Jul 30, 2024
How do you determine your worth as a voice actor, especially when you're just starting out? Join Anne and Tom as we unravel the complexities of setting rates in the voiceover industry. We challenge the misconception that newbies should work for less and emphasize the need for a solid base studio session fee. From understanding SAG-AFTRA and Global Voice Acting Academy (GVAA) rate guides to navigating the nuances of broadcast and non-broadcast work, we provide practical insights that empower you to establish your value right from the get-go. Efficiency and quality are your best allies in commanding higher rates and securing repeat clients. Learn the essential strategies for managing your career, from cultivating new leads and staying updated on market trends to understanding client churn. We'll share actionable advice on how to keep your pipeline full and stay ahead of the curve in this ever-evolving industry.
00:01 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Hey boss listeners. Are you ready to turn your voiceover career
goals into achievements? With my personalized coaching and demo
production, I'm here to help you reach new milestones. You know
you're already part of a boss community that strives for the very
best. Let's elevate that. Your success is my next project. Find out
more at anneganguzzacom.
00:26 - Intro (Announcement)
It's time to take your business to the next project. Find out more
at anganguzacom. It's time to take your business to the next level,
the boss level. These are the premier 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. The boss, a VO boss.
00:46 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza. Hey, hey, everyone,
welcome to the VO Boss Podcast. I'm your host, Anne Ganguza, and I
am here on the Real Boss series with my co-host, Tom Dheere. Hey,
Tom Dheere, how are you?
00:57 - Tom Dheere (Host)
Hello Anne, how are you doing?
00:58 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Real boss. Yeah, hey, Tom, as a real boss. How's your year going?
By the way, it's gone by so fast already.
01:06 - Tom Dheere (Host)
First quarter gone.
01:07 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Yeah, first quarter and tax season is already coming.
01:10 - Tom Dheere (Host)
Well, I mean, we filed, I filed and I got paid already. So yeah,
oh, very, very nice.
01:15 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
So, speaking of numbers, you're a numbers guy, so how's your year
going?
01:20 - Tom Dheere (Host)
It's funny because I just did my first quarter analytics
financially and I think I'm like literally like $300 ahead of first
quarter 2023.
01:32 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Congrats.
01:33 - Tom Dheere (Host)
Can't complain about that.
01:34 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Being ahead is always a plus, always a plus and myself as well, and
I'm ecstatic that I got paid already from the government, so that's
good. I'm going to reinvest that in my business. But I love talking
real numbers, like real money. So I thought it would be good to
talk about real money, because so many times I have students who
just get into this industry and they get that first job where
somebody's interested in their voice and then they panic and they
say, oh my God, they've come back to me and they want to know what
I'll charge for this job and I thought we should actually. Let's
talk about that. Let's talk about those numbers. How do people come
up with those numbers?
02:13 - Tom Dheere (Host)
Right. It's funny because, like we could just say, well, just go
look at the SAG-AFTRA contract if you're union, or go look at the
Global Voice Acting website if you're non-union, and this will be
the world's shortest podcast episode.
02:24 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
That's it. Gvaa rate guide and SegAftra Boom and you're
done.
02:28 - Tom Dheere (Host)
But, as you well know, it's a lot more complicated than that. But I
want to do a little bit of myth busting real quick. A lot of voice
actors coming into the industry think hierarchical. They think
vertical, as in. Since they're just entering the voiceover
industry, they should get paid the lowest and the people who have
been in here the longest should get paid the highest. And that is
not necessarily true. I mean, if there's one thing I've learned in
the 25 plus years I've been doing this is that the last gig I got
isn't always the worst paying gig I've got, and then the next gig
I've got isn't always the best paying gig that I've got.
03:08 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
It fluctuates, it just does right. I mean, before the rate guides.
Well, I think there was always SAG-AFTRA, but SAG-AFTRA mostly
concentrated on things that were national and broadcast right, and
so national, regional, local, anything that was broadcast. So what
was a girl to do back in the early years when I was there trying to
figure out what do I charge? And literally it set myself into a
panic and I always, tom, had to pretty much just kind of wing it
and guess what? I think that that's even still true
today.
