Business – Page 14 – Connie Terwilliger

Twitter? Facebook? LinkedIn? Email? Smart Phone? POT? Blogs? SEO? What works?

It has been an interesting year – trying to find the right mix of media to keep in contact with my clients and potential clients. Depending on who you talk to, the mix of media can be one or more of the above, in any order and in every possible percentage. What works for you?

I’m finding that my Blackberry lets me get out of the studio, but getting out of the studio means less time to work my network of contacts. And being an early adopter of nearly everything technological (I had a Kaypro), I have had to try out social media as a way to connect.

Can’t say that it is really working for me yet – although I did manage to land a nice project through a Facebook happy coincidence. I joined an e-Learning group the same day someone else did who happened to be looking for female voice […]

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:42+00:00April 5th, 2010|Categories: Business, Marketing|Tags: Facebook, Marketing, voiceover business|

Technology Update

Never reported back about the new Toshiba laptop. Working great! Except for some sort of Toshiba software that keeps opening up telling me I have messages, it has been a seamless transition. At some point, I will spend a few minutes and turn that off.

Took just a few minutes to get the audio chain set up so that I knew I could reliably record on the road. The first set up was with the dbx mini pre-amp I have been using for years, but early in the week a new MicPort Pro arrived and that was even easier to set up. I’m hooked on it, just like everyone else I know who has one.

The only thing I am missing right now is a single piece of Auralex acoustic foam in the 2″ pyramids – not the long wedges – the little pyramids. Need to replace the old foam in my […]

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:42+00:00April 3rd, 2010|Categories: Business, Recording, Technology|Tags: Auralex, dbx, MicPort Pro, Technology, Toshiba, voiceover|

When Volunteering Collides with Work

The balance of business and personal time is changing dramatically for me this past year. And I am trying to figure out if this is a good thing or not. While business has been a bit weird this quarter, it has been steady with repeat customers and some new – but no dramatic up tick.

This could be the economy, or it could be that my marketing efforts have been waylaid by my personal and other volunteer committments.

I’ve learned the marketing lesson before. You stop marketing yourself and people forget who you are. Well, not everyone, but you know what I mean.

Between my new responsibilities (and frankly new life) with my mom who moved close to me last April, my continuing volunteer work for MCA-I, roles in community theater performances, friends, classes, relationships – there just isn’t the same amount of time to do the […]

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:43+00:00March 28th, 2010|Categories: Business, Musings|

New Toshiba Laptop Arrived

Ah, technology today. My new Toshiba Satellite laptop was on the front porch yesterday.

Open the box. Plug it in. It finds my network. Asks a couple of questions and boom, we are up and running. This one has Windows 7 on it. So far, it seems pretty self-explanatory and user friendly.

Now comes the task of loading all my software on it to see if it is user friendly for the various programs. This will take me until the end of the week probably.

The basics:

Adobe Audition (done, not checked yet for recording)
Office (at least Excel and Word – maybe Front Page for website updates on the road)
Vox Studio
Word 2 Wav
Paint Shop Pro
Miscellaneous enhancements for playing audio, video, etc.

Connie Terwilliger2010-03-10T08:27:18+00:00March 10th, 2010|Categories: Business, Technology|Tags: computer upgrade, software, voiceover business|

A Stuffed PO Box!

Don’t you just love the feeling of opening the PO Box and finding it full of #10 envelopes! Checks! This time of year, however, the envelopes are usually a tad larger and need to be saved for the tax man.

1099s are flooding into my PO Box the past few weeks. Be sure to check them carefully and SAVE them! I had the IRS come back to me on my 2007 taxes saying that I owed them some ungodly amount close to 10 grand.

They thought that one of my 1009s was for 58 thousand dollars. Huh? Wow, that would have been a great client! After my heart stopped pounding, I realized that it was probably a typo and contacted my client who was able to quickly send me a replacement 1009 to show the IRS that the total was 58 hundred dollars, not 58K.

I’m not a fan of this side of the business, but […]

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:51+00:00February 3rd, 2010|Categories: Business|Tags: taxes, vo business|

Read the Manual

My inclination – when faced with a new piece of software (or pretty much anything) – is to install it and start using it. Read the manual? Not me. There are menus and a help button! (In the case of my cell phone, there is 611.)

Manuals usually have pages and pages of information that I already know and to find the bit of information I don’t know would require formulating a question that the Table of Contents understands.

However, in the case of Word 2 Wav, the manual is simple and short. Had I read the manual, I would have been able to save myself even MORE time this past year. Thank goodness Herve reads the forums.

W2W is a wonderful piece of software that I use at the beginning of my recording process for long form narration and IVR files. Although it is not a finishing program […]

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:51+00:00January 30th, 2010|Categories: Business, Recording, Technology|Tags: Adobe Audition, Excel spreadsheet, Technology, telephony, Vox Studio, Word2Wav|

Virtual Talent Agency or P2P (Pay to Play)?

With automated online casting now moving past walking and starting to run (it is about 5 years old now?), there is still a lot of controversy about the concept.

Without a doubt some sort of online casting will be with us as long as we have the Internet, but how will these sites evolve? That is the question some voice talent are bantering about in a couple of forums as a result of a post that Cairo based voice talent Mahmoud Taji added to his Voiceover Emporium site.

http://www.voiceemporium.com/archives/01/tajis-frankenstein-monster/

Read the discussions, follow the links. Educate yourself. See if you can come up with the ideal online automated casting entity.

Connie Terwilliger2010-01-28T18:43:42+00:00January 28th, 2010|Categories: Auditioning, Business, Technology|Tags: online casting, p2p, virtual talent agency, voiceover casting|

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|

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|

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|