Jan 4, 2022
Bosses, your time is money. Don’t waste a second of it! Anne + Laya dive deep into all the things that keep their businesses on track every day. From adding personal time to the calendar to automating follow up emails, you’ll want to try it all.
Transcript >> It’s time to take your business to the next level, the BOSS level! These are the premiere Business Owner Strategies and Successes being utilized by the industry’s top talent today. Rock your business like a BOSS, a VO BOSS! Now let’s welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza.
Anne: Hey everyone. Welcome to the VO BOSS podcast. I'm your host Anne Ganguzza, along with the amazing, happy new year, very special guest cohost Laya Hoffman. Laya, yay!
Laya: Hey Anne, happy new year.
Anne: Happy new year to you. How are you, Laya?
Laya: Did you rock it? I'm great. I'm like ready to seize this year.
Anne: Did I rock it? Like every new year's --
Laya: Did you rock it?
Anne: I'm getting older now, so it's harder and harder.
Laya: It's slower rocking.
Anne: It's slower rocking for me, but you know what? I celebrate it just as much, however, I may not be awake exactly.
Laya: Yeah. I mean, well, it's funny. I used to run nightclubs for a living, and so New Year's Eve was the biggest thing that we did all year long. And I can't even tell you the planning and the hours awake that I stayed.
Anne: Oh, I can imagine.
Laya: It's probably not something I would admit publicly. And here I am, but now I'm like to me, a rocking new year is in bed by 10.
Anne: And you were probably the thing about that is you were probably working at the stroke of midnight.
Laya: Oh working, oh, for sure. I was, I was on stage commanding the audience, doing the thing popped in the balloons. Oh yeah. The whole nine yards.
Anne: The whole nine yards.
Laya: These days, my rocket new year is much more low key. Yeah.
Anne: And it got very confusing when my husband and I moved from the east coast to the west coast. Cause now we're like, well, okay, can we celebrate it at 9:00?
Laya: Yes, you can. Yes, you can. Because the ball drops at 9:00. Absolutely.
Anne: The ball drops at 9:00 out here.
Laya: Yes, it does.
Anne: And I still get confused. I don't know. We've been out here forever and I still get confused, but anyway.
Laya: You can do it. You can do it.
Anne: We go on.
Laya: I say so.
Anne: We go on.
Laya: We go on to a better, brighter year, hopefully.
Anne: That's right.
Laya: Because gosh, I mean, we've had some success. We talked about this in the last episode.
Anne: Yeah.
Laya: There was a lot to look back on last year as being positive, and with this new growth mindset, we're walking into the new year, but we've got some good --
Anne: We've got work to do.
Laya: -- ideas to share. Yes, we do.
Anne: That's right.
Laya: And we have to make this year the best yet.
Anne: Yeah. So with all this work that we've already kind of like, here's what we want to do for our new year -- and of course, you know, over the actual time that you've had to think if you've had some time off, you might've come up with some more things that maybe you want to do for this new year, get yourself pumped up. So I think it's a great time to talk about, oh, how can I get this all organized? How can I be more productive with my time? Because I had a lot to do last year. And if I want to continue those, if I want to continue my brand and my parallel income streams, I still have a lot to do this year. So I want to know how can I do that more productively?
Laya: That is a great question. I'm asking myself that all the time, but as a Virgo, A-typical personality, super organized and a little OCD, I think that for me, it starts with a bit of a daily checklist. And I mean, I don't always stick to it, but at least it's in my framework of which buckets of the business can I dip into and touch a little bit every day? So that's where my productivity window starts. How about you?
Anne: Well, okay. So yeah, old school, old school, I have a to-do list.
Laya: Your pen and paper.
Anne: Yes, my pen and paper. And because I have to continue to make sure that I can actually write with a pen. It's interesting because when I write checks now like hand write checks, it's --
Laya: Oh yeah, your signature is all crazy.
Anne: Yeah!
Laya: Calligraphy is off.
Anne: My calligraphy is off.
Laya: Yeah.
Anne: I feel like the pen doesn't fit right in my hand anymore.
Laya: Yeah, isn't that crazy?
Anne: And that's with my to-do list. I'm constantly scratching on my to-do list. And literally I have saved my to-do list for the past five years. And they're just these little, I have these wonderful, thin notebooks that I love to write in, lined. And I basically every single day, actually the night before, this is what helps me, I write down what I want to accomplish the next day or what I need to do for the next day.
