Dec 31, 2024
00:00 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Hey bosses, real Boss, Tom Dheere and myself have a very special
deal for you guys. Tom, tell them what it is.
00:08 - Tom Dheere (Co-host)
All right, anne. If you use the promo code BOSSVOSS that's B-O-S-S
as in V-O-BOSS and V-O-S as in V-O-STRATEGIST, and the number 24,
so that's BOSSVOS24, you get 10% off my 30-minute check-in, my
one-hour strategy session and my one-hour diagnostic.
00:27 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
And you'll get 10% off all coaching packages and demos on the Anne
Ganguzza website. So, guys, black Friday starts now and runs till
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00:43 - Tom Dheere (Co-host)
BOSS, VOS 24. BOSS. VOS, BOSS, VOS, 24. BOSS, VOS, 24.
00:47 - Intro (Announcement)
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.
01:07 - Tom Dheere (Host)
Hey everyone, welcome to the VO Boss Podcast and the Real Boss
Series. I am Anne Ganguzza and I'm here with amazing real boss Tom
Dheere. Hey, Tom Dheere.
01:18 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Hello Anne Ganguzza.
01:19 - Tom Dheere (Host)
How are you?
01:20 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
I'm doing good. How are you? Happy holidays.
01:23 - Tom Dheere (Host)
I'm doing awesome. Happy holidays to you. Thank you, tom. Last week
we had an amazing discussion about how to take stock and take a
look at how your year has gone so far, and I think that it's very
appropriate at the end of the year here to have another discussion
about how we can best prepare for 2025 so that we can have the best
year ever.
01:45 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Absolutely Now. I've done videos like this or taught classes that
discuss this every year for probably the past 13 years or so since
I started instructing, I want to do something a little different
than the normal thing that I do. We'll get to that, but before we,
started recording.
02:03
I was listening to a podcast that was doing a post-presidential
election Monday morning quarterback reverse engineer breakdown of
like what happened. We're not going to talk about politics on any
level, but there was something very specific that the guests talked
about. They were talking about identity politics, as in how do you
identify and how does that influence what you think, what you feel
and, of course, obviously, how you vote, and of course, there's
gender and race and all of those types of things. But they gave a
very specific example of like, for example, west Virginia coal
miners. They said, okay, west Virginia coal miners, we know better
than you because coal is naughty, so we're going to take away your
jobs, but we're going to get you a job coding, and to some people
that's like oh, what a wonderful idea. But to the coal miners that
may be a horrible idea.
02:57
And this is why I talk about politics, because people identify in
certain specific ways. And I'm also talking about this not from a
class level but a vocation level, because coal miner is an
identity. Farmer is an identity, zooming out more. I work with the
land, I work with my hands, I like to work outside. This is who I
am, this is what speaks to me and feeds my soul as a person, as
well as puts food on the table.
03:28
The reason I'm bringing up this, anne, is because and I never even
thought about this before I identify as a voice actor, and I know
that may sound weird. I identify as a coal miner, I identify as a
farmer, I identify as a voice actor. But I decided I wanted to be a
voice actor when I was 23 years old, like I was a kid, you know, I
just dropped out of grad school and I decided this is what I want
to do and it's the only thing I've. I mean, I've had a part-time
job doing this and that I've had full-time jobs to make money, but
it was all the means to an end of being a voice actor. So I have
identified as a voice actor my entire adult life. How does this
relate to how to get ready for the new year? I think all you bosses
should think about how do you identify? And I'm going to break that
down into two very specific categories.
04:20
Yeah, as an artist or as a business Now, Anne as the wonderful
performance coach that she is helps you realize the artist within
you. I, as the VO strategist, help you realize the business that is
within you. Right, this is what's really important is that if you
identify 100% as an artist and spreadsheets and keeping track of
invoices, be damned, you're in trouble. You're not going to be the
artist that you want to be and eat. If you're 100% business, I want
to do the genres that make the most money and keep all this artsy,
fartsy stuff off my lawn. You're in trouble because now you're
refusing to identify with the artistry. That is voiceover. That
requires emotional journeys, expression. You know there's
psychology and inward reflection and all of that stuff.
05:17 - Tom Dheere (Host)
So you need to identify then with both. Correct then? Is that what
you're saying?
05:21 - Intro (Announcement)
Because I was just going to ask you can I identify as an
educator.
