Business – Page 16 – Connie Terwilliger

Know Thyself and Focus!

I am where I am today (making a living as a voiceover talent) by having a wide variety of sounds and doing a wide variety of projects. But I am not where I want to be – which is spending far less time working, marketing, bookkeeping, etc. What will get to me to where I want to be (making a much BETTER living as a voiceover talent so that I have more time) is focusing on the “real” me.

Kevin Delaney – Voiceover Ninja – writes about this often and has created a new blog called The Wealthy Bohemian that is even more focused on the topic of wealth building by using all the tools of today (the Internet, Social Networking, email).

And then, the other day my friend Bob Souer discussed this same general concept on his blog with lots of great […]

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:55+00:00October 3rd, 2009|Categories: Business, Marketing|Tags: bob souer, kevin delaney, voiceover, voiceover ninja|

Evolve or Die…

Yes – it’s true – we must evolve or we will go out of business. I’ve used that phrase before (Evolve or Die) when discussing the changes that the performer’s unions need to make in order to survive, but it is also the premise of today’s Voice Over Today electronic newsletter published by Edge Studio.

TO SUBSCRIBE: send a blank email to: VoiceOverToday-on@edgestudio.com

They highlighted four areas that will cause you to lose clients. This is a message every voice talent (beginner or pro) should think about. Most of the folks I know do think about these Four Points, but it never hurts to have a reminder. So see below for the article – written by Edge Studio.

**************

**Vocal Delivery: ARE YOU NO LONGER TRAINING?

Story: A while ago, one of our clients hired a student we had just trained to narrate a large series of videos. They loved his voice. Recently we hired him back to […]

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:55+00:00September 30th, 2009|Categories: Business, Marketing, Teaching, Technology|Tags: Business, Marketing, professionalism, Technology, training, voiceover|

Amateurs vs Professionals

The Internet voiceover community is ablaze with controversy these days. Perhaps it is the business climate fanning the flames, but there has been a lot of talk about professionals versus amateurs. Who should be allowed to play in the sand box? Should there be separate sand boxes?

Check out Paul Strikwerda’s Double Dutch blog this week. He reposted it on LinkedIn as well, so be sure to follow the threads in both places. Very interesting. I love the way Paul writes in general, but this post included references to classical symphonies -a subject near to my heart because my brother is a world-class Horn Player with (according to Paul’s sources) the world’s 6th best orchestra.

http://nethervoice.com/nethervoice/2009/09/23/should-amateurs-be-ousted-from-voice-over-sites/

http://www.linkedin.com/newsArticle?viewDiscussion=&articleID=71289844&gid=137057

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:55+00:00September 25th, 2009|Categories: Business|Tags: Double Dutch blog, Paul Strikwerda, professional vs amateur, voiceover|

What!? Friday!? Again!? Already!?

OK, so it was a short week, but it came in with a bang and kept on going.

Some nice gigs with regular clients – even a couple through my local agent. Lots of auditions – through Voice123 (quite a flurry there), and various agents and other places I’m listed across the country. A direct contact through Voice123. An ISDN session scheduled for Monday with no audition – sweet!

And there was the fleeting potential of a gig with a new client who found me on the net. He was looking for a backstage live announcer for a large corporate meeting coming up in January of 2010. Love those jobs. Nothing like live to keep your brain active and your energy up. Three days – in town. Cool.

But, wait – the end of January? Hmm, I have been booked the past three years at the end of January on ANOTHER backstage live announce job. Was […]

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:55+00:00September 11th, 2009|Categories: Auditioning, Business|Tags: agent, Auditioning, back stage announcer, booking, live announcer, loyalty|

An actual holiday!

No voiceover work this weekend! I have projects I can do – but no looming deadlines, so I was able to actually not record this weekend. No juicy auditions on any of the P2P sites, so seriously, I didn’t have to chill down the studio at all for 3 whole days.

Did I use the time wisely? Well, I guess that depends on your point of view. I took down the screens from the front windows. Hosed them down. Vacuumed and then scrubbed the window sills. Went to the gym a couple of times. Longs brisk walks. Laundry. And a daily trip over to a friend’s house to feed and play with her cat.

Picked about 50 pounds of figs and prepared them a couple of ways for a pool party. First I sliced the nice ripe ones in about 1/4 inch slices and drizzled them with Balsamic. Ah, yummy. Then I […]

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:55+00:00September 7th, 2009|Categories: Business|Tags: figs, holiday, pool party, voiceover work|

Gah! August Already!?

Yikes! Where did the year go? Most of us are probably wondering the same thing as we move into back-to-school time.

And what did we accomplish so far in 2009 so far? Is everyone on track? Do we know what track we are on? Do we know which track we want to be/should be on?

I use Outlook and have set up Categories so that I can make notes in my Calendar about how I am spending my time. Recording is Green, Marketing is Gold, Training is Yellow, Business is Blue, Volunteer work is a lighter Green and Personal stuff is Orange…that sort of thing. The Orange is winning by leaps and bounds since April when my mom moved out here from New York State.

But it’s not all mom time. Some of it is morning coffee time with my friends. Some of it is exercise time. Some of it is theater time – and lately a […]

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:57+00:00August 3rd, 2009|Categories: Business, Musings|Tags: business decision, career, voiceover|

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. […]

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:57+00:00July 31st, 2009|Categories: Business|Tags: bookkeeping, Business, education, training, voiceover|

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 […]

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:57+00:00July 26th, 2009|Categories: Business|Tags: Annie Blevins, computer tech support, Jeff Gelder|

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 […]

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:58+00:00July 20th, 2009|Categories: Business|