professional voice actor

I Practice What I Preach

October 11, 2024 by Laura Schreiber

Consistency Matters

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:

Goals

Goal setting is pivotal to success in voice over. If you don’t know where you want to go, how can you possibly get there? As part of my business plan, I update my goals at least twice a year, if not quarterly. Anyone who has worked with me can tell you I love to help them flesh out there goals and we typically do this early on. When I do my own personal goals, I always post them in my booth and where I like to work upstairs in my house. This helps a lot with mindset. I think everyone has good days and bad, and just knowing your intentions is useful.

Accountability

I have been saying for years that I would not be where I am today without my accountability buddies! We have even presented together at national conferences. At present I am in several accountability groups. My primary one for all of VO is affectionately called “the VO Powerhouse.” We meet weekly and talk about specific touch points and present in order every week. We also chat about our lives. We tend to talk daily on Facebook as well about everything from rates to pronunciation to our families.

I have a mentor for my audiobook work. We meet monthly. This has been extremely helpful in launching that genre of my business. Again, I don’t think you can quite imagine what the possibilities are without being pushed by those who have already gone there.

I am also in an eLearning ensemble. We meet twice a week. We touch base about our marketing goals specifically. This group is great because we push each other and keep our eyes on the horizon.

I always encourage students to find accountability buddies. I personally think that meeting at least once a week is crucial. I think it helps to keep you going and to keep your eye on the ball. I think everyone in VoiceOver should be in one! If you are not and would like to be, you can look at conferences (which is where I met my buddies), Facebook groups, and at local VO meetups.

Craft

As in other professions, voice actors, regardless of how established we are, are never finished working on our craft or technique. And in truth, as industry trends shift, it is extremely important to stay on top of them. Having one on one coaching is still extremely joyful for me, and the last one I worked with at length was Sean Pratt. I love doing online webinars, like Tina Morasco’s library and Dervla Trainor’s Speaker Series. I also love learning at conferences, and conferences are essential both to being part of the community and to staying on trend in VO. While I am often in attendance as a presenter, I try to soak in as much as I can as there are experts across genres from all over the country and often other countries, so if you can afford to go, you should!

Marketing

Just as I encourage my students, having a consistent in-bound and out-bound marketing strategy, staying on top of marketing is crucial to my business plan. From blogs, to social media, to newsletters, all of it matters, both separately and as a whole, to establish my brand. Everyone who knows me knows I can talk endlessly about branding, but in truth, it all matters, a lot, and being consistent not just about posting content, but the quality and quantity of the content matters. It can be daunting to have to post and keep track of all of these moving parts regularly, while staying on top of auditions and recording booked work, but if you want clients to know you exist, it is crucial.

Daily Routine

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.

Takeaways

When I coach, I draw from my experience. If I change what I do, I share it so others can benefit. If I find something no longer works, I share that too. I find the best way to coach is to draw from my years of booking and try to help my students build a solid foundation.

Why You Need a Home Studio When You Start with a Coach

June 3, 2024 by Laura Schreiber

Getting Started in Voice Over

When people come to me for voice over coaching, they are at all different point in their VO journey. Sometimes they are quite experience but many are totally new to VoiceOver and are making the bold move to pursue their dreams. Building a strong foundation is extremely important, and my production partner Dave Scott and I work really hard to help our students learn things the right way from the start. Still, whatever regardless of when you plan to do your demos, it is really important to start practicing on an actual microphone with a preamp or interface in a studio setting for several reasons. Here are some thoughts to consider:

Learning Mic Technique

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!

Form Good Habits

Put simply, lessons are expensive. When you pay for a voice over coach or take a voice over class online, you are investing in yourself and your career. Whether it is the time spent with the coach in sessions, the time spent doing your homework in between sessions, or for daily practice, you need to be establishing good habits. You simply cannot do this without the pro equipment. You need to set up your studio so that you can prepare to be a professional. There is only one way to do this and you need to master your technique early on so that it is seamless when you launch your business.

