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voiceover talent

What Values Do You express in Your VO Business?

November 21, 2021 by Laura Schreiber

The Choices You Have As A Business Owner

As a professional voice over actor, we have the glory of being the queen of our own kingdom! And as we get to make all the calls on how we run our small business, we have the luxury of deciding which of our values we reflect in the way that we choose to run our business. As solopreneurs, our choices and the we treat others gives our clients a glimpse into who we are and what matters to us. Therefore, it behooves is to put a lot of choice into all of these decisions. For me, I focus on several core values in my daily business practices:

Treat Everyone the Same

Treat everyone the sameI consider the is to be the “Golden Rule” of voiceover! Whether a job is worth $200 or $2000, I treat every single client the same. If a new student books a single lesson or a five pack, they too are treated equally. First, I truly cherish each and every booking. Whether as a talent or as a voiceover coach, folks have a choice of who to work with. When casting, there are many who do what I do. Whether it is the conversational, millennial sound that I provide, or the fast turnaround, I am aware that I am not the only shop in town. Next, in terms of coaches, there are many wonderful VO coaches. Depending on your needs and what style you respond to, different coaches are better for different people. Again, I am aware that everyone has a choice. So, I treat every single booking as if it is my most important booking.

Value Others’ Time

Value timeOne of my values is respect of everyone’s time. In the last year, I made a shift to using Calendly to book meetings and sessions. Automating bookings has been a huge improvement not just to my quality of life, but is also a giant nod of respect to my own time. There is no longer a repeated back and forth just ti schedule a 20 minute introductory zoom. Or when a student needs to book a session they have paid for, I no longer waste their time waiting for me to confirm a booking. It all happens seamlessly, which benefits everyone. Another way that I try to be respectful of everyone’s time, whether it is in a Clubhouse or a live session, is that I always am mindful of how much time has been booked. If an hour has been allotted, I try to work within the hour, and not run over. I always keep in mind everyone has a schedule.

Don’t be Penny Wise and Pound Foolish

The big pictureTry to be giving when you work with clients. Don’t nickel and dime them, try to think of the big picture. When you go out to eat, and you ask for extra of something, how do you feel when the waitress immediately snaps about extra charges? Even if there are extra fees, there are pleasant way to introduce them, and then there is a tone that makes you seem like an anxious money grubber. Recently the traversing rod in my bedroom broke. I had to reach out to the local upholstery man, John, who had made them to come back and repair them. I had no idea how much he was going to charge and I had to call him repeatedly to beg him to do the work. I was worried that with each pleading call the price would go up. Instead, when he came to do the work, he charged me less than I expected. In this scenario, I was delighted by the quality of his work, his turnaround, and hsi fair price. This is how I want clients to feel every time they work with me.

Be a Mensch

Be a MenschMake it easy for clients to get what they need. Once you have a booking, turn that booking into a repeat client by making it is easy as possible for your customer to get exactly what they need by being genuinely helpful and kind. For example, I happen to have a lot of international clients. Often, the scripts were clearly not written by a native English speaker, and they need revision. I offer Copy Writing. If the changes are minimal, I do not charge. If the changes are quite involved, I send a helpful and caring note and suggest my usual hourly rate for this before I move forward.

It’s YOUR business, so at the end of the day you make the call on what feels right to you. Each interaction, each conversation, each policy reflects your values. Think about what you want to reveal and how you want to make clients feel as your work together.

Filed Under: Business Management, Voiceover Tagged With: automated booking, business values, calendly, copy writing, Golden Rule, sessions, talent, values, VO, VO Business, voice over, voice over business, voice over coach, voiceover, voiceover talent

My DevLearn Experience: So Much to Tell Ya!

