The VO Meter, Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
Hi, everybody, and welcome to Episode 17 of The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
Well, we are gonna get right into the nitty gritty of today, which is our VO Meetup Roundtable, where us and some other In The Trenches voice actors kind of share our stories, get to know a little bit more about us and the people we work with, and talk about how this Meetup Group has benefited the progress of our careers. So without further ado, Paul, why don’t you tell us about how we started our own VO Meetup Group?
Fantastic. So yeah, we’re talking about VO Meetup Groups or affinity groups, another word that I like to use is accountability group. And this is a concept that’s been around for hundreds of years as far as business to business marketing, but we decided to try and make it work back around two years ago now, where a lot of us were interfacing on the venerable Bolton Board, the Voice Over Bolton Board or VO-BB.
Some of you are familiar with that. We’ve talked about it kind of ad nauseam on previous episodes, but specifically Sean, John, John Roorda, who we’ll talk about in a second, and Mike Norgaard were members of that group along with Heather Masters. And we used to post messages and see each other’s faces and after about six months of me rambling on there constantly, I got a phone call from Mike Norgaard, voice talent out of Texas, and scared the bejesus out of me because first of all, I didn’t know how he found my number or why he was calling me.
And basically the discussion was, how are you advancing in your career? And I said, what career? What are you talking about?
But it pointed out that there should be and could be more interaction among people that I had been interfacing with all these months and getting help from. So after speaking with Mike, I decided to try and get together a group of like-minded individuals from the VO BB. Initially, we called it the New Guy Group.
It was myself, Mike Norgaard, Sean Daeley, and John Roorda. And we met virtually every week over… I think initially it was Google Hangouts, but we’ve used various platforms across the different years.
And we just talked about the business. Initially, it was kind of challenging because Sean was living in Japan at the time, and Mike is in Texas, John’s in Indiana, and I’m in Baltimore. So we had some technology issues trying to get us started.
But the point was we were talking every week and really started to grow our businesses by helping each other. And eventually, we added Heather to the group and then Marisha Tapera. And that made us less of a new guy group and we had to change the name.
But I was happy for that because it brought some new variety to the group. And now for a little over a year, the six of us have been talking every week, not always the same number of people. We don’t have any sort of requirements.
There’s no fees. We just talk when we can. Somebody has something going on that week, like a kid’s soccer game or taking their dog to the vet or traveling.
Obviously, we don’t hold them to it, but we get together as much as we can, and I think we’ve all become better for it. So with that, I want to introduce all the members of the group and let them talk about themselves and their businesses and anything else they want to promote. So let’s start with, well, Sean, you know, hopefully you’ve listened to the podcast before, but Sean, tell us a little bit about your business and how you came to the group.
Well, yeah, actually, you reached out to me via the VOBB and sent me a message that you were trying to get this group together, and I was like, hey, why not? And so, like you said, there were some tech issues and scheduling issues trying to get everyone to meet up because me being in Japan, the local time was tomorrow. So that was a little bit difficult.
But other than that, I think the biggest benefit is just being able to talk shop, like you said, and kind of make sure that you’re on the right path. I mean, we’ve talked about everything in these groups from potential clients or client platforms, like Freelancer or Mandy or what have you, like how to approach agencies or even confirming bad feelings about a client who reached you or a project or something like that. So it’s been incredibly helpful, and it’s something that I always look forward to when I can make it.
And let’s go to Mike Norgaard.
All right, well, I guess I was here as one of the semi-founding members of the group. And Paul and I, like Paul said, I’d reached out to him by phone. We actually used to frequently bid against each other and still do on a certain freelance platform, not Fiverr.
And… Let’s throw that in there for the industry, folks. And I actually had a question about the platform and some technical issues that have been going on and with their accounting and so forth.
And so I called Paul just to see if he’d shared any of those and we began chatting and we had a, I don’t know, probably about a 30 minute conversation. And shortly after that, he said, hey, I’m getting this group together, let’s do it. And so we did and here we are.
In terms of my background, I come from a radio broadcast background, so I’ve worked hard to kind of lose some of that and go warm and friendly and millennial sound, as they say. And I think that this has been a great opportunity. I mean, to me, this is sort of like the virtual water cooler at the office.
I think many voice overs work in isolation kind of from everybody else. We’re sort of in our own little bubble. So to have that opportunity to network and have some professional contact and talk to people who are actually excited to maybe hear the things that we’re talking about, as is supposed to just our spouses all the time, or whoever, and just have that opportunity to professionally network has meant a great deal.
And I think, as Sean said, has really helped grow the career. So it’s been a great opportunity to be a part of that.
Great, thanks Mike. And John Roorda, tell us a little bit about yourself.
Well, I first stuck my toe into the VO Waters just ever so slightly before you did, Paul, in early 2015. At that time, I was in radio sales. I had a background prior to that of corporate training and tech support.
But enough time at a radio station, burning through the phones, people start asking you, well, why aren’t you doing something with your voice instead of selling? So that was about the time in early 2015 when I first ventured out. Very shortly after that, I started seeing this Paul guy over the VO BB like a rash.
Well put.
A nice rash if they’re… And not long after that, Paul reached out to me and asked if I would like to be part of our little weekly get together. And as Mike said, working in isolation in this little box in your basement, you don’t really have a point of reference as to what success is, what other people in a similar stage of the journey are experiencing.
