Featured Narration

Obstacles that Can Get in the Way of Following Your Dreams

Following your dreams takes a lot of faith and courage. But it also requires persistence – the ability to keep on keeping on regardless of the obstacles that may crop up. And there can be many. While you may think obstacles only come from outside forces, the opposite is also true. In fact, the greatest obstacles tend to be those we create for ourselves.

Be sure to also check out part one of this two part series on Following Your Dreams.

Self-Doubt

Even the most successful and seemingly confident people have experienced self-doubt at some time in their lives. It’s a perfectly normal human trait. Those who have followed their dreams to success are the ones who have overcome it. Overcoming self-doubt involves nipping it in the bud. Realize when it’s plaguing you and then make a conscious effort to change your mindset.

Tips to help you conquer self-doubt include:

Surrounding yourself with positive, successful people
Paying attention to the positive feedback you get, not negative comments
Not worrying what other people think. Base your decisions on what you think is right, not what you think other people think is right.
Not comparing yourself to others. You don’t do yourself any favors by gauging your success as it compares to the success of others.
Set a series of smaller goals, in addition to your big goal, so you’re consistently achieving a series of wins.

Frustration, Giving Up Too Early

No one said following your dream would be easy, or that attaining it would be instantaneous. It can take incredibly hard, incredibly tenacious work to make it happen. You have to be in it for the long haul, no matter what. If you give up too early or too easily, it’s not going to happen.

When Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz was trying to raise money from investors to make his coffee shop dreams come true, he hit a major brick wall… More than 200 of them, in fact. He spoke to 242 potential investors during the year he was trying to raise money – and 217 of them said no.

Colonial Sanders is another great example of persistence. He was 65 years old when the restaurant he owned failed and he went to plan B. His plan was to share his special chicken recipe with restaurants for free, in exchange for the restaurants giving him a percentage of the chicken sale profits. He got 1,009 rejections before someone agreed to his plan.

Those are two great examples to keep in mind when you feel frustrated and feel like giving up. Remember their stories, along with the old sales adage that says you’re going to get 20 “No’s” before you get a “Yes.”

Not Pushing Hard Enough

Not only are rejections par for the course, but they can also be an indication that you’re on the right track. If you go out of your way to only get a yes and avoid a no, you’re probably not pushing hard enough, according to author Andrea Waltz. She says this type of behavior “leads to a mediocre life where you’re always in your comfort zone.”

The success of your dreams is not where you are in your comfort zone, but above it. You have to grow and meet it if you want it. A few ways to push harder include:

Imagining yourself getting to your next level. Focus on what that next level is, and what you need to do get there.
Taking on a little bit more than you think you can. Challenge yourself to bigger and better things all the time.
Looking at how other people got where you want to be.
Remaining inspired and motivated. This can come from inspirational quotes, videos, images, meditations and support from someone on your side.

World Events, Such as COVID-19

Once you get past all the self-made barriers stopping you from following your dreams, you may still face forces beyond your control. What’s going on with the coronavirus is a prime example of this. With so many businesses operating on limited hours or, in some cases, not at all, you may think this is the worst time to follow your dreams.

That’s not necessarily true. You can still do the legwork for following your dreams. Perhaps you can enroll in classes or training you were too busy to tackle, or catch up on your industry reading or networking. You can also look for opportunities within the situation, rather than excuses for letting it slow you down.

Look for a need, and then offer to fill it. In my voice over business, for instance, I’ve made sure clients know I’m available for new messaging, commercial spots, retail in-store announces, IVR system recordings and more providing updated information or changing schedules due to COVID-19.

One final tip is to stay positive and optimistic. This is another mindset you can learn to cultivate with repeated efforts over time. As Sam Altman says in his “How to Be Successful” post: “I have never met a very successful pessimistic person.” So don’t let outside circumstances – or your own thinking – take you down and out. Keep moving forward, heading onward and upward instead.

Be sure to also check out part one of this two part series on Following Your Dreams.

To Follow Your Dreams (or Not) – Confessions of a Working Voice Over Actor

The very phrase “follow your dreams” can fill us with bliss. For a working voice over actor, it’s something society, pop culture and Disney movies reinforce at every turn. While following your dreams may sound like the only course of action you would want to consider taking, is it really the best road to success in our competitive and ever-changing world?

