What does it mean?

1. Conversational Tone - Approachable, friendly, sincere
2. Heightened Life - Conversational with all the boring parts taken out
3. Conversational voice-overs can be different

When should we practice it?

1. Should be part of your warm-ups every day - Clearly define a warm-up pattern. Spend a little bit on creating your warm-up routine for conversational reads, i.e. examples that you can use to imitate, and practice them.
2. Before you go into a recording session - Develop a sentence, brief script, or phrase and put it to memory. Before you begin recording the conversational read, repeat those words 2-4 times to drop yourself into the conversational pocket.
3. When you are driving alone - One of the best times to practice your conversational tone is when you are alone.

Where should you use it?

1. Directions by the client - Clearly when a client asks you to use it
2. Interpretation - But there is also an interpretation of the script, and the client can be saying one thing but...

So, what exactly is a voice actor rate card anyway? A VO rate card is simply a chart, document, graph, etc. that outlines monetary prices to work with you and to license your work.

Why is it important?

1. Your business is supposed to make money. Without knowing how much you are charging and what you can expect, you will not be able to grow a profitable enterprise.
2. Consistency - There needs to be a consistent customer experience so they can trust in your name

How is a rate card formatted (Simple example)

A. Rates determined by length of the script:

1. 5 words (2 seconds)
2. 50 words (20 seconds)
3. 500 words (3 minutes)
4. 5000 words (33 minutes)
5. 50,000 words (5.5 hours)

B. Broadcast Rates and Sizes Online

1. 10,000 people
2. 100,000 people
3. 1M people
4. 10M people
5. 100M people

How do you price your rate card?

3 ways to do it:

1. Industry Standards: GVAA is a great place to start your search
2. What are your operating costs
3. What are the trending rates on the platform you are on?

Do you post it?

1. Do you...

How To Tell Your Voice Acting Story

Learning how to tell your brand story can be pretty hard.

So I wanted to come up with a video today sharing with you an easy way for you to create a piece of content every single day that you can spread across all of the different platforms. All you have to do is start recording your voiceover sessions.

In the video, I talk about how you can create great content. This is an excellent way for you to start growing your social influence and building a body of voice-over work.

Then what will happen is people will find the work that you have done and want to hire you because of the fantastic work that you have completed.

P.S. There are a million and one questions you could ask about creating your content. All of these questions would be valid and could be answered. The problem with this idea of analysis before you start is that the rabbit hole goes on forever and ever. 

You have to start and let figure it out along the way! 

When I first started in voice-over, I had the most challenging time with my breath.

Because I didn’t know what I was doing, I tried to breathe in places that were very awkward and not normal speech. It took me so long to edit out breath’s and I got confused about where they should go and how they should sound.

So then I adopted a no breath strategy where I would remove all of the breaths.

But as I went along, I realize that that sounded very unnatural as well. So I went to a strategy of leaving all the breaths in. What happened there was that the breaths were so loud that that didn’t work either.

As I went through this whole process over a couple of years, I realized that the problem was not my editing but my actual breathing during my voiceovers.

So I created a strategy on how to breathe better during my speaking. In this video, I talk about four different steps you can use to build up your stamina and correct any breathing problems you may have.

Simple 3-step Voice-over Marketing Plan (Email, 20 online sites/1 P2P, and social engagement)

General Notes: 

1. Don’t make things over complicated with your marketing plan (Use this 3 step formula)

2. Consistency is everything.

3. The content was king, but engagement has taken over. 

3-part Plan:

*Number 1 - Get set up with 20 online casting sites; Freelance, P2P sites (Fully complete your profiles. Do not leave anything undone.)

*Number 2 - Social Engagement - Pick two social platforms, Twitter and Instagram, and engage, qualify, contact)

• Engage - Leave comments, retweet, share, participate with companies on social media.
• Qualify - Research their social and site to make sure they hire voice actors.
• Reach Out - Message and email them. Mention the content you found on social media.

*Number 3 - Cold email - Mailshake, Social Leads, Monthly Newsletter (1 tip, 1 article summary, one offer)

• Take the leads/contacts you got from your engagement process...