And is that guy on Fiverr or whatever other freelance site really serious when he says that? What? So it’s been a tremendous learning opportunity to see what my peers, what other people in this stage of the game are up to and where they’re at.
And it’s been a huge motivator to see that, yeah, the success really is out there and you just have to reach out and grab it. So it’s been great to see the success that everybody else has been having and that’s definitely helped to spur me along.
Awesome, thanks for that. And Marisha, tell us a little bit about yourself.
Well, I’m one of the most recent additions. I met Paul on a panel that we did with World Voices about rates, rates for people who are just getting into the industry. And the interesting thing for me is that I’ve been kicking around in a pretty part-time capacity since 2002.
So even though I’m technically not new, the as new, I should say, I was absolutely and still feel like I’m absolutely new to working at this at Voice Over as a business, and at the level that I’m hoping to start to work at. So Paul was kind enough to invite me into the fold. And I think the best thing for me has been just this sense of community that’s actually fairly intimate.
It’s really wonderful to have a group of people that have your back. And I think you guys have always been so available to answer questions, to run reality tests with, and then literal testing, A-B tests, that’s one of the, sort of the greatest features of the group. And I think the other thing that I love so much is having people to cheer on myself.
I just get such a huge charge out of how hard you guys are working, how you’re kicking butt, and the interesting ways that you’re finding to conquer obstacles in your businesses. And as John said, it’s such an education and it’s so inspirational and it is really fun to hang up and think, oh, you know, that’s amazing that this person is doing this. I feel proud of you guys.
So yeah, that’s been my experience so far.
Heather Masters, tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do in the VO world.
Cool. Okay. Well, I got into VO about three years ago.
I had a theater degree and little children at home and so I had no idea what to do with it. And one day when I was listening to an audio book, I thought, hey, I have a theater degree. Wonder if I could do that.
And so I did, and thus began the journey. And so I started with audio books. I have since transitioned a little bit.
I’m still working on audio books, but I’m working more often on commercial e-learning and video game and character work. Those fit a little bit better with my schedule, so I’m trying to gear more for projects that are not quite so long-term. I studied with Nancy Wolfson of Brain Tracks Audio, who I adore, and that really-
Name-dropper.
Name-dropper, it’s happened. Yes, she’s awesome. And I really feel like she’s the one who, going through her program, really gave me the confidence to feel like, okay, I’m for real, this is for real now.
I have the skills, I’m not just pretending at home with my homemade set up. And so I think that gave me the confidence to pursue, to really pursue, and things have been going wonderfully ever since, so yee-haw.
So Heather, what kind of groups have you been involved with, and how have you found this particular meetup group to be beneficial or maybe not beneficial?
You know, the very first interaction I had with any form of human contact in VO was on the VOBB, which was a real lifesaver for me in terms of getting knowledge. And the people on there are just… they’re fantastic professionals.
They have incredible credentials, and yet they are willing to help nobodies. And they’re so free and so giving with their advice. And that was a real lifeline for me.
And what kind of segued off of that, which was even better, was this guy named Paul Stefano, who… no, I know it’s Stefano. I can’t do it right.
Paul Stefano contacted me and said, hey, I think we’re putting together a group of kind of all the people who are newer so we can help each other out. And I was like, sign me up. And that has been massive for me because I feel like not only are there people who are willing to help me out, but there’s sort of a mutual connection.
And I feel like I have real friends. I feel like if I run into trouble, that I can ask for help. And I’m also willing and able to give help, because these are people I’ve gotten to know and that I really care about, and I love that dynamic.
It’s kind of transformed a little bit from me being newbie, I don’t know anything, somebody, anybody, please help. What do you know? What can I glean from you?
To more of a, okay, we’re all kind of getting our bearings here. We’ve got some experience under our belt. We have got experience in various genres, and how can we help each other?
And I think that’s been massive for me.
Well, great. And I won’t bore the audience with my background, but I will echo the sentiments that I am really happy that we all get together. I’m so proud of all the accomplishments that all of you have made as well, and love just cheering everybody on and seeing what everybody’s up to every week.
So with that, I want to throw out to Sean, who’s going to talk a little bit about networking in general, because he has more experience, I think, in networking in the VO world than almost anybody I know, with the exception of maybe Ann Gangusa. But Sean, tell us a little bit about how networking is beneficial in the VO world.
Absolutely, because I understand for some people, I know even you, Paul, like this idea of like an accountability group was kind of a foreign concept. You just wanted to bring people together and talk show. And so, like, we’re at this kind of interesting time where these meetup groups can take all sorts of different forms.
I mean, as Paul mentioned, I’m pretty active on social media. And that’s kind of like, I mean, these groups are sort of becoming accountability groups in themselves. The only issue is, is there’s like four or five hundred members in it.
So, but I mean, there are some great ones. I know the Global Voice Acting Academy has a free GVA community group. We also have a paid membership group as well.
There’s VO Peeps and Voice Over Pros and Voice Over Camp. And just make sure that you really kind of get a feel for each group. Just kind of that those are the people that you want to learn from and that you’re really understanding what each group is about because they do serve different purposes.
But kind of moving away from social media, we have like what we’re doing because say people who want to get to meet up, they might be isolated from other actors. So they might only be able to do it digitally or online. And now we have all sorts of conferencing apps, whether it be Zoom or Bedolgo Call or Skype or any of the other usual suspects.
And so you can meet up regularly that way as well for either for free or for very affordably. Another thing that I love to do is if you have the option are in-person ones. So this can be anywhere like at someone’s house or at a restaurant or even in a recording studio and those ones are always great because it’s always good to be able to like shake someone’s hand and like get to know, make that personal connection that much more quickly.