05:25 - Tom Dheere (Host)
I always think that. I say it multiple times. I feel like I've been
an educator all my life because I used to teach my dolls flashcards
from the very beginning. I mean, that's what brings me joy. And,
yes, voice acting, of course. Voice acting because that's the
creative aspect of it, right, but probably a little bit more. I
enjoy being an educator and sharing things with others and
hopefully inspiring and motivating, but also I really love
entrepreneurship. So I feel like that teaching with
entrepreneurship that's how I identify and it's funny because, tom,
that you say that because all my life, through my career, before I
was in education in some form or fashion, all along I also was
placed in these management positions where I would be the liaison
between the art department and the technology department. So I feel
like I've got the creative and the business or the technical side
within me, and so I think I've always identified with two, really
two different aspects of it and I love that you just said that
because you just I feel good now. I feel like I feel
seen.
06:27 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Yeah, absolutely, and part of having an identity or how you
identify is you also demand, or you should demand. I would like to
say that people see you as who you are and I had this problem with
friends, people that I thought were friends in my 30s because I
identified as a voice actor, and they didn't take that identity
seriously. They didn't respect my identity. And, to your point, the
fact that you could work in this corporate environment and liaise
with the business people and the marketing people. It means you
speak business, you speak marketing, you speak entrepreneur, you
speak art and you also speak educator.
07:06
I identify as an educator Also, you identify as an educator. You
can identify as more than one thing, but with the artist and the
business part, which are two critical components to be effective as
a voice actor, you need to be in touch with both of those things,
have a level of self-awareness, because some people come in from a
theater background, a very heavily artistic background. Some people
come from a radio background, which is an art form in itself, but
it's very announcer-y as opposed to storyteller-y Storyteller-y, I
guess that's a word now.
07:40 - Tom Dheere (Host)
That's a good word, Tom.
07:42 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Storyteller-y. You don't have to identify as a marketer to enjoy or
tolerate marketing as a voice actor. It's a part of what you need
to do, but at its core you need to identify as an artist. I would
say at your core, because this is about expression and engagement
and getting people to feel certain ways and obviously do different
things. Go buy this car call now. Operators are standing by, but
identify that. The business too.
08:08 - Tom Dheere (Host)
Well, here's what I like about this and this is what I like to tell
my students is I always step back when people are like I don't
really relate, I don't resonate with this genre or I don't resonate
with or I don't like marketing and I don't like certain parts of
this running this business. And so, in reality, I always try to
tell them to step back and say what is it that you love? Because I
would say creative and entrepreneur. Right, creative entrepreneur?
You know that kind of thing. I identify with multiple levels, I
mean, and under that, creative is voice actor, but I also love,
like voicing corporate, and I love voicing e-learning, of course,
because I identify as an educator, but I love corporate as well
because it's a challenge To me.
08:47
I say step back and look at the things that you don't like and
embrace the challenge, because that speaks to your creative part,
like solving a problem. And so, for me, I've always told people, if
you really truly hate and you're trying hard to find inspiration to
get into that character, embrace the challenge. If you don't know
like what kind of an actor or what kind of a character to be when
you're teaching and e-learning, you need to embrace the challenge
of how are you going to teach this lesson in an engaging manner. So
step back. If you don't like corporate copy, step back and say
there's a story in there somewhere. Where is it?
09:19
The challenge is to find that, and the challenge for me as an
entrepreneur, is to solve the problem of how am I going to make
money with my product, right? And so it's always that challenge,
that intellectual challenge and that creative challenge, that speak
to both or three things that I identify as which is creative,
entrepreneur and educator. So it speaks to all of those things
running a business, and so those things that you don't enjoy, that
you hate, try to step back and look at the challenge that they
present for you and embrace the challenge and embrace how are you
going to solve this problem. And that's what I feel like helps me
to love all aspects of it and, of course, the stuff that I really
don't love. We've talked about this before, tom. We say go ahead,
outsource it to the experts in the field.
10:02 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Right, it is difficult to reconcile all of these hats that you have
to wear to be an effective voice actor and remember that, yes, you
only have one head, so they kind of stack up like Dr Seuss's
Bartholomew in the Thousand and One Hats. It's not easy. This is
not an easy thing to do. So, with all that in mind, I brought up
the how do you identify as a voice actor, or how do you identify as
an educator or a marketer or a business person, because that should
inform what you need to do and what you need to be and what you
need to have to set yourself up for success in 2025.
10:45
Because, yes, a goal, I want to make this amount of money, I want
to get this kind of representation, I want to produce this demo, I
want to get on this social media platform. All of those are valid,
all of those are important, but you can only be effective if you
know who you are and understand who you need to be to be effective.
Whether you like it or not, if there's one thing I tell all my
students is the voiceover industry does not care. If you don't like
social media, the voiceover industry does not care. If you don't
like spreadsheets, the voiceover industry does not care if you
don't like auditioning. It does not care. It has no sympathy.
