Following the leader in business makes a lot of sense – but who does the leader follow? The Market! Supply and demand is all about answering to, and supporting the market, and what buyers want. In today’s episode, The Bosses lead the conversation and discuss how The Market gets what The Market wants.
Takeaways
Quick Concepts from Today’s Episode:
Students often speak about big goals in short time frames. And while goals are great to have…the market has to be taken into account.
Many people desire to have a second-career in voiceover after they retire but realistic expectations are necessary.
Previous work experience can play a big role in second-career voiceover success.
However, it is critical to take a look at the market’s demand. Market shifts much be tracked.
Your voice, sound, style and delivery must be in demand in order for the market to sustain you.
People outside of our industry often wrongfully steer people toward a voiceover career.
We have to gauge what the next 5 to 10 years might bring.
This will greatly influence how you market your voiceover skills.
Voice actors often market themselves incorrectly and fail to identify their buying target by putting too much focus on their voice.
Photographers experience this as well. It’s not enough to take beautiful pictures. You must show a buyer how that picture benefits them.
We must capture and captivate an audience with both our performance and its application.
We can adjust how we present ourselves to match the market needs and trends.
You have to understand what the market is asking for and position yourself ahead of that.
Every industry is subject to market demand and marketing trends.
Voiceover actors are a go-between the client and the audience so we are subject to trends from both parties.
Referenced in this Episode
Direct links to things we brought up ++
Learn more about branding and marketing from Anne and the GVAA
To follow the market, you have to plan for long term marketing. Anne talks more about this on her blog
Let Anne and Gabby do some of your marketing for you!
Recorded on ipDTL
Full Episode 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.
Anne: Hey, welcome, everybody, to the VO BOSS podcast. I’m your host, Anne Ganguzza, along with my entrepreneurial bosstie-bestie, Gabby Nistico.
Gabby: What up?
Anne: Gabby Nistico! How are you?
Gabby: I’m good, how are you?
Anne: I’m good. Hey, I got an email.
Gabby: Only one?
Anne: I got one. I got one.
Gabby: Just one email. Ok.
Anne: From a student that was just starting off, and was talking to me about goals. And one of his goals was to triple his income by the following year, and quit his job, and go full-time into voiceover. How many times have you heard that?
Gabby: [laughs]
Anne: It’s a tough one. Gabby, how do you respond to that? Do you –
[both laugh]
Anne: Because that’s a, I love – I never want to crush people’s goals.
Gabby: Hmm.
Anne: I get the motivation. I get, you know, wanting to be like “yes, I’m gonna do this,” and the drive and the motivation to really become successful, and I love that. However I think there needs to be a realistic approach in understanding of the industry.
Gabby: Look, I don’t – I’ll be the first to admit it. I’ve no idea where some of it came from. I’ve no idea how it started. I’ve no clue. All I know is that there’s a whole slew of people who think that they’re going to have a second career, a second life with voiceover. And while I think yeah, many of them will, I don’t know how realistic some people’s expectations are, and if they’re really thinking about what all goes into it and the investment.
Anne: Or those who will retire and say, “I want to be able to retire and do voiceovers full-time.”
Gabby: Yeah…
Anne: Look, I worked in the corporate world for a good number of years with a pension, and my husband had a pension from his last job and then his current job. So we, we’re kind of well on our way. Even then, that for us, I’m worried about money when we retire.
Gabby: I think a lot of it has to do too with what your previous experience or job was. I have a student now who’s a standup comic who’s on the road like God, damn near 300 days out of the year, and he does very well for himself on that circuit, but his goal is to eventually not be on the road all the time and to be able to make a living from, you know, from home. And so he’s looking to voiceover for that. As a performer and a standup comic and someone who has a performing background, that’s not a crazy leap. There’s a connection there that makes sense.
Anne: Right, sure.
Gabby: I get worried though when people are like “yeah, I’ve been an ophthalmologist for the last 30 years.”
Anne: “And I’m gonna quit to do voiceover full-time.”
Gabby: I’m like oh. Oh. Hmm….hmm.
Anne: I think, Gabby, what’s really important here is that we take a look at the market, the industry, the market, and the market demand. Sometimes people just, they have that dream and are like, “I’m really –” and even if you’re amazing at the voiceovers, right, you could be in the booth for eight hours a day doing amazing voices, I still think it’s wise for you to step back and take a look at what the market demands. I always make the reference to the music industry, and there’s so many different industries, but remember when we would buy records and CDs –
Gabby: Fondly.
