is a huge opportunity there Versus animation. Not that there isn't a huge opportunity there, but there's less of an opportunity there than there is in corporate. There's more of an opportunity in e-learning than there is in even I would say, promo, promo, of course. Right, documentary. Everybody that comes to me for narration says I want to do documentaries and I'm like well, how many documentaries do you think there are at any given time? Do you know?   0:21:32 - Tom what I mean yeah.   0:21:33 - Anne Compared to the 30.4 million registered companies that have a product or service to sell that need a corporate narrator.   0:21:40 - Tom And need human resources videos and need orientation videos and need compliance videos Right.   0:21:45 - Anne And I think that that is something that we really need to take into consideration at all points in our business, because that will affect right when you're talking about here's where I am. Here are the here's my perfect day, here's where I want to be, I want to be animating, I want to be doing animations on television or whatever that is, or I want to have a national commercial spot. That's all well and good. However, I think that you also have to take in account what is the market for that? Is there okay? Are you going to be able? And I used to think erroneously back in the beginning, before I realized what the market was oh, I just need a commercial a day, right? Or you know, oh, wouldn't that be nice.   Oh yeah, tom, we're talking about real talk, right? Real bosses. Well, okay, I don't know anybody that gets a commercial a day, except for people who are maybe on rosters for serious exam or they're doing, and that's usually for lower pay. But if you're thinking like, oh, if I got a national spot, even one a week, right, I mean, unless you're in it, voice for a campaign. I mean, I love how you laugh, that's the perfect way.   0:22:46 - Tom Well, I laugh because I thought I had to sound like James Earl Jones.   0:22:47 - Anne Right, I mean yeah, and so like that is. You know you have to understand what's realistic for the, for the industry too, when you're jotting these down. So any education that you can get on that right. Listen to podcasts like Vio Boss. I mean, we've been doing this for six years, right, talking about markets and business. And, tom, you've been doing gosh. How many years have you been doing business consulting?   0:23:10 - Tom and strategizing Over 10 years.   0:23:12 - Anne Yeah, over 10 years and specifically in our industry, and so, like guys, I mean, look, I'm not saying of course you should come to us, but I mean we've been doing this for a long time, we've watched the market evolve and so that's why I want to point it out and say that this is so important for us to have in consideration in our, in our step by step process of here's where we are, here's where we want to be. Now, if I want to be, you know, a commercial, you know Vio artist, well, maybe I want to think about another genre as well, to add in, to supplement those days when I don't get the national campaign every day. And I'm not trying to crush your dreams, guys, that's just not, that's just not it. But you know we're. This is a dose of reality, right, tom?   This is our whole series is based on let's talk real yeah.   0:23:57 - Tom The reality is is that you may be. You may be good at something you don't like, and you may not be good at something you do like.   A lot of people are drawn to the industry because they love cartoons and video games, and a lot of them may not be good at it, but they may find out that they are good at corporate or e-learning, which is a far more to your point, stable form of voiceover income, because, when it comes to effectiveness, the bottom line of effectiveness as a voice actor is you're able to make money. You're able to develop a revenue stream.   0:24:28 - Anne Develop any revenue stream that you need to make. Yeah, develop any revenue stream.   0:24:32 - Tom you can in any genre, whether you like it or not, and I always say all genres of voiceover is storytelling. I get my storytelling jollies out of any voiceover genre.   0:24:44 - Anne I don't care Teaching statistics right or you're narrating corporate responsibility or HR policies. You are absolutely a character and you are acting, and so that is a requirement, that is, I mean, baseline requirement, especially now when we talked about this in our last podcast. It is such a requirement for us to be the actors that we are called to be, I mean, and that includes all genres. So, yes, and that's the reality, that's the real talk.   0:25:14 - Tom Yes.   0:25:15 - Anne The real talk is you've got to invest in yourself, in developing those skills and getting good coaching, and not just taking acting classes. I know everybody would say take an acting class, and I think that's wonderful too, but you've also got to take acting classes as they pertain to voiceover as well.   0:25:32 - Tom Yes, there's a crossover. I mean, I always say improv classes are extremely important because it gives you the ability to make strong decisions quickly while you're narrating your copy. But to an end, compliment stuff like that, and there's like there are people who do improv for voiceover and acting specifically for voiceover. It's a very specific skill.   