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Mindfulness and Reaching Your VO Goals

April 26, 2024 by Laura Schreiber

Connection Between Mindfulness in all Goals

This month I decided to do a refresh with my amazing nutritionist team, Sugar Snap Shift. My cousin’s wedding is next week and frankly I was nervous about fitting into my dress! While their tips and tricks are under a tight NDA, I started to realize that in addition to feeling better and losing weight, I was actually getting done all of the items on my “To Do” list, something that I confess has not happened for a long time. What I started to realize is that mindfulness in one area, like health, seems to have a trickledown effect into all realms. I know seem to be able to focus much better on reaching my VoiceOver goals, feel like I am making progress, and feel re-invigorated. So let’s do a deep-dive and talk about mindfulness and VO goals!

Sorting Out Your Goals

There are some essential steps in reaching your goals:

Officially setting your goals or intentions matters. I do this multiple times a year and keep them visible in both my work spaces.
Be organized in your daily/weekly planning to make sure that you are meeting your goals.
- - Consider time blocking your schedule.
Set yourself up for success. Are you in an accountability group to remind yourself?
- - - - Do you celebrate and acknowledge meeting bench marks?
      - Do you have industry friends to help you sort out realistic goals?

Areas to Consider when Working on Voice Over Goals

As a full time, professional voice actor, one of the easiest tasks to push to the side is marketing and out reach. Recently, I have found that I am making an effort to get all of my marketing initiatives done! I have tried to be creative. I have teamed up with other voice actors to pursue new leads and I am trying to be creative in my approach, using branded content in a fun an engaging way. If you are excited and proud of your marketing, you are more likely to do it.

Be mindful of audition deadlines. You never want agents and producers to have to chase you down. If an audition is due at 10 AM on a Tuesday, and you could be great for the part, submit. Don’t miss out on a great opportunity because your timing is off! Make sure to continually submit high quality auditions on time.

Keep working on your craft. Voice over is an industry where trends change, especially in genres like commercial. The outside world very much influences what creative directors are looking for in our read. Make sure when updating your goals to continue to work on your craft through on-going coaching. Just like in other professions, on-going professional development is the norm in our industry if you want to continue to book.

Determination and focus come in waves, that’s normal. Being mindful is a skill that is honed with practice. We all have days when we are more motivated than others, but if you push yourself to stick to your routine, and make sure that you submit, market, and work on your craft, you will have more of those good days.

Feeling Good About Things

So I am on a journey to health and wellness with my nutritionists. I need their support because I can’t do it alone. Good recipes and good intentions are not sufficient for me, I have found that I need a paid team who has any back and helps me through each day. Even with this team, some days are harder than others. I have a life time of habits and patterns that I am trying to to turn around, and simply following them on social media is fun but is not enough to reach my goals.

When I work with the Sugar Snap team, I always start out by cleaning out my house of the junk. I get read of any chips or cookies or sweetened chocolate I might have around. I try to set myself up for success in every way possible. Somehow spending the money on my work with these gals gives me a greater sense of purpose.

Much of the same applies to voice over. How might you clean out “the junk” in your VO way? Might it be avoiding negativity or the ill-informed on social media? Why do we assume, in an industry filled with so many talented people, and now we have AI to contend with, that we can work through all of this alone? The simple answer is we cannot. In order to reach our VO goals we need: an accountability group, industry friends, great coaches, reliable engineers, supportive agents and rosters, and good habits. When all of that is in place AND we make an effort to follow through, only then are we lining ourselves up for success. In the final analysis, it is clear the mindfulness begets mindfulness, and mindfulness leads to finding your goals within reach!

It Only Takes One Hour To Be Entirely Re-Inspired

July 17, 2021 by Laura Schreiber

As A Working Mom Sometimes My Attentions are Divided

Often, I am mono-focused on my voice over business. As a full-time, professional talent, this laser focus is what has helped me to build my business and lay a strong foundation. I’ve missed lunches with friends and sat inside on weekends working while my family is outside enjoying a beautiful day together. I never feel like I am missing out because I have very specific goals and I am on a mission. Often having fun and reaching one’s goals are mutually exclusive. That brings me to my current conflict, I am a mom of twins, and my twins are rising seniors in high school. College visits are not only an essential part of the admissions process, but my twins have unique interests, so they are looking at entirely different schools. At the moment, all of my values as a parent and goals as a solopreneur are being put to the test: am I steady enough to juggle everything and be there for my kids while continuing to fuel my business? I have felt tremendous pressure, and been having a constant mental struggle, until our weekly Clubhouse today.