Anne: – there was a market for that. [laughs] There was money in that. And then MP3s came along. And then the market shifted, so now there had to be a new way to make money, right, to create that service. That market had to demand the service or the product in order for you to make money.
Gabby: Yeah. Look, it’s the same way we see so, so many people, men especially, big, deep, resonant, beautiful voices who “everyone tells me I should be doing this.” And yet when they finally kind of open their eyes and ears to what’s actually happening in voiceover, they go, “oh. You mean guys like me aren’t getting any work?”
Anne: They’re not as in demand as they used to be.
Gabby: “Why did everybody tell me I should be doing this if my voice isn’t even getting hired right now?” A lot of it has to do with people again not being on trend and going –
Anne: Market demand.
Gabby: – by old information.
Anne: Exactly.
Gabby: Yeah, that was the market demand 25 years ago.
Anne: Gosh, I’m always saying, in a world of, in a world of text to speech and synthesized voices, I think ultimately I want to be that person that has the most amazing, acting, human voice because ultimately I’ll be the one that’s different. [laughs] Right? Then maybe that will come in style. You know, I think there’s going to be some shifts in what the market is looking for in terms of voiceover. And I think we have to be, we have to be honest with ourselves. We have to really look hard and gauge what you think the next five to 10 years might bring in this career.
Gabby: A big part of it simply has to do with how you market yourself.
Anne: Yeah.
Gabby: People get really wrapped up in their voice and what they do and their product. And that’s not what it’s about.
Anne: That’s right. It’s about who’s buying it, right, and what their needs are.
Gabby: Their needs are.
Anne: We have to say it in a bunch of different ways, Gabby, I think, because it applies in so many aspects and avenues of what we do on a daily basis. You could be in your booth all day creating voices, animation voices, but if nobody has the demand for that particular voice at the time, you’re not gonna make a sale.
Gabby: No. We can pull a little bit from other industries, right? So photography is a great instance of this. You can be out there telling people, showing people “I take great pictures! I take beautiful pictures, I take – look at this beautiful picture I took!” That means nothing to them until you can apply it to their application, until you can go, “oh, I can capture your wedding.” “Oh, now I care!”
Anne: You create something that strikes them emotionally, right, then it becomes “oh my gosh.” It’s funny because you mentioned that about photographers, and I see a lot of people that take amazing pictures, don’t get me wrong, but there’s one person who takes pictures of my hometown, and he’s amazing. Now technically, is he any better than any other great photographer out there? Maybe not, but what he’s done is he’s got a subject matter and a way of doing it that has captured my heart. And that to me is like worth money. That’s like I’ll pay you for that photo, and I’ve never, ever been that captured. That’s where we need to be with our voiceover, with our services. What we offer somebody, they have to be just captured by what it is in such a way nothing else will do.
Gabby: I believe, the marketer in me believes a lot of that can be in how we position ourselves, how we express what we do, how we speak the language of that client. It kind of ensures that regardless of your voice type, you can always evolve and continue to have a career by simply adjusting how you present.
Anne: Yeah, I think it’s a connection that you make with the client just as with the content in your voiceovers, in your auditions. That’s what we’re all trained to do is to make that connection with the copy. You’re going beyond the copy, making the connection to the company, to the person, that you’ll make yourself indispensable to, or will somehow capture it so that they say “I don’t care, I need Gabby, or I need Anne, or whoever it is and I don’t care what it is.” Again, I’m always saying I have particular brands and products that I buy because of that.
Gabby: That’s also where market demand changes, and we get into the whole conversation about you’ll always, always, always, have a select group of shoppers in any category that are not bargain-hunting, that want the elite, they want the best, they’re willing to spend the money on it. And to them, it’s not a sacrifice. They are investing in something. And that’s ideally the buyer that we want.
Anne: It’s amazing how many parallels there are in marketing and in our own performance-driven, right, service-based voiceover how you’ve got to create, you’ve got to understand the client need, you’ve got to be able to fulfill that need in a way such that there’s no other alternative.
Gabby: I mean, I know that there are gonna be plenty of people out there, especially like if you do audiobooks, you’re gonna like hate me for this and stick your tongue out at me, and that’s fine. We as an industry survive and are here because we are a subset of marketing. We’re part of that mechanism, that machine of marketing and advertising. So if we don’t understand that world and how that process works, we can’t make ourselves indispensable to them.