0:25:54 - Anne There's very specific muscles that you need to flex, Absolutely, absolutely To be to do voiceover as opposed to on camera or as opposed to theater. I'm all about teaching the acting for narration and, by the way, tom, I miss you. I don't see you. Did you turn your camera off by any chance?   0:26:09 - Tom No, I'm still here.   0:26:11 - Anne Oh, I don't see you how interesting. That's that's. Do you see yourself?   0:26:16 - Tom I do.   0:26:17 - Anne Oh, okay. Well, I'm just going to assume.   0:26:19 - Tom Okay.   0:26:20 - Anne I'm going to assume that it just kind of blipped off. But you know, hey guys, technology Riverside, hopefully we'll have your, we'll have your video anyways.   0:26:30 - Tom Okay.   0:26:30 - Anne Absolutely, so, okay, so, so what a great conversation. So now you're back. Okay, so that's interesting. So now we've taken our, we've come back from the conference, we're motivated, we're, we've written down our, our perfect voiceover day, right and so, and then we've worked backwards to the steps. And so what would be next after that, tom, how do do we need to? We probably need to take time to evaluate whether we've accomplished those steps right, absolutely.   Once we've written them down and we've and we've developed our to-do list. Now we've got to go back, maybe in a week or so or in a you know at the end of the day and say did I accomplish my tasks?   0:27:07 - Tom Yes, self-evaluation and self-reflection is one of the most important skill sets to be an effective voice actor. Because you don't have. Unless you're part of my mentorship program or you're mentoring with Ann, you are working in a vacuum. You need to develop the ability to metacognate, which is the ability to stand outside of thank you, the ability to stand outside of yourself. Look at yourself objectively and say did I do what I assigned to my assigned for myself? Did I do it? Well, if I didn't do it, why didn't I do it? Was there a logistical problem? Was a financial problem? Was there a motivational problem? You know and find out why, why you do what you do, how you tick, and there's a time to be kind to yourself and there's a kind, there's a time to be tough on yourself. You know.   0:27:56 - Anne And so taking I think I've always tough on myself, but you're right, yeah.   0:27:59 - Tom You have to be able to. You have to be able to do both, because we're all human. We all have different energy levels and emotional states that fluctuate constantly throughout the day, week, month, year, decade, and we need to be accommodating for that. Oh, mercury's in retrograde today, so I'm not going to get my invoicing done, or what were you?   0:28:18 - Anne know oh, technology sucks, technology sucks. You know what I mean?   0:28:21 - Tom Oh, great retrograde, yeah, you know but if you find yourself making excuses for yourself about why you're not doing things, then you are not being effective.   0:28:28 - Anne Because I have an, I have an action for it. That's a whole another podcast right there.   0:28:32 - Tom Yeah, I have my action plan right here and I don't check off every single box. I get about 80% of my action plan stuff done every month, dating back to 2006. And sometimes it's-.   0:28:42 - Anne Do you have records from back then? Do you do you have a-.   0:28:45 - Tom I have a binder right here with every single one of these. So January 2006-. I love it Was my first printed one and I've done 12 a year since 2006 and it's in this binder right over here.   0:28:54 - Anne It does not surprise me that you love numbers too. I love numbers, right, yeah, see, and so that I feel goes along with.   Now I'm not so much, although I will. I will share my book is out there, but I have my to-do list that I love to cross things off on and I have my planner where I like to write my goals down. I'm not always as good as I propose to be, but, yeah, I think that's super important. But, wow, what a great conversation. I want to talk to you more, in more detail, about a lot of these steps because I think they're super important in our series. So, tom, thank you so so much for joining me for our first, our first in a series of real bosses.   0:29:35 - Tom Yeah.   0:29:36 - Anne So, guys, if you, I have a simple mission for you, but one that has big impact 100 voices, one hour, $10,000. Four times a year. Do you want to know what I'm talking about? Visit 100voiceswhocareorg to find out more and to join us. And big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl. We love IPDTL. We love connecting with bosses like Tom and myself. Find out more at IPDTLcom. Bosses, have an amazing week and be real bosses. We'll see you next week. Bye, bye.   Transcribed by https://podium.page