October 31, 2018 by Laura Schreiber

https://youtu.be/vygFz4BVJ6U
with Shelley and Jack at Devlearn

When a Solopreneur is Part of a Team

I did it. I flew across the country to Las Vegas and arrived at Dev Learn, the biggest eLearning conference of the year that the eLearning Guild runs. Any working mom knows that packing one’s bags, getting organized, and getting out always seems like an amazing feet. I even had my hair done. As a professional voiceover actor, a good percentage of my work load is narrating elearning modules, so going to an event like this just makes good business sense for me.

The morning of the conference arrived and with my super cute wheely bag in tow I arrived at the Mirage conference center. Even though I have my own business and run my own broadcast ready recording studio, this morning I was not alone. Before even entering the conference, I met up with other experienced voiceover professionals Shelley Avellino and Jack de Golia. We met for coffee and registered. We spent some time perusing the listings of attendees and discussing who might be good to connect with. I also scanned the list to find my current clients so I’d be able to check in with them. Imagine, we were there to support one another and I walked into the packed expo knowing that there were others there who had my back.

Voiceover is a unique industry. There I was at Dev Learn with the goal of reconnecting with current clients and picking up new ones. The other voice talents there had the same goal. While in other industries we might view eachother as competition, in voiceover, with these folks, we worked together. We supported eachother. We met for lunch and compared notes and swapped contact information. It was extremely helpful. I am not sure which other industries do that. Feeling part of this team was fantastic and was part of the magic of DevLearn.

Staying Current

With eLearning industry professionals from all over the world, DevLearn provides a wonderful opportunity to stay on top of current trends in an ever-evolving industry. I spoke to professionals from as far as Australia and Russia. While many of these folks were LMS providers and do not work directly with professional narrators like me, hearing about their platforms is essential to understand what the content creators I work with are using.

I also was able to meet a lot of folks who do work in content creation. From mobile learning to gamification, there was so much to see at the amazing Demo Fest. I was also over joyed to reconnect with current clients from around the country. It is really special to see people that I work with regularly in person.

Connecting with Other Working Moms

While it is great to find people who need professionals to narrate their eLearning, in truth it is even better to find universal connections and just have great conversations. I found that I could talk endlessly with a lot of different people at the conference and only had to move on when someone else clearly needed them. I found it particularly easy at the expo to connect with other working moms. This happened over and over again. Whether we had human children or dogs, we were exchanged photos and talking about our loves at home, and the lengthy chats had evolved well beyond the world of eLearning. We talked about everything under the sun from safety to dog treats to our hours. These are the conversations that meant so much to me as I was making real connections and actually getting to know people.

In the middle of the conference a client invited me to a sushi dinner at the Mirage sponsored by Vyond, formerly known as Go Animate. At this dinner, I found myself sitting at a table of women all in instructional design, all working moms. These women were amazing. They were bright and innovative. We were all from different places: Toronto, New York, California, Tennessee, and Michigan. Despite different climates and different backgrounds, we were of similar ages and we were all working moms. We all somehow managed to get all the way to Las Vegas for DevLearn.

Our conversation moved from light banter to some pretty deep topics. We covered faith, skimmed politics, and touched on issues relevant to client relationships. Being surrounded by intelligent, sophisticated women, this table at the Vyond dinner was a microcosm of the DevLearn conference. We represented what is possible in the industry when folks come together and exchange ideas. It wasn’t all pats on the bag, we challenged and questioned each other too. It is, after all, only from this kind of honest banter that real change and genuine creativity can flourish. And I believe that we were there, in this self-created circle, where we somehow felt safe enough to be open with these other people what we were only just getting to know.

The Sum of it All

So when we think about where our training comes from, and when we think about who creates the content for major companies, I am proud to say that I have met the curators of this content and that I am part of this process. The magic of DevLearn is vast, but for sure as a creative it is a joy to be a part of this process.

Filed Under: Elearning, Voiceover Tagged With: Business Travel, Dev Learn, elearning, employee training, instructional design, LMS, narrator, Networking, training, voiceover, voiceover actress, voiceover talent, working mom

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