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People

RIP Paul Harvey

General, People

One of the legendary voices of our age has been silenced. Bob Greene offers a moving tribute that is well worth a few minutes of your time. If you listened to Paul Harvey, Bob’s comments will make you nod in recognition, several times I imagine. If you don’t know who Paul Harvey was, you’ll get to know him in Bob’s story. Either way, I hope you’ll read the whole thing.

Good day, Mr. Harvey. May you read in peace, once again in the company of your beloved Angel.

(My thanks to my friend Charlie Glaize for sending me the link to this story this morning.)

I offer my thanks to my friend and mentor Roy H. Williams for the link to this video at the end of his Rabbit Hole this week. Roy also linked to this wonderful news story about Paul Harvey.

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Teleseminar coming up with Nancy Wolfson

Career Advice, General, Getting started in Voiceover, People

With recent discussions of downturn and a flurry of fear in the swirl these days, it is all too easy to feel helpless.
When that feeling pounces, I have 3 points of advice:
BE GRATEFUL, TAKE RESPONSIBILITY, GET PRODUCTIVELY PROACTIVE 

• Be grateful this business has changed to allow those with top skills the power to access to national and international job opportunities without having to move to the pricey major markets. Honor your foresight – you have chosen to pursue a career that is moving forward with technology, not being replaced by it.

• Take responsibility: Whenever I got in scuffles with friends as a kid, and I’d whine, “Yeah, well SHE started it!” my mom would yell back, “I don’t care who started it, YOU FINISH IT.” Maybe you got yourself in over your head with a house you couldn’t afford, maybe, like me, you are horrible at playing the stock market, or maybe unfortunate things have befallen you or your family that were beyond your control.  Now is the time to BAIL OUT YOURSELF.  It’s hard to strategize a life plan in the midst of demanding tasks that need to be done for someone ELSE’S company.  Now might be the first quiet moment you’ve had in years to be thankful for the lack of distraction so you can focus on creating a new map for a new career and invest in developing a BETTER YOU.

• ARE YOU PROCRASTINATING OR ADDING VALUE?
Have you written your “25 Things” on Facebook but not a list of 25 Tangible Goals To Achieve by June 1?
Have you been Friend Requesting other VO talents but not UPDATING YOUR SKILLS?
With all the talk of failed financial investments, I’ve never before seen such an abundance of wasted time.
Time is the most precious and irreplaceable thing we have, and wasting it is worse than wasting money.
And investing smartly in your time can yield amazing financial returns.

This teleseminar on February 25, 2009 aims to help you do just that.

Join Nancy Wolfson and Anna Vocino on February 25th 9pm Eastern/6pm Pacific for Acting for Advertising Part 8. 

This is not a sequel.  Each of these Teleseminars reveals a chapter from Nancy’s core curriculum, useful Q and A from your peers, plus more marketing and business tips that you can put to use immediately.

Each moment offers unique “behind the velvet rope of the agency/casting scene” advice not available anywhere else.

60 minute lecture, 15 min QandA…so bring your questions and notebooks!

Just $39 gets you on the call. Go to www.breakintovoiceover.com to sign up.

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A free teleseminar on recording voiceovers at home or on the road

Career Advice, General, Getting started in Voiceover, People

Dan O’Day is going to do a free teleseminar with Harlan Hogan and Jeffrey Fisher to answer your questions about how you can setup for and record voiceovers at home or while you’re traveling. The web page with the form to ask your question and sign-up for the free teleseminar is here.

By the way, if you’re wondering why you would want to ask Harlan or Jeffrey these questions, it’s because of this excellent book that they’ve written together.

So, put your question in the form, sign up to attend. It should be an excellent (and free!) resource that will be well worth your time.

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You do back-up, right?

General, People, Tools

Kara Edwards’ recent blog post prompts me to ask this question because sooner or later something is going to happen that means, if we don’t, we’ll wish we did have a back-up of something. (How’s that for a vague and unfocused sentence?)

For example, my son Eric’s laptop crashed a few weeks ago. Thankfully, nothing of consequence was on the hard drive that died. And replacing the drive, re-installing the operating system, the applications and so forth hasn’t been too hard; but it serves as a reminder that backing-up isn’t just a good idea … it’s a requirement.

Kara mentions that she’s using external hard drives for back-up. That’s a good idea. I go a couple of steps farther. I have an external drive for the initial round of back-ups. I then back-up to optical media (data DVDs) and I have another RAID drive attached to my network at home that holds back-ups of all critical files as well.

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A story for Valentine’s Day

General, People

My friend LindZ Reiss is a talented voiceover artist in the New York market. She’s done a wonderful reading of Two Lips by Amber Vilate for the YA Literature Review site.

(UPDATE: After Valentine’s Day,

      use this link for a direct download
of the MP3 file.)

 

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Travels and Nice People

General, People

It it always a delight to get to meet nice people in the various places that I travel. In the last few weeks I’ve had 3 such encounters and tonight I’m finally getting around to posting about them.

First, I had the pleasure of seeing my good friend Willie Edwards again and of meeting Ed Gambill for the first time when the 3 of us shared a luncheon of genuine Lexington County Barbeque. Willie had been singing the praises of his adopted home’s culinary delights ever since I first met him and I have to say he was absolutely right. It is nothing short of fantastic.

When we paused for a photo at the end of our meal, the “chef” was nice enough to join us.

Willie Edwards,

From the left, Willie Edwards, “chef Pig”, Ed Gambill and me after enjoying our Lexington County Barbecue lunch.

Then, a couple of days ago, while I’ve been in Nashville, TN I got a chance to hang out for a wonderful evening of food and conversation about all kinds of subjects, some of them even having to do with voiceover work, with the terrifically talented Stu Gray.

Bob Souer and Stu Gray enjoy dinner together in Nashville

Our waiter, Tom, was kind enough to take our photo with both my camera and Stu’s. You can see Stu’s photo and read his thoughts about our time together in the post he’s written on his blog. (Stu, that glow you saw in the East this evening? That was me blushing about all the nice things you had to say.)

And then less than 12 hours later I had a truly wonderful 5 hours of visiting with my long time friend Brian Mason while he did his Sunday morning Christian music show on Mix 92.9 in Nashville.

Brian Mason and Bob Souer in the Mix 92.9 studios in Nashville

Brian Mason and me in, what else, a radio studio after his show on Sunday morning.

Every one of these individuals fits in the category of nice. I so enjoy getting to spend time with my friends, old and new, when I have to travel.

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