College Visits Taking Me Away From My Work Routine

First let me explain why the college visits are a challenge for me. It’s not that I am a helicopter parent and can’t let my kids go it alone. My husband is an attorney and runs his part of his practice. It is not easy for him to miss work either. If you have not dealt with college admissions recently, the kids now, in addition to grades and test scores, get something called a “demonstrated interest” score, so they basically have to visit schools they are applying to as part of this to show their interest to the admissions committee. As a voice talent, I have always marketed myself as having super fast turnarounds and being in the booth all the time. This week, and for a lot of this month, that is frankly not the case. My day to day routine of auditions, booked work, and marketing is different as we are doing these college visits. I am not good with change and this change in routine is freaking me out. While I am thankful to have this time with my twins, and while I am trying to enjoy seeing all of these amazing schools, I am stressed about this deviation from my routine. I worry that all that I have worked to build is being undermined. I have felt like this all summer.

Clutter Building Up

Collage of Laura Schreiber's studio, Michelle Blenker's, and Diana Bidsall's — Every week I look out at the pristine work spaces of Michelle Blenker (top left) and Diana Birdsall (bottom left) while I continue to struggle in mu cluttered zone outside my booth.

While we are traveling about, my house feels less tidy too. Like many, love HGTV. I have been noticing when I watch my beloved programs my own house is looking more and more cluttered. As my time is more divided than usual between work and the twins, my house is taking a back seat. It is terrible. I have also noticed when I zoom with my accountability partners, others seem to have their act more together. Whether they are other working moms or just busy voice actors and coaches, their desk does not look like it is under siege and looks like a space someone would actually enjoy working. So this week in addition to being stressed about my schedule, I was feeling rather down about my lack of organization as well.

The Hour That Changed Everything

On Thursday Diana Birdsall and I did the one hour Clubhouse with the creative genius Jonathan Tilley. Years ago, I think in 2015 or 2016 I took his fantastic marketing class for creatives called League of List Builders. This is an on-going course that you can still take! Since then, I have followed Jonathan and continued to learn from him regularly on social media. I went to school for Political Science and History, so there was a major gap in my marketing knowledge. I studied with Jonathan to fill said gap. Anyway, the Clubhouse is meant to help others in the community, but this one hour with Jonathan left me feeling so re-inspired. It reminded me of how far I’ve come and how much I have learned. It refocused my attention. I have built something amazing. It also made me feel filled with new goals that I am super excited to pursue. I guess our time with Jonathan was just what I needed to bring the joy back. I was left feeling like I have focus again and that if I just allow myself time to breathe and re-center, I will be back on track.

It is quite extraordinary how one hour with the right people can totally shift your perspective, turn everything on its axis. This is not just about the power of positivity, but that is part of it. In voiceover, it is really important to know who to take advice from. There are A LOT of people with microphones out there. That does not mean that everyone talking should be listened to. But when one hour can give you so much solid information and direction, those are the people you should be listening to! If you happened to miss our Clubhouse, stay tuned for my next blog on the beauty of VO Marketing that will summarize our chat with Jonathan.

Back to School Juggling for Working VO Moms

September 20, 2020 by Laura Schreiber

Septembers Here…But is It Actually Easier?