Either you do it or you're out.
11:26 - Tom Dheere (Host)
People hiring your voice don't care. People hiring your voice don't
care. They just want the voice.
11:31 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
They just want the product, they want the voice, they want the
invoice, you know.
11:38 - Tom Dheere (Host)
And I do want to say to your point of making sure you know who you
identify with, but also know that you can evolve and change right,
so your identity can change and evolve. Because if you want to
diversify that business, right, Setting new goals for next year If
you want to diversify into another genre I mean the broad spectrum
part of it is I identify as a voice actor. Is there a specific type
of voice actor that you truly identify with? Oh, I really consider
myself, you know, an audiobook narrator, right, and so you can
evolve and change right that identity or narrow down that identity
or broaden out that identity based upon your goals for the
following year. Because I know that myself, in order to diversify
my business, I've had to do that, and it doesn't happen overnight
sometimes. Sometimes you've got to sit with it and think it and let
it come, because it's a creative challenge.
12:26 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Absolutely. I'm so glad that you said audiobook narrator is the
first example, because there's a handful of genres that people will
say I'm this genre before they even say that they're a voice actor.
What do you do for a living? I'm an audiobook narrator. That's one
of what I call the lifestyle genres, as in you can be a full-time
audiobook narrator.
12:49
You can be narrating audiobooks five days a week every year and
have a pipeline, and do it at the exclusion of all other genres of
voiceover and make a good living doing it. So a lot of people
identify as their genre before they identify as a voice actor. In
general, I'm the opposite I'm a voice actor, and the reason why I
say that is because, well one, I love storytelling and I love
storytelling in all its forms whether it's a 15-second commercial
or it's a 30-hour audio book.
13:19
It's all storytelling. I'll tell any story you want and any style
that you want and any medium that you want for any audience that
you want. And then some people say I am an e-learning narrator or
I'm a cartoon narrator, and that's good and I think it's healthy
too, because the firmer of an identity that you have when it comes
to setting goals for the new year, which is what this conversation
is all about it's easier because I tell my students vague goals
will get you vague results. Specific goals will get you specific
results and that feeds into vague efforts.
13:51 - Tom Dheere (Host)
Exactly. And if you narrow down that you want to get into, let's
say, audiobook narrating, then you'll have a specific set of goals
that will help you to get there. If you want to be an e-learning
narrator, you have specific sets of goals that will get you there.
So, yeah, I think if, at the broad level, you say I am a voice
actor, I am an artist, I'm a business person, I'm a serial
entrepreneur I like to call myself that Because I love the
challenge of like how can I make money from this? And it makes me
feel like I don't want you guys to think I'm all about money, but
it's not really that. It's about the challenge of taking something
and building it from the ground up and then that kind of
exhilaration and satisfaction when it works is amazing. When it
doesn't work.
14:32
You know what I learned from that as well.
14:34 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Oh, you know what I want to do now, Anne. I want to use this as an
example for you. So for you bosses who are watching this, you want
to set goals for 2025. Maybe try it through the prism of identity.
Let's use this example In 2025, I wish to identify as an e-learning
narrator. That's your goal, okay, so what do you need to do to be
able to achieve that goal of identifying as an e-learning narrator?
Well, the first thing is training and, of course, I use e-learning
as an example, because you should go to Anne Ganguzza to get your
e-learning training. But can? You should go to Anne Ganguzza to get
your e-learning training.
15:08 - Tom Dheere (Host)
But can we ask one question? Yes, can we ask one question before we
say I want to go into e-learning. Why, why do you want to
be?
15:14 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
There you go. Why do you want to identify as an e-learning
narrator? I think that's important, right, and that's a fantastic
question, because for some of you it may be I've been a school
teacher for 25 years and I'm retiring and that's what you want to
do. Or you just may be an academic, you may be a scholar and you
just love learning. So you want to share your love of learning as
opposed to being a teacher, and you want to share your love of
teaching. So figuring out the why is a great way to start. And
then, once you figure out that, why? Because e-learning, as Anne
can tell you, takes on many different forms. Medical narration is a
form of e-learning, narrating textbooks, narrating human resources,
resource guides or, you know, forklift, certification for
construction workers, or executive summaries or any or a number of
things, and some of that you may identify with more strongly and
others you may not identify with as much. But once you figure out
that why, then you go to the how.
16:15
Why do I want to identify? Why could I identify as an e-learning
narrator? And then, how can I do that? Get training with Anne, make
a great demo. Then you need to figure out the marketing part of
that you also need to build, possibly, a landing page on your
website. Maybe you need to build a list of e-learning clients that
you could direct market to. Maybe you need to join some online
casting sites that have a lot of e-learning casting opportunities
and so on and so on and so forth. So you can kind of plot that out.
