Blog – Page 27 – Connie Terwilliger

Eggs

You’ve heard the saying – don’t put all your eggs in one basket. I’ve been thinking about that the past day or so.

I am currently in Orange County at the beautiful Pelican Hill resort doing a live backstage announce gig for a biotech company. This is the 4th year in a row that I have been asked to be the voice of the company for this particular sales meeting. It is a fun job. The people are nice. The food and accomodations are always more than good. And the pay is quite good as well. But each year, I try to not think about the next year. Because next year may not come.

Early in my voiceover career – or perhaps I should call it my free lance career, because I was doing other things besides voiceover at that time (producing and writing and some on-camera spokesperson) – I had a […]

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:51+00:00January 26th, 2010|Categories: Business, Marketing, Musings|Tags: building relationships, customer service, eggs in one basket, voiceover business|

VO Explained in 5 Minutes

This isn’t new, but I ran across the clip on the Working Voice Actor group on LinkedIn this morning.

Blair Hardman explains everthing you need to know about voiceover – and one thing you don’t – in 5 minutes. It’s accurate and funny.

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:52+00:00January 24th, 2010|Categories: Teaching|Tags: Blair Hardman, education, voiceover acting|

Lots of mu-law / u-law questions

There has been an uptick in posts to various groups recently about a very standard telephony format called mu-law or u-law.

This is one of the most common telephony formats and there are several tools that can be used to convert to this format – PC and Mac.

If you are on a PC, then most of the audio recording software that professionals are using will do the job – I personally use Adobe Audition.

For Mac, Switch from NCH works well and is pretty easy.

If you are new to telephony – here are a couple of caveats:

The sound files use a low sample and bit rate in order to play them back over the phone – they will NOT sound good to your ears when compared to a regular file
Always capture at a regular sample and bit rate of at least 44.1 and 16 bit.
Downsample to 8K
Do NOT change […]

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:52+00:00January 22nd, 2010|Categories: Business, Recording, Technology|Tags: mu-law, Switch, telephony, u-law, Vox Studio|

Gosh I Love Schick’s Schtick

Todd Schick may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but he really is sharp and I recently ran across his “rate” page on his website. He also recorded the content of the page so you can hear what he sounds like.

Check it out! Interesting, irreverant, controversial. That’s Todd.

http://www.toddschick.com/VoiceoverRatesForVoiceTalentServices.htm#R1

Connie Terwilliger2010-01-19T15:57:01+00:00January 19th, 2010|Categories: Negotiating|Tags: Negotiating, rates, Todd Schick, voiceover, voiceover business|

Critical Business Practices

Edge Studio sent out a great email the other day with 10 important business practices. I haev to admit, I KNOW about all 10 of these things, but find that one or more get bumped down the To Do list depending on work and play load. This is the complete email I received.

You might consider getting on their email list – you will be notified of their free tele-seminars and get other good free information such as this. Was looking for a link where you could sign up for the email, but couldn’t easily find it – so here is the web address: http://www.edgestudio.com/careerbuilding.htm

1. DON’T BECOME COMPLACENT.

PROBLEM:
It’s very easy to become complacent once you have clients coming in. You forget what it took to get there. You’re up to speed, even accelerating, so you stop working your gears. BUT EVENTUALLY you start losing ground to competitors.

There’s an old saying […]

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:52+00:00January 16th, 2010|Categories: Business|Tags: Business, Edge Studio|

Can’t get away from it – even in Paradise

Just got back from about a week in Hawaii (the Big Island). My first trip – most of it spent driving around the island stopping at every point of interest. Amazing place.

Went over there for a VO Workshop – Medical Mumbo – with Julie Williams. That was one day in Hilo in the middle of the trip. Decided not to drag my laptop studio with me. Just the BlackBerry for email that mostly informed me of all of the auditions I was missing, as well as the ability to post pics to Facebook. It also rang a couple of times with jobs that needed to be pushed back until I got home. Luckily I was able to push them. Most of the time, when you leave home, you lose money.

But because this was a VO workshop, I did have a chance to do one audition that I just didn’t want […]

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:53+00:00January 15th, 2010|Categories: Auditioning|Tags: Auditioning, Hawaii, Recording, vacation|

Create Your Own “Luck”

I just have to pass along the great story told by Janet Ault, in the latest edition of VoiceOverXtra! Janet is a voice-over professional based in Scottsdale, AZ. If you are not perusing the business sections of your local papers, or reading a Business Journal if you have one in your town, or subscribing to online enewsletters that promote new businesses, account executives moving from agency to agency, etc, then you are missing out on potential new business.

Janet landed a new account by being pro-active – proving that you create your own luck by having the right tools and finding the opportunity to showcase them. What makes this story a bit more unique is that it happened so quickly. In about a week, she went from finding a “lead” to landing a rather lucrative spokesperson job.

Read the whole article here – http://www.voiceoverxtra.com/article.htm?id=5i15kwkt

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:53+00:00January 5th, 2010|Categories: Business, Marketing|Tags: Business, Janet Ault, luck, Marketing, VoiceOverExtra|

Don’t leave the room…or you’ll miss it

What is it about hearing myself on the radio or TV that makes me want to smile? You would think after 30 years of doing VO work, that seeing or hearing a spot I did wouldn’t be any big deal. Is it ego? Is it amazement that I get paid to do this? Is it a desire to self-critique? I’m not sure. Could be a combination of all of those things. But, when I hear myself, I always take notice. I imagine the advertiser is hoping that other people do the same!

Funny thing happened yesterday. You remember the Kaopectate commercial I did recently – the one where I had two words – “uh-oh” and “fast?” Well, I heard the first “uh-oh” from the TV – but I was – uh – indisposed at the time and simply couldn’t get back to the living room in time to catch the rest of the spot. It […]

Connie Terwilliger2010-01-01T14:26:32+00:00January 1st, 2010|Categories: Musings|Tags: ego, performance|

You Just Never Know…

After all that ruminating about doing so many auditions and lamenting that most people were not casting off our demos (see prior blog post – http://isdnvoicetalent.wordpress.com/2009/12/02/ruminating-again-about-auditions/), I had a direct hit off one of the P2P sites that will result in an ISDN session this morning.

So, you just have to keep everything honed and at the ready…’cause you just never know the path someone will take to find and hire you. Keep your generic demos fresh!

It’s just one part of any good business plan. Scroll back a few posts to see some great responses from a couple of pros on some of the other business thoughts I’ve had over the past week or so.

http://isdnvoicetalent.wordpress.com/2009/12/22/more-on-the-business-of-vo/

http://isdnvoicetalent.wordpress.com/2009/12/21/tangible-and-intangible-assets-needed-for-voiceover-biz/

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:53+00:00December 23rd, 2009|Categories: Auditioning, Business, Marketing|Tags: Auditioning, Business, demos, ISDN, voiceover work|

More on the Business of VO

I read a lot of message boards and user groups focused on the voiceover biz. One of them is the Yahoo Voiceover Newsgroup and a recent thread has been about some of the many changes facing the – well, pretty much ANY business these days.

Combine the economy woes with the changes that the Internet brings every day and you have a lot of old-timers scrambling to make the new world of voiceover work for them. You also have more and more who want to break into the business lured by promises of easy money just for talking. It takes a lot more than just talent…

Here are a couple of paragraphs of sage advice from Jennifer Vaughn.

Talent doesn’t take the front seat in any successful business. A successful business requires a savvy business person who is knowledgeable in all the elements required to make a business profitable. That […]

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:53+00:00December 22nd, 2009|Categories: Business|Tags: bookkeeping, Jennifer Vaughn, luck, Marketing, talent, voiceover business|