Anne: Exactly, exactly. You have to understand what the market is asking for, and then position yourself in front of that. [laughs]
Gabby: Yeah, even for the people out there who are the audiobook crowd going, “that’s not how this works, I’m not part of that world,” yeah, you are. Because don’t think for a second that there are not trends in the marketing of books and publishing.
Anne: Oh goodness, yes.
Gabby: Every industry is subject to this. So any time you’re a conduit or you’re a go-between from the company to the audience, you’re part of it.
Anne: I keep going back to the whole, what’s gonna happen to our industry with synthesized voices or AI and that sort of thing? I really believe again, the market is going demand a certain style. The market will be ok with a certain style, and we have to understand what the market is demanding so that we can then acclimate ourselves to that and offer it. Otherwise our businesses won’t survive, and that’s true for any entrepreneurial endeavor. It’s not just voiceovers. It’s anything. And technology is always the devil it seems to be in this case. People are always like, technology is the devil. But –
Gabby: So dumb.
Anne: I just think technology is amazing. Ride the wave, people. That’s what I say, ride the wave, ride the edge, ride the bleeding edge, because if you don’t, it’s gonna leave you behind.
Gabby: It will, but it’s also about adapting and understanding how and where you can adapt. I was having this thought the other day. Every now and then I meet male voice actors that can do female voices and female voice actors that can do male voices. It’s always a little bit odd, right, from a character performance standpoint.
Anne: Yes.
Gabby: There’s very little application for those, because why? I mean, why would you do that? Why wouldn’t you just hire someone of that gender?
Anne: Right.
Gabby: It’s a little strange. Yet there are some celebrity examples that people can look to, and there are shows like “Bob’s Burgers” where there’s, yeah, a host of female characters being voiced by men. Ok. It got me thinking about where the actual marketability there is. And I went, “Oh my God, it’s non-binary.” It’s that direction, it’s androgyny, who’s gonna be able to be that voice that makes everybody go, “I don’t know. I don’t know, are they male, are they female? Does it matter? I don’t know.”
Anne: Yeah, it’s something that causes us to, you know, perk up and say hmm and gets our attention –
Gabby: Yeah!
Anne: Very similar to how we need to market ourselves, right? How are you going to put yourself in front of one million people and make yourself stand out? How is that gonna happen?
Gabby: Exactly. It’s taking your skill set. and it’s looking at what you can do and saying, “ok, again, where’s that application? Where’s this valuable to someone else?” The minute you find that, run with it!
Anne: I don’t think there’s value in stomping your foot on the ground and saying, “I won’t. I won’t do this because it’s not fair.” And I know that we’ve come so close to the line in the fair rates discussion, the pay-to-play discussions about what’s fair and right in our industry. And of course, there are things that are fair, and there are things that are right, but sometimes stomping your foot on the ground and just complaining about it or refusing to –
Gabby: Budge.
Anne: – flow does you no good whatsoever.
Gabby: Here’s the thing, I hear you say it, and I can’t even picture it. Like you’re the least pouty person I know, so like the idea of you like stomping your feet and like having a temper tantrum, can’t even picture it.
Anne: Yeah, I usually don’t, temper tantrum.
Gabby: That’s not you. That’s me. [laughs]
Anne: I don’t usually pout.
Gabby: I’m the one who will throw the temper tantrum.
Anne: [laughs]
Gabby: It’s all broken, everything’s broken!
Anne: Guys, don’t pout. So Gabby –
Gabby: I’m leaving!
Anne: – what can we do? Here’s the question. What can we do to evolve and go with the flow? What’s an action step that we can take?
Gabby: I’ll tell you what it is for my business, and it’s what works for me. There is no constant, there’s no static element of my business. I don’t allow there be, because the minute I become tied to, or I’m not even sure what the word is, but the minute I do that, I become unwilling to modify, or to change, or to move forward. So there is no constant. Nothing, nothing about my business is not up for change in an instant.
Anne: Sure, yeah.
Gabby: And that’s the way I have to keep it.
Anne: So there’s no commitment to a –
Gabby: No.
Anne: – specific genre –
Gabby: Newp.