Maybe it is. Maybe it’s not. But you’ll never know until you try it, right? On the other hand, it could entail a big risk without a guarantee of reward. The risk may feel just too great, especially considering the uncertainties we’re now experiencing.

Some may feel the decision boils down to only two options. So what to do?

Pursue the “dream job” that you think will be fulfilling and rewarding on all levels?
Pursue a solid way to make a living that may not be very fulfilling emotionally but will meet your needs financially?

Flipping a coin may not be the best way to decide. I’d like to instead share my thoughts on some of the pros and cons of each scenario, along with my own experience landing on a solution that was fulfilling, rewarding and financially profitable.

Let’s look at the pros and cons first.

The Pros of Following Your Dreams

Since most of us dream big (because we’ve been taught to do that), following our dreams can be a huge risk – but it can also come with huge rewards. It can make us feel excited, alive and fueled with passion. We may expect the work we’ll be doing in our dream job will feel more like joy-filled play than actual work. Enjoying what you do and making money at it – what could be more amazing than that?

Another huge benefit of following our dreams is to live without regrets. Research says 98% of the population dies without fulfilling their dreams, which is a scary thought. Following our dreams ensures we at least gave them a try and won’t have to live with the remorseful thoughts of what could have been.

The Cons of Following Your Dreams

While we won’t have those regrets if we choose to follow our dreams, we may not have an easy road ahead of us, either. Our culture glorifies certain professions as “dream jobs” – such as actors (and yes, even voice talents), athletes, rock stars and celebrity personalities.

We imagine living a life full of fame and glamour, working every day on projects that feel exciting and artistically fulfilling. We likewise envision feeling constantly validated by doting fans, or even just by our own satisfaction that we are truly “living the dream.”

But the harsh truth is that this level of success is reserved for a small percentage of professionals in each field. In the most-pursued dream careers (especially in the arts), only a handful makes it to a level where they can earn enough money to make a living. And only a few from that group ascend to the level of success that fits the profile of what everyone is chasing. The vast majority often find themselves in a perpetual struggle to make ends meet.

We may not make enough to fulfill our financial needs, or we may find that the dream job is a lot more work than we anticipated.

Being a voice talent, for instance, may seem like a glamorous job. Parts of it are. But other parts behind the scenes require extremely hard work and don’t feel very glamorous at all. Voice training, honing your acting skills, learning the mechanics of editing and other software, constantly auditioning for the next job, becoming a great marketer, adapting to the ever-changing market, and the day-to-day operations of running your own business are just a few of those parts.

Cons May be Ongoing

Then there’s the constant rejection. Even as someone who has been a working VO professional for the past 25 years, I am rejected daily, usually multiple times per day. I lose far, far more jobs than I win.

Sometimes a voice talent will snag one of those jobs that is truly fulfilling and provides the sort of validation and fulfillment to inspire them to keep marching on. But most of the time you’re on your own. Being a working artist requires an incredibly thick skin, and unfortunately many find that their dreams are too fragile to persist in the face of the rejection and daily grind that is required.

Yes, work can feel like play at times – but other times it’s undoubtedly work. A dream job is still a job, and sometimes fueling such passions is incredibly exhausting and consuming. This particularly holds true on those days when you feel, despite all of your hard work and joy for the craft, you’re just not getting anywhere.

Once you’ve invested all you have into pursuing your dreams, you may end up disappointed. Reaching that part of the journey can feel both depressing and liberating. Depressing because the dream did not unfold as you envisioned. Liberating because you know you gave it your best shot and you can now move forward in a different direction that may bring more rewards.

How to Balance the Two Options to Create a Third

The cons of pursing your dreams may appear to outweigh the pros by a ton. Yet nothing can outweigh the passion in your heart for doing something you truly love. I faced this same dilemma years ago when I began my own career. What I wanted involved a tough road ahead, yet it was something I absolutely knew I had to try.

I made it work by finding a happy medium. This involved:

Having a more general dream job goal
Keeping realistic expectations
Being flexible
Never giving up

General Goal, Realistic Expectations

As a young college graduate, my dream was to be a working actor. I didn’t set out to be a star or to win an Academy Award or even be on Broadway. I just wanted to make my living as an actor.