So what exactly do we talk about when we have a meetup group? As we talked about before, like they can be pretty much just kind of camaraderie and talking shop and bouncing ideas off of each other. I know that when we first started, it was kind of much more performance based.
Like we would actually all come in with auditions or scripts that we were working on and then we would take turns reading and then practice giving and receiving feedback. And that was also extremely helpful because as we’re all trying to figure out our signature sound and trying to sound natural and not too exaggerated or unrealistic and stuff like that, that was immensely helpful. But that’s one form of group that you can have is one that’s strictly performance based.
And then the other one like we’ve been talking about before and what this group has really turned into is much more of an accountability group where we can set goals with each other. We can even have an element of friendly competition with each other as we’re kind of trying to progress at our own pace. And like Marisha was saying before, just being able to troubleshoot obstacles or challenges we have, whether it’s like, oh, I’m trying to learn this new platform or I’m trying to reach out to this agency or I’m trying to negotiate a higher rate or my signal chain sounds terrible.
What can I do? Just having some friendly people who are just calm and supportive and cool headed and very honest with their feedback has been invaluable. And so it’s been really fun watching everyone move, progress all elements of their business, whether it be the studio tech aspects.
Everyone’s audio sounds amazing, by the way, our agency lists or our client lists or the number of books that we’ve done. And that’s just another wonderful thing about this is that everyone’s experience and expertise is so different. I mean, I know like Mike and Paul do quite a bit of audiobook work.
So when I started trying to do some projects as well, like I just like berated them with questions and still do when I have them now. And so, and it might be like someone might be better at character voices or someone might be better at dissecting a script. And everyone shares all this knowledge, like nobody really bogarts it to themselves.
And it’s kind of like this microcosm of the support of the VO community that we see everywhere, which is like, and it’s just great to have our own little section of it to ourselves, kind of our own little secret, as it were. And then one last thing that like we were talking about networking a bit at the beginning is that you can get recommendations for all sorts of things. Like we can recommend each other to clients looking for a specific voice.
Like I know if somebody’s looking for like for an older gentleman voice, I might refer Mike, John or Paul, or a female voice, I might refer Marisha or things like that. So we’re able to refer people to clients, to agencies, to projects. We might recommend Gear or Voice Over Coaches or all sorts of other ideas.
So it’s a great networking opportunity to get to know the people, whether they be locally or like online, like what we’re doing right now.
Yeah, so whatever direction of a group you want to pursue, I highly recommend you find one, get involved and stay active, and it will really help your career in the long run. So with that, we’re going to conduct this meeting, the rest of this meeting, as we normally do, and sort of demonstrate how we conduct our little corner of the Meetup world, and that’s by talking about what’s going on in our business from the past week, from when we met last, and just go in a roundtable format to give everybody a chance to talk. So we’re just going to do that now, listen along and see how it operates, and then maybe start your own group or join an existing group and see if you can do the same.
So with that, let’s go reverse order this time. Marisha, what’s happening news-wise in your VO world?
Well, I had a very interesting week. It’s so funny. I love you guys, and yet it’s still very hard for me to say this out loud.
I’m not sure why. I’ll be happy to do it. Well, okay, I’m going to practice.
This is one of the wonderful things you guys have done for me. You’re giving me an opportunity to kind of practice being a big girl and talking about these things. I was incredibly honored to be nominated for a Voice Arts Award this year, and so I went to New York.
I decided to head up to New York and attend the event because it seemed like a wonderful opportunity to network and just to enjoy the spectacle. I really was excited to just participate, and it’s obviously something that Joan Baker and Rudy Gaskins have worked extremely hard on, and Anne Gangusa, who was the producer, director, and coach, for the piece that I was nominated for, had also obviously worked extremely hard, and we worked together. And so I really decided to kind of go for it and go up there, and it was a beautiful drive.
The fall leaves were turning.
Oh, come on, what happened? You’re killing me.
Oh, you want to know what happened? Oh, I’m sorry. My goodness, what’s wrong with me?
No, seriously though, I could not believe it, but I won. I won my category.
Absolutely.
Thank you so much. I mean, you guys are just the best. I have to say, Anne dominated that category.
She had five nominations total in that category. Absolutely unbelievable.
What was the category again for our listeners?
Oh, I’m sorry. It was for outstanding narration demo. So this is for a demo that I worked on with her about a year ago, actually.
So at any rate…
And how many nominees in the category?
There were six people in the category. Incredible, incredible people, including Anne. So I just could not be more honored and humbled by the experience.
And it was a beautiful event. So well run, incredibly enthusiastic, and just extraordinary people at this event. And it was an incredible night.
And I had a few mishaps, you know, getting up to Lincoln Center. I had will call tickets, and I just knew it was Lincoln Center, and it was the day of the New York Marathon. So I had already mapped everything out, and I knew I was going to be able to drive, and I drove in with no problem, drove down 42nd Street, and was looking at like these crazy electronic billboards that are now there.
I haven’t been to New York in a while, so it was quite an eye popping experience going up 42nd. Everything was beautiful. Got a cab over to Lincoln Center, and the cab driver said, this is as far as I can take you because we’re hitting the street closures now, but here you are.
So that’s great. And of course, when I went inside, there was no one there. And that would be because it wasn’t at Lincoln Center.
