It’s National Entrepreneurs’ Day and to celebrate in true BOSS fashion, we are gonna be super real with you. RUNNING AND OWNING A BUSINESS IS HARD! There are ups, downs, fears, uncertainty, feast, famine, and everything in between. Some days, as a boss, you’re barely in control! Get off the roller coaster, and take a 20 minute Boss Break to empathize (or bitch it out) with our boss ladies. And stick around for the outtakes!
Takeaways
Quick Concepts from Today’s Episode:
Celebrate being an entrepreneur and ALL of the ups and downs.
Running a business is super hard some days. It’s not all rainbows and sunshine.
You are not alone in these feelings and it’s not you.
Sometimes entrepreneurs just have to figure things out on their own.
Most of us would do it again and tolerate all the discomfort in order to reap the rewards.
Most bosses frequently question if they are doing the right thing or making the right decisions.
We are all control freak, Type As who want things done our way.
Business owners rarely know what they are doing 100% of the time.
Most people get into voiceover because of a passion/love for the industry and job. Serial entrepreneurs have a different motivation.
Voiceovers get over emotional and frequently think with our hearts, not our heads.
Fear and anxiety are a bigger part of business than most people acknowledge.
Referenced in this Episode
Direct links to things we brought up ++
Recorded with ipDTL
Transcript
>> Today’s voiceover talent is more than just a pretty voice.
>> Pretty voice.
>> Pretty voice.
>> Pretty voice.
>> Today’s voiceover talent has to be a boss.
>> Boss.
>> A boss.
>> A boss.
>> Join us each week for business owner strategies and success with your hosts Anne Ganguzza and Gabrielle Nistico, along with some of the strongest voices in our industry.
>> Rock your business.
>> Rock your business.
>> Rock your business.
>> Like a boss.
>> Like a boss.
>> Rock your business like a boss.
>> Rock your business like a boss.
>> A VO BOSS.
>> A VO BOSS.
>> A VO BOSS.
Gabby: Long before we had combined our BOSS powers, Ms. Ganguzza, I wrote a little publication by the name of “How to set up and Maintain a Better Voiceover Business.” [laughs] And it is an absolute must, not only for the business basics of voiceover and to help kind of get your BOSS butt in gear, especially if the business side of our world has always been a little bit of a strain for you, but also it’s gonna help you with your marketing, and branding, and helping you to develop your own personal brand in voiceover.
Anne: Find out more by going to voboss.com and then click on that shop tab.
Gabby: All right, now, on to today’s episode.
Anne: Welcome, everybody to the VO BOSS podcast. I’m your host, Anne Ganguzza, along with my entrepreneurial bosstie, Gabby Nistico. Hey, Gabby!
Gabby: Hi!
Anne: Gabby, this morning, I had to put my head in my hands in frustration. You know something, being an entrepreneur is mrghh hard.
Gabby: Well, yeah.
Anne: Oh my God, it’s hard.
Gabby: It’s such a double-edged sword. Right? Today is National Entrepreneurs Day, which —
Anne: Yay! Happy National Entrepreneurs Day.
Gabby: — which is kind of awesome, right, and we should celebrate that, and we should be, you know, like blowing kazoos and all kinds of things, and, and making noise, and patting ourselves on the back.
[kazoo noises]
Anne: Yeah.
Gabby: We don’t necessarily get to do that because damn it, it’s hard. [laugh]
Anne: It’s so much —
Gabby: So much [bleep] to do.
Anne: I say that, because all of our listeners out there, to know that, yeah, it’s hard. It’s so hard. And it’s OK. Like you don’t have to pretend that everything is all happy and flowers and roses, because this crap is hard. Oh my gosh, I on an almost daily basis, when I’m like looking at the numbers, writing checks in terms of, you know, my investments in my business and paying out my employees every month, it’s like, oh my gosh. So, I, I get scared, I get frustrated, I get sad. Ugh. And I just want you guys to know that that’s normal, I think. Right, Gabby? It’s normal?
Gabby: It is. It is normal. For entrepreneurs, especially those of you that are still new in your business, you might be saying, “is it me, is it me? What am I doing wrong? What am I doing wrong?” It’s not you. It’s not you. This is freaking hard. This sucks most days. It’s so much work, and it’s so much energy, it’s draining, it’s taxing.
Anne: And it goes on. [laughs] You think it gets easier, and the funny thing is and what I’ve realized is that as we grow and our businesses grow, it doesn’t always make it easier, because we all of a sudden face new challenges.
Gabby: Of course.
Anne: And we have new decisions to make, and, and then there’s always that uncertainty. Oh my gosh, Gabby, the uncertainty. And it’s scary. Wow, it’s scary.
