We just completed the third week of Harlan Hogan’s month-long STARTING YOUR VOICEOVER BUSINESS: Everything You Need To Know To Turn Your Dream Or Your Sideline Into A Business teleseminar series.
Tonight’s major topics: Finding The Work and Getting The Work. We asked our students to send us their candid reviews. Here they are.
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I really appreciate looking at our voice over business as being broken down into three parts: the entrepreneur, the craft and the manager. Seeing how this week was devoted to the entrepreneur, I was really interested in how I am going to find and get work. After listening to this call I feel I have a better idea of where I can start looking for work, how to promote myself and how I can go out and get the work. I also have been able to identify some of my strengths and weaknesses in these areas and feel like I start to put together a plan and then work the plan.
I’m looking forward to the Q and A tomorrow evening. I am interested in delving a little deeper into finding and getting the work.
I am so impressed with the marketing aspects of this class. Tonight’s 2 hours flew by so quickly that I couldn’t believe it was over…
I’m really looking forward to tomorrow’s q and a. This is the meat and potatoes of the class, and I really appreciate all the work you both put into this, and your incredible ability to cover this volume of information so quickly and thoroughly.
Talk to you tomorrow night—thanks for everything!
Random thoughts on week 3 from a tired old gal…
Holy cow! Jam-packed with information!
Great to have ideas of where to go to to look for prospective clients.
Motivated me to quit fooling around on the net and do something to actually get work. The phrase "Is what I'm doing have the potential to lead to work?" will be something I will be now asking myself.
Found that I've been doing so much wrong– like my website. Need to take some things off of my website.
Learned that I really do need to do some self promotion and how important that is.
Learned the value of face to face sales calls.
Ran smoothly and went right along.
Still don't understand the idea behind the trinket thing. When I was a P/D (industrials) I hated getting that stuff. It really was junk to me and I was never going to hire someone just because they sent me a pen & notepad or a stopwatch or M & M's. Now, I can understand if it was someone I worked with before and we had a relationship and we actually knew something about eachother but ya know, I never received trinkets from talent I hired (never expected it either) just from those prospecting. Perhaps I'm out of touch with what's in vogue.
This has been the best of the teleseminars, at least from my point of view as a working voice actor. Much valuable, practical and (most importantly) actionable information. This one call was worth the price of admission, at least for me.
Specifically of most value:
The 12 questions to ask about online casting sites
The review of Dan’s web site guidance (I have Dan’s entire workshop on CD, but haven’t listened in a while)
The relentless reminder that there’s nothing wrong with being relentless about building my voiceover business.
The extra credit bonus was the extemely gracious things you had to say about my blog. Harlan, I didn’t know you were even aware of it. I sat with my mouth agape while that was going on.
I am very excited about all of the information that we got tonight. It was amazingly comprehensive on a number of subjects without being overwhelming. I have traditionally been a lousy self-promoter, but breaking it down as you have makes it seem not quite as scary. My goal is to have my website written and hosted by Saturday, but I appreciate your willingness to look at the pages without the hosting, if necessary. I can’t believe how fast this class is going by, but how prepared I feel to jump out of the nest.
Once again you’ve completely gone far and above my expectations with tonight’s class! The topic – “Finding Work” and “Getting Work” is the main reason why I signed up for the class – though both of the previous weeks had plenty of great stuff too. Voiceover is something that I did for a living but nothing I made a living at – if you get what I mean. It was always a “salaried position”. NOW I know that there is far more to getting the big jobs than just doing a demo for some agent somewhere and hoping they can get me in there. On some level I always knew that, but tonight you both gave me tools and techniques to put to use in making this happen.
On the strength of what I’ve learned over the past two weeks and especially tonight I will say flat-out you could double, perhaps even triple your fee for doing this seminar. (Glad I got in on the ground floor). As always, looking forward to tomorrow night and Thursday.
Tonight's call was chock full of useful information! The info on websites from both Harlan's and Dan's perspectives was great because Harlan dealt with it from the Voice Over talent (entrepreneur) view and then Dan gave us great insight on what our customers expect when they get to our websites.
The Prospecting/Client resources section was especially helpful, a real project starter (one I will begin after answering those 12 casting site questions). I have not been a ruthless self-promoter in the past, so that's an area I'm going to have work hard on. And the Audition and Branding Position portions are ones that I'll probably have questions on for Tuesday's Q&A session. Thanks for a great call!
I got the most out of this module as it was the one that I really needed the most aside frrom next week (managing my business like a business). The crazy thing is that I’ve been in real estate for the last few years, and finally realized that I could be doing all the same types of marketing for my VO business that I previously dedicated to real estate, all the way down to the marketing software, which allows you to track your progress and create action plans.
It’s time to get busy and be the true working pro that I know I can and will be, with the right plan in place. I WILL FINALLY TAKE THE NECESSARY STEPS TO BE A FULL TIME VOICE ACTOR!