Ah September. If you can actually remember what life was like pre-pandemic, September used to feel like a huge shift for us working moms, with an audible sigh of relief heard from coast to coast. While having our kids home to spend time by the pool and doing crafts is a time of joy, for solopreneurs who have always run our small businesses from home, summer has always involved juggling lots of balls. This year, 2020, has presented a whole new set of challenges, and if your family is like mine, your kids are “back in school” without leaving your house. While I confess that I am enjoying the extra time I have with my teens, it does present a lot of challenges for those of us whose career depends on quiet in the recording booth. Doors slamming, thumping and thudding on the steps, random proclamations- these barely scrape the barrel of what the new normal is like. The quietude is gone and with it I have, you guessed it, more balls to juggle as both my children and my husband are now in the house. All day. Every day. So no, this September, being a working mom and small business owner it is not easier, but I do have some strategies for coping in order to ensure that my goals stay in clear focus.

Re-Establishing Work Routines and Mom Routines.

The school year is nine months long. It is extremely likely that school kids will be home through June. So, Re-establishing a daily routine and maintaining rhythm is really important. As a working mom, we always wear two hats, and we need to keep balance. If one shifts out of balance, it effects the other and life suddenly becomes uneasy. For me, aspects of my work routine include:

auditions
meditation
completing booked work
thank you notes
marketing/client outreach
invoicing

Aspects of my mom routine include:

cooking
laundry
grocery shopping
cleaning the house
dog responsibilities: walking, preparing and freezing kongs, etc.
homework help
amazon orders

Focusing On Wellness

In order to maintain the balance between my role as a mom and my life as a professional voice over actor, accountability in my professional career is extremely important. I have blogged before about my group, but one of our touch points is health and wellness. When we started reporting on this years ago, I did not realize that the relevance of this area would increase in importance. Who could have predicted a pandemic? Every day wellness is a priority, including: steaming, supplements, eating well, etc.

Walking is one of the goals I focus on in my healthy living strategy. I love walking with my dogs and we walk four to five miles a day. My beloved dogs count on the movement and frankly, as I work in a padded foam booth, I need to get out and breath the fresh air. The pandemic can be so isolating, but when we walk I talk to my husband and kids. We also run into neighbors on the street and it is such a wonderful mental break. Walking, then, provides both an emotional and a physical benefit. The walking is essential to my wellness.

Pilates is another focus of mine. After a difficult twin pregnancy, I have spent years rebuilding my core. I love that through the pilates I work on my breathing and that the workouts are total body workouts. I am learning to make connections and to listen to myself. Work as a voice over actor so much depends on connecting with people and connecting with scripts, so if I am connected with myself as a foundation of it all, I work better. At the start of every session, my instructor asks how I am feeling and for me to be aware of where my body is starting. I wish that I had people teach be to be aware of my physical state in this way when I was 12 years old. I think I would have treated myself very differently. In any event, I am thankful for this journey that I am on and pilates helps me very much.

Strategies to Support Success

As a momtrepreneur, I try to set a framework for me to thrive and to make good choices. Here are a few of the things that have helped me during the pandemic:

Metabolism Mojo with Betsy Markle @ https://www.facebook.com/groups/334541130558104: Betsy is a brilliant nutritionist that I happened to grow up with in Pennsylvania. She is now based in Florida and I look forward to every post, recipe, and Facebook Live. She has made our shelter in place better with her recipes. I also highly encourage you to watch her recent coffee video.
Daily Harvest: I am so thankful to have found this site of healthy food options. We buy the grain bowls for lunch and the smoothies as go to breakfast sides or snack options. They are delicious and having a full stock of healthy choices makes life easier.
Meal Plan Prep: As a devotee of the Budget Mom, I have been focussed throughout the pandemic on planning our dinners. This has enabled me to both stay within budget and to have food in the house that fits our needs and is ready. This has been a huge help. I often use this meal prep sheet that the Budget Mom shares.

Focus On Goals

“Don’t give up what you want most for what you want now.” Ultimately all of this matters because working moms have goals. As a voice actor, I have spent years building my business. It isn’t about getting through September, it is about making life work so that I reach these goals for myself and for my family. If we can’t see the forest through the trees, we just won’t get where we have worked so hard to go. In the shadow of the passing of the great Ruth Bader Ginsburg, we have a great torch to carry. She did it with such ease, and we must carry on for our children so that we can finish the work she set out to do.

