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When I agreed to take part in Movember this year, I knew that this day was coming and that I would most likely have a pretty scruffy looking upper lip when it arrived. And that’s exactly the case:

You see, I’m preaching at our church today. It’s not something I do on a regular basis, but as one of the deacons of our church it is something I’m prepared to do. On the off-chance that you both see this note before 10:30 in the morning (Eastern time, US) on November 8, 2015 and you would like to watch and listen, you can do so because our church streams the service live. And if the service isn’t live, the archives of previous services are listed on the right side of the page.

I do hope, whether you have any interest in my preaching or not, that you will consider contributing to the fight against prostate cancer and other men’s health issues through my page at Movember. Clicking the link will take you right there. And thank you for your support.

While a friend of mine and I were both donating blood this morning, he asked me: “what exactly are we supposed to see in all of these close-up pictures of your face that you’ve been posting?” I pointed at my upper lip. He leaned over closer to me and said. “I see. There is something growing there, isn’t there.” (Sorry if I got the quotes slightly off Paul.) We then talked for a moment about Movember.
Here is day 7’s look:

Give it another week and I think it will be clear to everyone that I’m growing a mustache for Movember and hoping as a result that you will help join the fight against prostate cancer and other help challenges for men. I’m doing this campaign this year in cooperation with my Male Voice-Over Guys group. Please join us in this fight.

By the way, my plan is to create a GIF when November is finished to show the day by day progress through the month. I think it should be fun. I will post it here in early December, assuming I’m successful in creating the GIF in the first place.

This is going to be very quick today. Here is the latest upper lip photo.

Please contribute to the fight against prostate cancer through Movember. My father is currently battling this dread disease, so this Movember cause hits close to home. And thank you for your support.

I realize this series of blog posts may be even less exciting that watching paint dry, but the cause is truly excellent. The funds we raise through this Movember campaign help the fight against prostate cancer and other men’s health issues.
Here is day 4;

If you would rather you can support our entire Male Voice-Over Guys team.

There is a little bit of visible growth now on my upper lip, as you can see:

Why am I calling attention to my upper lip like this? Because it’s Movember! I hope you will click the link and donate to the cause through my page. Or if you’d rather give to the entire Male Voice-Over Guys group, you can do that too.

As much as possible this month, I am going to do my best to post a Movember update each day, including a photo of how my upper lip is developing. Clearly from one day to the next, the change won’t be all that dramatic. Here is how things look after one full day.

Like I said, not much change from yesterday. I hope you’ll consider contributing through my page at Movember. Or if you’d rather, give to the entire Male Voice-Over Guys team.

And thank you for your support!

Today I am bringing my blog out of its state of neglect to kick off a month of fundraising for Movember, an organization dedicated to fighting cancer among men (especially prostate cancer) and helping improve men’s health.

As I do this, I’m taking part with a group of talented fellows with whom I’m associated professionally, The Voice-Over Guys. Click the link for our MVO group on the Movember site. If you would rather just donate directly to me, you can also do so, here on Movember.

So, here is photo one. I will do my best to post a new photo every day. Or at least as often as I can this month. Thanks in advance for your help!

I discovered today (when he emailed me to let me know) that I had somehow failed to include a link to the incomparable Johnny Heller on my blogroll. That oversight has been corrected.

What if what’s coming for your voiceover business isn’t an avalanche? What if it’s a tsunami? I started thinking about this blog post after reading my friend Jeffrey Tobin’s post called Your Tsunami is Coming.

As I read, I thought back to what I see as a vivid example of a tsunami hitting the voiceover business as a whole. The strike of 2000. Until that year, while there had been some significant shifts of one kind or another (one example would be how auditions were being done at agency offices rather than in recording studios), most voiceover work (especially work that paid well) was was booked way it had been for a very long time, through an agent. And much of the time after submitting an audition.
Then the strike.

Suddenly, the amount of good paying non-union voiceover work exploded.

There were a number of factors involved, most of them related to the explosive growth of the Internet. Anyone remember the dot com bubble bursting in 2000? Yes, the bubble burst, but it was a bubble in the first place because of how rapidly the Internet had grown. It was now possible for someone looking for a professional voice to search and find good, quality voice talent who had their own web sites. With demos.