Thank you so much for such an informative class. I enjoy how clear and entertaining you two are in your presentations! I found the information about what to include and not include on a website to be extremely helpful as I’m meeting with my web guy this week. I look forward to applying what I learned tonight to the work I’ll be doing later.This class continues to be extremely valuable, thanks!
This class is great. Marketing seemed like an obstacle I couldn’t overcome. After this class I feel like I have the tools to turn my dreams into reality.
Our Voiceovers as a business class for May 18, was jam-packed with extremely potent information! Website do’s and don’ts – Audition etiquette — Prospecting in all manner of places – Online pitfalls and pluses– the Promoting and MARKETING !!!
I like the class outline/study guide and order of the topics covered, and I thought that the information on the Branding was especially important! A question I might have later, is how to maintain the same branding (or can/does one need to?) as we move from genre to genre? Genre Vs. Branding?
I certainly would sound differently as a cartoon character (I aspire to return to that big time) than I would performing a commercial. I expect that so long as your Brand is firm and consistent throughout the demo, whatever the genre then the target client will recognize what he/she wants to hear?
At certain moments during the marketing section I felt a bit bewildered, not in its conveyance, but in its execution on my part and all that entails. I understand logically what needs to be done now that I have this great information– that’s start! I was thinking about how I personally I would gather prospects and then act upon them, navigating through all of the channels to arrive at the marketing and promoting stage — and ultimately the audition.
It really made me stop and think– What it is we REALLY MUST do and continually to keep doing to keep working.! I also had to ask myself whether I’m the right candidate for constantly prospecting every moment of my waking life, since I can see that other than winning the prize of being signed on to an ongoing Union cartoon series this is the only way one can WIN as a freelance voiceover business. One must also be their own talent agent, in the three-hat dynamic!
As an animation artist, once I have the connection, I’m on the project for a protracted amount of time – When I performed a few cartoon character voiceover projects, after having won the parts, I simply drove or flew and just showed up!
This is an entirely NEW ballgame – I was very happy to see another realistic dimension and yet doable picture of this art as a business in last night’s class, and we need this to develop the marketing skill. I’m a people-person but selling is something else, and I appreciate the concept from Harlan and Dan that it is NOT about YOU, it is about THEM and how and what you can do to HELP them. That makes it a whole lot easier to digest, since I always like helping people!
I do think I AM that candidate for winning at voiceovers as a business!
I enjoyed the discussion on websites, finding work and self promotion. I’ve noticed that numerous Voice Actor websites, even those of professionals, often disregard many of the guidelines that were provided, chief among them is numerous clicking requirements to obtain a desired result, resulting in wasted time.
Hopefully, that means that my own website, without such diversions, is much more user friendly.
I also liked the 12 resource prospecting client list. Like any good plan, I may even pick it up and use it!
Another set of wonderful topics were discussed this week! I learned more about positioning and branding by first experiencing the analysis of demos, and then beginning to apply it to my own web site. I love when you refer books and metaphors (like the central hub idea for branding). It gives me a clearer picture in my mind, and best of all, I know I have a source to read more about it.
On a different theme, I’m already beginning to see that building a contact list is vital, the lifeblood of success. Making a cold call was such a stumbling block for me, but listening to the strategies of checking out a business on a web site, and sharing excerpts of actual conversations you might have as an icebreaker made me realize it’s not such a fearful endeavor. I was getting bogged down with companies that would put me on voice message or dump me into a voice mailbox. Worse still, when I was researching in the yellow pages, making a call, and being told their company only handled visual advertisements. I was getting really embarrassed and frustrated, but didn’t have a way to counter the issue. When I would call again, I felt I just wasn’t able to connect with the “right” person. Since I had no frame of reference to make those calls, I felt I was stumbling around in the dark. I now keep repeating my new mantra, “I can promise THE solution to a corporate narration problem! So…now I’ve branded myself over the past couple of days. I feel I have a stronger position to make those introductory calls! Thank you! I’ll chart out my SWOT this afternoon (yes, Dan, I wrote it on my calendar!)
Thank you for the deep thoughts and time commitment you both have made. I’m hoping you’ll write, hold a prerecorded/live seminar, or record a book so you’ll continue to share your expertise with others. I admire your sense of educating us toward the real world business of VO!
You guys ROCK!
Thanks! I also purchased another domain name yesterday… and have it linked to my main address as per your suggestion. (Thanks again!) In addition, I’ve added 1 G storage space on my website to house my FTP connection for easy client download! I’m going to finish setting that up today! Woohoo!
Every week I am more and more impressed with the knowledge you guys have on this business. If only one of you were teaching, this would be a great course, BUT because you’re both teaching it simultaneously, the synergistic information makes this course a cut above the rest.