VO Success: When Motivation Meets Inspiration

August 30, 2020 by Laura Schreiber

My Breakthrough This Week When Walking my Dog

Some days I wake up with a burst of energy and ready to get to work. Other days I am less energetic, but regardless, the outcome is the same: I do my thang in the booth. I’ll explain. I am pretty regimented when it comes to sticking to my voice over routine, and that routine enables me to balance both my mom tasks and my business tasks in a way that I am comfortable with. Most days follow the same pattern, with slight variation by day of the week. But some days, I am less “into it” than others. I was thinking it through the other morning and I thought this was a matter of inspiration. I was walking my dogs one day this week with my friend Melanie and she was telling me she felt the same way, that feeling when you just can’t get started. Melanie is a successful New York attorney who works extremely long days. While her career path is decidedly different than mine is as a working creative, this got my wheels turning. Both of us are working moms. Both of us work long days every day. And both of us build our household responsibilities into our professional goals. What, then, is the secret sauce? It came to me that while I often think of things only in terms of the presence and lack of inspiration, it is actually the ability to sustain the magic of the intersection of motivation and inspiration that makes success happen.

Common Challenges All Working Moms Face

So, let’s take a step back. It’s not just me as a voice actor who has a business to run that also has to think about how to feed my kids dinner at the end of a long work day. There are common challenges that every single working mom has to face regardless of our chosen profession and these challenges impact our work performance. Sure, these challenges vary depending on the age of our kids and the level of involvement of our life partner if we have one, but for the most part working moms still:

feed their families
manage household responsibilities including cleaning and home maintenance and repairs
have appointments like doctors visits
have errands like marketing, grocery shopping, household supplies, etc.
need to interact with school teachers

Just to list a few of these, and all of these responsibilities take time, energy, and emotional strength away from our professional responsibility. We can’t split ourselves in half. We have to be present for all of it, and there are only so many hours in the day.

Motivation vs. Inspiration

So, with so much on our plates as working moms, what keeps as working towards our end goals? Let’s consider the definitions of motivation and inspiration:

For me, I could blog endlessly about my VO goals. I try to break them down and focus on immediate, short term, 6 month, 12 month, and long term goals. That is how I start to frame out the motivation. The inspiration has always been clear: it starts and ends with my children. They are my why. I was inspired to start my business for them. Everything I do is for them. Thinking of them and wanting them to be able to study abroad or open up their business helps me define solid financial goals that I am very motivated to reach. On a daily basis, I hold myself accountable with a google spreadsheet. On a weekly basis, I am accountable to my amazing VO Powerhouse Accountability Group. All of this is essential to spending time at this junction of motivation and inspiration and not floundering in between the two.

My Working Mom Interviews

A few years ago I also started doing a series of “Got Your Back” working mom interviews on YouTube. It occurred to me that I was just one of many and that maybe a lot of women had figured out this work life balance better than I had. I wanted to know what they struggled with and how they addressed those struggles to get it all done. These women were both inside the voiceover industry and beyond. One of them, Rebecca Gelman, has since evolved beyond her architecture business and now also owns an outdoor gear shop that boasts the largest collection of black bear collectables in our area which you can find at https://bigbeargearnj.com/. Talk about a gal who doesn’t waste a moment and somehow gets it all done, she is extremely motivated and Rebecca inspires me daily. All of the videos do! But if you are like me, you look to your tribe on those days when you are lacking, and, well, my tribe rocks.

https://youtu.be/hM_NIq1giFI

Working Moms: Featuring Rebecca Gelman (https://youtu.be/hM_NIq1giFI)

What Needs to Line Up for me to Meet me Goals

Life as a full time voice actor is not as simple as being found and just sent bookings. Yes, it’s great when a repeat client does that, but if I were to sit back and rely on that every day my business would cease to exist. I recall hearing Dave Fennoy speak in 2016, and he talked about a time when he was so successful he stopped working to grow his business. Do you know what happened? He lost his business. He lost everything and Dave Fennoy, one of the biggest names in voice over, had to rebuild from the beginning. He told us at this conference that we needed to work every single day as if it were our first day. That is what I try to remember. I never sit back and count on the work pouring in. Every day matters and I will continue to work my hardest.