03:44 - Tom Dheere (Host)
I mean, now we have guides that we can look at as benchmarks, but
in reality every job is absolutely different, especially when
you're talking non-broadcast rates, so broadcast rates, radio, tv,
cable, internet, streaming right, all the front-facing stuff, where
there's going to be a session fee, which is how much you get paid
to record the voiceover audio files, and then the usage fee, which
is how much you get paid for giving license, because you're
literally licensing your voice to the voice seekers for them to use
your audio files in a certain period of time and in a certain
area.
04:31 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Absolutely.
04:31 - Tom Dheere (Host)
Right. So that's broadcast in the broadest sense, for lack of a
better term, and just by giving your listeners that basic
explanation. That's what sets up this avalanche of other questions.
It's like how big of a market, how many listeners, how long are you
getting paid for? It's, in simplest terms, the more listeners or
viewers, the more you get paid, and the longer that they're going
to air this spot, on whatever medium they decide, the more you get
paid. So the question is where do you start with that? So actually,
that leads me to a question. Anne, do you have like a
turning?
05:13 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
on the lights fee. Do you have a base studio session fee? Yes, I
absolutely do. For me to step into the studio, I have a certain fee
and a lot of my work is non-broadcast. So if I am doing any work
that's broadcast. Typically that's either handled by my agent,
right? Who's negotiating that for me? Which is why it's awesome to
have agents, because they handle that and they're always fighting
for the most part, if you've got a good agent for your best
interests.
05:35
If it's not an agent fighting for the rates, then I have to go to a
rate guide to start somewhere and figure out what that is. But for
non-broadcast, absolutely. I have a rate for stepping into my
studio and that is my studio session fee, which.
05:51
I try to equate everything non-broadcast to the same equivalent on
the broadcast side, because these days, with synthetic voices
right, I want to make sure that nobody's going to be using my voice
for a purpose that it wasn't intended for, and so I will actually
put and I'm probably getting ahead of myself on my non-broadcast, I
will put an actual length of time, whereas previously this was not
something we talked about in perpetuity in another episode. But I
want to absolutely address that. For non-broadcast, typically it
was you gave somebody a rate for usage of that file and it was
forever. And now, with synthetic voices and the fear of getting our
voices stolen or used for purposes other than intended, I now put
in for non-broadcast. I put in a length of time that they can use
that for as a safeguard.
06:42 - Tom Dheere (Host)
Right and for certain things I mean there's explainers and
corporate and e-learning and stuff like that.
06:47
Most of that stuff isn't evergreen anyway, because, like an
explainer video, for example, the company's branding may change,
the name of the company may change, the product, the service, the
widget may change, so they're going to need a new explainer
video.
07:03
If they have just like one explainer video which is parked on their
website and their social media channels just saying we are this
company, this is what we do, in two, three years, maybe five at
most, they're going to need a new video and they may go to you and
they may go to somebody else. But when you see non-broadcast in
perpetuity, you want to be smart about it. You want to give it some
form of shelf life, and that's a big part of this conversation,
anne is how do you communicate this? How do you educate your
clients? By explaining, like look, in a few years you're going to
need a new one of these anyway, because I've noticed that for like
non-broadcast, most of them want it in perpetuity, not because they
want to synthesize your voice or because they want to hose you
financially, it's just because they just don't want to be bothered.
They just want to do this and it's done, and it's there and now
they can go focus on other things.
07:48 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Yeah, they say that it's theirs.
07:49 - Tom Dheere (Host)
And they say it's theirs. For non-broadcast genres there's a whole
bunch of different ways to charge. Sometimes you charge by the
finished minute. If it's an audio book, you charge by the finished
hour. If it's long form e-learning modules, you could get paid by
the word.
