The therapist is IN on this episode of VOBoss. We explore the mental game of voiceover and encourage you to flip the script and reframe negative thoughts about you and your voice. They share years of combined wisdom and insight to help you stay sane and stay the course.
Takeaways
Quick Concepts from Today’s Episode:
Many actors struggle with feelings of inadequacy.
Sometimes it’s hard to see why a client would want to work with you.
Beginners suffer from confidence issues.
Finding what is special, unique & original about your voice may be a challenge.
Selling a personal brand/product always comes with doubts.
Focus on how to make yourself marketable and appealing.
Being well prepared and planned can stave-off failure.
Use uncertainty to evaluate strategy if the market is purchasing.
Comparing yourself to another talent might be part of the problem.
What are you comparing? Apples to apples? Or Apples to iPods?
Observing the marketing tactics of other talent can be valuable if done analytically.
Companies hire celebrities for their individual view-point and how they relate to audiences.
Brand alignment is not about your voice – it is about your personality.
A unique market position doesn’t mean 100% unique – there will always be a category or group of people you fit it with.
Bring YOU to the party. That’s who buyers want to connect with.
Referenced in this Episode
Direct links to things we brought up ++
Recorded on ipDTL
Read about Imposter Syndrome
Transcript
>> Today’s voiceover talent is more than just a pretty voice.
>> Pretty voice.
>> Pretty voice.
>> Pretty voice.
>> Today’s voiceover talent has to be a BOSS.
>> BOSS.
>> A BOSS.
>> A BOSS.
>> Join us each week for business owner strategies and success with your hosts Anne Ganguzza and Gabrielle Nistico, along with some of the strongest voices in our industry.
>> Rock your business.
>> Rock your business.
>> Rock your business.
>> Like a BOSS.
>> Like a BOSS.
>> Rock your business like a BOSS.
>> Rock your business like a BOSS.
>> A VO BOSS.
>> A VO BOSS.
>> A VO BOSS.
Anne: Welcome, everybody, to the VO BOSS podcast. I’m your host, Anne Ganguzza, along with my VO BOSS bestie, awesomeness, Gabrielle Nistico. Hey Gabby.
Gabby: Hi, Anne. [laughs]
Anne: How are you?
Gabby: I’m good. I’m a little tired of playing therapist though.
Anne: Oh no. [laughs]
Gabby: I feel like I’m…
Anne: I get that. But why are you playing therapist? [laughs]
Gabby: I feel like that’s the funny thing about being a voiceover coach. We play therapist an awful lot, probably more than people realize.
Anne: Well yeah, sometimes we do.
Gabby: Because there’s a whole, you know, brain element to what we do as performers.
Anne: Oh my goodness, Gabby. You know, it’s OK, because Gabby, probably because we’ve been through it ourselves, I would imagine. At least I remember myself going through a lot of – there’s a lot of like mental game to this game. [laughs]
Gabby: Yeah.
Anne: And a lot of people when they first get in to the industry, it’s, it’s a lot of confidence issues.
Gabby: Yeah. There are. I had a woman recently who said to me, “why me?” And I was a little perplexed. I was like, “well, what do you mean, ‘why you’?” And she went on to say, “why would an agent or a client or you know anybody hire me? I’m not different, I’m not particularly special, I don’t have a really unique voice. You know, why would they want to work with me?” And I was like “whoa, that is a great question, but at the same time it’s also a self-fulfilling prophecy potentially.”
Anne: Oh yeah, yeah, and that’s something you need to watch out for. [laughs]
Gabby: Big-time.
Anne: Well you know, and I think it’s very common, and I certainly am not one to say no, goodness no, this never happens because it happens I think to all of us, right, when we first enter into a field, not necessarily just – because we are selling a personal brand, I think it makes it more obvious, but I think anything that you start that’s new, an industry that you get into, and you’re not sure of it, you’re not quite sure how it works, how it operates, and especially when you’re selling something so personal as your voice, I can imagine that the questions are, “ok, so how do I differentiate myself,” which is a different question than “why would anybody want to hire me?”
Gabby: Exactly. There’s a difference between “how do I make myself marketable, how do I make my services appealing, how do I present my voice, my services, my company” versus “why.”
Anne: Yeah.
Gabby: My answer to her honestly was “why not you?”
Anne: Right.