Laya: Love that.
Anne: It doesn't always get crossed off because sometimes those tasks are, you know, multiple day tasks. But for me, what I love is, and I, and I remember you telling me, you like to cross those things off. I mean, that is like a --
Laya: I do.
Anne: -- it's like a feel-good, I'm done, cross it off. I like that. I check beside it because I like to be able to see what I've done throughout the year. I still use that as kind of a checkpoint, but I also like to flip the page, right? To a new day, a clean --
Laya: A new day.
Anne: -- slate.
Laya: A clean slate. Absolutely.
Anne: A clean slate, absolutely. And I make sure that that is the first thing that I do. Plus as I'm telling you, I'm getting a little older, my brain doesn't always remember everything that I have to do.
Laya: Sure.
Anne: So writing it down really helps cement this is what I have to do. It helps remind me of what I have to do. And the check mark is like so satisfying.
Laya: Yes, it is. Well, speaking of that check mark, I actually have something maybe we are able to share with the BOSSes, like the actual document, but I created a VO business daily checklist for myself that is in those buckets. It has a few things. The buckets are, what do I do in my voice work? it's warm up stretch, vocalize, then all the way down the list into check emails, record and edit and deliver jobs, file all the work, you know, digital folders, et cetera, and make sure that --
Anne: Write the invoices.
Laya: -- it's not all cluttered on the -- yes, the invoices, all of that. Then there's a bucket for business development. Then there's one for social, like stay active, but --
Anne: Love it.
Laya: -- don't waste time here. That's a huge asterisk next to everything. Learn something new is another bucket and health and wellness is a bucket --
Anne: Nice.
Laya: -- as we've talked about a lot before, so maybe I'll polish this thing up, and we can share it with our BOSSes.
Anne: Yes, that sounds amazing.
Laya: It's helpful. It's equal parts -- I print them out. I have it digitally, but then I can check them off and start a new page when everything's accomplished. Helps my mind stay focused and stay productive.
Anne: Well, you know, what's really nice too, is if any of you guys are Mac users, the Notes, just the simple Notes application works great. You can create a checklist.
Laya: Yes, it does.
Anne: Yup. And what I love about it is you can check those things off and then you can see it nicely and neatly checked off. So if you aren't enthralled with your handwriting.
Laya: No handwriting required.
Anne: No handwriting required for the Notes version. And yeah, I think that that for me is the number one thing that helps me stay organized and be productive. And I'm going to talk a little bit about, 'cause you mentioned it, social media. I literally cannot have a social media window open when I am trying to be productive. I just --
Laya: Nope, nope, no notifications either for me.
Anne: -- can't.
Laya: Yeah.
Anne: And even though I say to myself, I am advertising on social media, right? 'Cause I have events through my VO Peeps and my VO BOSS episodes I'm posting out there, and I want to make sure that I'm responding and engaging with the community. I cannot have the windows open for LinkedIn, for Facebook, for Instagram, for anything, if I'm trying to get something done. So I make sure that I have specific times during the day that I will open them up and check and then respond.
Laya: Yes. I actually agree with that. And here's a tip for BOSSes. I use my social media, meaning Instagram and Facebook, the real, you know, schleppy social media channels, but are equally as important. I only check those in the morning over coffee, 8:00, 9:00. And then again in the evening, 5:00, 6:00. The reason I do is because those are peak times for engagement. And so if you are going to post, and people are going to engage, the chance of them seeing it is higher in those time points --
Anne: Oh yeah.
Laya: -- as opposed to you posting it 2:00 in the afternoon or 9:00 at night. So those are great windows of opportunity for exposure and to compartmentalize. And then I check LinkedIn at lunchtime because that's when my business colleagues and people are most active on LinkedIn is straight in the middle of their day. It's going to trickle out on its own time, as we know about all these platforms. But for me, that's where I compartmentalize that time to make sure that I don't stay off. I'm not great at it, but that's where I like to stay.
Anne: And I think it's been, I think that those specific times are really good. And you know, it's been an adjustment, I will say, because I know that people were more used to me being like immediately engaging on social media. And I know the past couple of years, I just cannot be immediately there to respond or comment when things come in, and it's okay. I've had to kind of be okay with that myself to not be as available out there. And I've always like stressed and worried. Well, if I don't respond, will I lose my audience?