08:06 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Exactly, I mean, those are the big ones there used to be per page
but I don't remember the last time I got paid per page and you know
what. I'll be completely honest, tom, I don't remember the last
time I quoted an e-learning module on a per word basis, because
most of the companies or most of the people that I'm working with
I'm not on a roster that is paying on a per word basis or working
with an instructional e-learning company, that usually is on a per
word basis.
08:31
Whenever I get e-learning clients, I always price them on a per
hour, per finished hour basis and I get paid the same for
e-learning as I do for corporate pretty much.
08:41 - Tom Dheere (Host)
Yeah, I mean they're both informational, non-broadcast, so in the
broadest brushstrokes they're pretty much the same genre-wise, with
the exception that e-learning is usually used to train students and
new employees and corporate is for internal communications, like an
HR video or a memo, or here's how you pick your employee benefits,
and stuff like that.
09:01 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Or even a corporate narration video. That's what I meant. Corporate
training and e-learning to me is the same. Do you know what I mean?
Corporate training and academic e-learning rates are the same to
me, except most educational institutions can't afford what a
company can Right.
09:15
It's harder for them to get the money, but I think one thing that I
want to emphatically tell the bosses out there that are just
beginning for non-broadcast is that really every job is unique and
we don't always have a rate guide to go to, and it's up to you as a
business person to understand what would be an acceptable market
rate for that and price it accordingly to that and also know your
worth because, again, like you had mentioned before, you think that
just because you're newer, you should charge less, and that is
probably not the. That is not the way I would be thinking about it
at all as a new person into the industry. Because you're being paid
for your voice right, you're being paid for your voice. You can get
just as much as I can or Tom can for that voice. It is your
business.
10:11 - Tom Dheere (Host)
Right. Here's the thing about that is that a lot of my students
immediately devalue themselves. Yeah, and you shouldn't do that to
yourself, because, think about it on the other side of the equation
is that if you're a voice seeker, do you care how long the voice
actors have been doing voiceover Really? I mean in the abstract.
Well, of course we would like an experienced narrator, but when it
comes down to the audition, within two, three seconds, either they
like you or you don't. It doesn't matter how long you've been doing
voiceover.
10:43
Now there is obviously a correlation between the ability to tell a
story effectively and how long you've been doing this. But
ultimately, if you've got quality training from Anne and a quality
demo and that demo is submitted and you've been trained by Anne to
audition effectively for projects, I'd say 90, 95% of the time,
it's a level playing field. Regardless of how long you've been
trained by Anne to audition effectively for projects, I'd say 90,
95% of the time, it's a level playing field regardless of how long
you've been in the industry, and I agree with you there, completely
agree with you.
11:10
So you take that data point and then you extrapolate that. Well, if
that's the case, then that means everybody should get paid the same
who's auditioning for that, because if one of my students auditions
for an e-learning project and I audition for an e-learning project,
if I book it, I shouldn't necessarily get paid more than they
should.
11:28 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
I agree with that, completely agree with that. Again, they're
paying for the voice. They're not necessarily paying for the
experience. However, in dealing with the client, your level of
experience might have a part in it because after you get the job,
in order to maybe keep the job or have the person keep coming back,
that's where your experience and customer service comes into play
and that's where I feel that you can command. And again, you can
command just as much if you can give them a good
experience.
12:00 - Tom Dheere (Host)
Right. This is what I tell my students is that your talent will
book you the first gig with a client. Your project management
skills will book you the next gig with the same client, because if
me and a student are auditioning for the same gig and they book it.
Great, they should get the same that I get, but then they better
deliver the goods, communicate the retake policy, understand how to
use their DAW, understand how to edit and deliver the audio files,
being able to take direction if it's a live setting those are
skills that.
12:31
Yes, there is a correlation between your experience level and the
ability to execute good project management, but if you work with
Anne or if you work with myself, part of our jobs is to teach you
that and how to be able to be professional and communicate
effectively and do all those things, because it's not just getting
the first gig, it's getting the next gig and the next gig and the
next gig without auditioning.
