General

“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”
  — Dr. Seuss

I love narrating audiobooks for Oasis Publishing. They always feature such interesting writing. The lastest is called A Place at the Table, by Chris Seay.

From my friend and manager Stacey Stahl comes this fabulous quote:

Success often obstructs change. When we have nothing we’re willing to risk everything. When we have something we’re afraid to risk anything.  
— Simon Sinek

The very talented Lance Blair started a group at Vimeo.com for voiceover folk. If you’re interested in learning more, you’ll find all the straight scoop in this post, Vimeo Voice Over Group for Voice Over Artists, on his blog.

It you want to take your voiceover business to the next step, no matter when you are on your journey, you’re not going to get to that next step by staying locked in to your current patterns. Something has to change. Marice Tobias makes this point brilliantly in a post she wrote to wrap up last year and look ahead to this year, a post called Moving Forward.

So, now that you know you can’t just keep doing the same-old-thing, what are you going to do about it? If you’re a working voiceover pro, studying with Marice would be one excellent way to move forward. Attending Faffcon (if you can get in, it’s 93% sold out as I write this post) would be another. They’re not mutually exclusive. And there are loads of other things to do, too.

The point is, if you’re serious, you have to do something. But then, you all ready knew that didn’t you?

When it comes to marketing your voiceover business, when is it not enough and when is it too much? My friend J. S. Gilbert wrestles with that question on his blog in a post called How Much is Too Much? or Dear God, Please Make it Stop. It’s well worth a few minutes of your time as is most of what J. S. writes.

Faffcon has been a great experience all 3 of the previous times it’s been held. In Portland in September of 2010, Atlanta in February of 2011 and Harrisburg (the first Faffcon to sell out completely) in September of 2011. Faffcon4 will be in Ventura Beach, CA the 23rd through the 25th of March this year. There may still be a few spots left, but if not there will be a waiting list started and there were a few folks from that list who got to attend Faffcon 3 because a few people had to drop out for one reason or another.

I made up my mind about 10 minutes into the first Faffcon that I would do everything possible to attend every subsequent one. Yes, it’s that valuable. I hope to see you there.

My friend Anthony Mendez is the voice at the end of this delightful television commercial.

Mighty nice work, Anthony!

My friend Justin Barrett is featured as the voice of the narrator, Devil and Cupid in this charming little animation.

It seems that the fastest way to start a fight or even just a big discussion on a voiceover blog is to write something about a favorite microphone and why it’s the best of the best. Almost as fast is to write about preamps. But Dan Friedman focused his attention to the subject of room accoustics several weeks ago. I’m not sure how many fights or big discussions his post has started, but I do know that the best microphone and preamp in the world will sound like garbage in a room that’s not treated properly.

If you’d like to learn more on this important subject, dig through the archives of the blog written by the late Mike Sommer.

Back in 2005 when I started blogging about voiceover, there weren’t all that many other people blogging about the subject so I made a decision to try to link to every other voiceover blog I could find. Since that time I’ve almost never removed a blog from my blogroll (unless the link was completely dead); but starting this year I’m doing a bit of cleaning. If a voiceover blog hasn’t seen any activity in over a year I have removed you from my blogroll. I bear no ill will to anyone, but if you’re not actively blogging about voiceover, then I’m not going to keep you on my “voiceover blog” blogroll. The one exception to this policy is for those who are deceased, but with exceptional content. Those blog links will remain active as long as the sites remain active.

With my fond thanks to my friend DB Cooper for posting a link to a related article today on the VO-BB, I’ve just finished reading something quite fascinating at the Study Hacks blog that relates (at least in my mind it does) to the series I’ve been posting called Invite the Avalanche.

It’s important for you to understand that the “avalanche” metaphor isn’t perfect, because it evokes an image of being buried in voiceover work. While there’s a lot of truth to that metaphor, my hope is that each of us becomes buried in the kind of voiceover work we truly want to do. In other words, that we would be busy doing the work that we most enjoy doing, not just end up super busy doing stuff we don’t enjoy.

Obviously, real avalanches aren’t selective as they fall down the mountainside. The pick up everything in their path and fall where they fall. But, in our voiceover work, we can and do have preferences. Some folks really love commercials. Some really love doing affiliate promo work for local TV stations. Some are passionate about imaging for radio stations. Some love reading fiction titles as audiobooks. Some live and breathe telephony and IVR. Others of us enjoy several different genres.

As you learn to Invite the Avalanche in your own business, may you too find that you do more and more of the work you truly love.

While I’m at it since today is the first day of 2012, may you have a wonderfully Happy and Prosperous New Year!

It’s time to get back to this series of blog posts I’ve been writing based on a talk I’ve given at Faffcon called Invite the Avalanche. As I’ve previously mentioned, i didn’t invent this term. It came to me from Nancy Wolfson in a communication with Cris Dukehart.

Mentioning Nancy’s name is especially appropriate today, because I am a big believer in getting professional training to help you stay on track with the kind of continuous improvement I discussed in my last entry in this series a month ago. There are a few people with the ability to learn from each experience in a way that they can continue to grow more and more excellent in their work without professional coaching, but for all of us mere mortals, working with a coach is vital.

However, as important as working with a top notch voiceover coach like Nancy Wolfson or Marice Tobias is, there is a very real cost invoved. Great coaching isn’t cheap coaching. So, what do you do while you’re waiting to accumulate enough funds to make that move?

It doesn’t take a lot of money to start helping people. And if you build your voiceover business on the basis of finding people who need help, and then helping them, you’re going to lay the foundation for a great business.

Your voiceover business will grow. It’s won’t necessarily grow quickly, but it will grow. Keep in mind that avalanches don’t start quickly. Oh sure, there’s something that suddenly triggers them, but the accumulation of snow that rolls down the mountain in that avalanche is slow and gradual.

It took me 24 years of professional voiceover work before I reached 6 figures for the first time and 26 years before I was able to step away from having a day job. Nothing “overnight” about the way things have gone for me. Not at all.

But during all of those years, I keep working at my craft. I kept my focus on delivering what my clients needed, the first time and every time. I built relationships with people that have endured across many years. If you keep your focus on helping your clients accomplish their goals, you too will find your business growing over time.