Fast forward 30 years later and I have been able to achieve my goal in a way that I did not know was possible when I set out on my journey. Having a more general dream job goal actually worked to my advantage. I was able to adapt and evolve over the years all while staying true to my dream.

Flexibility

On the road to becoming a working actor, I was open to working at other jobs until I was able to get a foothold in the business. Perhaps pursuing your dream job as a side gig while working a full-time day job can give you a good taste of what’s possible and what “living the dream” would look like – warts and all.

If you’re a performer, maybe gigging in a local coffeehouse or performing in community theatre is enough to give you what you want. Such a setup could feed that creative desire inside of you while also ensuring you are financially stable enough to pay the rent and put food on the table. With something else to support you, the rejections will not seem as emotionally and financially crushing.

Never Giving Up

Keeping my eye on the prize was another great motivator – and it still is. For me, the rewards consistently exceed the rejections, the risks and the ongoing hard work required to maintain a career as a working actor.

If your heart is truly set on a path you want to take, there are ways you can weave your dream into your life to make it a possibility. Set a general goal with realistic expectations, be flexible enough to adapt your plan as needed, and keep your eye on the prize.

Also keep your eyes open for opportunities. So much of the dream job appears to boil down to luck: being at the right place at the right time, knowing the right person, stumbling into just the right circumstances. With a little luck, a lot of hard work and ongoing perseverance, you never know what might happen.

Please also check out the part two of this series on Following Your Dreams.

How Our Voice Over Business is Taking a Positive Approach to COVID-19

Today we are talking about COVID-19, voice over and how your business can deal with the current uncertainty in the world. With all the craziness going on due to the coronavirus, it may be easy to fall into the trap of negative thinking, even for those who usually dwell in a fairly resilient mind set. Our lives are shifting every day and there’s plenty of uncertainty right now. Our hearts go out to all those on the front lines; the doctors, nurses, healthcare workers, first responders, police and fire personnel, bus drivers, truckers, janitors, post office staff, fast food workers, grocery clerks and more who are taking care of those most ill and providing some normalcy for the rest of us by keeping essential services up and running. You are all heros.

We realize that everyone has a different story and situation, so if you are struggling with the current circumstance in ways that we aren’t addressing here, we send our prayers and wishes for the highest and best outcome for all. Faith is a fantastic tool.

With so much uncertainty and fear pervading our world today, my family and I have decided to do what we can to take a positive approach to COVID-19 by consciously focusing on the things for which we are grateful and the help we can provide. We are truly blessed with good health and prosperity, even in challenging times, and have found opportunities to try some new things that may lead to even better situations after we get past this crisis. Here are a few examples.

Home and Family

Our health and safety comes first, as does yours. If you and your family are healthy and safe, you have the top item on the list covered. Having a roof over your head is another positive, as is the ability to take the recommended precautions and remain home as much as possible. We are blessed that our business was already set up to do this, so that is an unexpected bonus.

Since moving from Southern California to Michigan back in 2004, we have enjoyed the opportunities that go along with having a fairly large home in the Midwest. That’s part of the trade from moving from metropolis to Midwest…there’s more social distancing, naturally. We have plenty of living space for practical comfort in home and work life, (since home also includes the family business), and that extra space makes it easy to stay stocked up and prepared for a long quarantine. It also provides enough room to give every family member plenty of personal space – a great blessing when things get a bit stressful. Since we were already home-schooling our youngest (who is now fifteen years old), we didn’t even have to deal with the transition of no public schools in session. So, for our family, this was a pretty seamless transition.

I’m sure for other families and businesses there are different sets of challenges, and everyone has to start from a point where they are, and move forward. My wish is that using a spirit of gratefulness for the things you can be thankful for, will lead in a positive direction, for more good to flow.

The Business End of Things

Working remotely may be a big change for some, but it’s been a part of our routine for the last twenty-five years. So, we’ve been able to take this adjustment in stride and continue working without a hitch. Speaking as someone who is accustomed to working from home, I would encourage anyone new to the concept to focus on the positive aspects (of which there are many). Think of the commuting time you’re saving, lower fuel costs and reduced carbon footprint, home-cooked lunches and the ability to work in your slippers. Of course, there’s also the additional time you get to spend with your family. We’ve been enjoying the extra time we’re getting to spend with our daughter, now home from college for several more weeks due to the closure. That is an added bonus for us, though not what she had hoped for.

