End of the month paperwork

I have time this month to work on my end of the month paperwork – making sure that I have converted open sales orders to invoices – sending the invoices – checking on overdue invoices – making sure my bank statements balance with my ledgers.

Having the time to actually do all this in one concerted effort, means that work slowed down a little bit for me this week. How convenient that it would be at a time when I actually could use the time.

Of course, I am working on other things as well, and I have noticed other voice talent doing the same thing. A lot more podcasts being produced, live video chats and classes being introduced around the country. Ed Victor’s come out with several video podcasts and he’s working on a new reality show for about the voiceover biz. […]

2018-02-06T06:48:57+00:00July 31st, 2009|Categories: Business|Tags: , , , , |

Time and Technology

This goes back to an earlier post talking about being addicted to the computer and email. I have a serious habit. From the moment my little eyes pop open in the morning to just before I shut them again in the evening, I am jonesing for email.

If it doesn’t come into my Inbox in a steady stream, I start to click that Send/Receive icon – sometimes repeatedly…thinking that I must have just missed downloading something important.

The BlackBerry was supposed to help me get away from my office and in a way it has. I can go to coffee in the morning or run over to my mom’s or out to the store and not feel like I am going to miss an important email. But I do constantly look at it to see if the little red light is flashing.

Yesterday my email host was having problems and I didn’t receive […]

2018-02-06T06:48:57+00:00July 30th, 2009|Categories: Technology|Tags: , , |

The Added Value of Local Tech Support

Spent another big chunk of a day on the phone with India – tech support for my mom’s computer this time. She paid for the Extended Service Plan which is unlimited time on the phone with someone who is supposedly quite skilled at figuring out computer issues.

Well, even the best of them have a hard time when BOTH the mouse and the keyboard show intermittent behaviour problems (mostly the mouse).

After turning the darn thing on and off about a dozen times, doing a system reset to a few days ago to no avail, the tech guy decided that it must be a nasty virus and suggested a system rebuild – back to the day it was made. This of course required that I use keyboard commands to try to copy a previously saved folder of data to a flash drive. I did a system restore – or whatever the heck it […]

2018-02-06T06:48:57+00:00July 26th, 2009|Categories: Business|Tags: , , |

Do Not Count Your Chickens…

OK, I auditioned for what could be a large national campaign and got past the first cut. Not sure what the next cut entails – further auditioning or just simply being passed by another set of ears, but I was quite stoked to know I didn’t suck. ;-) Actually, I initially felt really good about the audition, so getting this feedback helped reinforce my self-evaluation abilities.

How cool is that!

No matter what happens with this particular audition (Audition and forget. Audition and forget. Audition and forget), it reinforces why I am stepping up my marketing, working on new demos, remaking the website, getting some additional coaching and making the big push to land a top agent in a top market. It’s because when I do get a chance to audition with the cream of the crop, I compete.

I’ve had a chance recently to work with some established national talent, picked from the avalance of […]

2018-02-06T06:48:57+00:00July 24th, 2009|Categories: Auditioning|Tags: , , |

Working on another role play for eLearning

It is interesting to see how work evolves and how people hear you. When I started in the business, I did primarily corporate narration and straight commercials with a lot of “sell.” Now, in the past few years, a large percentage of my work has turned to more role playing than straight narration.

eLearning characters make up a big part of that – being cast in multiple roles within programs – ranging from some nebulous African accent, to redneck homophobe, to tough Boss Lady. I have had more than one casting as Tough Boss Lady – working on one right now which sort of prompted this post. But I have also been cast as “soft young Asian woman learning to speak her mind at work.” So I while I do a good tough boss lady, please don’t pigeon-hole me there.

A lot of my radio and TV spot work has also been as a real person, […]

It’s not even 8AM and the AC is blasting…

We’ve been having a heat wave here in San Diego. And most of us in older homes do not have central AC. I do have a tiny old airconditioner that I had someone build into the wall of my studio during the initial rennovation. It manages to cool things down a bit. But of course when it is on, it is impossible to record anything….projects or auditions.

It is also difficult to get to – I have to climb on the counter to reach the knob – which leaves bruises on my upper shins. So I’ve been so reluctant to climb up there that I’ve been letting the projects and auditions pile up a bit – then scrambling up to turn it off.

Amazing how fast the temperature rises! So, during this heat wave, I am wearing natural fibers – as little of them as I can get away with – no […]

2009-07-22T07:44:20+00:00July 22nd, 2009|Categories: Musings|Tags: , , |

Today’s Casting Reality – Speed and Quality

Stephanie at Voices.com is a prolific writer with many excellent Blogs and Podcasts and Articles on Vox Daily. Her thoughts today on the speed at which casting is done these days is a good one for any voice talent to take to heart. Add Nancy Wolfson’s (BrainTrax Audio)insight to the mix and you can see how you need to be ready (with speed and ability) to land the jobs.

2018-02-06T06:48:58+00:00July 21st, 2009|Categories: Auditioning|Tags: , , , , |

Bookkeeping…part of the job – or something to farm out?

Oh for the days when the agent did the negotiating and invoicing! I tell you, this is the hardest part of my job. I wrote recently about negotiating and some of the pitfalls there, but another area that takes time and creates a great deal of frustration for me is the Invoicing part of the process.

I switched to QuickBooks a couple of years ago to try to streamline this whole process – reducing what was a three-step process to one. I used to enter client data into FileMaker, create Invoices in Outlook and then reconcile through Quicken. Now it’s sort of all in one place, but I still find QuickBooks to be confusing. I am not an accountant.

Quicken is simple – it is a checkbook ledger. Not QuickBooks! Oh it has some interesting features, like the ability to set prices for each regular client as necessary and create lists of […]

2018-02-06T06:48:58+00:00July 20th, 2009|Categories: Business|

The Power of the Ping

My goodness. I pinged Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo and MySpace about my new website and blog yesterday and in less than 18 minutes I had a dozen hits to the new blog. From zero to 30 in one day.

OK, that may not seem like all that many hits, but the immediacy of the response is what is amazing. Many many many of us are addicted to technology.

I read an article yesterday (I must remember to copy and paste the links for blog use!) about email – and making the leap – social media addiction. Ever since getting a BlackBerry, I find that I spend a little less time in my office in front of the main computer tower, but I have that phone with me everywhere. I have seen the signs of email addiction for quite a while now.

  • I respond instantly to email
  • I check every few minutes to see if new mail […]
2018-02-06T06:48:58+00:00July 18th, 2009|Categories: Communication|Tags: , , , |

Sight Readers Give Good Voice(overs)

Let’s get this out in the open. All good stage, film and TV actors do not make good voice talent – and vice versa. If you are used to having your script days ahead of time, with hours or even days of rehearsal with a director, you may not be able to get into the VO vibe.

Using a studio session as an example…let’s say a session is scheduled for 9 AM. You get to the studio at 8:55 (or earlier). Someone asks if you want coffee. You’re thinking “A script would be nice.” Someone hands you the copy around 9:15. (Traffic was bad?) If you are lucky, they may spend a minute filling you in on what they feel you should do with the copy before hustling you into the booth.

At 9:17 you enter your padded room, adjust your headsets. Look for a pencil with a sharp point (or pull […]

2018-02-06T06:48:58+00:00July 17th, 2009|Categories: Musings|Tags: , , , , |
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