In wrestling with life's challenges, recovery and self-care are paramount. Anne and Lau stress the importance of having that one person who understands, who can act as a sounding board without getting overly entangled in the emotion of the situation. The Bosses discuss the significance of discipline in the recovery process and the role of self-care, underlining the need to step back and reassess situations from a different perspective. Tune in to join us in this deep and insightful discussion as we share our personal experiences and offer valuable advice on how to effectively manage challenging times with a robust support system. Transcript   0:00:01 - Intro It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss, a V-O boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza.   0:00:20 - Anne Hey, hey everyone, welcome to the V-O Boss podcast and the business superpower series. I'm your host, Anne Gangusa, and today I am so excited to bring back to the show Miss Lau Lapides. Hey, Lau Nice, to see you Excited to. I'm actually so happy to see you, la, because I have had a crappy week, I've had a bad week. Poor Anne, tell me about it, baby, I've got some cookies.   I have to talk about what we can do to help me recover. Oh so, wait a second, are you in recovery? I could be in recovery right now. I mean, meeting with you, la, it helps me. It helps me in my recovery from a bad week. I know, I think it's something to talk about because I mean, look, I'd love to have an amazing week like every day and amazing days every day, but gosh knows that's not always the case. It's not, I swear. Sometimes it happens like one right after the other and literally I'll tell you, I had to say goodbye to a client. That was number one. I was in the process of responding to a client and, gosh, I guess I waited a minute too long and they could not wait for me and I lost the job like in a split second.   And I was like, oh my gosh. And then I had technology problems. I had technology problems where literally a cable went bad, but before I figured out that it was the cable, I replaced an expensive part of my camera system and now I have a backup, which is good. So guess what? I bought another camera, but that's another story for another day. So I'm going to be upgrading my camera here, but until I forget out what that simple $9 cable problem was, I literally had every other problem on the planet, like I couldn't access my files. You know, my drives weren't spinning up. I had to cancel a student because I couldn't access their files. It's just been one of those weeks Lau and I'm sure you've had them yourself.   I'm sure you've had them yourself. But I thought maybe we could first of all talk about it and number one, to know that I can't be the only one who's had a bad week here and there and let's talk about how we can kind of get ourselves up out of that funk, because I was in a funk Lau.   0:02:36 - Lau I was in a funk, 1970s funk. You're in the VOR. That's what you are. That's a voiceover recovery zone.   0:02:43 - Anne There you go. That's what you are. I need recovery tips. You do.   0:02:48 - Lau You know what it reminds me of? It reminds me of athletes that are top athletes and they do a lot of commercial campaigns. Now on, choose that. Help you recover from those extreme physical wanting tasks if they're doing a marathon of a day.   0:03:03 - Anne And I have those shoes, I do, I have recovery shoes. Yeah, and they're the best Recovery.   0:03:08 - Lau VO what we need. A recovery VO SOS Process, process of some kind I need to pair recovery VO sneakers. There you go. You need an in-house recovery therapist in the booth.   0:03:23 - Anne Well, I did purchase a new camera for this booth, and so I don't know if that was shopping to recover. We're not sure.   0:03:30 - Lau Retail therapy. Retail therapy, I love it.   0:03:34 - Anne That's exactly what it was. But yeah, I will tell you, mentally it was tough and it's interesting because I'm a fairly upbeat person and I think you are too. Sometimes, when things get to me, gosh, it's just in the back of my mind and it gnaws away at me and it affects my demeanor, it affects my performance. Gosh knows I can't come in here and really put my 100% into my auditions or into my gigs because I'm upset, I'm hurt, and that's the thing. It's probably not even that I'm, maybe I'm angry, but most of all I think for me, I take things so personally. Again, it's so hard not to in this business because it is part of our personal brand and so if something doesn't go right, if a client isn't happy or a client can't wait for me, I'm like, oh, you know, I take it to heart and I take it like, oh, they couldn't wait a minute for me, I should be worth that. And what happened?   0:04:30 - Lau And I'm squilling what you're peeling right now. I totally get it.   0:04:34 - Anne I empathize, I'm not sure I've heard that phrase before, but I like it.   0:04:42 - Lau Well, adopt it. Okay, I'll start with tip one. Let's do our top tips on this because I think it is so real, so important and, as you're expressing right now, so heavy on us. When it happens, we can make light of it now because it's a little bit later, but when it's happening it feels very intense and you're a very emotional, caring and very due diligence kind of person, so you may take it harder. So here's my first tip.   My first tip is this take a step back and assess. If you can assess where you or myself, if I'm talking about myself where you are at literally in the moment that this is happening. Where am I at mentally? Is this the beginning of the day? The middle of the day? Am I tired? Is at the end of the day? Has it been a difficult week? Has it been a light week? Has this person pulled the rug out from under me before, or is this brand new?   