12:56 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Exactly. And it's funny because it reminds me of a conversation I
had in my Voices in Podcasting Clubhouse the other day with Jodi
Krangel and Cheryl Holling, where we got into this discussion about
acting right, because a lot of coaches these days will say it's
more important now more than ever to have your acting skills so
that you can separate yourself from the synthetic voices. And Jodi
said you know, I don't know if I'm completely convinced about that,
because in reality it also has to do with your customer service.
And I'm like, yeah, well, you've got to get the gig first right,
which is your auditioning talents and your performance talents and
your acting talents are going to get you the gig.
13:34
Then what's going to help you keep it is going to be that customer
service that business aspect that you just mentioned, in order to
keep them coming back and then commanding that good rate, moving
forward.
13:48 - Tom Dheere (Host)
And that's when it comes into so for the audition, to book the
audition it's about your talent and your storytelling ability.
After that, it's about your ability to manage the project
effectively. Because, also, if you can demonstrate that you can
deliver the goods and do it quickly and do it right, then, yeah,
you're in a better position to command higher rates and slash. Or
you're in a position to just get more bookings without having to
audition for this end client that you got that initial gig with and
other end clients at this production company or recording studio or
ad agency or marketing firm or political production company or
explainer production company has they're like yeah, you work with
Ann. Ann delivered the goods on this series of explainer videos.
She can do that for you and your series of explainer videos too. So
it's not just about getting as much as you can for the project in
question, it's about delivering the goods so you can get paid over
and over and, over and over again.
14:44 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
And aren't those the best jobs?
14:46 - Tom Dheere (Host)
Well, we all want regular clients, like everybody, everybody, in
every part of the country.
14:50 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
You don't have to audition for them, that just takes out a complete
amount of steps. And it's funny because I think for me and for my
business right. I'm always telling people you always have to
cultivate new leads, because if you've been in the business for a
long time, undoubtedly you'll probably have repeat clients. Right,
tom? You must have lots and lots and lots of repeat clients Many,
many, many, many, many repeat clients and me too, and I'm grateful
for them.
15:10
but I always have to be cultivating the new clients as well, and
that means I have to really continually assess and understand rates
and what I should charge and understand my worth in the current
market, in the current market.
15:24 - Tom Dheere (Host)
Yes, my friend Adam Werner, audiobook narrator, fellow FAFCon
attendee. He taught me about client churn, which is every quarter.
I look at all of the voiceover gigs that I booked and all the
clients that I worked with and the genres that I booked and how I
got the gig whether it was through my representation, whether it
was through an online casting site and whether it was through my
self-marketing strategies and I look to see how many new clients
did I gain and I keep a very close eye on how many new clients I'm
getting, because if I'm getting a regular stream of new clients,
that means my marketing strategies are working well, yes, yes and
your marketing strategies.
16:03
Is your self-marketing strategy? Cold calls, cold emails, indirect
marketing, social media, blogging, whatever. But also, am I just
auditioning better through my representation? Am I auditioning
better through my online casting sites? Because clients are just
going to naturally go away, they're going to retire, they're going
to go out of business, they're going to change their business
model.
16:23
They're going to hire their nephew who wants to do musical theater,
to do their phone greets. And now you're out. Ai is going to
replace and already has replaced some of us voice actors. For
certain clients, that's just going to naturally happen. So you
always want to keep the till full.
16:39
Yep, yep, absolutely absolutely want to keep the till full, yep,
yep, absolutely, absolutely, and making sure that you understand
what you're worth in today's current landscape on a per word, per
finished minute, per finished hour, per studio hour. You always
want to keep an eye on that, yeah. So how do you keep an eye on
that, anne? How do you keep an eye on current rates? What are your
go-tos? What are your habits?
