- Your Voice Is A Wind Instrument - Cardio Will Improve it Dramatically

People ask me quite often what one of the single most important things is that they can do for their voice. The answer is "Get some regular exercise, cardio" (Always check with your Doctor before starting any exercise program).

There are about 126 muscles in the cricoid thyroid structure ( voice box) that are directly involved in phonation. That doesn't include all the muscles in the chest that are involved in breathing. When you are getting some kind of regular cardio exercise you are not only strengthening the whole support structure you are perfecting the coordination between the bellows of the lungs and how you speak. When you combine exercise with your voice and breathing exercises you will be amazed at how your voice will bloom into it's full beauty giving you more presence more authenticity and greater confidence.

- Voiceover Marketing and Industry Updates

The voiceover market is changing very rapidly. There are many new ways to get jobs and many new ways to market yourself to try and get those jobs. You have a number of choices and we are going to cover just a few of them.

You can set up your own web site or put your own voiceover demo on one of the many voiceover talent sites. Or you can do both. One of the main newer strategies is to have your own web site, which can be very simple and then pick three or four of the voiceover talent web sites to also put your demo and contact information on. This way you have postings on a number of talent sites and they all have links to your website. Each of these talents web sites spend a small fortune on advertising, so you don’t have too. There are literally thousands of potential clients visiting those sites so it’s very rapid exposure for the new person. You just have to make sure you’ve got a great demo so you can compete with all the other voices out there.

There was a time not so long ago that you either had to be represented by a voiceover talent agency or had to have a friend get you into corporate voiceover work. The internet has changed all of that. Everyone knows that money is much tighter now and many organizations are making use of on line casting rather than going to the more expensive voiceover talent agencies for talent. This means that you want to do as many marketing crossover plans as possible so all the organizations that need voiceover talent can become aware of you.

Many of the companies who do educational CD Roms post casting notices online and no longer go through voiceover talent agencies any more. They have discovered that they can get great talent at more competitive prices.

When you start thinking outside the box, you will come up with your own bright ideas about where to look for work and turn a lack of representation into an advantage because you can work cheaper and directly with clients. People ask me if they have to be online with a web site or have their demo on a voiceover talent site and the answer is absolutely yes. People have to be able to find you online.

Here’s a story to inspire you. A little while back a man called me and said he was doing a 30 second commercials for a company’s web site and needed a female voiceover artist. He said it was not for broadcast but for web use only and that it payed $1000. On a flat buyout. He asked if I could send him MP3s of 3 women that he could choose from. I said yes, I’d be happy to do that. He said, “Well, you’re the only one!!!!!” I was a little shocked and said what do you mean. He then started to explain that he had called three different talent agencies in town and they wouldn’t submit any demos of talent until he took the time to aswer a number of questions about his project and that all three of them said they would assign him an agent in the next two or three days to handle his project.

He laughed and said ya know, I‘m just trying to meet my production deadline and don’t have time for all of this red tape...

Well there you have another clear illustration of why more and more people are casting outside of voiceover talent agencies. These are just a few samples of how the industry is changing. Time is money and casting from online is very fast indeed.

Now lets move on to another issue. World wide buyouts. Many one or two line ads have involved an international buyout for 60k to 100k.

I know of two companies who decided that they would only pay 10k and the other company 20k for two short sentences in each case. Well everyone screamed and yelled, but in the end the voiceover talent who was getting 80k absolutely refused to go from 80k to 10k. How could she accept so little when she had been making 80k... On the other hand, the new person was of course thrilled to get 10k for two sentences... It’s still a lot of money.

It’s important to remember that work can come from the most unpredictable places. Sometimes people think they can only get work if a voiceover talent agency chooses to represent them, that is simply not true. Use your imagination and think where you might network to discover new opportunities.

In marketing and advertising, presentation is as important as networking. You are going to the trouble of finding networking opportunities and when you find them you don’t want to teach them that you are unprepared or amateurish. I recently watched a voiceover artist talk to the owner of a foundation that wants to hire some voiceover talent. He wanted to read for him on the spot, did so very poorly, and then wrote his name and number on a scrap of paper saying to the man, “I don’t have business cards or anything but I’m really glad I met you and I’d love to work for you”.

I mean, good grief, who in the world would ever be interested in someone who is that unprepared and sloppy. If you want to be hired by professionals who will pay good money, you must act like a professional who is worth good money. What do your materials look like? Are they clean with a nice design, or have you just printed your name on your demo. Graphic design services can be very affordable and they are a must so your business cards and your demo look like they belong to a pro. Make sure your email address has your name in it! Nothing bugs people more that not being able to type in your name and have you appear in an email address window because you use some “cool” name or phrase that isn’t your actual name. Save the funky email names like talldude@... for your friends. In business, it’s about making it simple for people to contact you.

You can be excited about your voiceover future, because there has never been a time when there are so many opportunities to do voiceover work, and so many new ways to find them.

- How you use your voice can change your life

 The Power to Persuade can create unlimited success. Our voice is the engine of that success. We can use it to create empires or a successful life, or to complain and explain why we are victims. Our tone of voice is very often a reflection of how we view the world. If we’re nervous and up tight the voice often has an edge and puts people off. Whether a person wants to be a voice over artist or more successful in their own profession it is extremely important to look for the good or opportunity in all situations and be patient. The things we say to ourselves control our mood and tone of voice. It is useless to do voice exercises to improve how we sound if we are saying negative things to ourselves because the voice will reflect the sound of mistrust that is in our minds.