Being a business owner comes with a lot of risk, but because of that, in our current situation, we fortunately don’t have to worry about the possibility of being laid off or downsized. Even though some activity may be slowing, many of our clients still have voice-over needs and we’re continuing to provide the high-quality services that we always have. Much of our business is in the telephony and narration genres, so even if there is some slowdown in retail advertising for awhile, there are still plenty of projects in the works. We are thankful for our loyal and long-term clients who continue to send business our way.

I’m assuring my clients, it’s basically business as usual in my home studio, which is equipped with everything I need to do my job. We also have ISDN/Source Connect/phone patch capability, which makes it easy to connect for live, remote session work with clients anywhere in the world. Most of the live TV world is now using the technology we’ve been accustomed to for years.

New Opportunities – Coronavirus, COVID-19 and Voice Over

In addition to the usual types of projects that come in, we’re also seeing opportunities to help businesses and organizations deal with COVID-19. A couple recent examples include:

Company Phone messages regarding COVID-19, which are urgently needed by many businesses and organizations
Revised messaging about changing schedules, for hotels, showrooms and other large venues
Advertising messages and PSAs including the “we’re all in this together” common assurance to customers
Science and Medical VO regarding PPE and Clinical Trial work

Our daughter (and teen VO talent), Natalie, is now home from college for the rest of the semester. That makes her more available than she was when living on campus. This has actually simplified our work flow quite a bit, so it’s a welcome change.

Make This a Positive Change

Even if your own work has taken a downturn, you may find new opportunities to customize your services, products or offerings to help fill a need that didn’t exist before. Creative thinking can go a long way toward finding solutions, new streams of income and innovative ideas that otherwise may have never been born.

Many great discoveries and innovations happened by accident or when someone “took a detour” or “got off the beaten path.” That is exactly where we find ourselves right now. Outside of our comfort zone, outside the box and off of our usual path. Take time to look around and notice what you may never have noticed if this situation hadn’t happened. You may find something that is life-changing or transforms your business.

Once you get into the groove of thinking positive and counting your blessings, the days are suddenly lighter and brighter than they were before. We can and will get through these trying times, and a positive attitude will make it that much easier. Here’s hoping you get into that positive mindset – and that you and your family stay safe. Let’s all get to the other side of this thing as soon as possible so life can begin to get back to normal, even if it is a new normal.

Please also check out my followup post to this one, “How to Feel Good and Stay Positive in a Negatively Focused World.”

Contact me if you need any messaging or other voice-over work related to COVID-19 or any other projects you have brewing. I’m open to meeting tight deadlines and always happy to help.

Set the Video Foundation

The first step in any effective e-learning video is to set the foundation. That means writing a script and creating a storyboard. Storyboards let you map out each scene’s audio and video to ensure they work together as a whole. Having the entire video outlined on a storyboard saves you tons of time and makes production much easier.

Tell a Story

People love stories. They’re intriguing and memorable, which makes them ideal format for learning. Telling a story with an e-learning video can involve creating different characters to carry out the action, but it doesn’t have to. The main goal is to use the traditional story arc formula to attain and then retain the viewers’ attention. The formula can be condensed into three parts:

Exposition, or story beginning
Conflict, or climax
Conflict resolution

In an e-learning video that explains a product, for example, the story could break down into something like:

Introducing the product
Introducing a common problem that nothing seems to resolve
Resolving that problem by using the product

Choose the Optimum Video Length

While 60 to 90-second videos may work for quick explainer videos, the optimum video length for more extended e-learning content is seven minutes. A University of Rochester study provides strong evidence for this as well. The study looked at the average time students spent viewing video for their online courses. It found students watched the greatest amount of video content when the video length was nine minutes or less.

Students watched less of the video content when videos were more than 11 minutes long. Once videos hit an even longer length of 15 to 40 minutes, students ended up watching no more than three minutes of the video.