Gabby: As adults, right, we look back at our childhood or our early adulthood and go, “oh my gosh, if only I could go back to having that little responsibility, or you know, those few bills.” And then I thought it was horrible. Yeah.
Anne: I mean, if I were a cat right now, like —
Gabby: Right, right.
Anne: I look at my cats, and I say, if only. [laughs]
Gabby: I want to come back as a Ganguzza cat, that’s for damn sure.
Anne: Yeah, I’m coming back as a cat for sure. I think it’s important for everyone to understand it doesn’t, it’s not all roses.
Gabby: No.
Anne: It doesn’t always run smooth. You’re not always making a profit. Right? You’re not always exactly sure what you should do, and there may not be somebody out there that can give you an answer. Right? Sometimes we’re just, we’re in uncharted territory.
Gabby: [laughs]
Anne: And no one knows the answer.
Gabby: Yes. Sometimes you just got to figure that out. And here’s the thing. We’re kind of being like total downers and very pessimistic for it being National Entrepreneurs Day, but —
Anne: It’s real, Gabby. We’re being real.
Gabby: Look, I used to have, truthfully, quarterly meltdowns, quarterly. Like every quarter, you would find me balled up on the couch like bawling my eyes out [laughs] hysterical, and it was either because it wasn’t making enough money, or because I was overwhelmed, right, I was, I didn’t have enough free time. I didn’t have, I wasn’t taking me time, that’s for damn sure. So I was, you know, probably not getting enough sleep, and I was just overworked, and I, and I think about it, and I’m like, OK. Went through it. Right, I’m out the other side. Was it, was it worth it, and would I go through it again? Yeah, I would.
Anne: We don’t intend to be complete downers here, but we do want to say that, yeah. You know what, at the other end of the tunnel, was it worth it? One of our more recent podcasts interviews that we did with Hilary Jastram, she has a point in her book where she says, you need to ask yourself a couple of questions. Are you having more of the good days or more of the bad days? And the other question you have to ask yourself, so how did that work out for you? And once you get past, once you get past that, that initial like, you know, shock or that initial like, “oh, what are you talking about? Why, why are you even asking me this?” You ask yourself that, and you really try to make a determination as to if you’re going on the right path, right, and a lot of that is are you on the right path in growing your business or in maintaining your business, whatever it is, is it still giving you that joy with all the frustration, hardship? Are you still on a path where you’re having more good days than bad days?
Gabby: Yeah, but sometimes, Anne, we don’t know.
Anne: Yeah.
Gabby: We just don’t know how to answer that – I mean, I think back, and I go, so much of my anxiety and stress and early hardship in business was the not knowing.
Anne: That’s the, it’s so scary.
Gabby: We go into business because we’re type A’s. If you’re listening to this podcast, and you’re not a type A person — please like write in, because we need to do a case study on you.
Anne: Yeah.
Gabby: And like probably put you in a lab and dissect you because then what the hell are you doing running a business?
[both laugh]
Gabby: We all have that control freak nature about us. We all have —
Anne: Oh, I thought that was just me, Gabby.
Gabby: Yeah, no. It’s all you. Yeah.
[both laugh]
Gabby: You know, we have all these —
Anne: [laughs] I am such a control freak, oh my goodness.
Gabby: — proclivities, and quirks, and oddities about us, and we need it done our way, and so it creates stress. It creates this environment, but the biggest thing is, yeah, for me, it was always I don’t know. I don’t know what’s around the next corner. I don’t know what next month is gonna look like. I don’t know how to project my quarterly income for next quarter because I don’t even know what’s going to happen this quarter.
Anne: For me, it was all about, is it normal? Is this the way it’s supposed to be?
Gabby: [laughs]
Anne: Like if I’m growing my business, is this, like, is this how it works? Right? And the fact is, Gabby, like you said we, we don’t know. And, and for us control freaks, right, that is a scary, scary thing not knowing. And a lot of times, myself, a lot of times I had to throw it out to the universe, and just give it some time, and wait for it to come back, see if it worked. And that probably, Gabby, I don’t know. Maybe I do that on a daily basis, throw it out to the universe, and I think my decision was correct. I’ve got a good feeling about it. And you know what, if it comes back, and, and it was correct, yahoo! But it seems like every day, there’s yet another thing that I’m doing that I’m not sure about. And I’ve, I really have to consistently talk myself out, you know, of running away, screaming like a maniac out the door and going back to my cushy, corporate, IT job because —
Gabby: Well, if it ever comes to that, please call me before hand.
Anne: [laughs] I’m telling you like —
Gabby: I’ll talk you down off the ledge.