If, by December 31st 2025, you have said I now identify as an
e-learning narrator, both inside and outside, and, like Anne said,
figure out the why that's the inside part and then training, demo,
website marketing, casting sites, direct emails, which turns into
e-learning jobs, now you can realize that goal of identifying as an
e-learning narrator.
17:11 - Tom Dheere (Host)
Now also, if I could just interject and say that, when you're
figuring out what it is, what are your goals for the following
year? And I think also researching the industry. Tom and I have
spoken about the industry and how it's evolved in past episodes and
how it's evolved in past episodes, and I want you to know and we
also just came back from a conference where we were discussing how
are these genres being affected by disruptive technologies such as
synthetic voice or AI? And, just to let you know, e-learning is
alive and well, as well as corporate. I personally, I talk about
looking at the market space, right 33.2 million registered
companies. How many of them are going to use synthetic voices?
Probably the ones that don't care about engagement or storytelling,
right? And that's the same amount of people, I believe, that didn't
care that the narrator could tell a story either, and maybe they
just had a nice-sounding reading voice, and so they might hire
somebody for that, and so the same people that are going to hire
for that are going to still hire for that, and they may go to
AI.
18:12
But I believe that there's a huge, huge market. It is the largest
market out there, really, of all the genres, when you're talking
about percentage of opportunities out there. So, guys, just because
you might be hearing stories about how all e-learning is going to
AI, I stand up and object to that, not because I don't want it to,
but, honestly, when you look at the realistic numbers of the market
space, yeah, some of it's going to go there, but some of it's going
to go there for every genre, right. You still have a really large
market to work with here that I don't see going away anytime soon.
Tom, I don't know what about you.
18:46 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
I still believe that there's plenty of work for everybody that
knows what they're doing.
18:51
And the question is do you bosses know what you're doing? I would
say just the fact that you're having this conversation with us and
listening to us means you are much farther ahead of the game than a
lot of other people, because you're taking it upon yourself to
educate yourself about the voiceover industry through the VO Boss
podcast. With all that in mind, yes, the industry is changing. Yes,
ai is here. It has been here. It is causing the overall voiceover
industry to contract. That is unquestionable, and some people are
asking it from the perspective of genre, and Anne heard me say this
when I moderated the AI panel very recently at the Mid-Atlantic
VoiceOver Conference, that I think it's a bottom-up thing, that the
lowest budget content will be the stuff that gets eaten up by AI.
First and this is why I'm going to talk to you about this part
bosses, about setting your goals for 2025.
19:45
Another mission, because there's goals and then there's missions. A
mission to identify as an e-learning narrator I think is a very
noble mission and we kind of walked through that. But another
mission can be to be a better storyteller than AI, and you have to
be that because more and more of the work is going to get eaten up
on a low performance low budget level, which is, for the most part,
entry-level work for lack of a better term for a lot of people who
are entering the voiceover industry. So that means you need to make
sure that you have quality performance training storytelling
training, on-camera theater, opera, improv, stand-up comedy. Get
that training to complement Aang Ganguzza's e-learning training and
all the other wonderful coaches out there so you can hit the ground
running and already be relevant and already be more of an effective
performer than AI.
20:40 - Tom Dheere (Host)
And you know what else, tom, worst case scenario and I don't want
to like worst case scenario for next year, but worst case scenario
there is no voiceover industry anymore. Right, if you've gained all
these skills, right, building a business Hello, building a business
right. Understanding how to have a product, market it and sell it
right, you have a business. And also performance wise right, as an
actor. Gosh, these performance skills can be put into so many
everyday opportunities for work. If, for whatever reason Now I'm
not going to say the voice industry is going to fall out, but I
think as business people, we have to always be prepared, right. So
those skills that you develop right in becoming the best actor that
you can be, are going to help you down the road for anything that
you do, if you're presenting, if you are trying to sell yourself in
an interview, I mean, all of these things really are beneficial, I
think, to your personal and professional growth and development. So
it's not a waste of investment ever.
21:34 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
I don't think it's funny because, as you were saying that, I
thought of two professions. There are people who train lawyers to
speak in court. That requires an acting coach of some sort. And
there's another voice actor I know who trains actors to be
professional patients at medical schools so they can exhibit
certain symptoms, so the medical students can diagnose their
ailments.
21:58 - Tom Dheere (Host)
So this is not about exit strategies for when?
22:00 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
AI eats voiceover. But Anne's point is very sound.
22:05 - Tom Dheere (Host)
Yeah, no, it's just investment, yeah.