We want to be optimistic, but not delusional of course. It’s important to use our voice to bring a positive experience to other people; To work at being pleasant. Then we notice that we have positive experiences ourselves. We really do attract and create the situations we are in. All of this is a process and takes time.

It is perfectly natural to say things like, “why can’t I do that,” “I wonder how to do that”, oh I could never do that.”

In order to develop greater ability to persuade people we must practice and be patient. Learning to allow for process is one of the most important things that we can practice in in our lives. Process is how the earth was made. Process is how math, science and art achieve all their great accomplishments and inspirations.

If we don’t allow process because of impatience we are literally making the choice to NOT understand because we have interrupted the process of building up familiarity, understanding and skill. Voiceover artists, teachers, sales people and everyone can become more persuasive and successful as we improve how we speak to others and the things we say to ourselves.

- Success and the "Power To Persuade" - What You Can Learn From Voiceovers

The human voice is a wonderful musical instrument. We rely on it to transmit the symphony of our ideas and feelings. The ability to persuade determines our financial success. Everything in life is about presentation, we connect with people based on how well we do it Whether we are  teachers, CEO’s, sales people, lawyers, politicians, religious leaders or managers, our voices are the engines that carry our ideas to others. Our voices provide the point of first contact with people.

We all want to be able to communicate effectively with people in our personal and professional lives. We all want to do it better and more successfully. No matter who we are, we all seek the power to persuade.

Non of this is magic. Rapport is composed of certain elements in our delivery. Voiceover artists have refined those elements to enjoy tremendous success with their communication skills.

Becoming aware of them, mastering them, hands us the keys to effective and successful communication which can take our lives to a whole new level of success. Whether you want to be a voiceover artist or just enjoy new levels of success in your profession, study the art of voiceovers.

- Studying Voiceover Skills Improves Success in Any Profession

The ability to persuade determines our financial success. In fact, everything in life is about vocal presentation. We connect with people, get hired, teach, and close deals based on the effective use and clarity of our voice. Whether you’re a teacher, receptionist, lawyer, salesperson, politician, program coordinator, CEO, team leader, doctor, negotiating or interviewing, it is our voice that carries our ideas to people. Success is a voice driven activity and studying voiceover skills can give you the vocal tools to achieve it.

Rapport with people isn’t magic, it is composed of certain elements in a person’s presentation. Are you ever frustrated because the training you’ve had doesn’t give you the results you want? Whether the training works or not depends entirely on delivery. The secrets for achieving your ambitions are contained in your own voice. All of success in business and personal relationships depends on your tone of voice and your vocal presentation. 

- Many Ways To Have A VoiceOver Career

The high profile voiceover jobs are wonderful and incredibly lucrative. A top voiceover guy once told me, "There's no other way you can make so much money without the risk of going to jail". It's easy to dream of national commercials and movie trailers, but there are literally thousands of ways to make great money lower on the food chain. Here are just a few of the ways: On hold messaging, power point presentations, corporate narratives, documentaries, HR department narratives, pharmaceutical narratives, industrial narratives of all kinds, audio books. Make a list of the ones that interest you most and go get them.

- Voiceover Skills Improve our Communication Skills in Any Language

Our ability to persuade people and communicate clearly is very important for all of us personally and professionally. Our success in life depends on our ability to communicate well with others.
We have entered a great new age where communication is dependent upon our ability to connect, and our ability to connect depends on what we decide to say and our manner of delivery. This is the result of the intensity of the information age. We cannot rely solely on the fact that we have the authority or the answer. We must have the ability to organize and personalize thoughts in order to be heard and understood. This has become of paramount importance in, corporations, hospitals, organizations and all of the service industries. How we communicate with our voices and how we organize ideas has never been as important as it is today. Our voice is the engine that carries our thoughts to people. Our voice and presentation is the point of first contact.

- Is There Room For You in the VoiceOver Industry?

I hear  people saying, "I'd love to do voiceovers, but everyone says it's way to competitive".
If you stop and think about it and ask yourself to make a list of high paying jobs that aren't really competitive, there won't be anything on the list.
Of course everything is highly competitive. If you wanted to be a lawyer, teacher, or open a carpet cleaning business, you would have to deal with the same issues. You would have to network, have great skills and be good with people. The other important thing to remember is everyone does not have to like you. You are looking for a number of people who like your voice and natural style.
You are not looking to be hired by everyone.
Things take time to set up and develop. Most people who are well trained and who feel like they just have to do voiceovers do, over time,  find clients who are happy to pay them for their work.
People who make a living doing voiceovers have been trained and have built up their careers over time because they love doing it, not because they were an instant success. Work hard, be patient, and don't give up:)

- More Voiceover Work Than Ever

I'm amazed that everything is being digitized now. There are fewer and fewer brochures and more and more voiceovers explaining everything under the sun. Remember that HR departments are creating and endless stream of audio and narrated power point presentations to train employees.
Gone are the days when companies would pay huge sums of money to bring in experts to train people on every subject from process to presentations, (I was one of them for the state of California).
Now everything is done as a recording and then kept and updated in their training libraries.
New authors are also looking to create audio books of their new works to broaden their income potential.
Go get them!

- Print models can make big money doing voiceovers

Many people make great money with a modeling career, but they often aren’t aware that they can make a lot of money doing voiceovers as well. I have noticed that people who model are often very socially adept and communicate really well with people. These are skills that translate beautifully to the world of voiceovers. They are, in fact, the exact skills that are required to have a successful voiceover career. Doing voiceovers for the fashion industry, being a spokesmodel, and other related industries is a natural use of the communication and social skills that models seem to acquire naturally.