And I like doing this kind of an assessment because it helps to intellectualize and analyze when I want to immediately emotionalize. So I want to move that emotion aside and I want to intellectualize it because my reaction to this is going to be very different and unique based on where I am coming from in this moment. So you're saying you had a really hard week. It was a tough week. If it wasn't if it was a fabulous week and everything went perfectly and you were joyful and it happened to you you may have reacted differently. You may have been coming from a different mindset. So my tip one is take a step back, objectify, check in with your mindset and really do a quick psychological checklist. Where am I at in this moment? Does my reaction fit the crime, so to speak? Is it accurate to the level of what I perceive was done to me? And sometimes we find it's not. Sometimes we're exaggerating, sometimes we're hyperbolic about our responses, sometimes we're creating and crafting things about it.   That actually aren't even there, based on where we're coming to the situation. So take a breath, take a step back and analyze where I am at as this is happening to me. That's my tip one.   0:06:58 - Anne I love that. I think that's really a great tip, because what I did do to try to get myself out of the funk initially was okay, I saw red flags, and this was not a complete surprise to me, and so I tried to justify was there something that maybe I was not doing or communicating that contributed to this? And of course, I want to say, well, no, of course not Nothing. I actually couldn't figure out where there could have been something that would have gone astray, and so I actually went back and I really revisited all the steps and my interactions and I had seen red flags. And I also have to understand and I think it's important maybe for bosses to understand that you can't please everyone all the time. And that's a tough one for me because I'm that kind of person that really I strive to be liked. I like to be liked, and so if somebody has an issue or a problem, that translates to clients, and so if there is an issue with that, it really affects me personally and it makes me second guess things.   0:08:10 - Lau It sounds like you had two tips right there, though. Yeah, it sounds like am I right that there were two that were together, it wasn't just one tip.   0:08:18 - Anne Yes, it was yes, yes, which I love that.   0:08:22 - Lau I think that's great. So what was the first one you gave?   0:08:24 - Anne So the first one is just to really go back and, if this is an interaction with a client, go back and review the facts, review the emails and a lot of times we deal with clients through email and I really feel that that's hard sometimes to communicate via email and when there's emotions involved or misunderstandings and going back, reviewing the facts to make sure that there was something that you could have stopped or done differently, and then, once assessed, realize that, well, you cAnneot please everyone all the time, and that's a big realization for me.   That's a huge one for me.   0:09:01 - Lau You cAnneot please everyone all the time, and the tip you also gave to was to trust your instinct.   So many of us are not listening to that inner voice of what the instinct is telling you and pushing you and you have to really pay attention because that instinct is really there for a reason. I'm going to add one more to this and I'm going to say as much as we like to like and we like to be liked and there is a professional likeability factor in sales and in relationships. There certainly is. I don't think the deal or the job relies on being liked. You don't want to be disliked, necessarily, but I don't think that you need to feel personally close to someone or feel like they understand you. It's really much more important that you're providing value to them.   And what they're needing and sometimes that feels that perceives as if they don't like me or they're not getting me or they're not whatever, when it's really. How are they processing their information? What are their takeaways and are they actually understanding what you're giving to them? I think a lot of this dislike, discommunication, is based on one party just not understanding the information that's given to them and misunderstanding it, and then it feels like they don't like you when it's really not that.   0:10:23 - Anne I totally, totally agree with you there. I mean, especially in today's day and age, where, again, we are so bombarded with data and chaos and we communicate via text or email and it's so easy to misinterpret that, that's where I always like to get on the phone, talk to someone, and I really believe that a lot of our issues can be solved by just talking to one another and talking to your client. Sometimes that's not possible, whereas in the case of when the client, when I lost the job, I literally you snooze, you lose, kind of thing, and I snoozed for like a minute. I'm like whew, and literally I just lost the job. And they're like sorry, we had to give it to somebody else. And I'm like and then it became.   