Gabby: What’s wrong with you that they wouldn’t want to work with you? But at the same time you do realize this is very much the actor’s lament, you know this is that weird ingrained thing in us that goes “I’m no good, I’m never gonna make it, nobody’s gonna hire me.”
Anne: Yeah, if you audition and you’re not hitting any of your auditions, of course that becomes, I think, Gabby, that becomes the biggest mind game of the industry. Right? When you’re auditioning, you’re auditioning, and you’re not getting anything and then boom you just give up. I had somebody like just the other day, a student who wrote me, and said, “you know, I’m so frustrated and I had to go back and get a part-time job because I just, it’s not working out for me.” I was so sad. I was sad to see that because this talent was amazing, an amazing talent, and I think so many people give up too soon, and I understand yes, there’s financial requirements, right, but before you go in to this industry or any industry, I would hope that you have financial, I always call it the financial cushions, put in place, so you can explore a new opportunity without, you know, all of a sudden not being able to pay the mortgage. I wouldn’t want people to give up so soon because it is a marathon, not a sprint.
Gabby: So many people go into this and they’re enthusiastic, and they have all of these hopes and these dreams, and they’re committed, but somewhere in all of that, they believe they’re gonna succeed and they’re gonna succeed rapidly. Rarely do we account for, what if I don’t succeed rapidly? What if it takes more time than I thought it would or what if I falter, what if I need more training, what if, what if, what if, what if, what if?
Anne: Yeah, and then it becomes something that they’re manifesting out there [laughs] that is uncertainty and possibly, you know, their confidence is faltering.
Gabby: Yeah.
Anne: And I think that that is absolutely readable by a market that is purchasing. So I think there’s a fine line there. You gotta be real careful about what question you’re asking yourself, as we alluded to earlier. “Why not you” I think is a better question than “why me” absolutely, because it reframes everything. And I think – Gabby, a long time ago, I did a course on money blocks, and it’s almost the same kind of a thing where you start with almost the negative side of “I’m not deserving, I’m not worthy,” and that’s what happens. You manifest that out into the universe, and it actually comes back to you exactly how you’re throwing it out there.
Gabby: Well sure, but you look at all of the things that cause it, right? So one is that we compare ourselves to other people, and of course in that comparison we rarely focus on or put a lot of attention on people that we think are not as good as us. We put it on the people who we think are way, way, way better and far superior and far ahead of us, and that’s not necessarily fair because then you’re not putting yourself into a peer category. You have to look at others that are in a similar place in their voiceover journey as you are.
Anne: And then it becomes difficult even then though too, Gabby, because what we offer is so darn subjective. Right?
Gabby: Oh, I know.
Anne: Who’s to say, you know, so what voice category do I put myself in? Like do I compare Anne Ganguzza to Gabby Nistico, or you know, who do I compare with and do I actually do that?
Gabby: That’s an interesting point. I mean, on one hand the marketer in me says yeah, we have to. Because if you don’t understand your competitors, if you don’t understand the people that are both similar and different from you in the market segment, then you will always have a really hard time defining who you are and what you do. But on the other hand… a slippery slope.
Anne: I think – well, yeah, no I think, what’s really good: why do we compare? We compare so that we can get similarities and differences. Right? Similarities, Gabby and Anne, female.
[both laugh]
Anne: Age group, we’re in a similar age group. You know, but where, ok so then, what makes us unique from one another? Right? And that might be a good place to start not necessarily comparing because you’re in such competition, but to discern what sets you apart from another talent that is also female and maybe, you know, in that age group that you are, and how can you market yourself differently than, let’s say, I look at you, how you’re marketing and say, how’s Gabby marketing differently from Anne, and therefore I can – or I can say, how is she marketing and what can I do that’s similar and yet doesn’t make an impact on Gabby – honestly if it’s my business, right, I’m looking at other competition. Actively I’m not saying oh, let me go out there and get Gabby’s, you know, clients. That’s not possible because I don’t have the same voice as Gabby, so.
Gabby: But one of the things that I like to look at is why companies hire celebrities to be spokespeople. Companies don’t just hire a celebrity because ooo, it’s a celebrity. They hire them because they want to align their company with that person’s individual viewpoint –
Anne: Right, brand.