16:57 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Well, my current rates. I actually make sure that I check the rate
guides frequently because they're continually being updated by
people more than me out in the industry. Back in the day I was a
core contributor to the GVAA rate guide and I think you were too
Tom like e-learning and corporate and telephony and medical and
those were the rates that I helped with on that rate guide. I make
sure that I'm continually assessing those rate guides, but I'm also
assessing the market. I mean, I work in the market and so I do a
lot of research on the client and I try to understand, like, where
else could they be going for potential business or another voice,
and how can I remain competitive with that voice? And so how do I
keep myself current? It's continual research, really, and
assessment with the rate guide and some of it, honestly, is just
pulling it out of the air. That is really what happens Sometimes.
It's nowhere to be found and you just have to use your best
judgment. Always use your negotiation 101 tactics on asking what is
the budget?
18:06
That's like the most important first question I think you can ask a
client.
18:10 - Tom Dheere (Host)
Do they have a?
18:10 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
budget, and if they have a budget, can you work within
that?
18:13 - Tom Dheere (Host)
Right, my go-to's is just looking at my agent casting notices and
looking at my online casting site casting notices yes, yes,
yes.
18:19 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Market assessment notices. And looking at my online casting site
casting notices Market assessment.
18:23 - Tom Dheere (Host)
Market assessment and what Ann does and what I do. You should be
doing both of those. You should be doing both of those because when
you get a casting notice from your representation, it's been
pre-negotiated. They've already gone through the rigmarole of
negotiating with that particular client, so what you get is most
likely the finished product of what the actual rate is going to be
for that project. So that will let you know, because, along with
that casting notice, in addition to the rates, is the specs, the
session fee, the usage fee, the market, the exclusivity and
conflicts and the rate of usage, how long it's going to be used
for. So you can use that to greatly inform your broadcast rate
sheets. And then for non-broadcast, looking at the online casting
sites and just noticing trends in e-learning versus corporate,
versus explainer, versus telephony, versus medical versus voice
of.
19:17 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
God. And in order to do that, in order to do that, do you need to
be a member, tom? I know, because some of them will post job rates
without you necessarily actually being a paid member if you're a
free member, but I believe you've got to be a paid member to get
that information these days.
19:33 - Tom Dheere (Host)
For places like Voice 123, I believe you won't have access to the
casting notices unless you're on the tier, because the only way
you'll get them is if they make it to your inbox, and the only way
it makes it to your inbox is having a subscription tier, unless you
have a free site, a free membership and some casting notices come
in and some say here's the jobs you missed and here's the
money.
19:53
Right, voicescom, I think you can run searches but you can't
audition unless you're a paid member. But you know what? There's
other places to go. I mean you could look at Backstage and Badalgo
and Casting Call Club, even Twitter. Now Casting Call Club and
Twitter, there tend to be lower no-pay jobs, which is why a lot of
voice actors early in their journey go to Casting Call Club because
it gives themselves a great opportunity to kind of develop their
audition skills, their rate negotiation skills, build up their
portfolio, resume, genre awareness and confidence, all of which are
extremely, extremely important things. But if you're able to hit
the ground running and you have more resources at your disposal
which I've got, a pay-to-play site like a voice123 or voicescom you
can get a much better idea of what current trends in the rate
structure is for voiceover gigs.
20:38 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
And you know what's so interesting. What I'm hearing from you,
interestingly enough, is not just understanding the rate guide and
then understanding the principles of negotiation and what you're
worth, but also your audition techniques, right. Auditioning
techniques, it's a first impression, right. And so if you're
looking to command a particular rate for a job, even if you don't
get a job that you've auditioned for right, you're submitting
auditions into your agent and you're just, you're nailing time
after time after time, or you're nailing the auditions in the pay
to play, right, you're getting consistent in people's minds and
that is building your value.
21:16
And it's interesting because when people come to me and they say I
want to get a corporate demo or I to get a medical demo or I want
an e-learning demo, I've, over the years, evolved into the type of
coach that is really coaching how to do the audition to get the gig
first, because, honestly, we all can do that. Read, that's a really
pleasant, nice read. You know that's reading the words, but it
takes acting skills to really tell the story. And so I really work
on building up students' storytelling skills and acting skills and
that, I feel, is going to command you the higher rate.
