Vox Daily has a very insightful story regarding union voice over work, voice over agents, how the field of play has changed and where it might be going.

Always a good read, Stephanie’s post today was especially informative.

Thanks for reading.

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Tags: blogs, commentary, voice talent, voiceover advice, voiceover blog, voices.com by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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I know the Smartest Man in the World and his name is Saul Colt. I know he is the Smartest Man in the World because he had a business card that said he was.

Well, that was good enough for me.

I met him about a year ago at a Geek Dinner in Toronto along with Eden Spodek (she of Podcamp Toronto 2008 fame, among her many credits) and we had a very enjoyable time. I follow them both on Twitter and I subscribe to Saul’s blog.

Today Saul had a blog post about a bad experience he had at a movie theatre over the weekend when he went to see Iron Man (which is getting some great buzz). He posted about everything except the name of the movie chain that was responsible (note that) for the problem and dealt with it ineffectually (note that too).

I posted a response as such to the post (though I respect his choice and it is his to make) and noted that blogs are the new complaint letter. Why?

We end users (are we “customers” any more in the digital age?) can spend hours pouring over just the right prose to convey our anger, displeasure and frustration over a problem we encountered from a company and couldn’t properly get resolved. We send it off, throwing our letter in to the mail box or pressing our email “send” key with just the right touch of righteous indignation, knowing we’ll get our desired outcome.

We don’t, usually.

While many companies have a complaint department and some may actually resolve an issue satisfactorily, in my experience many more companies don’t have a complaint or customer service department as much as they have a form letter or pleasant but helpless voice department.

An example. This past Thanksgiving Day, I flew AirTran Airlines to Atlanta…a direct flight from Buffalo. I took the 6:45 a.m. flight so I could get down there to enjoy that day and next few days with my family.

I won’t bore you with the details (certainly AirTran didn’t care) but because they failed to safely maintain the plane I flew, I left Buffalo at 2:00 p.m. and got to my destination at 4:00 p.m. Their response from start to finish was poor, even after I wrote them multiple, spiffy complaint letters. I got a form back. It’s the second time AirTran has screwed me. I avoid that airline whenever possible and flinch when I have to fly them.

There are many schools of thought about outing companies on blogs or complaining about customer service – ranging from effectiveness or usefulness to how it reflects on the blogger (am I now just a big whiner?) Well, if I am seen as a patient man who sometimes gets ticked off on occasion when someone or some organization treats me poorly, I’m OK with that. Otherwise, people haven’t done their due diligence on me

Maybe the company I’m frustrated by could be my customer some day, huh? No they won’t, no matter who the “they” are.

My company has a simple code of conduct that we’ve always operated under but only recently published. If I know from personal experience that a company can’t do what it says it can do, I won’t work on the account. Yes, I have turned down work on such accounts before.

They can screw up their brand all they want but they’re not going to infect my brand (me, my voices, my company) with their poison.

The other side of it is that if we (you, me, whomever) are always complaining on our blog, no one will read the blogs and we will be ignored…by the company, by subscribers etc. That makes sense which is why I don’t complain on blogs a ton. We also become “the boy who cried wolf”.

But if we all don’t step up occasionally (when the situation calls for it…see earlier “notes”), companies – clearly already lazy in their customer service departments – will get even lazier and the downward service spiral will accelerate. Then we will have no one but ourselves to blame.

Please feel free to disagree in the complaint box below 😉

On the upside, let’s not be shy about singing the praises of companies that wow us either!

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Tags: blogs, commentary, social media, social networking, technology, voiceover blog by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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My thanks to everyone who voted, who advised, who hated and who opined. I appreciated all of it at its universal root: the desire to help me when I asked.

You can see it all in use here.

Whether we are friends virtually or on terra firma…we are friends.

Thank you.

Thanks for reading.

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Tags: advertising, audio'connell voice over talent, blogs, commentary, international voice talents, internet, logo design, marketing, social media, social networking, voice casting, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover advice, voiceover blog by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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I promise you by this point, Stu is so sorry he tagged me on this he may never blog again. But he should anyway 😉

4. What’s the best book(s) you have read to help you become successful at what you do?

Someday I may write a book about the voice over business and on that day I am going to be really pissed at myself for writing this but it’s what’s in my heart and my heart’s edit button seems to be on the fritz so here ’tis: voice over books are not very helpful for being a voice over talent.

Thud!

If you are at a point in your career where you have no idea about the technical and/or business side of the voice over business, well then you’re really behind the 8 ball and some of those book will be helpful.

Make no mistake here, the authors aren’t bad people nor are they full of beans. They have tips, they have tricks and some shortcuts.

But to be successful in voiceover, you have to be able to perform and performance comes from doing not reading a book (unless it is out loud). Focus on your talent before you touch a voice over book.

You need to get to a group class, especially if you’re new to the business. I do not recommend you go to an individual class. Do that later. First, get with a group. Audit the class, listen to the performers, and talk with them. Assess your own performance either internally or externally based on what you’ve seen. Do you have the voice for the business? No? Stop. Yes? Then go to about 4-6 classes.

Do you feel the passion going to class or does going to class get in the way of other stuff you want or need to do? If it’s because of the teacher or the group, find another one. Chemistry is important, to be sure. Is it not about the chemistry?

