Tom Asacker is a very bright man with insights into lots of aspects of life, not just marketing. On his blog he features a re-post of one of his best from the last few years, some superb insights into how to truly deal with the stress we all encounter.
Blog
How is business?
John Florian has published the results of the VoiceOverXtra survey of your peers regarding volume of work and income. This survey was conducted online in October of 2008 and is based on responses from 204 voice actors, with no correlation kept between the answers and the respondents.
A couple of things I thought were interesting. Just about exactly half of the voice actors responding have been at their craft for 10 years or more, more than half work at voice acting full-time and 60% are non-union with another 8% who are dues-paying non-members (Financial Core).
Friends all over the place
Bill Oxley contributes a guest blog over at Vox Daily today and it’s a home run. It’s all about the importance of making friends in the voice acting business. Bill’s excellent blog reminds me of a conversational exchange I had with someone recently, an invidual who make the comment to me about how important it is to “network” all the time. My reply? I’m not so much on “networking.” I’d rather just make friends.
VoiceOverXtra expands
I received an email today from my friend John Florian, the driving force behind the excellent site VoiceOverXtra.com, a great resource for all things related to the voiceover industry. He’s just announced that he’s named Paula Lin, an international voice talent, write and educator as senior editor of the site. Congratulations to Paula and everyone involved in that fine operation.
RIP Bill Drake
His name is better known in radio circles that the voiceover world, but legendary radio programmer and consultant Bill Drake has just died. Here is the news from Ken Levine’s blog. My thanks to my friend Willie Edwards for posting the link on the VO-BB.
A formula for succcess
Are you ever astonished by the number of people hoping to find some magic formula that will guarantee success? I sure am. While I suppose it might be possible to create a formula that goes something like “effort + persistence + patience = success” even that is no guarantee, because so much depends on what kind of effort in what direction and so forth.
However, Tom Asacker has developed a very interesting formulation to map business direction for 2009. It goes like this.
EF = A/S + I/P
You’ll need to look at Tom’s A Clear Eye blog to get the explanation. I think you’ll find it well worth your time.
An opportunity
If you are a member of an online voice casting service, you might find this video of interest.
Building your own voice booth
TJ Jones has a new voiceover blog he’s started in the last few days. Among his first posts is a series he’s done to document construction of his own voiceover booth. Quite an impressive bit of work he’s done, starting with the initial post. Then Framing. Adding carpet. Some additional assembly. Adding Trim and foam. And finally the completed project.
Happy Thanksgiving!
If you live in the USA, I hope you’re enjoying a very Happy Thanksgiving holiday with those you love. If you’re outside the USA, I certainly hope you’re having a lovely day, too.
On this traditional start of “the holidays” in the States, how appropriate that an email should arrive in my inbox today from Scott Brick and his clan announcing the release of Scott’s audiobook version of A Christmas Carol, the Charles Dicken’s classic. Scott also has blog post up about his life-long relationship with the story that is well worth a few minutes of your time.
Hello Zurek
My friend Zurek (formerly known in the Voiceover Universe as Rick Party) has blogged about his name change and other matters of importance. I hope you’ll take a moment to stop by, read, and ruminate.
Let’s hear it for the little guy
My friend Steve Stone emails this morning with the admonition, “read this story.” So I did. Now, I’m passing that admonition along to you. What a great story. Seriously.
Customer value
In the current down economy, the way a company presents itself to its customers is vital. No big insights there. However, if you’ll click through to Tom Asacker’s cogent blog post on this subject, you’ll see there’s a world of difference between framing the perception of value and adding to perceived value.
TeleVoice Workout
Deb Munro does a teleseminar on the last Wednesday of each month. You’ll find details on her web site here.
Marketing art and science
My friend Tom Dheere has written part 3 of his series on the Art and Science of Self-promotion for VoiceOverXtra. My thanks to Erik Sheppard for the link that lead me there.
Added to the blogroll
My friend Anthony Mendez is one of the most talented and inspiring voice actors I know. He emails this evening with news that he’s just started a blog he’s calling The Lazy Voice-Over. When you read, you’ll see he’s defining lazy a little differently that you might think at first. I know this is going on my reading list immediately. Welcome to the blogosphere, Anthony.
Why don’t women do movie trailers, more thoughts
There’s an article in Variety that talks with several ladies who are involved with this question in one way or another, including Sylvia Villagran who linked to this Variety article on her Voiceover Universe blog.
If you ever have to move
Kara Edwards is one of my very favorite voiceover people. Not only is she wonderfully talented, but she has a knack for taking the difficulties she encounters and turning them in to valuable lessons for her own life and for us. She’s written up a Top 10 List of things to do if you have to relocate your voiceover business, a list based on the lessons she’s just learned from her move from Charlotte to Tampa. It’s well worth your time even if you’re not thinking about moving.
Getting out the word
Donna Reed offers some thoughts about preparing press releases that are well worth a few moments of your time.
Nice people come to Charlotte
My friend Peter O’Connell is in Charlotte on a business trip and we were able to spend a very pleasant dinner together along with my youngest son, Brian. We talked about voiceover, of course, especially marketing since Peter is something of a mentor to me in that regard.
After dinner, we took a few shots with Peter’s camera in the restaurant (read Peter’s take on our visit and see one of the shots from his camera on his blog) and then when we got him back to his hotel my camera had just enough power to take this shot of the three of us in the lobby.
From left to right, me, Peter O’Connell and my youngest son, Brian.
Liz and H2 and Elaine
My friend Liz de Nesnera blogs about her experiences this past weekend studying with Harlan Hogan and Elaine Clark at their weekend workshop in the Washington DC area.