Business – Page 12 – Connie Terwilliger

The Free Lance Mindset Helps Bridge the Gap

I have always been risk averse. Never was a dare devil. Never did anything “wrong” when I was growing up. I was a good kid, because I didn’t want to get into trouble. I couldn’t imagine gambling, or playing the stock market. So how did I end up in the kind of job where you never know from day to day if you are going to earn money?!

It could be due to the fact that I saved the peanuts from the Peanut M&M’s during road trips so I would be able to spread out the goodness for a long time. It could be because of my parent’s example of creative eclectic thriftyness. It could also be due to the number of places I lived while growing up – my stability was in being flexible. The ability to jump in and make things happen in pretty much any situation.

And due to the […]

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:37+00:00October 17th, 2010|Categories: Business, Marketing, Negotiating|

Fafftermath

I didn’t coin this – fafftermath – but it is what is happening to at least some of the people who attended the first ever FaffCon in Portland OR, September 11 and 12, 2010.

One of the things Amy, the organizer did near the end of the last day, was force everyone in the general session to answer some questions and write down some action items. This was so that we didn’t get back home and let life take over without capitalizing on the information that was shared and the energy that was exchanged and enhanced.

I managed to walk off without my notebook and my notes – and all my remaining business cards, but I did remember at least one of my action items (or if it isn’t on the list when I finally do see it again, it is now!)…get in contact with old clients.

So I have make it a […]

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:37+00:00September 21st, 2010|Categories: Business, Techniques, Technology|

I Love My SEO – But I Could Probably Love It More

SEO – Search Engine Optimization. Without it you do not exist. Well, your website doesn’t exist in the eyes of the search engines and that is like not existing. People can’t find you when the go looking for someone like you.

While people finding me on the web is only part of my overall marketing strategy, it has become a very active “passive” method of bringing new clients to my door. And I have not paid for placement in a long long time. A few years ago I experimented with pay-per-click, but quickly saw what seemed to me like far too much money going out without an equal or greater amount of money coming in.

I was already (and still am) pretty well placed in most of the search engines, simply by the fact that I have been online with a web presence since 1996. First with corporatevideo.com and then shortly thereafter with voiceover-talent.com. […]

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:37+00:00September 14th, 2010|Categories: Business|

A Pat on the Back

We “voiceoverists” (a term coined by self-proclaimed and deservedly so Top Voiceoverist Philip Banks) are celebrating our wonderfulness this month! Out of the blue it is National Voice Over Appreciation Month – or simply National Voice Over Month. It should probably be International Voiceover Month, but the domain says National, so I guess we’ll just have to assume that this means any voiceover folk in ANY Nation!

http://nationalvoiceovermonth.com/index.html

Peter O’Connell was one of a small cadre of voice talent who brainstormed this idea. Peter says, “For the thousands of professional male and female voice over talents, the joy of participating in this industry is recognition enough. But National Voice Over Month allows everyone the chance to understand and appreciate these special artists.”

Dave Courvoisier, Advisory Board member of the non-profit Society of Accredited Voice Over Artists (SaVoa), says “Calling for a month-long […]

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:37+00:00September 2nd, 2010|Categories: Announcements, Business, Musings|

One door closes…

I saw a Facebook post from a friend today that talked about a regular client who had decided to move their voice work in house – so minus one job. But shortly thereafter a new client entered the picture. Subsequent comments to her post illustrates that this is a common occurance for people in our business – with those who are good at what they do.

The same kind of thing happened to me today. I was just starting to record the first of 4 modules for a semi-regular client, when I ran across some small questions about the script (acronym land) and called to clarify. He was in the process of writing to tell me that plans had changed and the end client had suddenly decided not to move forward on the project at this time. So, he told me to bill him for my efforts so far and we’d […]

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:37+00:00August 31st, 2010|Categories: Business, Marketing, Musings|

Another set of ears

Interesting stuff happened in my class today. I teach one class a semester at a local community college – an introduction to voice acting class. The assignment was to listen to demos – I gave them voicebank.net and voice123.com as two places they could hear lots of “demos.”

I told them to listen primarily to commercial demos at this point in the class. And gave them a couple of things to be aware of with each site. Voicebank – depending on which agency you select – will have the “stars.” Many of whom don’t have real “demos” – well, because they don’t need no stinkn’ demos. And in fact, that is what some of the students discovered. Several well known actors didn’t have real demos – just a sample of a spot or two. Others found great demos from both the stars and the non-stars.

On Voice123, I told them that they […]

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:38+00:00August 25th, 2010|Categories: Auditioning, Business|

Quality Assurance Meets Absurd Quantity

We all need differentiators to help set us apart from the growing army of voiceoverists* so that we end up with our fair share of the sacks of money* waiting to be spent on voiceovers.

(*Inside joke from the VO-BB.com)

One of the things I “sell” is my quality assurance. I spend time making sure that the files I send are as close to perfection as possible. This is fairly easy to do if you have a standard :30 or :60 spot. Couple of minutes to record a couple of takes. A quick couple of minutes to listen and clean up any little blups and boom, the file is out and you are 100% sure that it is ready for your client to drop into their production timeline. Make mistakes with this simple kind of work and you won’t stay in business long.

But much of my work includes vast numbers of […]

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:38+00:00August 17th, 2010|Categories: Business, Techniques|Tags: Adobe Audition, naming files, quality assurance, Recording, VO-BB, Vox Studio, Word2Wav|

Get your ACT! together…

OK, that was probably not very original, but I really need to get my contact act together.

I mentioned in an earlier post about being in reaction mode – and one of the ways to help this situation is to get a better handle on my contact database. I tried Outlook Business Contact for a while, but after many phone calls with their tech support,helping them debug the software, I just gave up and have been limping along with the regular Contact part of Outlook for the past few years.

After researching several other CRM solutions, I installed ACT. While still in the early learning stages of this new software, I see that it integrates pretty well with Outlook – although I don’t know exactly how at this point.

So I imported more than 1400 “contacts” from Outlook into ACT! and started weeding and feeding. After the initial purge of duplicate cell phone numbers created in […]

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:38+00:00August 14th, 2010|Categories: Business, Marketing|

Time Balancing Act

There has to be a better way to allocate my time. Lately I seem to be living in reaction mode. The BlackBerry has a lot to do with this I think.

Ever since I got the little pacifier, I am a slave to the flashing red light. It sits next to my keyboard while I am working on an edit or doing some research or marketing or bookkeeping – and when it starts to flash I am COMPELLED to stop what I am doing, pick it up, and see what emergency is calling.

OK, not very many emergencies in the voiceover business, but probably more than one would expect. But usually it is something like an ad for discount travel or hotels, chain letters from friends, Facebook updates, and auditions. I also get scripts from clients for jobs and requests for quotes for possible jobs.

The point is that instead of finishing up what […]

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:38+00:00July 28th, 2010|Categories: Business, Communication, Marketing, Musings|

FaffCon? What the heck is FaffCon?

So what the heck is FaffCon – that isn’t a real word. No. But it has deep significance for us voiceoverists. (At least those of us who hang out on the VO-BB.)

It comes from the word faff “which means to blow in gusts…..so to go nowhere in particular….to mess about. ” This is from a UK Yahoo Answers page.To some “faffing about” means – “To muck about, wasting time doing something not necessary.”

But this coming September it means a lot more than that. If you’re a working voice over professional, you’re invited to the first ever voiceover unconference in Portland Oregan (USA)! FaffCon!

Far from being just something the waste a bunch of time and money, FaffCon promises to be (according to Faffy*) …

You know all the […]

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:38+00:00July 16th, 2010|Categories: Announcements, Business|