21:51 - Tom Dheere (Host)
Yes, I've got some numbers for you.
21:53 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
I know you love your numbers, I do, I do, I do. Tell me
Okay.
21:56 - Tom Dheere (Host)
In 2019, I auditioned roughly 400 times. Okay 1% of my voiceover
revenue came from representation. 18% came from casting sites. I
wasn't on any paid casting sites back then. Fast forward to all of
2019, 5 years later, 2023, I did 1,854 auditions. My online casting
site revenue percentage grew from 18% to 50%.
22:24 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Wow, that's incredible.
22:26 - Tom Dheere (Host)
My representation revenue percentage went from 1% to 12%. Wow,
that's incredible, and my overall revenue increased by
20%.
22:36 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
And now, what would you say that was due to then?
22:39 - Tom Dheere (Host)
Auditioning Auditioning right and auditioning skills.
22:43
Getting my reps in on specifically Voice123. And you can hear, if
you haven't watched our casting site VO Boss Video, go check that
out. You'll hear me talk about Voice123 in severe detail, about my
voiceover journey, the fact that I was auditioning so much on
pay-to-play sites I was just getting better at auditioning. I was
auditioning so much on pay-to-play sites I was just getting better
at auditioning, which meant when I was getting those agent and
manager-driven auditions, I was just getting better at auditioning
there too and as a result, I booked more gigs and I booked better
gigs.
23:12
So, if nothing else, don't put all of these things into separate
buckets or silos, pass judgment on them and ignore them, or covet
one and ignore the other. It's through data and money I've shown
that the online casting site portal and the representation portal
are clearly linked. There was clearly a synergistic relationship
between the quality and quantity of my auditions on Voice123 and
the quality and quantity of my audition efforts through my agents
and managers. I love that you're backing it up with the numbers and
quantity of my auditions on voice one, two, three and the quality
and quantity of my audition efforts through my agents and
managers.
23:43 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
I love that you're backing it up with the numbers, because I mean,
it's so easy right To point the finger and say, oh well, pay to
play suck, or there's too many people on the pay to plays, or the
pay to plays are bottom feeders. And so, therefore, I didn't get to
the audition on time, which you know that plays a certain part in
it.
24:03
But also it could be like my agent keeps sending me the same
auditions to everyone. So it's easy to point the finger and lay
blame. But I'll tell you what a lot of times, if you can increase
your audition skills, you can increase your net worth, you can
increase the rate that you can ask for. It's kind of like this what
came first, the chicken or the egg, the audition or the value right
that you can charge your potential client? I mean, honestly, it
just goes hand in hand. If you are a better actor, if you are a
better auditioner and that's going to require an investment,
typically in working hard with maybe a performance coach that can
give you good feedback. Because if you're like I don't know what's
happening, the pay-to-plays suck these days. I'm not getting any
work or my agent is not getting me work, and I hate it when people
blame their agents for not getting them work.
24:50
It really is up to you to put in that investment into your business
so that you can audition better and then command those better
rates.
24:58 - Tom Dheere (Host)
Absolutely so. Creating a rate sheet from scratch or using the
SAG-AFTRA guidelines or using the Global Voice Acting Academy rate
guides is an important thing to understand what is a voice actor's
worth in relation to the genres and the broadcast versus
non-broadcast market. But I'll be honest. I mean, yes, I have had
rate sheets that I built from scratch and talked to other voice
actors over the past 15, 20 years, but these days I don't really
look at it anymore. I just kind of just know, through repetition,
what I'm worth, what the genre is worth, what the gig is worth
based on the broadcast or non-broadcast usage. Is it going to just
be in a museum exhibition or is it going to be on a corporate
website that has 10,000 employees?