Laya: Oh gosh.
Anne: But I think that that has been one of those things that I have had to really try to test out and see, okay, how many times do I need to revisit and engage with my audience before they figure, oh, this is just, nobody's really here. And I do know that I have certain social media avenues where people think I'm not there, and that I'm a robot. And that has been something that I've been really consciously trying to test out and rectify and figure out what is the -- is there a magical formula for when and how often I should revisit that? So that has been the last couple of years, it has been a definite like test on my part, and I've realized that I don't have to be there. And in reality, I think the way social media has gotten in the past where it's been a little more toxic, a little more frustrating, there are more people who are taking time off from social media. And it's a little more accepted that --
Laya: Oh, it's beyond accepted.
Anne: -- I'm not there.
Laya: And let me give you a perspective flip on the mindset of that. If I see somebody that's constantly on social media, like throughout the day, the first thing I think of is they're not busy in their work.
Anne: Oh my goodness, yes.
Laya: They're not successful because they're --
Anne: Absolutely.
Laya: -- wasting their time here if -- they wouldn't be here if they had jobs in the booth. So when I see people that are super active all day long, I think what are you doing in your business? You're just chatting or responding to people.
Anne: I love that you say that.
Laya: So the mindset flip there is like, hey, the perception, maybe to others, if I am responding so much, is that I don't have enough work in my business.
Anne: Well, yeah.
Laya: And nobody wants to feel that way.
Anne: Nobody wants that.
Laya: But that candidly is sometimes what I see when I -- and not in our industry necessarily, when I see other people that I think are successful creatives. I'm like, what are you, how do you have time to be on this at 2:00 in the afternoon? You know? And so that's just a different way to shift your perspective. Maybe that'll help. I don't know.
Anne: No, I actually, I love that you said that because there will be times I will see certain people, if they're continually commenting, continually posting, and I'll be like, what? Like, and this sounds horrible, but like, stop, like, just be quiet. Like just want to say, why are you here so much?
Laya: Yes.
Anne: Like if you're that busy, why are you still talking?
Laya: Or if you're that successful, how are you that -- there's no way you're that successful if you were spending half your day or you're checking in every hour or whatever it is. And it's a willpower thing. Right? And so I'm like, maybe you're a little weak in your willpower, or maybe you're a little weak in your self-esteem that you've got to be on this all the time --
Anne: Interesting.
Laya: -- looking for re-encouragement or looking for engagement when you should just be in your business. So that's kind of where I stuck in my head when I felt the same way about you. I started to notice how I felt when I saw that type of activity.
Anne: Yeah, I think it's always --
Laya: Maybe that's a hack.
Anne: I think it's always good to look inward. So how you -- it's similar to, let's say emails, right? So if I got an email from somebody, and it was unsolicited and they're trying to sell me something, and I look at it and inside I go really? Like, and that is my initial reaction. I think that all BOSSes should look to that. In terms of before you post something, before you email something, before you do anything, how would you react if it was done to you? That kind of thing, you know? Right. I mean, it's just, it's like life lessons 101.
Laya: Sure, sure.
Anne: If that happened to you, how would you feel? And so there are so many people that are silently doing that to every move possibly that you make on social media or in an email. They're silently making assessments. That's how I'll put it, they're making assessments.
Laya: Sure.
Anne: And so --
Laya: That's what I was doing. I, so I totally agree with that. Yeah.
Anne: I think it's a good check to find out should I post, should I say that? Should I do that? So in terms of helping me be more productive, it actually has helped me to be more productive to limit myself --
Laya: Good for you.
Anne: -- limit my input on social media. So that is definitely a number two productivity hack so that I can get my job done and not be distracted.
Laya: Time management.
Anne: Yes.
Laya: You know, it's about everything. And it also kind of comes down to how you format your day. I don't know about you, but a typical day for me will be I get up and I'll do my wellness exercises, my meditation, we've talked about that. Get some fresh air, take care of my kid, get right down to work. I'll usually address -- and I, and I do this in stages and kind of in blocks. And I've learned this through some of my other voiceover mentors, because it's very easy to get wrapped up and scattered in your brain as to, oh, I should. I got to just get these invoices. And I just take a little bit of time every day, but I keep it organized, right? I'll handle all my top priority clients and agent auditions first or jobs, but usually a job isn't -- for me because I work shortform, is not usually left to the next morning unless it has to be. But the warmups for me tend to sit there, and then I'll continue to block the day where if there's jobs, in between those jobs or those sessions, I know I've got invoicing later this afternoon, I'm going to do all my invoicing in one block. And so those block mentality, as you compartmentalize your day, can help you stay productive. And there's a lot of thought about that, like work for 50 minutes and then take that 10-minute break, get up, walk around, get a snack, get a drink, what have you. And so if you can block your day --
Anne: That's important.