Editing breaths in my voice overs used to plague me all the time. I literally would spend hours taking out breaths because I thought they sounded horrible and made the voice over seem amateurish. 

But I quickly realized that it wasn't the breaths I needed to be paying attention to, but the type of voice over I was doing.

Let me explain ... Was I narrating an audiobook or doing a car commercial? 

Both are voice overs but have a defined style of narration. There are always exceptions to the rule, but one (audiobook) should have breaths and one (car commercial) should not. 

As I grew as a practitioner of audio, I learned how to differentiate between the two. 

So ... there are times, especially during long form narration, elearning, conversational reads in longer form, etc. that should have breaths. It is natural to breath while talking and will actually sound quite odd if excluded. 

But, shorter spots, quick reads, commercials, etc. should...

I am excited to talk to you about the people sleeping right now. And you might be like, Anthony, what the heck are you talking about ... everyone sleeps?

I'm talking about all the people who are not working hard enough to get what they want. There are people making excuses. There are people failing to simply start. 

"Courage is crossing the starting line" Amby Burfoot

All of those people choosing to "not start", choosing to not take chances, choosing to sleep when there is plenty time to do more, are going to lose. 

And that is a huge opportunity for you and me. 

You see, when I started out in voice over years ago, I didn't have the fancy equipment I have right now. I didn't have a studio or Whisper Room or super expensive mics. All I had was a crazy desire to work and prove myself. 

There is not a day that goes by I don't thank my lucky stars that I worked so hard in the beginning. 

I remember people asking me about my successes...

I am so thrilled what is coming up in A VO's JOURNEY. As you might have seen, there have been some major changes to the community.

I made an announcement that I have been waiting to make for 3 years ...

I AM GOING FULL TIME AS A VOICE OVER ACTOR!!!

It is so incredible to think of the journey that has taken me to this point and the journey we have been on together.

Because of the monumental decision, it hit me that I should really stop and think about what was the main factor that got me to this point ... what was the one thing that I would tell someone if they asked?

HOW DID YOU DO IT? HOW DID YOU GO FULL TIME?

The only answer I could honestly say is ... ACTING! 100%

Acting has been the cornerstone of what I have put all my eggs into. It wasn't the gear when I started out, in fact, all the gear I have now was purchased in the last 6 months based on my voice acting success.

It wasn't the marketing or fancy copy, or this and that.

Plain and simple, it was my skill in acting that led...

It's every voice actors dream ... get consistent voice over work. 

If you are like me, that is the single most voice over question on my mind (after mastering the technical stuff). It's painful not knowing where the next business will come from.

And even more, it sucks when you feel hopeless to not be able to control any of it. 

Look, it's not your fault. The industry is split right now, technology and the internet have changed the landscape. The industry is having severe growing pains because of it. 

So, for us, it is downright frustrating

What can we do? 

It is no secret that 2 things make you money in voice over ...

1. Narrating
2. Marketing

Everything else for the voice actor is a business expense. 

In order to make sure that we are constantly doing those things that will get us business, we need to find places that we can audition (Marketing) as much as possible so we can get the voice over work (Narrating). 

There are many places online to do this but...

Having coached many voice actors getting started on Fiverr, and even veterans, the greatest issue they have is with the setup of their gig.

In this post, I talk about 3 Pro Tips for setting up your Fiverr Gig right.

Pro Fiverr Tip #1: Title

Setting up your title correctly is imperative. Think of your title as what someone would type in the search box.

If you try to shove too many words (keywords) into your title, it will sound unnatural and won't cast you in a professional light.

Your title should include a possible searched phrase like ... "I Will Record An American Female Voice Over".  

Straight to the point and a possible customer might type in "American Female Voice Over".

Pro Fiverr Tip #2: Description

The next part of your Fiverr gig setup is your description.

Using your title, you want to answer the following questions in your description box:

1. Who
2. What
3. When
4. Where
5. How

These questions will give you a direction to go. If you answer...