Having a Schedule Matters
As full time, professional voice actors, it can often seem like there is not enough time in the day. I can’t tell you how often my to do list carries over from one day to the next, with priority given to booked work, live sessions, and coaching students. There is always a difference between what has to be done and what can wait, and essential items like booked work typically can never wait. Some might say to higher a VA, but as someone who has never had great luck with a VA, I am always striving to improve my time management skills. Over the years the have improved. My children have also gotten older. The combination has enabled me to improve my scheduling so that I can book more work. Here are some scheduling tips to help you book more work:
Google Calendar
I switched to google calendar a few years back and this was life changing. This enabled my calendar to sink on all my devices all the time, everyone. It has several features that I love:
- I love that I can block out chunks of time in different color
- I love that when I am going somewhere (like a VO conference) I can add locations and ticket attachments as a PDF. For those of us juggling way to many balls this is amazing
- I love that I can send calendar invites to guests also sharing an event.
- I love that it integrates seamlessly with other apps like Apollo, Evernote, and Calendly!
- I love that if an event or task changes it is easy to edit.
Calendly
Years ago I decided I needed to make my scheduling life easier, and Calendly was the answer to all of my prayers. Are you ever tired of the constant back and forth about when to schedule a zoom and how to accommodate your clients or industry friends? I sure was? Calendly put an instant end to all of that. Different types of calls and zooms are available. I have it as a drop down tab on my website. If someone needs to change a time, no problem, they go back in and reschedule. The best part of all is that this syncs seamlessly with Google Calendar which of course syncs with all my various devices.
Without Calendly, I would almost certainly need a VA to schedule my appointments at this point in my career. I simply do not have time for the back and forth conversations and to coordinate between coaching students and voice over clients. Often peoples’ schedules change. I also do not have time to have repeated conversations about the same session. Calendly makes all of this seamless.
Let’s say you never want to work Thursday afternoons because you have a prior commitment. No problem, so set that up in your availability settings. Perhaps your accountability group meets every Wednesday night. That’s fine too, just block the time. Calendly let’s you make yourself available when you are and carve out the time when you are not and you no longer have to explain it!
Planoly
I confess I have a love/hate relationship with Planoly. Her my many years in business, sometimes I am super focussed on it, sometimes I can’t bear to use it, and I think it simply depends on how much I have to say, how much is happening in my personal life, and how much is happening in the studio. With that caveat aside, Planoly allows you to pre-plan and line up your social media posts on sites like Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and X. You can line them up a month (or more, I think) in advance and they will automatically post for you. You can even pre-plan stories, which I find to be mind-blowing.
There are several pros to this. Planoly allows you to sit down in one fell swoop and make sure, in just a few hours, that posts will happen and you will indeed have a social media presence. Whether you do it or a VA does it, it will get done and those posts will go up! You will have a chance to build great branded content and can cleverly weave themes throughout which is quite nice.
There are cons as well with Planoly. Let’s say there is a natural disaster or terrible, tragic event, whether it be in your personal life or on a national scale. But now, you have used Planoly, and regardless of what is going on in the world, you have a post going up at 3:10 PM on all fronts that is all glitter and hearts. This may not be idea. It may go with your brand but yikes, it may be all kinds of wrong. You need to make sure that wherever you are in the world you can stop or block such.a post in the event of an unforeseen emergency.
Paper Lists
Yes, I confess, I am still a woman of a certain age and even though I could do it all with Google tasks and phone apps, there is something about having a paper list and seeing it in front of me. I confess I use several different paper items because I love them so much. I use a paper weekly planner for on-going brain storming so my ideas don’t get lost, I use 3 x 5 cards because I love the size and feel, and I use paper “to do” lists because a girl who has a love of lists can never have too many lists. I’m not kidding, I actually love the paper products and I make no apologies for it.
Hiccups
Nothing is perfect. In VO, a lot of my work books very last minute. Many of my commercials which require Source Connect sessions come in same day and then require that something be moved. It just happens. The other problem is that I am, at the end of the day a human and a working mom and I mess up. Sometimes I schedule everything I’m doing on google for the 1st of the month and then nothing gets blocked an I am double booked. That really stinks. Try not to do that! It is apparently google’s default. I also apparently often put actual religious holidays on the wrong day. I am Jewish and observe a lot of holidays, especially in the fall. We actually go to synagogue, so I cannot take bookings those days, and this year I accidentally left the second day of Rosh Hashanah open. Oops! Basically, you can make mistakes with all of this and the only way to catch it is to inconvenience people and it is very, very annoying. Some people will be kind and others will make snide remarks.
Lessons
Over the years I have learned that trying things and learning from other industry friends is generally a help! Be adventurous, test things out, and see what works for you! You will have opinions and will like some things and really dislike other things, but you won’t know until you try.
As a full-time professional voiceover actor and coach, I think one of the reasons my career has continued to thrive and grow through the years is the consistency of my practice. When I work with my VO coaching students on techniques, whether the are voice over acting methods or the practical steps to running a day to day business, I pass on exactly what I practice in my own business. I encourage what I have found to work and hope to foster good habits in students. Conversely, I also share what has not worked in hope of sparing them what I already know not to be helpful. As solopreneurs, we wear so many hats and juggle so many balls. Setting ourselves up for success and holding ourselves accountable makes life much easier. So yes, this many years in, I practice what I preach as a coach and I do as I say in my lessons. Here awesome aspects I focus on regularly as both a professional talent and a coach:
Having a consistent daily routine and painting a schedule helps to ensure that important “to do” items don’t fall through the cracks. Whether starts with a warm-up, goes to booked work, then auditions, and cleverly weaving social media in, or whether certain days are time blocked for certain tasks, your routine is important. I tend to leave certain days for certain tasks. I also am passionate about healthy living and fitness, so I weave meal prep and pilates into my routine as well. My voice over career would not be where it is today of those items were not part of my schedule. When I work with coaching students, I try to be realistic with them about their schedule. Working moms with young kids have very different demands on them than empty nesters. Still, regardless of the phase of life, routine helps everyone stay on task.