Make the Most of the Visuals

E-learning videos tend to most effective when they showcase what’s being explained. Static images can be a waste of valuable video space that could instead be used to demonstrate how to use or do something. This could be how to use a product or service, how to treat customers in difficult situations, or how to successfully complete a project or a task that’s part of the e-learning curriculum.

Use Videos Strategically

You can certainly use a longer video to cover an entire lesson on a specific topic. But you can also use videos in a variety of other ways throughout the e-learning experience. You can use shorter videos to break up text documents and emphasize a point. Or use a short video at the beginning of a lesson to grab attention, another in the middle to demonstrate a specific task, and a third at the end to sum up the points made throughout the lesson.

Videos likewise work well when paired with hands-on training exercises. Your video could be explaining a task while your viewers are actually attempting the same task in real life.

Invest in Quality Audio

Quality audio refers to several things. One is the actual quality of the recording, which needs to be crisp, clear and free of background noise. It also involves the voice over artist you hire to narrate the e-learning video. Because e-learning requires careful listening, you want a voice that is likable, pleasant and trustworthy.

Steer clear of voices with too much breathiness or other distracting qualities that could possibly detract from the learning process. You can find additional qualities to look for in e-learning voice over narration in a past blog post.

Keep these video tips in mind, and you’ll be well on your way to creating an e-learning video that’s engaging, intriguing and highly effective at meeting your goal. Check out samples of my e-learning, instructional and tutorial videos for a look at effective videos in action. Also feel free to reach out for a custom quote or audition if you need narration for your next e-learning project.

Why Voice Over Actors Don’t Need to Lose Sleep over TTS

Technology is moving so fast it can make our heads spin, especially in the world of text to speech (TTS). As voice over actors, we’re certainly aware of TTS – and some of us may even fear the technology is advancing us right out of our careers. But it’s really not. Despite the rapid advances in the field, TTS remains unable to replace the real deal. Keep reading to find out why.

How TTS Has Advanced

Text to speech (TTS) is a system that converts the written word into the spoken word. Simple enough, right? But it gets more complex from there. TTS systems store speech units that can include phones, diphones, words and entire sentences. It then puts those speech units together in specific combinations to create synthetic speech that says anything – all using the voice that initially recorded those speech units.

While the first talking machine was initially introduced back in 1939, advances in the world of TTS over the past several years have been more rapid and dramatic than over the past 75. Some of these advances include the ability to:

Incorporate a model of the vocal tract and other human voice characteristics to sound more human.
Correct synthetic speech mispronunciations, adjust regional pronunciations, add emphasis, and other tricks through Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML).
Produce robo calls that stop and ask “Can you hear me?” or wait for a reply, like a human would, before continuing their spiel.
Copy lip-movements for dubbing.
Fix small errors in voice over recordings with synthetic edits.
Create a model, or “voice bank,” of a real person’s voice for later use as synthetic speech

Once TTS began to converge with machine learning, big data and artificial intelligence (AI), it became smarter, more realistic and, as mentioned earlier, a perceived threat to some in the voice over industry.

Potential TTS Threats to the VO Industry

There is no doubt the advances of TTS have aroused a number of concerns across the voice over industry, with some of the most common outlined below.

Losing Ongoing Royalties

The royalty structure keeps giving us a steady flow of money each time our voice is used, regularly paying us even though we’ve already done the work. If we are recording into a voice bank, are we going to get royalties every time our voice is used to create synthetic speech? Probably not. While we can likely expect to be paid a large amount for the initial recording session, we may lose out on royalties each time our voice is used down the line. After all, how can we be paid royalties for a future recording that uses our voice but we didn’t technically record?

No Control Where Your Voice is Used

Since technology allows for a pre-recorded voice to be used to create any type of message or project down the line, voice over artists may fear they won’t have a say in the type of work that will be attached to their voice. Some work may be unacceptable, but we may have no control or say over the matter.

Being Prohibited from Future Spots

If we offer buyouts on our voice banks, we could be limiting our careers without realizing it. For instance, let’s say our voice is used for a car company. We would then potentially be prohibited from doing all spots for all other companies in the future – even though we didn’t know we’d be associated with a car company at the time of the buyout.

Continuously Declining TTS Rates

Recording sessions for TTS are no longer in the $50K range. As the technology advances, the rates continue to decrease. Methods of capturing and synthesizing voice take far less recording time, which means far less pay for the voice over talent.