It was at Jazz at Lincoln Center.
Which is apparently not the same.
It’s apparently not the same. And despite living in New York for quite a few years, granted that was quite a few years ago, but yeah, I missed the boat on that. And so lucky for me, I had some, those little, you know, hey, your heel, your high heels are hurting your feet, so you can slip on these ballet shoe things.
I had those and I had to hoof it up the street to get to Jazz at Lincoln Center because the streets were closed. But it was, yeah, I got there, got in, and all else was well.
Well, that’s great. Congratulations again.
Thank you so much. Thank you.
Not that that’s not enough, but is there anything else you wanted to bring up this week?
No, other than, you know, I did also go to visit one of my clients in New York. The next day, I had an additional day there. Exactly.
No, but seriously, that was a big deal for me also because I really was trying to make a point of putting myself out there and also, you know, trying to build a relationship. And having a face-to-face meeting with my client was an incredible opportunity. I was really lucky that they were, you know, ready and willing to have me in, and I got a chance to have a really wonderful experience with these two production assistants at this production house that I’m working with in New York.
So that was a fantastic experience also. So overall, it was a great trip, and I really have to say that it was… I really am feeling…
I can say I feel very proud of the fact that I showed up for all of that and like got in there and did it. So yeah, that is my story for the week.
That is awesome. All right, John Roorda, what is happening in your VO Corner?
Well, my VO Corner is far less exciting, but it has been a bit of an interesting week on the audiobook front. So I had kind of put audiobook work in general kind of on the back burner. For over a year, I had done a couple of small royalty share products early last year that just flat didn’t sell.
And honestly, that kind of discouraged me from looking at audiobooks as a whole. But after hearing the success that the rest of you have had, I decided to start pursuing it with vigor again within the past couple of months. Just got another royalty share project that went up just a little over a week ago and has actually now outsold the one that has been up for a year and a half in just a week’s time.
Granted, it is a hot and timely topic, Bitcoin, so that’s getting at some attention, but I’ll gladly take anything that I can get. And over the course of the past week, I had another Bitcoin title, which I had actually had to back out of my contract on because it was so poorly written and translated. Even after backing out of that contract, the rights holder came back to me and said, hey, I got it rewritten.
Would you like to take another swing at it? As well as another royalty share offer based on a positive list that the rights holder had had from a per finished hour project that went live about a month ago. So it’s been a busy week on the audiobook front.
So keeping me busy, I’ll definitely take all the activity I can get there.
Awesome. Congrats.
Yeah, that’s excellent. Oh my goodness.
Mike Norgaard, what is happening with you?
Well, I’m glad you asked.
I’m glad that you’re glad I asked.
Well, and I shared earlier and I’ve been sort of ranting on Facebook a little bit, speaking of audiobooks, the ACX platform seems a little bit buggy these days. I don’t know if anybody else has experienced it or not, but the dashboard reporting doesn’t seem to be up to date. I don’t think it’s reporting bounties correctly, and I don’t know if any of you have had any experience with that or not in the last two to three weeks, but something’s not right there, I think.
Mike, did you say that you had been able to… that you’d heard anything from ACX?
I did.
I got an email back from ACX, in fact today, Sunday, that said they were not aware of any problems and then kind of boilerplate standard, this is what a bounty is and this is how it works, definition from there. But I just didn’t know if anybody else had noticed any peculiarities or abnormalities with it.
I have a book that has zero sales since Halloween, but that’s not necessarily abnormal for me.
I’m sure I have several of those as well. That’s not necessarily out of the norm.
I mean, it was released on Halloween. It still has big, fat zero in the column, but yeah, again, this happened before.
I have a book that has zero sales since April 16, so…
Nice.
But that’s about it, just still kind of recording. I did get a fairly substantial per finished hour offer for a book that should start sometime next week. If I can get in touch with the author, he’s…
I’ve been communicating with his staff members, his underlings or whatever, and I think I finally get to talk to the boss this week to put together the final details on this, but they asked me to send in a written proposal and they had selected me to do the project. So that’s good news. It’s a 9-
or 10-hour book starting sometime next week.
Mike, is that one of the longer books you’ve done?
Most of my books are kind of the shorter nonfiction. For me, I found that that tends to be kind of a niche that I work a lot in. Although lately, I would say I’ve been expanding more into longer form stuff.
Three, four, five, six hours. I’ve got one that’s 16 hours. That’s my longest book.
Wow.
And one that’s about 13. But those are the outliers. Those are the exceptions.
How are you finding that? How are you finding transitioning into longer books?
It’s good. You know, for me, I think there’s… I think that there’s sort of a point of diminishing returns in terms of book length on ACX because I think at about six hours, the pricing structure and the incremental increases per hour from there forward, to me, seem to sort of diminish the return on investment.
So if I do anything beyond about six hours or maybe five, depending on the book, usually I’ll want to do those on a per finished hour basis. All of my longer ones are. Because I just don’t…
To me, the way that audible prices from about the six hour point forward, it’s not enough incremental difference per additional hour of audio, to me, to make that worth pursuing a lot of those on a royalty share basis.
And this is why I love our Meetup Group because I never would have figured that out on my own.
I mean, you hear me taking notes over here. Absolutely.
There’s an exception. Recently, I recorded a book that, at the time that it was given to me and offered, was on the New York Times top ten bestseller list. And that one was about seven hours long.
Well, I’ll make an exception there, and had it been 12, I still would have recorded it. On a royalty basis. But again, that’s kind of the exception to the rule.