Laya: -- that also helps with productivity.
Anne: Well, as a matter of fact, my sessions are 50 minutes long. So I have 10 minutes to just relax and/or prep for my next session. And I wanted to kind of go back in terms of communication with clients, right? In terms of any type of communication with clients that you might do over and over again, there's a really cool feature that I love in, well, I have two ways that I do it. One is in Gmail. Gmail has templates now. So if you have a certain message that you send over and over to, let's say, a new contact, "hi, thanks so much for contacting. It's a pleasure to meet you. I'd be thrilled to be the voice for your next project." And so those types of templates can be automatically filled through the Gmail templates. I also had another thing that I purchased before the Gmail template came out and that was called Type 4 Me. And that's on a Mac.
Laya: Oh, okay.
Anne: T-Y-P-E, 4, the number four, Me. And that allows me to have all of these little like clips of the same type of emails, even my response, like my "warm regards, comma, you know, new line, new line, Anne Ganguzza."
Laya: Right.
Anne: That is, that is a clip. And I can just in a keystroke and with one, I'll do it. Like, thank you. I think I do, uh, TYWR, then it pops in those words for me into the email. And that helps me so immensely.
Laya: Thanks for that hack, Anne, because I am a Mac user, and I'm slightly jealous. I know there's a way to convert into using your email to, or Apple Mail to Gmail, but I missed from my old days, those canned email responses. And so what I do is --
Anne: Yup.
Laya: -- I have a document for that, but thank you for helping me to the Type 4 Me, for Mac. I knew there was something.
Anne: There is.
Laya: Because I do use canned email templates for a lot of things. I do -- I have one for generic inquiries, for generic corporate work or just what my kind of standard rates are. And that helps you streamline the process. Of course, I tweak and personalize where I need to and when I need to, but just like you see some templates features in some of the pay-to-plays, it's very helpful to --
Anne: Oh yeah.
Laya: -- just continue to go back to that. I like to keep mine in Google docs, that way I can pull it from anywhere or in my notes, and it can be on my phone in case I'm on the go. And that makes sure that you don't miss anything when communicating quickly to a new client or sending --
Anne: Oh, it's so helpful.
Laya: -- inquiry, right? So it's so key. Thanks for that, Type 4 Me.
Anne: Type 4 Me. And I think also on the Mac, there is an auto-complete. If you type a few characters, there is an auto-complete, and you can set that up, and that's just comes with the operating system. However, I'm so used to -- and you might want to look into that.
Laya: Sure.
Anne: Just look into Mac iOS auto-complete, and see how you can enact that or enable that. But I love the type, the Type 4 Me is, it just pops up. It's a little application and I can just say, assign these few characters to this snippet. You know, so it's actually a snippet.
Laya: Sure.
Anne: And I love, love, love it, because it totally helps me. And I'll tell you another thing that helps me, which I found out a couple of years ago, because I do schedule meetings, and I'm in meetings quite a bit, not just with clients, but also with students. And so my other is a scheduling system, which is done through my Wix website that schedules on my calendar, integrates with my Google calendar, which by the way, I would not be able to live without my Google calendar.
Laya: Same.
Anne: Everything is scheduled into my Google calendar, and there's a lot of programs out there.
Laya: My whole life.
Anne: Yes, my life is Google calendar, and everything, there are lots of programs out there that integrate with a Google calendar.
Laya: Yeah.
Anne: So that is like another one of my hacks. Like literally here, if you want to talk to me or you want to get in touch with me, bang, go sign up for a free consult or just get on my calendar here. And those types of automations really help me to schedule when I can talk to people. Like I literally am scheduled out probably -- my days are pretty darn busy, but this is an ongoing thing with me. You literally need to get me at least a week or two in advance before I can fit you in. 'Cause I've got it so blocked out.
Laya: Yeah.