25:40
After a while you just kind of get the hang of it, but that does
not help our bosses who are early in their voiceover journey. So
bookmark that SAG-AFTRA rates, Bookmark that GVAA. Have your own
little Google Doc. Keep track of the agent auditions that you get
if you have representation. Keep track of the online casting site
audition rates. Just start to note them. Just make a little simple
spreadsheet Genre rate terms.
26:03 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
I did that right in the beginning of my career. It was like
audition. Where did the audition come from? Did I book the gig?
What was the price? Literally? That can really help establish for
you rates to charge and just make sure that you're keeping up with
those rates and really doing some market research. If you're new to
the industry, those rate guides use them as a guide only. That
doesn't mean that they're the be-all, end-all of what you as a
business owner should charge. But I would say, rather than going to
the lower number because you want the client right, make sure that
that number is well within what you are worth. And just because you
started just recently doesn't mean that you can't command the same
rate that Tom and I can.
26:47 - Tom Dheere (Host)
Right, and here's the thing about that is that the lowest bid
doesn't always book the gig. It does not always. It does not always
win.
26:55 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
I get nervous when I buy things that are too cheap. Then I'm like
oh, I don't know about the quality of this Right, because you know
there's going to be.
27:01 - Tom Dheere (Host)
Yeah, there may be a lack of quality. I mean, think of it this way
Like my wife and I were just in the big Macy's flagship store a
couple weeks ago to see the Macy's flower show, and we walked
through the departments and you see, like on the top floor of
Macy's is the luggage and you luggage and you've got five different
suitcase sets. The first few are worth $100 and then the last one
is worth $400. What are the ones people are going to look at first?
They're going to be like why is this one $400? What is it that
gives it more value than the other ones?
27:32 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
And I'll tell you something too Sometimes I can't believe I'm going
to admit this like on the air top as a female when I go shopping
clothes shopping right and they have huge, huge sales. When there's
like bins of clothing that are slashed 70%, sometimes that's almost
too overwhelming and exhausting. And now that the prices have been
slashed so much, I'm like I don't know people have been handling
these clothes. I don't know. Are they not in fashion anymore? I
question everything right.
27:58
Oh my gosh, they're so low, yeah, why are there so many of those in
the bin of the same like style? Is that because it's not in style?
And then I question all the other aspects of it. The quality, is it
in style? And so, literally I will. To save my brain the overwhelm
of low prices, I will go to the stuff that is priced higher and
it's usually presented much nicer right and it's less overwhelming.
Think about your voiceover right. Think about your voice and
presenting it in a way that you are worthy, right. You are worthy
of commanding that price. You are worthy of the elegant luxury
brand of that voice, right and people paying that money. There is
such an attraction to that for a lot of buyers it's like a
psychological aspect.
28:45 - Tom Dheere (Host)
Yeah, look, look, vo bosses. If you have gotten your training, if
you have gotten your demos, if you've built your website, if you
have your home recording studio set up and you have a rate sheet
built, you're worth it. Yeah, absolutely, you are worth it. You are
worth it and you have a rate sheet built, you're worth it. Yeah,
absolutely, you are worth it. You are worth it and you are worthy,
yes, absolutely Good stuff.
29:05 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
We could go on and on and on about this, but I find, tom, when I
talk to you, like our podcasts run a little bit long because we
have so much to talk about. You're so easy to talk to.
29:14 - Tom Dheere (Host)
Aw, you too.
29:15 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Thank you, Tom, for the wonderful, wonderful, sensible business
head that you have. I absolutely love, love, love our sessions
together and, bosses, I'm going to give a great big shout out to
our sponsor, ipdtl, that allows me to connect with Tom and talk
numbers, because I love to do that, and all sorts of other
wonderful business things that we should know as voice actors. You
can find out more at IPDTLcom, tom. Thanks again so much. I just
love our sessions together and I can't wait till our next
one.
29:45 - Tom Dheere (Host)
It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me back.
29:47 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Bosses, have a great week. We'll see you next week. Bye.
29:52 - Intro (Announcement)
Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host,
anne Ganguza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for
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