Anne: How many, how many times did I do that, right, after I left my cushy job and went into this full-time? And it’s not even about voiceover. That’s just the industry that I chose to go into, but it’s so much more broad than that. It is not just what I’m doing, it’s the business aspect of it, no matter what I was doing. I mean, I could be making scrapbooks for a living. The fact is is that I am now an entrepreneur.
Gabby: You could though. Your scrapbooks are really good.
Anne: Oh, thank you, thank you. [laughs]
Gabby: Like they’re not even scrapbooks. I don’t even know what to call them. They’re like amazeballs.
Anne: They are, they are — thank you, they are a passion. And so again, I love them. But those weren’t ever going to work out for me, by the way, as a business because I remember people saying to me, “you should do that for a living. You should, you know — I would pay you money.” I’m like “no, you couldn’t pay me enough money,” and that didn’t come from a place of arrogance. That came from just a fact that I could only do one thing, one creation at a time, and I could never duplicate it, and I could never streamline the process because the beauty of it was that it was a creative process, and it was a product, very similar to voiceover, right?
Gabby: See, you are onto something here. Most people I think get into voiceover and stick with voiceover because of passion, because of the love for the industry. Very, very few people I’ve ever met in this business go, “I am here to get rich.” That’s not why. That’s not the motivator. As opposed to what I call the serial entrepreneurs, right, the people we meet that are just always chasing the dollar, always looking for the next big investment opportunity, the next way to flip something, make money fast. Those folks —
Anne: That’s a business unto itself.
Gabby: Yes, and they have a very different motivation, right? There’s no passion in it. They don’t care what it is as long as it can make them money.
Anne: Actually, there is a passion. The passion is money.
Gabby: OK, yeah, fair enough.
Anne: Right?
Gabby: Fair enough. Right.
Anne: I have a semi-love affair with money. You and I do, I know that.
Gabby: Well, yeah. What I’m saying is there’s no passion for the thing or the, whatever —
Anne: Yes. Yes, exactly.
Gabby: — you are doing.
Anne: For the product, mm-hmm.
Gabby: Us, we’re hugely invested in the product.
Anne: Yeah, we are, because it’s ourselves. It’s ourselves, right?
Gabby: And that’s where, where voice actors, you know, look, sometimes we make really poor decisions. We think with our hearts and not our heads.
Anne: Sure. Absolutely.
Gabby: We get overly emotional. I mean, yeah.
Anne: [laughs] [fake crying] What do you mean, Gabby?
Gabby: [fake crying] I don’t know.
Anne: [fake crying] I’m not emotional.
Gabby: [normal] There’s a big swatch of entrepreneurs that go through it too, but I mean, it’s again, it’s all creative type industries. I mean, restaurants, restaurants, I mean, my God, chefs must go, like the risk that they take, and then the tragedy when they have to shut the doors, like it’s, it’s nuts. So I don’t know. I, I just feel like we’re, we’re, we’re not totally unique in that, but we definitely feel the effects of our industry emotionally —
Anne: Yes.
Gabby: — harder —
Anne: Yes. I agree. I agree with that.
Gabby: — than some other as owners.
Anne: So let’s talk about, Gabby, what we can do to kind of umm calm ourselves down, have better days.
Gabby: [laughs]
Anne: Be OK with it. I think, I think that’s the big thing. What can we do to be OK with the uncertainty, to be OK with the fear, to be OK with, you know, growing, and not knowing what’s happening on the other side.
Gabby: Are we having like a woo moment? Is this like woo-woo?
Anne: I think so.
[both laugh]
Anne: Woo-woo moment.
Gabby: Very woo. Oh geez.
Anne: Very woo.
Gabby: All right. [sighs] So I’m so bad at this. Still, it’s still a journey. I’m still learning how to do this, how to accept. How to —
Anne: Do we ever stop? That’s the question.
Gabby: No, no, probably not. Probably not. But for me, it’s a daily struggle. It really is, it’s a daily struggle just to commit and say, “OK, whatever happens, whatever the outcome is, I’m going to be OK with that,” but also, it will be OK. I will adapt. I will do whatever I have to do based on that outcome, good or bad. And it’s OK. It’s going to be OK. I’ve had to stop myself from projecting forward and like going to the panic place.
Anne: Absolutely, that’s important.