Gabby: – and their – yeah, perspective on the world. And that’s an important component of this because ultimately that’s part of what one of your voiceover clients is buying from you. It’s your unique perspective, it’s the way you view things, the way you approach things and whether or not it lines up with what they do.
Anne: I think that’s – it can be quite a bit different from talent obviously to talent.
Gabby: It can! I mean, one of the things that always cracks me up, and I think about this a lot because marketing brain, I don’t think it ever really shuts off. [laughs] It doesn’t know how.
Anne: True;
Gabby: So I love that Capital One uses Samuel L. Jackson as a spokesperson. I love him as an actor. I think he’s an amazingly talented guy.
Anne: And then Visa uses – [laughs]
Gabby: Visa is using, well –
Anne: Or did use. Morgan.
Gabby: That’s right, Visa used Morgan Freeman. And then, ok. So hold on, we could take this bunny trail a couple places.
Anne: We could!
Gabby: Alec Baldwin was doing a credit card for a bit, I think also Capital One.
Anne: Capital One is Jennifer Garner, if I remember correctly.
Gabby: She might be part of the Capital One team as well.
Anne: She’s part of Capital One.
Gabby: Here’s the thing that cracks me up with Samuel L Jackson and every time he says “what’s in your wallet,” is that I sit there, and I go, “when’s he gonna drop the [beep]?”
Anne: [laughs]
Gabby: Because [laughs] this is how we know this guy. This is an actor who, right, nobody’s immune to this, we all know it. He’s known for this boisterous, loud, opinionated, cynical viewpoint. What does it say about a credit card company –
Anne: Well yeah, they’re not messing around.
Gabby: Maybe. That’s part of it. Doesn’t it also say that they have a little bit of a sense of humor?
Anne: Oh yeah, probably.
Gabby: That they’re down to earth?
Anne: That makes people want to use them, right, because they’re aligning with that message.
Gabby: Yes, and it’s – if you look at Capital One’s branding today, it’s a far cry from, you know, the old “don’t leave home without it” campaigns, the very like posh, upscale AMEX viewpoint.
Anne: Absolutely. And we just did an episode on influencers, right, social influencers are very much, they start with celebrities, and they could be celebrities that traditional celebrities that we know and love from TV and movies, but also social media celebrities as well. So I think that, you know, you can absolutely, if you’re out there on social media, and you are getting – letting people know you and know what you stand for, that is absolutely one way that can help make you unique from your competition.
Gabby: Yes, it can but also recognize that unique doesn’t mean 100% unique. You’re always going to have some percentage of people that are similar.
Anne: Yeah, female, female. [laughs]
Gabby: Yeah or your age group.
Anne: Yeah.
Gabby: But that again are kind of in line –
Anne: Mom sounding. That would be me, I guess, right
Gabby: Exactly. That’s what I mean. People go about it thinking they’re gonna come up with something wholly and completely original. Not really.
Anne: No. But it can be something original in how you handle your employee or your – how you handle your client versus how they’ve had their experiences prior to you. Right?
Gabby: Yeah.
Anne: You could be giving great customer service, and I think that’s probably one of the biggest ways you can become different, if people give you the chance and they become your client, good customer service is right up there at the top of the list of how you can make yourselves unique and different from maybe their last experience.
Gabby: That’s a good point. There’s always something. There’s always some way. I mean, you know, the actor community has long said that the one thing they don’t have is you.
Anne: Bringing you to the party, that’s what people want to connect with, no matter what. I’m telling you there’s a whole blog article on this or another podcast actually about “American Idol.”
Gabby: Oh God.
Anne: You know how people go out on stage, and they’re singing, and all the time, the judges are saying “I want to hear what kind of an artist you are. I want to hear you. Bring you to the – give me a part of you. Look at me, connect with me.” And it’s so funny because they say that all the time in “American Idol,” and that’s who we connect with, the people who are very uniquely themselves and put a piece of themselves out on the stage for us, you know, to grab on to and identify with and love. And that I think is exactly the same way we can do that as voiceover artists in being there for our clients, being there to help serve them, and yeah.
Gabby: And they don’t really care what other people think.
Anne: Yeah.
Gabby: That’s where the authentic-ness comes from. It’s, this is just me. If you’ve struggled with this, if this has been in your brain, and you’ve been kind of playing this why me game, you’ve got to flip the script. You’ve got to convert it to why not –
Anne: Why not? [laughs]
Gabby: – me?