Anne: The biggest problem that I have is that if I don't block out time for me, then I have no time for me. That is an issue.
Laya: Exactly. So you gotta be number one on your calendar.
Anne: Yep.
Laya: I agree with you in that I use Calendly, which I've found to be incredibly helpful, especially if you get into the customization. Because for me, I've got, of course I just spoke, I've got an Apple calendar and that does integrate with the Gmail calendars and things of that. I share a calendar with the household. My kid's got a calendar, you know, all of those things. If you're laser connected to Calendly and you can have your own VO calendar, from there, I compartmentalize whether you need a 15 minute precession chat or a SourceConnect test, or maybe you just need to talk about a project that's coming up. Maybe that's a 30 minute block. I've got my session blocks as well for an hour or 50 minutes. And that's helpful to send to my agents for instance --
Anne: Yes.
Laya: -- where they're like, hey, we just need to know your schedule. Like what's your general availability for the next two weeks? I'm like, here's my link to Calendly and --
Anne: Oh my God. That's a perfect idea. I love that.
Laya: Send that over. Now the thing is though for me, I've chose not to add it to my website. The con for me -- pro would be that it's super easy. The con is that then I would have no control over who's booking. And so I have it embedded in a private link on my website. That private link also has my revisions policy --
Anne: Yup.
Laya: -- my professional services guarantee, and my resume in case somebody needs any of that old school, the old school resume information.
Anne: Yup, yup.
Laya: So I'll send that link to clients that are asking, or I'll just send the Calendly link for this specific time slot they're asking for which can be its own independent link. Like, hey, we just need a SourceConnect test. Well, here's all the 15 minute blocks that you could get in my schedule over the next infinity. So that to me has been a huge bonus hack as far as keeping things easy. And then you're not going back and forth with the well, yeah, 2:00 on Thursday --
Anne: Oh gosh, that takes up --
Laya: -- from this time to this time.
Anne: -- so much time.
Laya: You're actually -- and it makes you look way less professional and like you've got a system for your schedule, and that you're in demand. And so --
Anne: Well, yeah.
Laya: -- I think that has, it serves many purposes.
Anne: And I actually have it linked to my signature on my email.
Laya: Nice.
Anne: Here, set up a consult or whatever, schedule a chat with me. And so it just links to my scheduler, which is so, so helpful for me because you're right, the back and forth, "okay. So when are you available?" And I'm like, honestly, the best way to get in touch with me is here.
Laya: Yeah.
Anne: And I'll give them a link to my calendar to get on my calendar, and that just helps. And what's nice is it's automated. It has like, thank you. Here's how we're going to connect. You know --
Laya: Yes, same.
Anne: -- it might be ipDTL, or it might be via phone call. It might be via Zoom. I've got all the different ways that you can connect with me. And it just makes my life so much easier. I'm going to say that when I implemented my schedule or my calendar, it literally saved me -- and it automated like sent out the emails.
Laya: Yeah.
Anne: Thank you for connecting. Here's your automated reminder.
Laya: Yes, the follow-up on those are awesome.
Anne: Oh, gosh, you can do follow-up. And the fact that it automated all of those emails saved me 50%, at least, of the time that I used to try to schedule people in at times and going back and forth with email. It just became really, really frustrating.
Laya: Yeah. And the effort to become more accommodating to your clients, to your students, to whoever, even your friends, you end up wasting more of your time.
Anne: Yeah.
Laya: And so that's kind of a boundary set. That's really nice. And I love that you spoke to the automation on the backend.
Anne: Yeah.
Laya: Like I mentioned with Calendly, I can send an immediate reminder 15 minutes prior to session.
Anne: Yup, yup.
Laya: I can send a follow-up message two weeks after or a week after, or what have you, that says, hey, just checking in, making sure everything is clean with the audio, if you had any other needs. And so it takes that extra wheelhouse off of my mind. Of course, I still have my own method for following up with the client personally, but this just adds like this extra layer. And sometimes I'll get the response back, and they'll be like, oh, thank you so much for checking back in. And to be honest, I may have even forgotten and you know, to follow up or got so busy and something else.
Anne: Yeah.
Laya: So it saves just peace of mind and professionalism. It takes it to the next level.
Anne: And I think also there are those programs or CRMs that can help you to --
Laya: Sure.