Good microphones are powerful. Whether you are starting out with middle of the road mics like the Rode NT1 or the Cad Equitek E100S, or investing in a more expensive microphone right away like the Neumann TLM 103, these microphones are condenser mics and will pic up all the sound in a large radius around them. You need to learn proper technique to best enhance your sound. Also, technique varies by genre. The way I work with my mic for conversational commercial reads or intimate reads is different. When I do video games I move around a lot and often back away from the mic, especially when I am shouting and doing effects. These are all skills I was taught and worked hard to hone, I did not wake up one day and just know how to do it. It takes time. And you do not want to walk into a studio for a job or worse for a booking and not have the skills necessary to rock that session!
The other side of this is that you need to become a critical listener of your audio too! You need professional headphones, or cans as we call them, that do not have a filter in them. You can not really hear how you sound without them, and you can not really hear what clients will hear or be listening to without them, so this is essential to your training!
Interestingly, an early morning text from my nutritionist got me thinking about why positivity matters so much. At the end of her text, which happens to be the first text of my day, it said “No effort is too little in the big picture. It ALL adds up to progress. Keep your eyes on the goal and have a glorious day!” That is how my day started. Who wouldn’t feel great after such a message? And this got my wheels turning about the importance of what I put out to my own VO students. I am someone who has always responded well to positive reinforcement. More than that, I thrive on it. Feedback with a positive spin is something I can run with. Conversely, when I feel criticized or scrutinized I do not perform well. I have studied the psychology behind this in graduate school and in professional development workshops as a teacher, and I try to bring all this with me pedagogically when I coach. I do believe that for voice over students to get the most out of their experience they need positive reinforcement.
Before working in voice over, I actually taught middle and high school history at an all-girls school in New York City. For one of our teacher in service days, we had a neurologist come and talk to us about positive reinforcement. Did you know that there have been studies that prove that people respond better when their papers are marked with green pen than with a red pen? Further, students to respond better to encouragement to improve and build
I cherish building close relationships with people I work with. In the past few years, I have been come close with a “client” named Steve. First, I got to know Steve when he owned a production agency in Portland. Then, he opened a boutique talent agency. Over time, Steve became a close and cherished friend. When Steve opened his agency he actually decided to refer talents who needed coaching to me. Why? In addition to the curriculum I developed, he liked my positive way. Even recently, while in a period of transition onto a new path in life, Steve asked me if I would direct a session for a client because of my positive way. The point is that people need this kind of support and vibe, it makes it easier to work together. 
When I was in graduate school we also spent a lot of time learning about Howard Gardner and his theory of multiple intelligences, that different people learn and absorb material in different ways. I can tell you that as I get older I think the way that I myself learn has changed. But, the way that I relate to people and connect with people has only changed in degree and not manner. I would say that I am perhaps more sensitive now, than when I was young. I am a delicate soul, and especially something as personally as our art, well, we are all unique and while there are industry standards and benchmarks we need to meet, I would like, myself, to learn about it in a meaningful and engaging way that brings out my best, and is not belittling.
Learning to actually incorporate breathing was hard. Voice actors need to learn how to breath and when to breathe. But being told to breath from your diaphragm and then automatically doing it at all the right places in the script are two very different things. That’s why this week fellow voice over coach Diana Birdsall and I invited Michelle Blenker into our Clubhouse room “Ask the VO Coaches.”
We were eager to ask Michelle about vocal fatigue. Whether you are auditioning or doing booked work, often your voice feels tired as the day goes on. Our voice is a delicate instrument, Michelle explained. She said our entire being is used when we do voice over. We use our body but our vocal cords take the brunt of what we do so we need to use our whole body to support them. As we bring air into our larynx, we want the air to float through and we don’t want to push air in. She suggests that we reframe our thoughts about where our voice comes from and focus on the diaphragm.
In order to increase this amount, you need to learn how to stand. Then, you need to engage your ribs and fill them more deeply with air. Lastly, you need to control how quickly the air is exhaled. When you learn to use your resonators properly, which are found in your sinuses and more, many voice talents discover that their true voice is actually higher than they realized.
It seems like that raspy sound is still popular. Still, just because they ask for it, this does not mean you have to provide it if that is not your natural vocal tone. When we speak, our vocal cords vibrate and bump into each other to create sounds. When this happens, we can get nodules. Then, the vocal cords don’t open and close properly. To prevent rasp, there is an exercise you can do:
One of our attendees asked a question about promo reads. He said that when he tried to get deep resonance he loses his breath. Michelle confirmed that he stands and he said yes. She directed him to put one foot in front of the other. Then, he was told to tuck his bottom under to expand the back ribs. Michelle said that as he releases his breath he needs to control it and let it come through more slowly. She then told him to do the above exercise in the tucked stance, letting the air flow in and out like a balloon.
Like with other genres of voice over, actors have to make a choice. Directors give input and Randy works with that. Randy shared an anecdote about her late, great friend Chris Corley. Chris is well-known for being the voice of the MLB network, movie trailers, imaging, and more. Anyway, once auditioned. He was cast in this role. Once hired, they told him his read was not what they wanted. But, he was so committed and they loved that commitment to the read. The choices we make when we read and the characters we choose matter so much across genres.
