Archives for September 2016

Oh the lessons we learn in this crazy business we call VO. As my colleague Tom Dheere was no doubt penning his own blog http://tomdheere.com/blog/ about communicating with agents, I was once again slapped in the face with a similar business lesson.

I have been fortunate to have landed an agent to represent me in my short time as a voice actor, several in fact. One such agent is out of Philadelphia. When I signed with the agency the owner told me they don’t get many voice over requests. I appreciated the honesty, but sill signed. Though I live in Baltimore now, I was born and raised in Philadelphia so I was excited to be represented in my home town. This, as someone who still considers Rocky Balboa the greatest athlete to hail from the “city of brotherly love”.

At any rate, it had been some time since I had heard from said agent. Not one to rock the boat I had not followed up in a while. I assumed the agents were busy and they’d contact me when they had something. Then today I contacted them. I wanted to talk about doing some marketing to some local media contacts. The owner responded and kindly pointed out that some of the “paperwork” they ask all new talent to do was missing. There are several casting sites that I was to create profiles for as a new talent. I thought I had done this. When I went to the sites, however, both said my account was inactive! It seems I missed a step in both places and the account was deactivated after a few months! The agency was understandably miffed at me for not doing what they asked. Note, nobody told me this but I can read between the lines. I know how I would feel if I had been in the same position.

Well, suffice it to say I NOW have filled out all the requested information. The agent said “I’m glad you emailed Paul”. Probably not coincidentally, I also received an audition from the agent today.

So the moral of the story is, communicate, communicate, communicate! It’s great to land with an agent. As Tom points out, they are not a panacea for your career. However, if you want them to help you, make sure you let them! Follow their instructions, and for Pete’s sake, TALK TO THEM!

It can be tough to value yourself and your talents when you run your own business. There is always the inner thoughts in your mind about what is “fair” based on your experience, training and perceived talent. This is especially true of those in the arts.
If you ever want to be successful, as well as taken seriously in your marketplace, however, you have to charge fair rates. Well, what is the best way to do that? In my opinion, there are several best practices. One way is to ask those that have come before you. Look around at what those people you respect in the business are doing. If their rates are not published, Ask! The voiceover community especially is incredibly helpful to those who seek guidance respectfully and tactfully. A second way to get a grasp on fair rates is to look to advocacy groups. For voice actors there is no better place than the World Voices Organization or WoVo (www.world-voices.org). In fact yours truly just participated in their monthly rates roundtable where we discussed this very topic. You can watch the full video here http://youtu.be/BmBInKWw8m0.

This brings me to this week’s real world example. One of the topics discussed in the roundtable was how to set up a fair rate at the beginning of your business and stick to it. So this week I quoted a client on an elearning piece. The client accepted my bid but came back to me with a request for syncing the voice to an existing video…in Russian! I immediately put on the brakes and said “you didn’t mention syncing in the job listing, this will require an extra fee”. I wasn’t being greedy, just honest to both the client and myself. How much extra work there really was to do was even more than I imagined (but that is a lesson for a different day).

Anyway, I quoted the client an additional fee that was a full 50% of the original price for the entire job. You know what happened? They said yes, immediately, and off we went.

So the moral of this week’S story? Know your rates, stick to your guns and Don’t Sell Yourself Short!