Anne: -- once you connect with your contact, after you've done the job, it can send out an automated email that said "thanks so much again, it was a pleasure working with you and keep me in mind for any additional projects. If you have any questions in the meantime, feel free to contact me here" and boom, and then are actual like on a Wix platform, I have a few drip campaigns that are set up that will automatically contact my clients. So if anybody's on a Wix platform, it is part of the Ascend platform that you -- it's an add-on for email marketing. And basically, so after you connect with a client, you can have a "if then" statement that says, if they open this email, then three days later, send this email or send a followup. And there's lots of different scenarios. So it's really great. So I'll give an example for a VO BOSS interview. If somebody inquires about I want to be on the veal BOSS show, it goes through a whole campaign. Here, sign up here, fill out this form here. The form then sends me all the information, and then it gives them a link to the calendar, which then allows them to schedule, which then there's an automated email that says, thank you so much. Here's how you're going to connect with Anne. It'll send a reminder right before the connection. And then a couple of days after the actual scheduled session, there'll be a thank you that goes out. So it's really awesome the way that it can automate.
Laya: I love that.
Anne: And there's more than just -- that's the Wix platform. I also have an Active Campaign that I send emails out from to my lists. I also have client lists that can also do automations like that.
Laya: Yeah. I've seen some of that same functionality in using HubSpot, which is a free CRM solution. You can connect Zapient to MailChimp.
Anne: Yes.
Laya: You can connect it to --
Anne: Is it Zapient?
Laya: Zap -- Zapient?
Anne: Or is it Zapier? Is it Zapier or Zay-pier? I can't remember. Are they two different things?
Laya: I think they may be one in the same.
Anne: Okay.
Laya: I'm not going to fact check myself in this moment, but --
Anne: if you start with zap --
Laya: There's a zap somewhere. There's a zap somewhere out there.
Anne: I've used it myself. And it's great.
Laya: It's great.
Anne: So if this happens, then do that. It's a really wonderful free app that you can do things like that with.
Laya: And you can pull content too. Like if you have a hard time pulling all your email addresses because you've got multiple email accounts, or you're trying to create more of a contact list -- in fact, I recently found out an automation was in that cog wheelhouse that pulls my contacts from QuickBooks and put it into MailChimp. So I don't have my CRM solution fully vetted out by any means. I need all the help in the world, but trying these different productivity hacks for automation, there are many solutions out there that can make your life easier and less laborious, you know?
Anne: Absolutely. And one other thing I'm going to oh, totally, totally recommend is go ahead, be brave and outsource things that you just --
Laya: Yes.
Anne: -- don't want to spend your time doing, or it's too com -- I'm going to say like for me, accounting, I say it all the time. Everybody that's listened to any, to just one episode, I might say it every episode. I'm not sure, but outsourcing my accounting was the best thing I ever did for my business.
Laya: Yeah. If you don't love it --
Anne: Don't love it.
Laya: -- pay someone that does.
Anne: And she's great. She's fast. She loves it. And I trust her. I trust her with my life. You know, she'd been doing my accounting for gosh, at least five years. So.
Laya: And that's a great hack too. And I use somebody not for my voiceover business, but for the podcast. I have partnered with a very talented, very savvy copywriter, and she knows my style of I, and she creates a social media posts for the podcast that I do with my daughter, She Sounds Like Me. And I love it because it just takes that off my plate. But also we use a platform called Later, which is a social media scheduler. And what I love about that is that I can see what's coming. She can do a cross platform integration and schedule. I can approve it ahead of time. And then if I don't like where she's got it, or it doesn't feel quite right, or it's not timely, I can very easily shift the tiles. So it's either aesthetically pleasing or it's more on topic point or what have you. And that's become a seamless integration into my social media management. I've often thought about integrating it into my voiceover business page, but for me that's still very in the moment, very real time, very personal --
Anne: Oh yeah.
Laya: -- and not exactly all that consistent at the moment because of just the last year of burnout. But I have found that Later is a great platform. And I feel like I've tried them all over the years, as far as social media scheduling goes.
Anne: Yeah.
Laya: So that one's pretty efficient. Yeah.
Anne: I have a social media scheduler for, 'cause I have so many Facebook business pages, and Facebook for a while was really where a lot of my clients were. And so I have a Facebook scheduler, which also integrates with Twitter and LinkedIn. I can have so many social media to -- it's called Post Planner.
Laya: Okay.
