Career Advice

Marc Cashman emails with details about a number of one-day voiceover workshops he’s planning for 2009.

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In response to overwhelming demand, and in an on-going effort to “raise the bar” in V-O instruction, I’m scheduling a series of exciting, but rigorous one-day workshops in specialty areas of voice-over.

In the past, in addition to my practical, foundation-building course structure, I’ve brought in top voice talent as guest directors to give students challenging exercises that will prepare them for the real world of voice work. But starting in 2009, I’ll be inviting the top directors and producers in the U.S. in various fields of voiceover to participate in my workshops. These people will share their insight and expertise, and students who sign up for these workshops will be performing in front of decision-makers—people who are in a position to actually cast and hire talent.

My special guests will be owners/producers/directors of award-winning production companies in various specialty areas: videogames, audiobooks, animation production and commercials. I’ll also be inviting other top experts to share their advice, tips and techniques in areas outside of performance—areas like the business of voiceover: promotion, packaging and publicity, as well as the technical areas of home studio installation and recording.

Some of these workshops will be limited to advanced students and part-time and full-time professional voice talent (and only ten per event). Other workshops will be open to Beginning and Intermediate students. All workshops will provide breakfast, lunch and snacks, and run from 10AM to 6PM.

-Videogame Workshop – Jan. 17th, 2009

-V-O Demo Prep Workshop – Jan. 24th, 2009

-Audiobook Workshop – date to be announced

-The Business of V-O Workshop – date to be announced

-Home V-O Recording Workshop – date to be announced

-V-O Narration Workshop – date to be announced

-The Art of Dialogue Workshop: Timing, Comedy, Drama, Characters – date to be announced

-The Art of Retail Workshop: Proven Approaches to Effective Delivery – date to be announced

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If you had a chance to see Marc at VOICE 2008 you all ready know he’s both very insightful and very funny. And while I have not studied with Marc personally, several of my friends have and they all sing his praises. You’ll find Marc’s contact information on his website.

Deb Munro does a teleseminar on the last Wednesday of each month. You’ll find details on her web site here.

My friend and mentor Philip Banks recently posted some extremely helpful comments on the VO-BB on how to build your voiceover career. With his permission I reprint them here.

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What is a prospect? It’s a potential buyer of your services. So is that any business person? No, not really. You have to spend a little time qualifying your prospects before you approach them and that means before you ask the person who runs the business if he uses freelance Voice Over people you must be as sure as possible the answer is going to be yes.

A few weeks ago I conducted an experiment. Sunday morning I surfed the internet looking for a particular kind of business and sent an email suggesting that if they ever needed a voice like mine feel free to get in touch. I added that my email was a one-off and assured recipients they would not be added to a mailing list and would not contact them again unless they requested that I do so.

1 – Clearly identifed prospects.
2 – No sell, just a clear, polite suggestion
3 – END

It took me about an hour to conduct this experiment and it resulted in me being booked as the voice for an awards ceremony for a 4 figure fee. I know people who send newsletters and emails by the thousand and get very little back. I sent out 21 emails and got a booking and a few expressions of interest, my guess is that the end result will be 7 jobs.

I approach prospects most people approach suspects and suspects are no use to you at all.

Some may say to this that their agent does all this kind of stuff. Here’s a question for you agent the next time you speak to him or her in person or on the phone.

“Who have you told about me since we last talked?” Most of you will get the answer – NOBODY! If that’s the case then your agent doesn’t take care of talking to prospects about you so that means I’ll have to do it or you will …………..Guess it’s up to you.

Philip, how did you get started?” asked Jim. I told him and assumed that what I believed to be obvious would be obvious to him. Oh how wrong was I.

Get list of people and telephone them to ask if they use the services of freelance Voice Overs. Sound ok? I thought so except Jim simply got a list of local businesses and called them. WRONG. Before you make the call you need to be 90% certain that the person you are calling is going to answer yes to the question.

The trick, if there is a trick, is to spend more time digging for prospects than calling people. Right, let’s start project 100. You need 100 names and telephone numbers. What do you want to do? For whom would you like to work. You are able to do long form audio like elearning? Ok, type elearning production into a search engine. Visit the websites and look aorund, it will take time. Is there any evidence to support your theory that this company uses voices? Prove to yourself that they may find a use for you -PROVE do not guess. In the contacts or “about us” section is there a name – Joe Smith Head of production or Audio Producer – DIG DIG DIG. The more you do this the more your investigative instincts improve. From every search you need a company, tel No and contact name.