If going to VO class feels like a chore, stop! Get off the voice over horse. You’re done.

Go be a lector at church or call a bingo game for charity or offer to help with a local blind reading service. All sincerely noble and charitable tasks for which you will be greatly rewarded.

But you will not make it in the business of voice over so don’t even try.

Ouch? Oh please, not even close. When the door of voice over rejection smashes the cartilage in your nose to beyond repair then OK, maybe a little owie. But what I am doing here is saving you the pain.

You have to want it, this voice over dream. Thousands share that great passion every day. The art of performance has to be so deep within you that you dream about doing the work, not making piles of money or dating Scarlett Johansson (see, you thought we didn’t know).

If you don’t want to perform voice over so badly that a chance to get on mic makes you delightfully happy, if the thought of being picked for a voice acting role doesn’t really thrill you for more than just a paycheck, no voiceover book in the world will help you succeed in this business. Period.

You know, except maybe mine.

So endth the lesson. Blame Stu.

Thanks for reading.

If you haven’t already, we’d be honored if you subscribe to voxmarketising – the audio’connell blog and podcast by clicking the “subscribe” button on this blog.

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Tags: blogs, commentary, voice actors, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover advice, voiceover blog by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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In this episode of “Desperate Bloviating”, Stu asks a very introspective question that takes us Back to The Future.

3. What advice would you give a young VO professional?

If I were me talking to me 25 years ago and I wasn’t allowed to tell myself which stocks to buy, which teams to bet on and which hot girl actually thought I was cute but young me didn’t know it and I blew my shot with her but I’m over it and its not an issue, then I guess the only thing left to offer myself would be voice over advice.

But boy there sure would be a lot more stuff I would like to tell me. Anyway, here goes:

Peter, your professional reputation in voice over is everything.

In business, try and treat people the same way you want to be treated. Talk to people, not at them and for God sake LISTEN. You have two ears and one mouth and your opinion sounds brilliant to you but others sometimes think you are a babbling idiot so stop proving them right and be quiet more! When blogging is invented, then you can babble to your hearts content and people will just delete you and I’ll explain what delete is and what computers are later.

Humor is good, obnoxious is bad. Learn the difference quickly.

You are going to make mistakes, you are going to offend. Make sure it’s not intentional and that it is infrequent. Sometimes these situations will be obvious and sometimes you won’t know who you’ve alienated. When you screw up, own up to it and apologize. It may not fix it, but it’s the right thing (and sometimes the only thing) to do. Then move on.

While you need to be careful not to be arrogant it is OK to be confident. If that line gets blurred, refer to the paragraph above. You are talented but you can build on that talent by learning from everyone in your industry, even the idiots (if they go left, you go right…don’t do what they do)

Finally, appreciate that there is much in your career you can control but much more that you cannot control. Flexibility and patience will be in great demand throughout your life and it will test you mentally, physically, spiritually and emotionally. Sometimes you will encounter the odd client who is in a bad mood on recording day and your shirt is his least favorite color and how were you supposed know. Remember what your Dad told you “Don’t let the bastards get you down.”

Oh, you’re going to have at least two children and wife all of whom are too good for you and none of whom you deserve. Take great care of that fortune and try not to be a burden to them.

Our story concludes tomorrow.

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Tags: blogs, commentary, peter o'connell, voice actors, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover advice, voiceover blog by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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Our story continues now with the “Perils of Bloviating” in which a kindly blogger asked a few simple questions in search of a few simple answers only to find out that voice talkers never use two words when two thousand words are available.

2. What habits have blocked you from success?

In the voice over business, like in almost any business, we voice talents can’t get out of our own way regarding our success sometimes and that’s been true for me too. We are called voice artists and that term artist brings with it a lot of baggage including ego, opinion, self deprecation, fear, loathing, lack of focus, self-worth, selfishness and about a thesaurus’ worth of even more descriptions all of which can be the first (but not that last) things that can get in my/your/our way on the path to success.

Learning from history but not dwelling on it was one of the first thoughts that came to mind with this question. The wouldas, shouldas and couldas of this business can haunt you and occasionally that gets in my head too. Sometimes the voice “artist” in us sporadically wants to make us suffer…we need to turn the slider on the microphone of that “artist” voice down to 0.

Lost opportunities, poor choices, slow responses in a myriad of business situations over a career dot everyone’s professional landscape, mine too. The key take away, though is to learn from the mistakes but also learn to let go of the mistake. If your business is in a lull, don’t think about the wouldas, shouldas and couldas but rather the “ares” and “ams”. “We are going to make some calls to prospects today” or “I am going to attend a local networking event.” Positive wins and action achieves.

Another challenge is not focusing enough time to manage the business. Sometimes it’s the work load and sometimes organizing your profit and loss statement just isn’t very interesting. But at the end of the year or at tax time when you’ve found that over the past year you were spending like a drunken sailor and your net profit isn’t as large as you’d hoped or needed, you’ll be sorry you didn’t focus a bit more on the debits, credits and other core elements of the business.

More tomorrow.

Thanks for reading.

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Tags: blogs, commentary, peter o'connell, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover advice, voiceover blog by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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