Typically, with longer books like that, I would be looking for a per finished hour thing. So, moving away from audiobooks, one question I wanted to bounce off the group is that I do have an issue this week with a client who I’m having difficulty collecting from. It was a Voice 123 job, and it was just a short IVR.
It wasn’t anything big. But I’ve been, you know, communicating with them, and they’re, oh, yes, no, we’re happy with it. Oh, one little change.
Okay, no, everything is good now. It sounds great. I’m going to have my billing people go ahead and complete payment for you.
And it’s been, I don’t know, going on 10, 12 days now, and I haven’t heard anything. It’s a little small nonprofit. And I’m wondering, you know, how quickly and or assertively I should be doing some follow-up there.
I don’t think that I would get assertive until you at least cross the 30-day threshold.
Yeah, I was going to say a month.
Exactly, anything less than a month, and I kind of just shrug it off.
There’s a lot of companies will pay, they’ll pay invoicing only monthly. And if you don’t get to that point, then, you know, it’s possible it may drag on, but I would, yeah, like John would say, at least give it a month.
Yeah, the one time… The one time that I found myself in that situation where, you know, I look back, I was 45 days plus, and I realized I hadn’t gotten paid on it yet, simply using the reminder function in PayPal to follow up on the PayPal invoice I had previously sent, that PayPal reminder got me paid within 24 hours.
That’s great. In fact, that’s ironic, because that’s what I was going to say. You know, I could send a reminder, but I’m not sure at what point to go ahead and pull the trigger on that, just to keep things on their radar.
Yeah, I don’t think I’d make a scene about it until at least 30 days, but yeah, 30 days, send that PayPal invoice reminder, and that did it for me.
And check your mail, too, because I had a situation like that also with Voice 123, where they were sending me a check, and I didn’t know that. So I was waiting, I was checking PayPal. I actually sent them an invoice over PayPal, too, and was checking feverishly, and then a check came in the mail and got it that way.
I didn’t even know that until the check arrived. And lately, I don’t get a lot of real mail. It’s mostly, especially around the holidays, it’s mostly catalogs for stores trying to sell my kids’ stuff.
So I throw most of it away, and luckily I was able to find this check.
Oh my gosh.
Well, it may be something like that. Maybe I’ll follow up and just say, hey, just wondering what the window may be, or if you need an alternate. They don’t have my street address because I didn’t put it on the invoice, because I try to encourage online payment when I can just to streamline things.
Man, that’s another gem. I never would have thought of that. My street address is right on the invoice.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, I don’t think it hurts to have it there, but typically I’ll put if PayPal doesn’t work, let me know and we can make alternate arrangements. I’m wondering if in advance on these small one-off things like that, if it would be beneficial to clarify specifically the expectation of the payment timeframe upfront.
Absolutely, yeah. I know plenty of philly sectors who include that in their contract, and if I don’t get it by net 60, within 60 days, there will be consequences kind of thing. Or even project must be paid or invoice must be paid 24 hours after audio is submitted or something like that.
I mean, make the terms, get them to agree on it, and then go from there.
You may have seen Rob Zygampaglia on VOBS last week, but he said this before. He says he doesn’t do any work without a written agreement, and that’s probably a little bit further than I would be willing to go, but some people take that route, where they don’t do any work without a written contract.
Well, and with certain clients, I would be comfortable doing that. For somebody who I’m just recording a 45-second voicemail, I think they might really consider that intrusive and overkill to have a signed formal written paper contract for that.
I think it’s interesting that there’s been a lot of discussion of the idea that you kind of do a bit of a statement of work in the exchange, the email exchange where you say, this is what I’m going to do for you. I mean, just that simple email exchange where you say, oh, okay, you know, what do you need, and this is what I’m going to do, that actually does technically serve as a contract. So just adding a line in a response email seems like it fits the bill.
I think the question of sort of trying to set terms, payment terms in advance is an interesting one, and it’s interesting to me to hear you in particular say that that wasn’t something that you necessarily established, because you are trying to follow the lead of the client. What do they need? What are their circumstances?
Some people I know get a deposit or they get in advance payment, and then others are willing to say, okay, well, if you can’t pay on receipt and you’re saying to me that you’ve got some sort of billing department that only cuts checks on such and such a date every month, then we need to talk about that. You need to let me know, and I can agree to that if it’s going to make our work together flow a little better. But you’re right.
It would be nice to know those things in advance, and the question is, can you… Is it reasonable to ask? And I suspect that it is reasonable to say, hey, this is what my…
I think what I’ve been doing recently is if I send an invoice, I’ll say, do on receipt, because I’m just trying to leave it open to them paying right away. But then I’ll say in the email that I’m attaching the invoice to, my invoice is attached, and please let me know if there are any concerns or any issues with the terms, or something along those lines, just to say, hey, this is what I’m saying. And then sometimes people will say, oh, no, those are absolutely fine.
And then it turns out, no, they meant that it’s 30 days. They didn’t really read it or whatever. So that’s a risk that you take.
If you wanted to sidle into that discussion, you could do it that way. Or you could just do what Sean was saying and spell it out. But in your case, it does seem like, especially a nonprofit that has a little accounting department, a receivables department, or a payment department, it’s highly likely that it’s a 30 day net 30 situation.
I just don’t know if at this point it’s worth asking retrospectively for more clarification, specifically about when that’s going to go down.