22:08 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Yeah, investing in yourself. Here's another thing that I'm starting
to notice. Yeah, search engine results. If you're using Google or
Bing or Yahoo, whatever, I've noticed that, at least with the
voiceover-related searches, which is most of what I do for various
reasons, ai companies are starting to show up more in the sponsored
results.
22:32 - Tom Dheere (Host)
Have you noticed this, anne. Well, I know that the AI answer is
always coming up first, and so I don't know if I've noticed AI
companies specifically advertising their services. But AI answers
and responses.
22:39 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Yeah, this is what I'm saying. Absolutely, it's both, because, like
I use a Chrome browser.
22:44
I tend to use Google the most often and I'll get that AI answer
before I get other answers, but it'll be the AI answer. It'll be
these AI-sponsored companies, as, pertaining to voiceover and then
all the normal Google results, I'm wondering that a lot of these AI
companies have been recruiting and contracting with voice actors
like us, and now that they've gotten enough of a voice roster of
human voices that they're cloning speech to speech or text to
speech, and they've gotten all their software ducks in a row and
they've gotten all their marketing ducks in a row, that they may be
going for it possibly this year. And I say that, bosses, to light a
fire under your butts. It's time to stop being professional
students. It's time to get out there and start working. Keep
getting your coaching with Ann, keep producing your demos, keep
developing your skills, but get off the fence. Get on top of
it.
23:38 - Tom Dheere (Host)
So you can go and advertise your product. All right, so we've got
step one. Right is how do you identify right, your, why?
23:46 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
right.
23:47 - Tom Dheere (Host)
Understanding, I would say, educating the industry and what it is
that you identify with. And if you want to move into or add
additional genres or whatever you want to do for your business, to
really investigate, educate yourself on that. And now we kind of
have the goal that we're setting and then we're working backwards
right, we're like reverse engineering the goal. So what will it
take to achieve that goal? What other tips do you have, tom? We're
writing this down, I assume, because that's what I tell people. It
always helps to write down.
24:16 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
I certainly hope our bosses are writing this down.
24:18 - Tom Dheere (Host)
I don't know if I have much writing skills anymore, but you know I
do have paper and pen and there's lots of great planners out
there.
24:24 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Yeah, I will give some quick tips that I usually talk to my
students about, now that we're talking about identity, which also
is a form of how do you define success? So that's a part of it. How
do you identify? Figuring out which genres, like we said, you want
to identify as an e-learning narrator in 2025. But then the third
one is what are the portals? Your bosses have heard me talk about
this before the three portals of voiceover that connect voice
actors to voiceover casting opportunities, which are
representation, online casting sites, self-marketing strategies.
So, for example, if you want to identify as an e-learning narrator
in 2025, most agents don't cast e-learning.
25:04 - Tom Dheere (Host)
Correct.
25:05 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Which means you don't need to seek representation in 2025, most
agents don't cast e-learning Correct, which means you don't need to
seek representation in 2025. However, there are tons of casting
sites that have lots of e-learning opportunities and, of course,
you can engage in direct and indirect marketing strategies to build
lists of potential clients, cold email them more follow-up emails
to stay top of mind, so you can see how. Now you can kind of plot
it out into I need to be this, why do I want to be this, how am I
going to do this and who am I going to connect with to get the
casting opportunities that I want?
25:34 - Tom Dheere (Host)
And, by the way, part of that direct marketing where you're doing
the cold emailing and generating the lists and stuff that Tom helps
you to do as well the VO Boss brand has a product for direct
marketing as well that could be of interest. That will also help
you with all different genres e-learning, corporate and that is
using a vetted list that exists and you can find out more obviously
at vobosscom and set up an appointment to talk to me about that as
well if you're interested. That's another valid marketing. In
addition to the marketing that Tom talks to you about, I think you
need everything you can get. To be quite honest, get yourself out
there, I agree.
26:11 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
I agree.
26:12 - Tom Dheere (Host)
Well, tom, this has been a great conversation. So, bosses, we are
manifesting for you and with you, the most successful 2025 ever for
all of you. So make sure that you are taking stock in how your year
has gone and let's go ahead and set those goals. And, guys, we're
here for you. We want to hear feedback how is it going, how are
your goals being set, and what do you guys want to do for 2025? So,
tom, it's been a pleasure, as always. Thank you so much for all of
your words of wisdom, and I'm going to give a great big shout out
to our sponsor, ipdtl. You, too, can connect and network like real
bosses. Find out more at IPDTLcom. All right, guys, have an amazing
week and we'll see you next year. Bye.
27:01 - Intro (Announcement)
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
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