And then it became damn All right. So I want to make sure that next time I'm still on that roster, I'm still top of mind and I'm still there. So I quickly said, all right, snooze, you lose. All right, fine, I get that. He's a busy guy and we don't always know like our clients. They have deadlines, they have pressures, they have stresses, and I think we need to really understand that and not take that personally. And I was like, well, okay, he was under the gun, under pressure to get that job done. I wasn't there to reassure him or say, yes, I'm here, I can get that recording done. I literally responded to him a couple of minutes late and then afterwards he said sorry, I didn't hear back from you. And I said, okay, I wrote back. And I said, well, I'm really bummed and I hope that you'll continue to keep me at the top of your list for next time. And he wrote back. He said, oh yeah, no worries, you are, you are my top talent, you are my top talent roster. So I felt much better after that.   0:12:07 - Lau I gotta tell you and you know my instinct says about that situation, I think honestly this would be a situation I can't prove it, of course, but I think it had nothing to do with you. I think, because of the timeframe you're giving me and how fast that happened, that they went either another direction really quickly, or the job went down, or they're not going to record it, or they had a date change. I honestly, in that amount of time, I don't think they have five other people lined up. I think that I feel that's what.   I was like I think it was a logistical thing that happened that he didn't want to get into. He just said oh, all for the best, it's okay, I'm all set.   0:12:41 - Anne And I thought about that too. I'm glad you said that that's what it feels like. I did think about that too, and then I was like, well, that's okay, as long as I'm still top of mind for him and he's still good that he responded and said that. So, and you're right, that makes me think that, yeah, maybe there was something else that happened. I was like it literally happened so quickly and I was like, wow, I lost that and so, oh well.   0:13:03 - Lau But isn't that the case? Isn't exactly that what we're talking about?   is that, of course, you felt bad because you wanted to please and you're on that campaign and you have a relationship. You don't want to let people down. I get that. But isn't that a perfect case to take a step back and say, hmm, that happened in 4.3 minutes, so chances are great it didn't probably have anything to do with me. And even if it did, it did. I mean, life happens, but chances are great. My logistical power is gonna tell me. Most likely it's not me. That would be a good place to take a step back and to kind of think in that way yeah Right, and it wasn't meant to be, and maybe it didn't happen. It wasn't meant to be, you're right, you're right, it wasn't meant to be.   0:13:45 - Anne It happened.   And so recovery I have to tell you recovery from that one because I kind of snapped back and said, hmm, let me send him an email to make sure, right, that I'm still top of mind and that, so, sorry, maybe next time my bad and looking forward to the next campaign or whatnot.   And the fact that he wrote back and said, oh yeah, absolutely made me feel good and so that was helpful to recover. But again, going through like, okay, what could possibly have happened? And understanding that you don't know literally, and especially if obviously I can't get on the phone and say, hey, what's wrong with him right at this moment and we can't do that with all of our clients Some of them we can I think that for us, for recovery, I think it's important to communicate, and so that would be my biggest tip really is, when you are having those bad days and it has to do with clients or vendors or people that you're working with, I mean, really I would say, just go above and beyond to try to communicate your feelings and communicate especially in the business aspect of things, whether you're hurt or not.   0:14:52 - Lau I do feel that communication is key and that's the next tip that you just gave and it reminded me. The first visual that came into my head is like the circus, or Cirque du Soleil God forbid someone falls or someone gets hurt, whatever, unless they die, god forbid or they're really, really hurt. Guess what the families teach in circus school since two years old Get up, go back right now, do not think about it, go and attack it. So what you're saying, which I truly believe in, is a discipline fall off the horse, do a quick email, do a quick text or whatever the relationship is, do a quick, even if it's a client. Let's say, a client is unhappy and you're either issuing a refund or you're issuing an apology, or whatever the case may be. Always follow up, don't get afraid, don't run away Like this is the boogeyman. You know what I mean. Like always come back in a day.   Or be angry and not yet, or be angry and start concocting a whole scenario, go back and say hey, you know that didn't work well, I think we fixed it. Let me give you something else that you may need. Let's do this again and I'm telling you nine times out of 10, people are pretty forgiving. People are pretty like oh yeah, right, that didn't work well, but all right, let's talk about the next thing.   