Yeah, very often the person who hires you is waiting on someone else. They’re in the same boat. But since going back to this idea of contracts, I know a lot of people get either confused or intimidated by it.
It doesn’t have to be an extremely formal document. We were talking about Rob Siglen Paglia. He actually has in his book, Voice Over Legal, like copyable documents that you have permission to use in your own…
That’s right.
But for example, when… I know a couple of us are on the online casting sites, and you’ll have all of these client templates for when you do an audition proposal, that’s essentially a contract. Because they’re like, I’m going to get this to you in 24-72 hours.
It’s going to be free of mistakes or mouth clicks. And I’ll give you however many pickups before you have to pay more and stuff like that. Exactly.
And I’ll do something very similar in my email correspondence. But at the end, I will say, if you agree to these terms, please write, I agree to these terms in your reply. And then that way I have a paper trail to protect myself.
Yeah. One of the things in particular with the freelance websites that are out there that I run into by not always necessarily dictating specifically. And if I’ve got like a long e-learning thing that’s going to be 40 minutes long, usually I’ll break that into three milestones and say, hey, let’s do this one chunk at a time.
You can pay the milestone, I’ll move on to the next stage of the project. So on larger budget stuff, I do protect myself in that way and it seems to work out well. But particularly for, oh, I don’t know, product video narration, explainer video type of things, which are pretty common these days, kind of do a lot of those in their short form.
They’re minute, two minute, three minutes. Then what you get is, oh, I have to go run off to my client and I have to get them to approve this and then they’re going to like it and then once they pay me, then I’ll pay you. As opposed to payment on delivery kind of thing, which to me, it’s interesting.
I got thinking about it the other day and I said, you know, that’s kind of like going to a bakery and saying, give me three dozen donuts and I’m going to go feed them to people at a conference. And if they like them, then I’ll come back and pay you for them. And if they don’t, then, you know, not so much.
You laugh because it sounds ridiculous when you put it that way. But that’s really what they’re doing. I’m going to go feed my client these donuts and see how they like them.
And, you know, if they’re good, I’ll pay you for them. And if not, well, you know, then we’ll have to do something else.
I love that metaphor. And the thing is, that happens in so many… I think that this is a freelancer issue in general.
Every… I think so many, you know, areas of freelancing have this same problem where people are saying, I’m not going to get paid by my client until such and such. And so I’ve got it.
That’s how I’m going to get the money to pay you, et cetera. Yeah. Yeah.
Oh, my goodness.
Well, speaking of…
I’m thinking about it from the other side. Like when I do audiobooks, frequently I’ll outsource the editing and or the proofing and or both. And I wouldn’t dream of not paying the person that does that work at the time the work is done.
And then I’ll get paid by my client on the other side. But I understand that that’s a cost of doing business, and it’s going to come out of my pocket on the front end as the project coordinator for that particular thing. And I’m outsourcing part of the labor to them.
Well, I’m not ever going to ask them to wait until I get paid to get paid. I pay them when they deliver the work. So I don’t know.
Maybe I’m just working from a different frame of reference.
Well, speaking of protecting yourselves, let’s protect ourselves and say that any advice given here is purely our opinion. Please contact your legal professional and or tax professional for how you might approach your own VO business. And with that, let’s give Sean a chance to talk about what’s been happening with him this week.
Oh, thanks. Well, so recently, as some people know, I’ve been getting more work with the Global Voice Acting Academy.
Woohoo!
So as their social media manager, and everyone’s been incredibly supportive of that. So I get to learn a whole lot about social media marketing for my own business. And that’s what’s…
I’ve been talking about this with my friend and coworker over there, David Toback. We get to learn so much about running this larger scale business that we get to pull all of these kernels out and how to improve our own. And so that’s really cool, too.
And so I’m learning all sorts of things about writing copy for marketing campaigns and trying new avenues and different CRMs to try and make things go more… or to make our workflow more efficient and stuff like that. Voicing-wise, I did have an interesting job recently from an international client.
And it was funny because they sent me an email at like eight in the morning. And then I was actually out of the office that day because I was helping… my family has a couple of horses.
And so we go into a nearby city to pick up hay from a local farmer and take… it’s like a half-day trip. But anyway, so I didn’t respond to the email because I was going to do it as soon as I got back.
And then they actually called me while I was gone. And they were like, did you get the email? Can you do the project for us?
I was getting a little intimidated. It sounded a little sketchy, but I was like, yeah, I did it. And then I looked over.
It was like this three-quarter page narration. It was like less than a… it was like a three-minute, four-minute job.
And it was like, all right, will you do 350? And they were like, yeah, that’s fine. But the whole project was like court…
like they were communicating with me throughout the day. Like, are you finished yet? Is it due?
And then all of my questions, though, like, oh, like about pronunciation issues and stuff like that, they were slow to respond to. But I… don’t you love that?
Or it’s like, oh, we can’t… or they were trying to send me phone audio over WhatsApp, which apparently only works in WhatsApp. Which I do not have.
And it was such a stupid mistake because I assumed that it was for this company called MexiCAM. But I thought that since they were trying to reach out to English-speaking markets, they wanted MexiCAM. So I did the whole thing like that.
There was about 10 or 15 sentences with the product name and the title. And then they’re like, oh no, we want you to do it like MexiCAM. I was like, oh no.
And it’s like 10.30 at night at this point. And so I had to do all the pickups. And then I sent it off.
