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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Sometimes I am such a schmoe.

Back in March Stu Gray tagged me (which is blog speak for taking a topic one writer has started and either responding to it or building on it “tag you’re it”) about how voice talents become successful.

Well, I missed the tag…it totally blew by me for reasons I cannot explain (or as has become my truthful response “blame the kids”) and were it not for Kara Edwards response to Stu’s tag in her blog, I would have totally missed it.

So thanks Kara and sorry Stu.

But under the heading of better late than never I shall offer my usually long and fairly self effacing answers (I don’t want/like to sound all puffy) to this multiple choice essay test which will prove yet again why everyone in my family was amazed I graduated high school and stunned when I graduated college (both were on the “pity the poor stupid bastard scholarship”….oops, can you say “pity” on the web).

I’ll do this daily (it should wrap up Thursday) so what I lacked in timeliness I will try and make up via sheer bloviating.

1. What habits have enabled you to become successful?

Is there a better word than passion to describe the professional sensation I feel working in the voice over field and managing my business? I get a rush every time someone calls with a new project and the rush is not money based…truly!

It’s a new project, a new creative start. When I get to work with other voice actors in the studio or during a training class, there are endorphins that kick in that are just blissful. When I get to visit with other voice talents and talk about the business I find pure enjoyment. I’m lousy at articulating it (I’m a VO, I need a script!) but I know it when I experience it…maybe you do too.

So to look to habits or tricks to be effective seems to miss the core of anyone’s true success (in my dictionary anyway). You must have a passion for what you do, it must consume you (in a non-addictive, not-so-much-a-hermit way), almost a part of your central nervous system and drive you to succeed. If you love something (voice over) that much, your success isn’t guaranteed but it is more assured because of it.

But I do mean to answer the question.

So with passion as your base, you must have true talent to succeed in voice over and one must be honest about whether that is the case. Talent isn’t a habit but the best habits cannot replace talent. Do you have it? Please try not to fool yourself because our business has too many fools already (see this blog’s masthead as exhibit A).

Just because someone says “you have a nice voice” or because you did the voice for your company’s in-house video doesn’t mean you have talent. Heck there are some radio announcers that aren’t very good but the station needed a warm body (consistent quality has long ago left the radio station biz). Most people, if they are honest know if they really have talent. But if you’re not sure, find an honest, reputable teacher and have a heart to heart. Here’s the puffy part: I have talent and it’s a key part of my success.

Calling on that talent, growing it, requires preparation and training (here’s some habit talk). While I chide radio, it was my great training ground back when radio offered some flexibility. Finding a group or one on one voice trainer is critical. In person is best but phone training is ok too. I don’t go near enough to my classes but every time I do I get energized.

I also often tell the story of being a teenager and reading magazine copy out loud in my room and having my parents peek in quizzically. I still do that today when I have the opportunity and people (well, mostly my wife) still look at me funny. At least I think that’s why they look at me funny. Basically, if you’re a voice talent, use your voice whether someone is paying you or not. Practice.

Then there’s the sales and marketing aspect of the voice over business. While you cannot succeed without passion, talent and training, all of that will get you no where if you don’t know how to market and sell yourself. I focus on it relentlessly (which I think qualifies as a habit) but breaking it down to a habit or trick is difficult except to say you need to scour the globe for leads, you need to track your leads and you need to manage your leads. One could quite seriously write a book on each of those three tasks. But you must learn how to do each of them or your business will fail (was that tough love or just too tough?)

If you had to focus on just one aspect of sales and marketing to make your VO business thrive, it is this: learn the internet. Every damn thing about the internet.

Voice over has become a virtually industry and you will never meet most of your clients (which I think is kind of shame). Your web site is your office. It’s the most construction you’ll likely ever have to do. Make it as easy and effective a place to access and operate as you possibly can. Or find people who know how to help you.

More tomorrow.

Thanks for reading.

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Tags: blogs, commentary, peter o'connell, social networking, voice actors, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover advice, voiceover blog by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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I am resourceful or I am full of resource or possibly I am a source of re’s.

It’s all so confusing but this burdensome responsibility has been placed on me by the Ciccarelli family, they of Voices.com fame. Now with their GoodVoiceKeeping Seal of Approval I have to churn out internet content that’s valuable and important and vital to the voice over, marketing and advertising communities!!!

Oh crap!

Well page through my archives, listen to my voxmarketising podcast, learn anything you want but just please take off your shoes before you come in as I just vacuumed.

Thank you.

Tags: commentary, internet, marketing, media, peter o'connell, technology, voice actors, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover advice, voiceover blog, voices.com by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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No matter what line of work you’re in, you will have to speak in public. It may be a crowd of hundreds or only a dozen or so people. And of course, public speaking continues to be one of society’s biggest fears.