0:16:12 - Anne Yeah, absolutely, and I think if not, then you've got to just let it go. It's like one of those things. I mean, it can become toxic right For you if you're letting it bother you, letting it affect you, and it really can just become a toxic thing that can build up and you don't want that. That does not affect your performance or your business in a positive light, and so not, at all Not at all.   0:16:36 - Lau I got one more for you. Yeah, okay, we always talk about in this society in general the idea of self care, taking care of yourself, I think, when you're in recovery which we're all in recovery just from daily work and stress.   0:16:53 - Anne I'm glad you got that out.   0:16:54 - Lau Yeah, if you build in a care for yourself, that is very specific. So, whether it's, you know, whatever it is a massage, going to the nail salon, going to the gym.   0:17:04 - Anne I sat in the garden lot with the sun on my face, because the sun has not come out lately here in California and I was so happy, I just breathed, pet my kitties and just sat out there for a good half an hour and just took a break and you're right. I love the self care because you just got to let it go.   0:17:24 - Lau And you need recovery time. So, like you and I have very heavy days at times.   0:17:29 - Anne Yes.   0:17:29 - Lau Sometimes it's going to a movie or having a latte, or taking a quiet walk or there's a gazillion things or climbing the mountain. Whatever you do, you must make time to do it, because not only is it for your mental health and your physical health, but you have to put things into perspective and the only way to do it is to step away from it. Yeah, you have to step away.   0:17:51 - Anne Stepping away, I think, is very important and I have been guilty of kind of working myself into the ground during the pandemic. I mean it was wonderful for my business but for my health and my mental state it was too much. I've gotten to the point where I'm much better now at kind of stepping away for a little bit of time.   0:18:09 - Lau Me too.   0:18:09 - Anne Yeah, and taking those moments to just relax and appreciate, I find that I'm much more productive and I'm much better off when I do that. I've slipped into the pattern before. I've kind of been a workaholic all my life. I know these lessons and I should remember them but you know what. Every once in a while, we just need to have something kind of slap us in the face and say and wake up, you know wake up.   0:18:32 - Lau It's also. It's in your makeup, though. I mean it's in your genetics, it's in your persona. It's not really a problem per se. It's just something you have to manage and be careful it doesn't take you over but it's what makes you great Also it's what makes you successful and happy. Also, right, I also want to mention too because you and I do this for each other and that's what makes us great new friends, and that is have a sounding board, have someone.   0:18:57 - Anne You were my sounding board this week. You were diplomatic.   0:19:00 - Lau They can be in the same business, they can be in the same space. But someone who's a little bit more neutralized, diplomatic, not someone who's going to get hot and heavy with toxicity, hot and heavy with anger with you. Agreed, you know, rev you up, get you angry. You don't want that. You want someone to bring you down and make you feel better. I know like when I always communicate, I just instantly feel better.   0:19:23 - Anne Yeah. You know, I'm always like I have somebody that can empathize, not necessarily preach or get you riled up, or I just really believe that the sounding board, the whoever you have your support group, is really helpful and somebody that will understand and that, I think, is really great, because what is the first thing I did? Well, maybe it wasn't the first thing I did, but I definitely texted you and I'm like, oh my God, here's what happened.   0:19:47 - Lau Yeah, and it's great and I love that because I feel like you trust me when you do that and I feel like I have to honor listening to that without getting overly involved with the emotion of it, because you come not just you, but anyone who's a friend comes because they want you to save them from that.   They want you to listen or offer a moment of advice. They don't want to get riled up and revved up. So I think that that's absolutely brilliant to have at least one person, if not more than you can do that with, and trust that they're not going to go say everything that you're saying to them to everyone else.   0:20:24 - Anne Right, I'm telling all the bosses out there.   0:20:28 - Lau You want trust. I have bad week, I have bad week. You want trust.   0:20:33 - Anne That's right, that's right.   0:20:34 - Anne But yeah, no, I think that recovery is important. I mean, this happens to all of us, it gets us, and I try so hard. I'm like, oh, you think I would be over it by now, but no, no no, no, no. Things still affect because I care.   0:20:46 - Lau Things still affect.   