I stay up to like 1.30 in the morning to make sure that I got the OK. And apparently they’re just working on this project all day because it’s like go, go, go. And then finally they’re like, yeah, it’s great.
Thank you so much. And then they call me the next day. Can you just say the word MexiCAM five times?
I’m like, OK. And so I was like, but that’s still within my policy. So I did.
It was just such like it wasn’t a negative one, but it was such a weird like bordering on sketchy experience. But luckily they like they paid in a reasonable amount of time. It was about 10 days after the project.
And I just kind of checked in to make sure they didn’t have any issues. And I wanted to talk about this earlier. Make sure when you ask, when you send reminders that you’re polite like it’s usually there are extenuating circumstances.
So just like, Hi, just wanted to make sure you got my earlier reminder. Make sure you don’t have any issues. And if you need any help navigating my preferred payment system, please let me know.
And if you like your thumbs, send it right now.
I know where you live.
I’ve got a drone outside of your window, right?
So any other interesting stories this week, Sean?
Not too much. Just resettling down after my little, my quarterly vacation. Yeah.
Well, I say that, like, I mean, as everyone knows, I’m in a bit of a long distance relationship right now, but she’s in Hawaii, so that softens the blow a little bit. But while I’m there, I’m still working. So like I brought my travel kit with me.
I didn’t have any new jobs come in, thankfully, because, I mean, it’s not just because you can record when you travel doesn’t mean you always want to or should.
Yes. Oh, my goodness.
It’s just like the stress factor, because we were talking about before, Paul, like how we can be so perfectionist, especially with audio quality. And like, it’s just like, I’m amazed. Like, frankly, I’m amazed at quality I’m able to get in a closet and like recording between helicopters and like millions of cicadas outside my window.
It’s just, oh, my God. But it’s just so nerve wracking to try. And like, so when you get home and you’re back in your booth, and you’re like, oh, this is how it should always be.
Yeah. Booth, sweet booth.
I’ve done both, and I definitely prefer studio sound.
Oh. Well, that’s great. And Heather, what’s been going on for you this week?
I have been pretty busy. I’ve been working on a couple of audio books and trying to get those taken care of, to get everything off my plate so that I can enjoy the holiday season. I don’t know.
We’ll see how that’s going to work out. So I’ve been working on a few audio books. I’ve done a few commercials for projects, for products, commercials for products and video game.
So this week was really fun because it was kind of varied. You know, I got to dip my toe in a bunch of different pools, which I have found really is what I love to do. I’m pretty certain I’m pretty ADD because I love a little…
I’ve got that whole up thing, you know, the squirrel with the dog. I feel like that’s how I live my life. So it’s been a good week.
What’s the dog’s name? Doug? Squirrel.
I love you.
I feel like that all the time.
That’s awesome. So the video game you’re working on, is there anything you can share or not yet?
It is not. I have to say, that’s the hard thing about video games, is I feel like in so many of the other genres, you can like, hey, here’s what I’m working on or here’s what I just did. And in video games, it’s like, I’m working on a video game, and I’ll tell you about it next year when it comes out.
Yeah, it’s a nice problem to have though.
Yes, yes. And I am so thankful because character work is my favorite. It’s where I get to kind of stretch my acting muscles, and that’s creatively just what I love the best.
So it’s nice when I get to throw those in with other areas. So, yeah.
So as far as my week, I have one cautionary tale I’ll share from one of the freelance sites. And I think I shared this in last week’s group, but for our listeners here, I’m going to share it. I took on this job a couple of weeks ago for a big e-learning company in India.
And it’s a decent rate, the low end of what would be a union rate for the e-learning project. But they want me to do the pieces individually. So it’s 10,000 words, I should say.
They told me this up front, that it’s 10,000 words. And I’m one of the characters in this e-learning project. I play Khalid.
Do I sound like a Khalid? So anyway…
I would have thought Ahmed.
So they send me these pieces where it’s a PowerPoint slide. And there’s like three sentences. And they want me to do them piecemeal like this.
And I’m sort of trapped in this loop where I don’t even know what to do about it. So I’m billing them each time at the moment. So I’m sending them invoices for $13, $8, whatever they send me to work.
Because they’re sending me things like every day. And Mike suggested last week, and I think it’s a good one, to sort of set some boundaries and say, just don’t send them to me until you have an hour’s worth. Or I’ll bill you once I’m done an hour’s worth of work.
And I’ll just throw that out to the group again if they have any other suggestions on how to deal with that because frankly it’s kind of driving me crazy at this point.
If you’re doing a lot of small projects over a long period of time, do a bulk payment plan. Because if you’re using something like PayPal or something like that where they take a processing fee, then you’re going to lose $3 right there. And that’s almost a quarter of the fee.
And the fact that you’re doing multiple payments like that means that’s really adding up.
Yeah, well, thankfully this is through, well, I’ll just say, it’s freelancer. And they have their own payment system without a fee attached to it. So in that way, it’s helping.
There’s a project fee, but that’s done up front and it’s already been paid. So luckily I’m not getting charged in the backend for fees.
It’s interesting because just listening to you describe that, the whole idea of batching jobs like that, and again, it’s in any sort of communications industry, makes a lot of sense. I mean, you can just be more efficient and it would seem to me that you’d be able to be more efficient and it would be more of a best practice in terms of just kind of getting warm and getting into your character and being able to deliver more at the same time versus having to kind of ramp up and find the vocal placement and all the performance stuff, much less the technical stuff, trying to match sound and all of those things. So it’s interesting when you’re dealing with a client that does want a piecemeal like that, because you’re just saying, are you guys trying to economize?