There are only two times in all the public speaking that I have done that I was actually nervous, panicked and way anxious. Both times I was doing readings at a funeral and both times I had little or no time to prepare. Funerals don’t especially bother me (sad as they are) but being unprepared really bothers me. If my physical reaction these two times was anything close to what people have with their general fear of speaking, boy do I empathize.

Now you’d think that a guy with 25+ years of voice over experience would be able to keep it together even when speaking without preparation (having never seen the text or seen it really briefly before). And likely as far as the audience was concerned, I did. But internally, I could hear my voice crack, my breathing was tight and my body was rattling from head to toe. It was bad.

I don’t like being unprepared for live work.

In a studio, hand me a script, give me a few minutes to process and rehearse then hit the record button. I’ll be golden.

Live is different. You are not hidden in a booth and you get no retakes.

Live does not grant you do-overs. Preparation makes all things flow when you are live.

I’ll give you a couple of examples. Last weekend, I had to give a pulpit talk at my church on behalf of Catholic Charities. Big Cathedral, marble podium, the works. I aced it. I had time to spend 15-30 minutes the night before to prepare. I knew the script so well I could keep the talk going with eyes off of the script to look at the audience without losing a beat.

Yesterday, I gave a talk to a class of college students on the voice over business. All extemporaneous stuff. Home run. I’ve got 25 years worth of material. Here, its not a matter of having content, it’s a matter of editing it to only an hour’s worth of good stuff.

Both times I had done my homework. Both times I scores straight A’s.

Prepare, rehearse, plan. THEN make it look effortless.

Tags: commentary, peter o'connell, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover advice by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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If you know the medical or psychological term for the feeling you get when you watch a function or service or job you really have an abiding passion and respect for just be ripped apart agonizingly slowly and painfully, please let me know.

Because that’s the word I would use to describe what all voice talents and on-air radio staffers have been feeling watching radio’s long enduring death spiral. I think we’re closer to the last third of the spiral than the first third of the spiral now though. The money is really running out for broadcast companies.

Not to harp on all the reasons most of us in the business know about but in case you don’t, radio listenership and usage is way down, that brings down ratings and advertisers won’t pay for a less useful marketing channel. The competition in the media world is too big. And radio companies over paid for their properties and are saddled with mind numbing debt.

Sales people (many of whom are hired as a first job out of college and are directed to a telephone and a phone book and ordered to “sell!”) aren’t coming up with the ad dollars.

The biggest line item in every budget is salaries. And the first people to get cut (excluding sales people but that’s always been a revolving door) are the on-air talent.

Clear Channel fired Rocky Allen at WPLJ and John Gambling on WOR both powerhouse stations in New York (the latest examples). Less known (but not necessarily less talented) names continue to be felled by HR in markets across the country. No one is safe and most sad of all is that the audience seems indifferent to the loss. There’s a full body paper cut for you.

I haven’t been on the air in years but it still remains one of my most favorite jobs. That and production director for a radio station. It was creative, it was fast, you interacted with the audience….that was a gift. If you’ve worked in radio, didn’t you feel the same way?

Sure, pay was lousy and you worked with a few idiots. But I have yet to see a job that didn’t have those issues…even now and I own my own companies!

But much of what was great about radio for those of us on air has changed. More syndicated programming covers our local airwaves with names like Delilah, John Tesh and Ryan Seacrest. Bland, awful stuff. But it costs less than local, real bodies running the board at your station.

Maybe I’m the only one who notices all this and who cares but if I’m not, I really would love to get your take (short or long) on all this. Angry? Resigned? Saddened? Frustrated? Past it? Let me know. Thanks.

Tags: advertising, announcers, commentary, commercials, marketing, media, peter o'connell, radio, voiceover advice by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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I have been remiss in the crunch of work and holidays and kidney stones (don’t ask) to thank fellow voice professional Todd Ellisfor joining me for dinner last week when I traveled to St. Louis.

Todd has enjoyed a successful voice over career part time and now (for the past five years) full time. He has a wonderfully humorous disposition which meshes well with mine.

At the complex that housed the restaurant where we ate, Todd stopped by KTRS-AM, meeting with an old radio colleague of Todd’s, Shawn Balint, who is a news anchor at the station. (The picture features Shawn, me and Todd)

Together, we all shared many funny radio and announcing stories and proved yet again, when you are in voice over, you’ve got a friend in almost every city.

Tags: announcers, commentary, peter o'connell, radio, voice actors, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover meet-ups by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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