You Might Have Diction Issues

No one in VoiceOver wants to have speech issues. Speech issues that I have had to deal with as a voice over coach range from diction issues, regional accents, articulation issues, plosives, and sibilance. If you only record on your computer and submit, it can be really hard for your coach to pick up some of these, or pick up the severity of some of these. Imagine speeding months coaching, getting ready for demo day, going to a pro-studio, stepping in front of a U87, and your coach hears a major diction issue they never noticed until demo day. What a disaster! This can, however, be easily avoided simply by setting up your professional home studio and working with your coach on real recording equipment.

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!

You Need to Practice Recording and Editing

When you are working with a VoiceOver coach, you need to practice recording and editing they way you would when you would submit for an audition or a job. You can only do this if you have a functioning booth with a microphone, preamp or interface, computer with a DAW, and good cans. You need to practice editing your audio every day so that you get used to the ins and outs of your DAW and become efficient at producing pristine audio. Nothing else will suffice in this business. And it does not happen overnight, believe me!

Conclusions

I hope this has helped you better understand why you should not wait to set up your home studio! Timing matters a lot. While budget plays a factor for most people, even with cost in mind we can work with you to help guide your choices as your start to big gear for your home studio. It’s better to have it ready and get going and be well-practiced when your launch your business. For those of you thinking that you might get coaching, do your demos, then build your booth, that is not advisable. Read the blog again and re-think your plan! Now, best of luck in your VO journey!!

Crochet as Metaphor for Making it In Voice Over

May 18, 2024 by Laura Schreiber

Metaphor Between Afghan and VO

Last summer when I was on my voice over retreat with my accountability group, Kim Handysides taught us how to crochet granny squares. I learned to crochet as a little girl and have always loved all needle crafts, but there was something about sitting around

Branded Granny Squares — These are they granny squares Kim helped me start in my brand colors. I am making a tote bag.

with a group of women I was already close with and stiching and talking. It reinvigorated my love of crochet and somehow now linked it to my passion for voice over, so thank you Kim.

Anyway, as a little girl, when I was in second grade, my beloved Mommom Harriet taught me to crochet and knit. We started with crocheting. Her approach to both was the same. She wanted me to get it right. She encouraged me just enough so that I would not give up, and showed me what I was going to make, telling me that I would finish, but as I went along, for any mistake I made, Mommom pulled it out and had me re-do it. When something was nicely done she would say “beautiful work, Laura.” But, if a stitch needed correcting, she would look at it and sho me exactly where the last good stitch was. Then Mommom would pull the stitches out to that last good one, set the needles or hook back, and again I would re-start. Perhaps this is what got me so used to doing multiple takes in VO without flinching?

Well, since last summer, Kim really got me hooked on the granny squares. I decided to do an afghan club where the subscription sends me a kit each month. It is extremely exciting and fulfilling. Every month in the mail I get a package with beautiful yarns and

directions for the squares. At some point it will turn into a blanket. I chose a project called the “Happy Days Afghan.”

The more I work on this project, the more I realize that my approach to it is a rather solid metaphor to my approach to my voice over business. Like crocheting an afghan, our voice over career is a journey giving us multiple opportunities to try, do, and re-do until things look right for us.

How Long We sit With Things

Last month one of my squares turned into a pentagon. I felt fairly confident I had followed the directions flawlessly. I read them over and over. I counted stitches. I looked at the photo. Yet in my hands I held a pentagon, and what I needed was a square. I was not sure what to do. I thought perhaps I would hem it? Clearly any stitcher would no that would really not be okay. After about six weeks, I was looking at it again in dismay and a little bit of disgust. As time went on, my inability to get it right bothered me.

If this were voice over, and I weren’t booking, I would hire a coach or take online classes. I would talk to the gals in my accountability group. I would post on Facebook chats. So why, with the pentagon, was I just sitting there, stumped, paralyzed? When I did seek online help, I knew my stitches were correct, so the flaw was in my perspective, my analysis of the pattern.