Like, what’s happening here? But yeah, it does seem to make sense to… I guess this is kind of a learning experience, because then you say, okay, you know what?
This isn’t really working for me. And so yeah, future and possibly if we are going to continue to work together, we need to kind of go back to the drawing board a little bit.
This almost sounds like it would be a good scenario for the Upwork time tracker function, where it logs your time to a specific project and takes periodic screenshots, et cetera. I personally haven’t used that in a while. The one time I did use it, it left a little bit of a bad taste in my mouth because I wasn’t quite able to track time accurately, just because at that time I was using a separate booth computer.
So, essentially the time that I was in the booth, actually recording, was untracked. But, you know, obviously that’s not everybody’s scenario, so that would depend. I can’t recall if Freelancer has something similar to that available, and if that might be of benefit to you in a situation like this.
Yeah, I’m not sure they do, but it’s definitely something to look into, and I just want to put that out there for our listeners, that if someone tells you they have a multi-thousand hour project, definitely figure out how you’re going to invoice or get paid, because it can be a huge headache. So, on a more positive note, I signed with a new talent agency this week. I signed with the Atherton Group, or Tag Talent, out of Austin, Texas, so I’m super excited about that.
Congratulations. Oh, my goodness.
That is phenomenally huge, and I can’t wait to hear as the weeks and months go on as to how your experience is with them.
Yeah.
Yeah, well, thank you so much. I’m super excited. I haven’t gotten any work yet, but it was just on Wednesday, so they haven’t dumped me yet, I don’t think.
I was talking to Cam Cornelius, some of you know him, on Facebook. He gave me a congratulations, because I was blabbing about it on Facebook. He said, welcome aboard, because I guess he’s on the roster too.
And I said, thanks, I’ll try to have to sink the ship.
Aww.
Ba-dum-bum, pssh.
No, but that is extremely cool. Oh my goodness.
Yeah, and actually Heather, this was signed to them as well. I’ll put that out there as well and say congratulations to Heather.
Congratulations to both of you.
My biggest curiosity, as time goes on with Atherton, is to see the kind of auditions you get. As we’ve had the experience with the agencies that we’re with otherwise, is that some stuff kind of… It has the appearance of getting blasted out to everyone.
As long as you’re a male or a female somewhere vaguely close to that age range. Or not. Or not.
I’ve recently gotten some stuff asking for the surfer dude sound, must have a British accent, et cetera. Stuff that’s just off on another planet somewhere. I’m curious to see if this new relationship is going to mean that you’re getting auditions that are actually more suited to you.
If something’s actually hitting your inbox because someone back there said, hey, that sounds like a Paul kind of gig. I’d love to hear as time goes on the type of auditions you get and how closely tailored they are to you.
Yeah, me as well. Because I’ve had that experience like you described too. And we’ll see how it goes.
They are part of the Voice Agent Alliance. Did I say that right? Yes.
So hopefully that will help. And we’ll see if some good things come. Hopefully they will.
So that wraps up the normal process that we go through with this group. Hopefully you got a chance to see how it works and the dynamics that are involved. And maybe take some ideas away for yourself that maybe you can start an affinity group or accountability group either locally in your hometown or online.
Sean, anything you want to add before we wrap up?
Well, we’re all great friends here. And it’s really cool because we all just bonded over Voice Over and we all have different niches and all that other stuff. But I can’t tell you how much I look forward to these Meetups and how much I learned from just listening to you guys, just being a fly on the wall.
And like Marisha said, I’m always taking notes, like, oh, that’s a great idea. Why don’t I do that in my business and stuff like that. And it’s really great to have that validation and support and encouragement because it’s a little bit of both.
I mean, you got the warm-hearted value, but you also got plenty of honest feedback when you need it. Like, if you’re trying to get people together, I highly recommend it, as Paul said, online or locally, depending on who’s available, where you’re at. But try and figure it out.
Without further ado, I’d like to give our wonderful guests one more opportunity to talk about themselves and how they can be reached via their websites. So why don’t we start off with John?
So I can be reached at johnroorda.com. That goofs everybody up. It’s R-O-O-R-D-A.
If you want to shoot me an email, it’s john at johnroorda.com.
Thank you. Up next, we got Mike.
All right. It’s… let’s see.
My website is voiceovermike.com, mike.com, and the email is easy enough. It’s mike at voiceovermike.com.
I get it. Next we have… Then we have Marisha.
Continuing the theme, I’m at marishavoice.com, and that’s M as in mother, A-R-I-S-H-A, voice.com, and my email is marisha at marishavoice.com.
Thank you. And last we have Heather Masters.
Feel free to contact me on my website, heathermastersvo.com, or shoot me an email at heather at heathermastersvo.com, and you can also follow me on Twitter. My Twitter handle is iheathermasters, which I think sounds like I’m swearing an oath.
I like that. I, Heather Masters, do solemnly swear to limit myself to 280 characters.
I know. Yeah, so that’s where to find me.
Thanks again, everybody, for allowing us to record this mess, because normally we do this off the cuff, and I appreciate you all being willing to come on here and let us record the meeting, and hopefully it will be helpful to our audience out there who want to start their own networking group. So that’s it for Episode 17 of The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
See you next time, everybody.
Thanks for listening to The VO Meter, measuring your voice over progress. To follow along, please visit www.vometer.com.