I will still also take care of myself too. I want to teach my children that is well. I will blow out my hair, put on some make up, do my nails, and do pilates. If I fall apart, how can I take care of the needs of so many others? Worse, what kind of example am I setting as a mother. So here I am, hanging out at this intersection I realized I love being at but only just named. And now that I’ve found it, I’m not going anywhere!!

Migraines and Voice Over: Oy Vey

February 3, 2020 by Laura Schreiber

It’s a Conundrum

I have so many good days, when I am super productive, I have tons of energy, and I get more accomplished than I had ever thought possible. On such days, sometimes a crazy thought creeps through my head: what if they’re gone? What if just as suddenly as they came, I will never get a migraine again? Then, like a load of bricks dropped on my head, I wake from my sleep with the throbbing pain behind my right eye and I hope that I get the medication in me in time so that I can take the lowest dosage possible. So, how can the good days seem so immeasurably good and then the bad days I am just so thankful for each task that is completed. When making toast seems like climbing Mount Everest, the vast contrast between the good days and the bad days of this working mom is mind blowing. But here’s the real kicker: I speak for a living. As a migraine sufferer, on bad days, I don’t want to talk. At all. The sound of my voice seems to echo against the inside of my head and is excruciating. How frustrating that all of the things I am passionate about, including voice over, are not easy on migraine days.

Making it Work

As a working mom I try hard to exhibit good coping for my twins Emma and Jack, so laying curled up in a ball on the sofa all day is not a good longterm strategy for a chronic problem. When I’m “lucky,” and believe me I am using that word loosely, my migraines will come on a weekend and I can sleep them off. Often they come as they like as they are triggered by all sorts of things: stress, lack of sleep, my cycle, the weather, so in short- life triggers them. When they come on a week day I try to take the medicine as early as I can. I tend to be a heavy sleeper and wake up confused, but if I can actually get the medication in me early, that helps. I try to always have both coffee and ginger ale in the house as they help. My strategy then changes. Daily routines will be completed, but anything extra gets pushed to another day. Nothing fun will happen on a migraine day. I try to give myself a break and only do what is essential. Booked work will be recorded. Auditions will likely be skipped. All emails will be replied to. I will likely defer any direct marketing. In terms of mom tasks, if I can ask Harlan to help with anything, I do!

Planning Ahead

My migraines started when I had my twins, almost 17 years ago. It is safe to assume I will have them until the kids go to college, so now, like with everything else, I plan ahead. Here are some tricks that help me a lot, just in case a whopper of a head ache should descend:

Pack school lunches the night before. I actually make sandwiches or entrees for a few days at a time so that I just have to grab the sides each night. It really speeds things up!
Have set laundry days.
Order groceries weekly so your house is always stocked with the basics at minimum.
Plan your food for the week. I have a weekly print out so if I am down for the count someone can figure out the food.
Make sure to refill the migraine medication regularly. It is terrible to realize that you have run out at 3 am when you really need it. Keep a stock of it on hand.
If you cannot drive on your medication, as I often cannot, make sure you have carpool arrangements that are flexible for your kids.

Voice Over Specific Issues and Migraine

There are work related tasks that I will and won’t do on migraine days. I will happily do any self-directed sessions at my leisure. I will happily record short and normal length scripts. A migraine day is not the day to have an ISDN session with new clients and multiple people giving directions. My brain just can’t process the input and it is not a smart, career promoting move. I also wouldn’t promise to deliver 10,000 words of eLearning with a migraine. It doesn’t mean I couldn’t record a few modules, but I pride myself on being a meticulous editor, and nothing is meticulous when you are on such strong headache medicine. The other task I would avoid on migraine days is voice matching. I have a knack for being able to match others’ voices and my own past jobs. But, on a headache day, that is just too tricky and I would wait.

Pros of Working with a Migraine Sufferer

Yes, I wish my migraines would stop and never come back. But, I do think they have changed me. I have so much more understanding of what people with much more serious chronic illnesses go through. I am much more patient. I am genuinely thankful for every non-migraine day. I am very sympathetic when others have to reschedule and are under the weather.