Unless you have no alternative DO NOT EMAIL – YOU MUST TELEPHONE.

“Hello my name’s Philip Banks and I’m calling to ask if you ever use freelance voice overs”

If you’ve done your homework you will get a yes. If not offered a name, ask for one, the one you already know and ask if you can speak to them for a moment.

“Hello my name’s Philip Banks and I’m calling to ask if you ever use freelance voice overs”

Assuming the answer is yes.

“Would it be ok for me to send you a demo? (before they say anything) You’re allowed to say no by the way”

In 18 years I have had one person say no to me.

“That’s great I’ll send you one today. Thanks very much”

If you are asked for a link to demos on a web site do that instead of a demo CD.

Here’s is the BIGGIE – NEVER EVER EVER ASK FOR FEEDBACK

If you are tempted to ask for feedback

NEVER EVER EVER ASK FOR FEEDBACK

To be certain you have fully understood – NEVER EVER EVER ASK FOR FEEDBACK

You are looking for work not a critique.

Prospecting is the key. No selling required. If you have been thorough in your search for names and numbers and your demos are good enough you will get work.

As a way of finishing this piece here’s the story of a job I managed to secure over ten years ago.

I read in a newspaper that Pilots and crew of a new helicopter were going to be trained using CBT, Computer based training. On noting the name of the company I saw they were about 5 miles from me. I visited the office armed with an audio cassette.

“If you have any projects that require a professional voice please get in touch”. Note that I didn’t tell them what I knew.

As it turned out the CBT was going to be 45 hours with 38 hours of speech content. Over an 18 month period that one job earned me around $25,000.

Any specific questions about prospecting, feel free to ask. (ed: You can contact Philip here. Or me here.)

Want a demo evaluation? Pay Nancy Wolfson to give you one as it’ll be money well spent.

(Update: You’ll find Philip’s thoughts posted, along with some additional comments, on Vox Daily.)

Voice Over Experts is a series of podcasts from Voices.com that has lots of interesting ideas. Here’s one excellent example from Nancy Wolfson. It’s Podcast Episode 68: I Am Enough.

Jeffrey P. Fisher and Harlan Hogan have just issued an updated version of their classic book The Voice Actor’s Guide to Recording at Home and On the Road (Second Edition) providing a soup-to-nuts guide to creating an inexpensive but professional sounding recording studio in your home (or to take with you on the road).

My thanks to John Florian for the heads up about this new edition of this book. You can read more, including an exceprt from the book, at VoiceOverXtra.com.

I’ve quoted Bob Fraser here quite a number of times, mainly because he has a lot of intensely valuable insights that he’s willing to share freely based on his multiple decades wearing just about every hat there in the acting business. While his weekend workshops called An Actor Works are targeted at on camera and stage actors, I’m confident there will be a ton of valuable information for anyone in the voice acting field as well. Full details are available at the An Actor Works web site.

If you’re not sure whether this is for you or not, here is a long quote from an email Bob sent a couple of days ago. It gives you just a flavor of what he’s all about …

Today I want to deliver some good news. This is especially important in the face of the weeks worth of ‘worry and concern’ being delivered to us by the media lately.

Here’s the reality for those of us who depend on show business for our living: The entertainment industry has always thrived in economic tough times.

The crash of 1897 ushered in the golden age of theatre and vaudeville. The crash of 1929 was the beginning of Hollywood’s most prolific years. The ‘downturn’ of 1987 resulted in several years of increased production and the explosion of big-budget projects.

In other words, history is on our side.

Which brings me to this: If you’re ready to really start taking steps toward improving your acting career results – now is an especially good time to invest in your business.

Many actors have asked when I was going to teach a class or have a workshop – and the answer is … ‘NOW.’

On November 8th and 9th – and December 6th and 7th, I’ll be holding a weekend intensive ‘acting career lab’ called An Actor Works. It’s going to be an exciting and life-changing program, and I hope that you can grab one of the 24 seats available at each weekend event.

In order to learn more, I urge you to get over to the site and see what is going to be included in this ‘weekend of change.’

And please, for goodness sake, don’t procrastinate regarding this decision to invest in your business – this email is going out to more than 7000 actors and there ARE only 24 seats available at each event.

Again the site is An Actor Works.