Time to Reshape Things

Wanting to fix the pentagon was not about being a perfectionist, I began to realize just like in voiceover, it was about making my blanket what I wanted it to be. I kept hearing my Mommom’s voice in my head, and I got to a point where I just couldn’t leave it as it was. I think what was bothering me was that I had a pattern- a path- a roadmap as it were, and it still went wrong. I did my best and it was not right. So now It was time to re-do it. In VoiceOver, there is no road map for our career- we can build it and change paths, and we can talk to coaches but no one has a crystal ball and much like with my afghan, things can and will go sideways.

So two nights ago feeling the very strong presence of my grandmother I began pulling out stitches. I pulled out until the last good

row, just as she showed me as a little girl. The tricky thing in the square is that the early part of the pattern is round and I had to build corners. Since what I did was very wrong, I had to try something else to make mine look like the photo in the pattern guide. I didn’t rush and I concentrated, and low and behold my pentagon took on a new life as an adorable square.

I had a lot of feelings about this. Much like in my voice over journey, I learned not to rush, its a marathon, not a sprint. I learned to enjoy the journey, because it’s in the doing that a sort of evolution occurs. I could also see that even when someone very specifically tells you how they got to a certain point, that does not mean that you will get to that point using those steps. I think that as both a professional voice actor and a voice over coach, this mattered a lot. Simply, there just is not one right way, or one size that fits all, and you can help people and guide them, but much like my afghan pattern, there are variables. Lastly, there is great joy in discovery. Much like finishing these beautiful squares, learning new genres, working on one’s VO craft, and booking work with new clients or repeat work with cherished ones is quite joyful, and all should be savored.

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!

VO Sales Funnel Fail

July 18, 2022 by Laura Schreiber

How Something That Seemed So Right Could Go So Wrong

When I first heard about the sales funnel for voice over, I was elated. Basically, their funnel drew me in and it worked instantly. I had several thoughts. First, I loved the idea of paying less for pay to plays. I thought by starting a funnel I could change my pay to play strategy. To be clear, I do not think there is a voice over reality in which pay to plays cease to exist, I simply wanted to be less dependent on them. Next, I loved the idea of positioning myself to be found by the people who were hiring me. In all my years as a full-time actor, I spend A LOT of time doing direct marketing, and we all know this can be a craps shoot, a big roll of the dice. The sales funnel was appealing because I had hoped that through the marketing expertise of the folks I hired the people who needed me would find me and I could focus on what I love to do most, recording and coaching. It sounds great, right?

Perhaps I was also very willing to try because I very much liked and trusted the team I was working with. Rob is very well-known in the industry for his legal expertise and his daughter Mary seems quite savvy. I have put my own kids to work for me in the past and I loved that it was a father-daughter team and their vibe was great. I felt like we could make magic together.

Maybe I Jumped the Gun

In retrospect, Rob and Mary’s sample size at the time that I worked with them was NOT big enough. They had great success with ONE other voice talent who made back his investment in the first month. One. They also had their funnel running to draw in voice over actors and coaches like me, and it worked. Rob told me repeatedly that he had to turn the funnel off within days of running and as he was so booked and the he would have to do the same for me. Perhaps I should have waited until they had worked with more of these other talents to see what their results were before signing on for a three month deal. Or perhaps I should have opted for their one month option. I can say with certainty that signing up for a three month sales funnel with only one person prior was based on a lot of optimism and not a lot of numbers and I have never before in my business career made a snap decision like that.

So you must be wondering how a gal who has made spreadsheets for every single choice in her career, from who to do demos with to which microphone to buy, could make this choice so capriciously? One propelling factor was the lofty financial goal that Rob had set for the funnel. It was so high that I would have covered my daughter’s college tuition in one month, and my son’s by month four. When I heard the numbers, I felt determined to try. Who could pass this up if I could really earn that much from the funnel? I do, after all, have goals that I am determined to reach and this funnel sure sounded like a quick fix.