Why Voice Over Actors Don’t Need to Fret

While TTS concerns may feel valid for us voice over artists, we don’t have to lose sleep over them for several reasons. For starters, TTS still harbors many limitations – like the inability to spontaneously generate the infinite human range of emotions and vocal techniques.

Being able to create synthetic speech by simply typing in the words you want it to say is also not something that can yet be done. And synthetic speech, no matter how advanced or finely tuned, has still not shown it can match the multiple nuances and components associated with a real human voice.

Ongoing payments may still even exist. In addition to a recording fee, we could arrange licensing agreements that outline when and where our voices can be used down the line. Turning our TTS fears into the framework for a clear-cut contract can help ensure we have all bases covered – and continue to thrive in our profession.

Communication is Key for Voice Over Success

While all businesses rely heavily on communication for success, it’s even more important in the world of voice over. That’s because communication is at the heart of all we do. The main goal of our profession is to effectively communicate a message to the audience, and that can only be achieved if we are effectively communicating with our clients. Understanding this component of your voice over business is key to long-term success.

Good communication brings clarity to every situation, imparts professionalism and builds long-lasting relationships. Here’s how.

Communication for Clarity

All voice over jobs start with a rundown on what the client wants, and the only way you’re sure to deliver is to ask the right questions. You need to ask relevant questions that give you the information you need to fully understand exactly what they’re going for. Questions here include things like vocal tone, file type, delivery method and all other details associated with a particular project.

It’s then imperative to carefully listen to what they say so you can deliver what they asked for. If things are unclear, clear them up before you begin. You’ll save a lot of time that you’d otherwise have to spend correcting something that was vague or misunderstood.

Communication for Professionalism

How you communicate with clients says a lot about your competence level, whether it’s through a quick phone call or a detailed email. You always want to be respectful and professional, ensuring you use appropriate guidelines for business correspondence. Sending a professional email is not like texting a quick message to your pal in all lower-case letters with two-letter abbreviations.

You want to use proper grammar and salutations, spell check before you send, and include your logo, branding, a professional email address and good tagline. Part of your online communication also includes your website and social media accounts. Every email you send, post you create and image you choose reflects directly on you as a professional.

Impeccable emails and a polished online presence indicate you’re someone who knows what they’re doing. They paint you as someone who is experienced and can be trusted to complete the project to the specs required.

Communication for Building Relationships

While communication with a new or prospective client is best kept rather formal, you can relax the formalities a bit when you work with repeat clients over an extended period. I find ways to personalize communication, to make it feel more like a friendship when appropriate.

I have many clients with whom I’ve worked for years, so in some instances I know details about their families, their work transitions and their overall lives. When it’s appropriate, I enjoy being chatty and casual. I like to deepen the bond with them, so they see me as not just a voice talent, but a trusted friend and a fellow human being.

I also never under estimate the importance of a thank you. This could be for a referral, a recent job, or just for being a loyal client. I’ve tried many different approaches to this over the years, including sending postcards, personalized notes, birthday cards, gifts, or just reaching out through email or social media.

Posting a review for a client on their LinkedIn page or other platform shows your thoughtfulness and may help them with their marketing. Letting clients know how much they’re appreciated and valued can go a long way, especially when you do it in a way that gives them an extra boost to their own business.

Two More Tidbits on Communication

In a previous blog I wrote about The Biggest Voice Over Customer Service Mistakes, and it’s no surprise that poor communication made the list in two instances. They bear repeating. One was delay in communication, which can give off the vibe that you don’t really care. The other was not really listening or understanding what the client wants, which we also touched on above.

Responding to audition requests or messages to clients as quickly as possible shows you’re a pro who is ready to deliver what’s required. In the case of new clients, being the first to respond is often the move that gets you the job.

Truly listening and understanding what a client wants is another big deal. It’s better to ask tons of questions than make tons of mistakes. Good communication involves good listening skills and really paying attention to what the client is saying.

Keep these communication tips in mind as you move forward in your voice over career, and you may be happy to find your career moves forward with success. You’re apt to be seen as a true professional who can deliver exactly what the client wants while building beneficial relationships that can endure for years.

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