Anne: Because you’re the person that we want to connect with.
Gabby: Here, prime example. [laugh] Shameless plug for two of our sponsors, right? [laughs] So ipDTL, who we gush about all the time –
Anne: Oh yeah.
Gabby: And Voiceovers.com, both of these companies could have easily said, well, why? Does anybody really need another connectivity? Does anybody need another casting site? That’s not how this works.
Anne: Right, they were gonna bring something to the table that no one else did, and they did.
Gabby: Exactly. Voiceovers.com, efficient, fair, transparent, right? Totally unique approach to all of the upheaval we have been seeing in online casting in the last couple of years. And ipDTL – Oh my God
Anne: ipDTL, we first – I’m tell you, they came to the table with ISDN, right off the bat, receive end dial to ISDN. They’re now, they’ve got the new SIP.
Gabby: All I know is when I met Kevin four, five years ago now, however long ago it was, the first time, I was blown away hearing about the technology and the new way that he was approaching connectivity issues.
Anne: Oh yeah.
Gabby: If he had sat there and gone, well, why would anybody want this, we wouldn’t be here right now. I wouldn’t have my bosstie.
Anne: Absolutely, we wouldn’t be connecting like this like we were sitting in the same room, and so yeah, Kevin has always been very innovative with all of the things coming to market. If he had let his competition stop him, well, that’s it. He wouldn’t be here.
Gabby: Exactly.
Anne: We love our sponsors. Guys, go check them out, ipDTL.com and Voiceovers.com.
Gabby: And for all things BOSS, make sure you head over to our website, voboss.com. Lots of great things for you to check out, swag, merchandise and of course ways that you can connect with me and Anne and options for marketing your own voiceover business.
Anne: Yes. Have a great week, guys, and why not you? [laughs]
Gabby: Yeah.
Anne: See you next week.
Gabby: Bye!
Anne: Bye!
Announcer: Join us next week for another edition of VO BOSS with your hosts Anne Ganguzza and Gabby Nistico. All rights reserved, Anne Ganguzza Voice Talent in association with Three Moon Media. Redistribution with permission. Coast-to-coast connectivity via ipDTL.
[Outtakes]
1
Philip: I said the way to make your first million is to master the Iranian double pause.
[Anne and Gabby laugh]
Philip: And I was doing a TV promo session for a company, and one of their promo producers was a Russian. And because of the way they’re wired –
Anne: Yeah.
Gabby: [laughs]
Philip: — they believe in conspiracies, and so one of my producers said to me, “Philip, can you just take a longer pause?” And the sound engineer said, “Philip yeah, do the Iranian double pause.” And Kika just said, “what is this, please?” We tried to explain to her that it was a joke, but the more we tried to explain to her it was a joke, the more she thought she was out of the loop, and that we were conspiring against her to make her a lesser promo producer. Honestly it took us 25 minutes to calm her down.
Anne: Oh no.
Gabby: [gasps]
2
Anne: Can you hear her squeaking?
Gabby: Who?
Anne: Gab – my little girl? She’s like neh neh neh!
Gabby: Is that what that was? Oh my God.
Anne: She’s like a little monkey.
Gabby: Oh shit.
Anne: Little monkey!
Gabby: Sebrina the monkey.
Anne: Little Brina Girl!
3
Anne: Alrighty then. Here I am!
Gabby: Yeah.
Anne: [singing]
4
Anne: “Who’s Your Demo For,” yeah, ok cool. I like it. Who’s your demo daddy?
Gabby: [laughs]
Anne: Who’s your demo, who’s your demo mama?
5
Anne: Oh, I just sprayed Booth Breeze. It’s lovely.
Gabby: Booth, Booth Breeze?
Anne: It’s almost like a bidet. It’s like a bidet for my booth. [laughs]
Gabby: Oh Jesus Christ. Don’t even try to bring your bidet to North Carolina. It’s not happening.
Anne: It’s like a, it’s like a bidet for my booth.
Gabby: Oh my God.
6
Anne: [coughs] Sorry, I’m just dying now.
Gabby: OK.
Anne: Hang on. Gotta get a drink.
Gabby: Don’t die. Don’t die. I can’t –
Anne: I hate when that happens.
Gabby: I can’t cohost if you die.