Gabby: I skip all the middle stuff. I go from, “oh we had one bad month. Oh God, bankruptcy.” [laughs]
Anne: Exactly. Well, I think, I think what’s key, I think what’s key is you said commit. And just as we commit, right, to our voice acting, we commit to that character, we commit to that script, we need to commit to ourselves, and we need to commit to our businesses and have that same faith. And I think what is really cool is it all is in parallel. Right? I think you, I think if you guys realize you have that commitment, you have that acting commitment, and you can commit to your craft, then take that same commitment and let’s try to apply that to your everyday business life when things scare you, when things – you’re not certain about things. Again just commit and know that it will be OK. Gabby and I are here. We are going to be here tomorrow. Right? I mean, well, we hope anyways. We are here to say that it’s OK. Not every day is roses. It happens, and you can just trust that if it happens, it happens to us, it probably happens to a lot of people, and you’re not alone.
Gabby: One of the best things you can do on Entrepreneurs Day is celebrate the hardship.
Anne: Yeah.
Gabby: Celebrate it, celebrate the growth, celebrate the learning, celebrate the things that have now made you wiser, made you stronger, made you more resilient.
Anne: Celebrate that cry. Celebrate the pain.
Gabby: Yeah.
Anne: [laughs]
Gabby: Yeah.
Anne: Celebrate the fact that you’re still here. Right? You’re still, you’re still in business.
Gabby: Heck yeah.
Anne: Right? And we’re able to be in our business doing what we love, and you know, as I, as I always mention, I love voiceover. I love the business of voiceover just as much as I love voiceover.
Gabby: And I, and I think, yeah. That’s a common theme for most of us. Again and if you’re going “well, not really,” what are you doing here? Why are you here? It’s another one of those prerequisites. You need to be type A, and you have to love this. [laughs]
Anne: You kind of have to love it because you’re going to be working a lot of hours.
Gabby: Oh my God.
Anne: Typically you work a lot of hours at this, and so it makes it much more bearable when you, when you like it. That’s for sure.
Gabby: It does, and I mean it makes it worthwhile. You know, one thing I’ve also had to learn is that we cannot be self-limiting. It’s, it’s a very old paranoia that stems from generations before us. Well, yeah and what happens is we have this idea in my head of, “Oh God, if I fail, this is all I know. And what else am I gonna do? What will I do?” Well, you’ll do what you’ve always done. You’ll get back up, you’ll assess, and you will apply skills that you have somewhere else, if that — and that’s the worst possible case scenario.
Anne: There’s so many areas. You know, we covered emotional intelligence. There’s the power of positivity, there’s that in negotiation, confidence, we talked about money blocks and how to try to change your mindset. I – and again, I think this is also one of those cases where it’s so important for you to change your mindset and stop the self-sabotaging talk. You know, whenever you start to say, oh my God, it’s kind of the Law of attraction, right, you, you are what you think.
Gabby: Yeah.
Anne: And so truly try to change what you think, even if you don’t believe right away, just try to change the inner dialogue. And I think if you change the inner dialogue, you’re gonna be a whole lot more comfortable with running that business, and growing the business, and not knowing what’s gonna happen at the other, you know, end of the tunnel, and, and being OK with it. Even if it doesn’t work out, you’ll still be OK.
Gabby: Yeah, you will. [laughs]
Anne: So guys, celebrate, celebrate every aspect of your entrepreneurship. Celebrate the success, celebrate the failure, celebrate you, celebrate that we’re all here doing what we love.
Gabby: And just go yeah, “it’s hard.” It’s honest.
Anne: It’s hard.
Gabby: It’s hard.
Anne: Call us up, leave us, leave us a sound file just saying “this is so freakin’ hard.”
Gabby: #itshard.
Anne: #itshard, and I think you’re gonna feel a whole lot better because we’re all gonna, like we’re gonna get like — Gabby and I are going to get a million messages saying “yeah, you know what, it is hard.”
Gabby: Also we might get some [bleep] pics, but that’s besides the point.
[both laugh]
Anne: No, we don’t need those. This is a, this is a business podcast.
[both laugh]
Anne: [sighs] OK, guys. I’d like to give a huge shout out to our amazing sponsor, ipDTL. ipDTL has just been so amazing, and —
Gabby: They make it easy.
Anne: They do.
Gabby: It’s the opposite of hard. They, yeah, they make it so easy.
Anne: They really do. They really do. You too can find out more and be a BOSS with ipDTL by going to ipdtl.com.
Gabby: And for all things BOSS, guys, you know the drill. Go to the website, check out our socials. Please be sure to check out the store, and merchandising options, and all of the things that allow you to show your BOSS pride, and celebrate yourself as an entrepreneur.
Anne: You guys have an amazing week, and we’ll catch you next week.
Gabby: Bye!
Anne: Bye!