0:20:48 - Anne I think because we care so much about our jobs, we care about our businesses, we care about our voices and our clients and if you didn't care, it wouldn't affect you. We care.   0:20:58 - Lau We do, we care a lot, and one thing you do really really well I try to do this too, and this is being a proactive business person is when those things go right or go wrong or whatever. One of the first things you and I do we have this in common is we go try to fix it elsewhere for future population, future clients. For instance, let's say someone misread something on the website or let's say something was by accident omitted from a contract, whatever, we immediately go in and we fix that Absolutely. We fix that the next person doesn't experience it and we don't have the same issue. That's something a lot of people don't do. They go through the hardship and recover, but they don't actually remedy the problem itself the problem.   0:21:43 - Anne Yeah, absolutely Right, and we've done podcasts on this. Learning from our mistakes I mean, you know, mistakes are wonderful actually when you learn from them and then you can implement that remedy and try to make sure that it doesn't happen again and again. I think, opening up the lines of communication, self-care, having that sounding board, having somebody out there to support you, all of these things and really taking action and owning up. If there is something that can be remedied, own up to it and put those remedies in place, and that is going to be an essential part of recovery.   0:22:17 - Lau Exactly. And one more to throw in there is to deal with the situation, even though it may be uncomfortable or make you upset. Go right to the person or people, deal with it and say what can I do to make the situation right? And sometimes there's a huge learning curve in that they say something that you never knew before or you didn't expect. That's not personality driven, it's not necessarily about you. It's about the practice, the process.   0:22:46 - Anne Absolutely the product.   0:22:48 - Lau Well, I'm not happy with this product. The demo doesn't represent me, it's okay. Okay, good to know. Can you point out one or two specifics that I could potentially fix? Well, I don't like the order. Can we fix that? Well, yeah, we can fix that. You see, like I can't read that mind. You can't read those minds.   0:23:07 - Anne We're not mind readers.   0:23:08 - Lau So the more communication now. Sometimes it does open up Pandora's box and you don't want to have an ongoing year after year with that. But you can tell if someone's reasonable. If someone is really reasonable and is relatively kind in nature, I like to try to fix the problem. If there is a problem, if it's a personality clash or they just don't like me, or whatever, it's not going to be fixed. It is what it is. Cut your losses and go yeah.   0:23:34 - Anne Right, and if it is toxic, cut the toxicity out. That's it, and learn from it and don't be bitter. That's right. That's the thing Just like okay, I feel clear, I feel lifted, and then things can progress forward.   0:23:45 - Lau I like to say don't get bitter, Get better. There you go so in recovery.   0:23:50 - Anne don't get bitter, Get better.   0:23:53 - Lau So I want more thank you of yourself a lot of time. Sometimes recovery doesn't happen in a day or two.   0:23:58 - Anne Sometimes it needs a little bit longer, that is for sure, if it's a big loss.   0:24:02 - Lau It's going to take longer.   0:24:03 - Anne Yeah, and this didn't go away right away. I get frustrated with that. I know I'm that kind of person. Me too, I'm a happy person and so like if I'm not happy and I can't get happy, it's so frustrating to me, Like that to me is like well, I should be able to work myself out of this.   I expect so much right, this shouldn't bother me, and you know what. I have to allow it, I have to allow it to happen and I have to be okay with that and I have to give myself grace. No-transcript bosses out there while in recovery mode.   0:24:31 - Lau Great conversation, great conversation and, by the way, your last tip of the day is it's not always based on bad things happening. You have great days and great work days that you're exhausted by and take a lot out of you and drain you.   0:24:44 - Anne You need recovery from those amazing days too, sounds like some retail therapy, vo Retail Therapy. There we go, it's in order. Anyways, bosses, do you have a local nonprofit that's close to your heart? And if you've ever wanted to do more to help out, you can visit 100voiceshoocareorg to learn how. Thanks shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl. You, too, can network and connect like bosses. Find out more at IPDTLcom. Have an amazing week, guys. Have an amazing week and we'll see you next week. Mwah, see you next time. Bye, bosses.   0:25:20 - Outro Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host and Gangusa, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at vobosscom and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution, with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via IPDTL Okay.   0:25:52 - Anne Okay, let's try to get in a little more emphasis on this word. Just really pop that word, really pop that word. Okay, well, okay, maybe not that much. No, not that much. No, not that much.   0:26:05 - Anne All right, let's try.   Transcribed by https://podium.page