My friend Connie Terwilliger started her site in 1996. I posted my first site in 1998. Back in the late 90s there were not huge numbers of  voiceover people with their own websites, and the majority of us who did have sites were working pro voices. So, someone searching for a voice was likely to find a professional. No need for an agent. Or an union. Or even a contract. Just connect via email or telephone. Work out the details. Email a script. Record at home. (I built my first studio in 1986.) And deliver the audio. Send an invoice. Deposit the checks when they arrived in the mail.

So, back to the tsunami. What does a tsunami do? It creates massive devastation and destruction. Which is, at least at some level, what happened to the careers of many voiceover people in the aftermath of the strike in 2000. No, it wasn’t as swift as a tsunami, but the aftermath was just as complete.

Loads of very talented people were booking less and less work. A decline that has continued for many. And for all of us, the levels of pay have never returned to what they once were. Oh, individual jobs can still pay very well. But the playing field today is very different than it was 25 years ago when I was still in my first decade of doing voiceovers.

Here is reality: some kind of destructive storm (or maybe tsunami) is ahead of each of us. How are we going to deal with the aftermath of whatever that turns out to be? What we can’t know is exactly what will happen. What we can know is how well prepared we will be to deal with it. Or them, if the trouble turns out to come in multiples.

Many of the people that have thrived in voiceover in the last 15 years have been people who have learned to ride the waves of change that have swept through the business. They have a professional website. They don’t sit back and assume that everything is going to stay the same. They know it won’t.

Learn to be flexible. Pay attention to the shifting landscape. Adapt as things change. As you do, you’ll see that everything works out.

My friend Anthony Mendez in the narrator for the new CW show Jane The Virgin. Check out the extended trailer, also narrated by Anthony.

So here’s a question every one of us who works professionally in voiceover needs to wrestle with: how do I make my business bigger and better? Or another way to put it would be: how do I become more successful?(What follows was prompted by Seth Godin’s recent blog post Dumb down and scale up and I warmly recommend you spend a few minutes reading that post before you continue here.)

If you’re not thinking about these questions pretty often, you aren’t thinking about your voiceover business as a business. Maybe it’s just a hobby? But if you’re doing voiceovers professionally, whether you count your income totals for the year in 4, 5, 6 or 7 figures and whether you do mostly radio commercials in one local market or audiobooks or promos and trailers for the top studios and networks in the world, moving toward greater success is something you think about.
Right?

There are a couple of elements involved here, of course. How do you define success? Is it more money? Or, more money for each session? So that you have more time available to spend with the people you value most. Or, maybe it’s the kind of clients you have; and the amount of money you make isn’t the primary factor?

Another element has to do with the question, is bigger always better? For me the answer to that question is, yes! But your answer may be different from mine.

Here’s what I mean. My voiceover business now employs, at some level of involvement, all four of my children, my wife, my mother and two of my best friends. Some of these, pretty much every week. Others only a few times a month and a few just a time or two each year.

Thirty-one years ago when I started doing voiceovers professionally on a steady basis, it was just me. And my business stayed that way for a bit more than 20 years. It wasn’t until about 10 years ago that I started adding my wife and then my son Eric and daughter Karen into the mix.

As I look back, I can clearly see that while there was some fluctuation in my voiceover income from year to year, it was all within a pretty narrow range. There was a bump to a new range about 20 years ago when I started working with my agent in Pittsburgh, but it wasn’t a huge jump. Just a nice bump.

But 10 years ago, two key things came together that have made a huge difference for me. First, by adding in help from my wife and my kids, I was able to concentrate more of my time on the thing that only I could do: the actual voicing. As I moved editing, writing, proofing and so forth off my plate, I was able to be both more efficient with my time and more productive with my work.

The second thing that was added in to the mix was to start studying with some top voiceover coaches, thus raising my ability to tell stories more and more effectively and professionally.
I don’t think I’m being too immodest when I say that the fact that I had been working steadily as a voiceover professional meant that I wasn’t a disaster for the first 20 years; but it’s also clear to me now that I had a lot to learn. And like most people, I had no idea how much I didn’t know.

So, my suggestions for growing your business come down to two simple suggestions: find people (like my daughter Karen obviously) to whom you can outsource some of your work. And either start studying with a truly excellent voiceover coach or get back to doing so.

I do something at least several times a year to keep my tools sharp and polished. I don’t ever plan to stop. Because while getting bigger might or might not be right for you, but getting better isn’t an option. It’s a requirement. At least it is if you want to continue to consider yourself a working voiceover professional.