My Actual Experience

While working with Rob and Mary was as expected in terms of their bed-side manner, and they were responsive and kind, Rob over-promised and under-delivered in terms of the result of the funnel. It was actually shocking. We would look at the same numbers, and they would have a completely different analysis of them. Keep in mind the funnel was supposed to bring in dream clients with large budgets. It was supposed to weed out the undesirables. This was NOT my experience. My experience with the opposite. My dream clients were no where to be found. I had multiple people sign up for calls and not show up. I sent follow up emails and texts to those no-shows. After several weeks I had THREE total calls. One lady thought it was a job interview. One call was actually someone who was interested but did not move forward. The third was a man who had been on unemployed and just took a job as a janitor. He had a very limited budget and knew nothing about voice over and it seemed exploitative to even be talking to him.

Sadly, the funnel was not achieving its goals. It was disappointing. Rob, Mary, and I had a different perspective on how the funnel was working. We parted ways and I was thankful for the funnel to end. I lost both money and time.

I know another long-time VoiceOver professional and coach who started a funnel just after I did. Instead of directing her funnel toward coaching clients, she was going after automotive clients and attempting to market her automotive demo. Like me, she also stopped her funnel and parted ways with the team.

Final Thoughts

The most established member of our accountability group, Kim, has long cautioned that the VO community is always looking for “the next big thing”, and when it comes out we all jump on the band wagon. This happens every few years. It happened with voiceovers.com. I think, in the end, the sales funnel was like that for me. I was looking for the magic bullet, a quick fix. Instead I learned a lesson about listening to those who have been around and seen more. Next time I will slow down and wait for the hard data.

Voice Over Breathing Techniques

March 23, 2022 by Laura Schreiber

All Voice Actors Breathe

I remember when I first got into voice over years ago, one of the very first things I had to learn was not to hold my breath. 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.”

Michelle Blenker is a well-established professional voice actor and coach. Michelle is the only coach we know who has developed a curriculum specifically for breathing and voice over. She began her vocal training as a young child, taking singing lessons in MA where she grew up. There Michelle learned a breathing methodology to protect the voice.

This practice is useful beyond VO, and would work for people in sales or public speaking as well Michelle noted. As both a trained opera singer and a graduate with a Speech and Hearing Science degree, Michelle has both the training in specific breathing programs and the knowledge and understanding of human anatomy to bring out the best in her voiceover students.

Does Your Voice Feel Tired After Recording All Day?

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.

How Can I Control My Breath More?

This is so common, from newbies to established professionals. Everyone wants to know how to best control their breath. Michelle cautions that if you sit, you often slouch which is problematic. In contrast, when you stand, you engage your legs. This provides a loosed base for your instrument. Apparently, most people barely use 40% of their air capacity!

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.

Interestingly, Michelle cautions that a lot of people mistakenly think their voice comes from their chest. It does not. Our vocal apparatus is actually suspended quite miraculously in air by muscle and just floats in the throat. That is why pushing too much air can be so destructive. Our instrument is so delicate. Unlike drums, we need to phonate healthfully to prevent our vocal cords from getting damaged.

How Do You Avoid Vocal Strain?

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:

Take a deep breath in and learn how to control the flow of air
Do this singing and speaking exercise:
- - Very softly and gently sing “Hah-may-mah-mo-meh-moo” across keys

Diana noted that she always feels like when she practices such exercises she should do them stronger and louder. Michelle explained that in this case it’s experiential and you should feel the softness and then put power behind it.

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.

Another attendee wanted to know if cardio vascular exercise improves voice over endurance. She surmised that her best recording days are the days that she does her elliptical machine. Michelle suggested that your body is more oxygenated on work out days, so it is possible. She further instructed Lisa to work on practicing her breathing as she walks. To count her steps, and try to control her exhales as a means of learning to increase her breathing capacity.

We also had a touching chat with Keaston, a voice actor living with a spinal cord injury. Keaston has to sit all the time, so he was curious how this technique applies to him. I was fascinated to learn that like pilates, the technique that Michelle teachers her voice students was created for injured veterans after World War II. So, perhaps he could learn from it as well.

Final Thoughts and Breathing and VO

One of our regular attendees, Xavier, made an interesting observation. He noted that when he is really engaged in a script, you can’t hear him breathe and he incorporates the breath naturally. In the end, isn’t that the goal? To have good habits so that the breath flows naturally and all of these habits become second nature?