Anne: And so I've been using that for years. And then also Facebook now has become, and/or Instagram, one in the same now, have their own scheduler now.
Laya: Sure, they do.
Anne: And so that has become fairly decent in terms of you can't schedule too far, but you can schedule out. So with the combination of those, I'm able to schedule the majority of my stuff out there. And then I will follow up with the engagement. Like I said, I can't be connected to social media every hour of the day, but when I do connect, that's when I engage and comment and respond and also post some interesting finds to my own timeline or add to what I've already posted before to keep it kind of fresh and not too predictable.
Laya: Yeah. Absolutely. Another great resource that I've been loving because my days of graphic design or my experience there is limited -- I know what I like aesthetically, but there's no way I'm going to spend time creating unique graphics, whether it's for the show or for promoting the business or promoting something within the voiceover business, like we've done with the podcast. I love using Canva and I use Canva Pro for graphic design for so many things.
Anne: Yay! Canva's amazing.
Laya: And it's actually, yeah, speaking of integration and scheduling, Canva just introduced a scheduler within their platform.
Anne: [gasps] Yes.
Laya: And what I love to deep -- and take it to a next level, everyone asks who may not be savvy in those audio grams, where you're seeing how you've maybe just done a radio commercial, and you've gotten full permission from the client, you can use the spot on social or to promote your business, but they don't have moving imagery. So you grab the picture that represents the brand best or the concept or the campaign. And you overlay that audio on top. People are always asking, how did you do that? I use Headliner for that.
Anne: Yup. Headliner's awesome.
Laya: Love that. I use it for the podcast as well. And sometimes for some of my voice work or for my demos to make a moving image. But Canva now integrates with Headliner.
Anne: Oh, amazing.
Laya: So these, some of these systems are working together to not only plan, create, schedule, but overlay --
Anne: Yup.
Laya: -- all in an effort to be more productive, more cohesive, and save you time.
Anne: I have to plus like 21,000 for Canva because that literally, you don't have to be a graphic artist --
Laya: No, it's so easy.
Anne: -- which not many people I know.
Laya: It's intuitive. Yeah.
Anne: And so I would struggle with Adobe because I have the Creative Suite --
Laya: Same.
Anne: -- but it's not something I use every single day. I'm not a graphic designer, and neither are necessarily anybody that's working with me to do to post social media. But Canva has just joined us together in happy, joyous unity.
Laya: Oh, I love it. I love it for my teams too.
Anne: Yup.
Laya: Like I was saying about my social media manager, we have folders that are specific to that brand.
Anne: Yup.
Laya: I have folders that are specific to my voiceover business or Cyla's voiceover business. And so to go in there and have this asset library --
Anne: Oh yeah.
Laya: -- and the membership is very inexpensive.
Anne: It is.
Laya: There is a free version --
Anne: Yup.
Laya: -- and then an inexpensive version. I just make sure --
Anne: I use Pro.
Laya: -- that these are part of my -- yeah, me too, to integrate that as part of my business cost, because those memberships can save you so much time, energy, and effort and up-level the look and feel of your brand and your professionalism.
Anne: I didn't know they had scheduling. Now I'm going to have to check that out.
Laya: Yeah.
Anne: That's awesome.
Laya: I don't know what it integrates with or if it's a standalone scheduler, but I love that it's there. It's, everybody's thinking along those same lines, you know?
Anne: God, good stuff.
Laya: For sure.
Anne: BOSS productivity hacks.
Laya: Love it.
Anne: You guys BOSSes, we would love to hear your productivity hacks. So we've given you the best of ours. And I think I am really, really excited for an amazing year this year, Laya, and I know you are too.
Laya: Yes, let's work smarter, not harder --
Anne: There you go.
Laya: -- and be smart and productive in our VO BOSS businesses.
Anne: And I'll tell you what else is smart. Our sponsor, ipDTL.
Laya: Yes.
Anne: I love, love, love ipDTL. It allows me to connect with Laya, with all of my clients and with every BOSS out there. So you can find out more at ipdtl.com. You guys, have an amazing, productive week. And we'll see you next week.
Laya: And happy new year, absolutely.
Anne: Yes. Happy new year. Bye, guys.
Laya: Bye-bye.
>> Join us next week for another edition of VO BOSS with your host Anne Ganguzza. And take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at vobss.com and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies, and new ways to rock your business like a BOSS. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via ipDTL.