Announcer: Join us next week for another edition of VO BOSS with your hosts Anne Ganguzza and Gabby Nistico. All rights reserved, Anne Ganguzza Voice Talent in association with Three Moon Media. Redistribution with permission. Coast-to-coast connectivity via ipDTL.
Bloopers
1
Gabby: Are you recording, my love?
Anne: Yes, I am. I am recording.
Gabby: All right, fantastic.
Anne: Man, I wish my voice was better.
Gabby: You are fine. You are fabulous.
Anne: [laughs] So like in tune with — oh my God, I’m nasal. Yeah.
2
Anne: Oh my God, Gabby. It’s been like so long. Forgive me. We haven’t recorded in like — because I was away.
3
Anne: [breathy] Here I am.
Gabby: [childish] Hi.
Anne: [sings] The one that you love.
4 [both speaking breathy, low]
Anne: Oh Gabby.
Gabby: I know.
Anne: I’m very close to my mic right now.
Gabby: Mmm.
Anne: [laughs] The intimate podcast.
Gabby: Tell me more. Mmm.
Anne: [laughs]
5
Anne: So I’m looking at my script from the other day, and I did a, did a series on diabetes type two, and every time I do a medical narration, I have the disease.
[both laugh]
Anne: So I’m looking at it, and I just, I have — I put the copy away.
6
Anne: Welcome, everyone, to the VO BOSS podcast. I’m your host, Anne Ganguzza, along with my gorgeous entrepreneurial cohost, Gabby Nistico. Hey Gabby!
Gabby: Hello. You can’t see me, but my arms are outstretched very dramatically.
Anne: Yes, they are.
Gabby: [laughs]
Anne: Well, Gabby, speaking of — wait, I just spit. Don’t take that one.
Gabby: [laughs]
Anne: Gabby. [laughs] I got so excited I spit. I had to wipe my mouth.
Gabby: Oh. Oh boy.
Anne: [laughs] Wait, actually, I just have to ask you this. Am I the only one that drools when I, when she puts on her mascara? Like, do you drool? Is this a sign of age?
Gabby: [laughs]
Anne: Do know what I mean, like your mouth is open, right, and you’re looking at your eye, and every once in a while, like the drool will just come out the side of my mouth. Is that like, is it age?
Gabby: So I, I actually read this really screwed up statistic years ago that like 99% of women put on mascara with their mouth open.
Anne: [laughs] It’s true.
Gabby: So I don’t. So I don’t for that very reason because I’m aware of the statistic, so I don’t. I close my mouth.
Anne: So therefore you won’t have any, there’s no drool escaping your mouth.
Gabby: Yeah, no. My mascara process is drool-free.
Anne: I did it the other day, and I had just put on foundation, you know what I mean? So now there’s like a big line of drool coming out the side of my mouth, and it made a mark. It made a mark. [laughs]
Gabby: This is not sexy. This is not sexy talk at all. This is, wow. This is real, people. My goodness.
Anne: Anne drools while putting on mascara. Breaking news.
7
Gabby: All right. [clears through] Hem-en-na hem-en-na.
8
Gabby: Row, Row, row your boat.
Anne: And then in the middle of the interview, I had a tickle in my throat. Do you ever get that? You have to go like [forced cough], you know what I mean? Like really loud. And I, I kept swallowing. [clears throat]
Gabby: Yep.
Anne: But no, I didn’t, I did not explode like I wanted to. I did clear my throat a couple of times, but I — it was like one of those things, “oh my God, if I don’t step out of the booth right now, I’m going to, I’m going to just make a really loud cough.”
Gabby: Anne, please don’t explode.
9
Anne: [different styles] Welcome, welcome, welcome. Welcome. Welcome. [laughs]
Gabby: You are scaring the crap out of me.
Anne: [sighs]
Gabby: You’re like the voice of SkyNet right now, Jesus.
Anne: [laughs] SkyNet. [laughs] Here we go.
Gabby: “We’re coming for you.”
Anne: Yeah, here we go. Here we go.
10
Anne: Welcome to the VO BOSS podcast. I don’t like that. [more cheerful] Welcome to the VO BOSS podcast! Welcome to the VO — [laughs] I usually say “welcome, everyone.” Welcome, everybody, to the VO BOSS podcast. I’m your host, Anne Ganguzza, along with my entrepreneurial bosstie, gas — Gaspie! [laughs] Jesus.
Gabby: What the [bleep] is going on?
Anne: Gasp, Gasp, Gaspie! Gaspie Nipskico! [laughs]
Gabby: Gaspie. Awesome. I’m Gaspie now. Wow. [inhales loudly]
Anne: Gaspie! [laughs]
Gabby: Jesus, I’m just here for the snacks.