Anne: It’s a different story to market to your target market, but that’s different than allowing yourself to be flexible in adapting, and evolving, and changing with what’s happening. And there’s a different trend coming up in voiceover in terms of sound, right, in terms of style, and also in terms of how people buy on the Internet, all driven by technology. We were just talking about the younger generation hears things differently. They hear a voiceover, a voice differently. And that really dictates, if they’re going to be the ones that are gonna be buyers, that’s gonna be dictating what we’re gonna be hearing out in the market.
Gabby: No, you’re absolutely right, and part of what goes along with that, I think, is remaining judgment free.
Anne: Mm, yes.
Gabby: If I meet another business owner who starts judging product or trends, or you know, and it can be anything. Right? If you sell clothes, you’re going “oh my God, these kids and their freakin’ skinny jeans,” you know, and you have an issue with that, you have a problem on your hands, because you’re not embracing –
Anne: Yeah, your stomping your foot.
Gabby: Right, what’s happening in the market. So that’s a huge part of it. We have to take ourselves out of the equation, and we have to remain –
Anne: Get off my lawn!
Gabby: And we’ve to – yeah, we’ve got to remain neutral. We can’t become judgmental. We can’t decide suddenly we’re gonna start arguing with the clients. “No, no, no, what you’re asking for, it doesn’t sound good.” Well, who the hell am I to say that?
Anne: Even amongst ourselves, we cannot afford to do that. We cannot afford to be in groups and be counterproductive and just say “no, I refuse to do this because, you know, blank is taking over the world.” Is it AI, is it robots, is it pay-to-plays, is it, what is the, you know, the rates, Fiverr, you know, whatever it is that’s taking over the world, we’ve got to stop being complacent and stomping our feet. We’re gonna push ourselves towards the future. We’re gonna see what the trends are and how we can evolve our business with them. And if we can’t, guess what? Then look for a new business.
Gabby: Yeah, get out of the way.
Anne: Get out of the way.
Gabby: Marc Scott today on his Facebook group –
Anne: Great post.
Gabby: You saw that? OK, yeah.
Anne: Oh yes, it was.
Gabby: And he’s so sweet. You know, he’s so apologetic and so flippin’ Canadian –
Anne: [laughs]
Gabby: Like, “would you just stop it?” He’s so sweet, and I’m like dude, stop. You don’t need to do that. Like don’t apologize for you’re running a ship, and you’re keeping it tight.
Anne: He runs a great ship, by the way.
Gabby: Telling everybody what the parameters are. But the reason he’s doing it, and I mean, it’s exactly what you just said, Anne, is the counterproductivity.
Anne: Exactly.
Gabby: It’s the bitching, the complaining, the, we fuel each other with that crap.
Anne: And by the way, I’ll just give a plug for Marc. He’s got one of the best Facebook groups out there, VOpreneur. A lot of good stuff goes on there.
Gabby: There’s like a prime example. Like you and I could easily be standing here stomping our feet going, “what he does is similar, and I don’t – and he’s go VOpreneur, and we’re VO BOSS.” And we’re like, who cares?
Anne: Exactly. And that’s the thing, Gabby, you bring up such a great point. Right? He does business, we do business.
Gabby: Yeah, like Ok.
Anne: We’ve made ourselves unique in each of our little business niches, if I should say neech or nitch. I happily support Marc, and Marc, you know, happily supports us, so it’s all good. Really you need to take a hard look at the industry and figure out how you can constructively maneuver within the industry, otherwise it’s time to probably say goodbye. That’s what I’m saying.
Gabby: Thanks, guys, for joining us for another week.
Anne: I’m just gonna say, Gabby, I know you say you don’t commit, but marriage, Internet, Gangoogle, all those things, ipDTL right up there [laughs] with things I commit to.
Gabby: I’ve committed to you. I’ll go ahead and say I’ve committed to ipDTL, alright?
Anne: There you go. We’ve committed. ipDTL allows us to connect and to deliver content every week that we want you guys to just love and like. Find out more at ipdtl.com.
Gabby: And another company we’re committed to is of course Voiceovers.com. We are backing them, we’re behind them, we’re ready to see the kinds of changes they’re gonna be making in the industry. and what is to come in the future. Fair, efficient, transparent, Voiceovers.com.
Anne: If you have not met Matt or read any of Matt’s posts, go ahead and read them. He’s right up front, very, very frank about everything that he’s doing right now to make his product the best that it can be. Give a shout-out and connect up with him as well. OK, guys. Have a great week, and we’ll see you next week.
Gabby: 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.