Anne: Oh my gosh.
Gabby: Then my co is kind of useless. That doesn’t work. You too can be booth fresh!
Anne: [laughs] [coughs] Booth Bidet, with Booth Bidet!
Gabby: [laughs]
7
Gabby: Is it a whole separate like apparatus?
Anne: It’s got a fan.
Gabby: Like a toilet?
Anne: It’s like a whole lid. It’s a whole lid, and you hook it up to your water system.
Gabby: Ah, but that’s what I mean. Like do you hook it up to your existing toilet or is it a separate –
Anne: Yeah, you hook it up to existing water, yeah.
Gabby: So that’s not, that’s not a real bidet. That’s a, that’s a…it’s like an overcoat for your toilet.
Anne: Yeah, but it’s great, let me tell you.
Gabby: [laughs]
Anne: It acts like a – but it acts like a dibet – a bidet. So I don’t understand. So you mean the bidet, the entire toilet, or?
Gabby: Yeah. Like in Europe, yeah.
Anne: No, this is a, well, this is the same damn thing in a fricking toilet seat.
Gabby: Right. It’s just…right, right.
Anne: It wasn’t a cheap investment. It was a few hundred dollars.
Gabby: No, no, I get that. But it’s not the same thing as – like I’m sure that J. Michael has a legit bidet next to his toilet, you know what I mean?
Anne: Ok, so you’re saying that my bidet’s not legit.
Gabby: No.
Anne: You’re saying the fan –
Gabby: No!
Anne: You’re saying the fan and the oscillation of the heated seat and water that cleanses me is not legit?
Gabby: No, no, all you did, all you was pimp your toilet. There’s a huge difference.
Anne: I totally pimped my toilet, I totally –
Gabby: That’s what you did.
Anne: But it’s amazing, but it’s amazing, Gabby. Holy crap.
8
Gabby: I know my little rickshaw, rickshaw baby.
Anne: [laughs] Gabby, oh my God. Can I just tell you –
Gabby: So funny.
Anne: 3:30 in the afternoon I started trying to get an Uber to the city, 3:30! The event started at 6:30. So 3:30, I click on my Uber, two people come, you know, my Jersey, the Jersey – “Oh no, I can’t go into the city, I gotta pick up my son at 5:00! No, I can’t take you. No, I, no.” So three times, “oh no, I, no, I can’t” – she can’t go in the city, so like three people, and then I got a guy who was gonna take me into the city.
Gabby: Why didn’t you just mass transit? I don’t understand, why didn’t you take the train?
Anne: ‘Cause to get to New – I didn’t want to take a train. I was dressed up. I had hair and makeup done, I didn’t want to take the train, that’s gross, you know what I mean?
Gabby: I feel like that’s what you do.
Anne: But everybody said to me, take an Uber. Everybody said to me, take an Uber. So I finally got somebody, you gotta hear my trip. You gotta hear my trip.
Gabby: Alright.
Anne: We get in at 5:30, right 3:30 to 5:30. It’s already two hours, because it was the marathon that day.
Gabby: Right.
Anne: Even at 5:30 at night you forget that it’s not finished yet. So they closed every single entrance into Central Park, everything was closed, but I didn’t realize it, right, that it was still going to be closed at 5:30 p.m. So we get there, we get to 8th Ave, and if I had known they closed off 8th Ave right before we got there. Right? So had I known that, he would have dropped me off at 8th Ave, and I would have walked through to Columbus Circle. So anyway, but I had never been there. I’ve been to Lincoln Center multiple times but not to Jazz at Lincoln Center, which is a completely different building on 60th versus 67th. So I, we get to 8th the first time, right, and as we get up to it, they close it. And then, we’re like, “ok, we’ll just take the next left. We’ll go” – well, forget it, everything was closed. We went all the way around Central Park. By the time we got around to 8th Ave again and he dropped me off, it was already like 7, I want to say, 7:00. So literally I got out, I’m all – again, I’m all dressed to the nines. And I just, I found a bicycle rickshaw and I said, “can you get me to Jazz at Lincoln Center?” And he didn’t know where Jazz at Lincoln Center was. He’s going to take me over to, he’s going to take me over to 67th. And I said, “no, no, no, no it’s 60th. You have to” – he goes, “no, it’s at 67th.” And I said, “no, it’s at 60th.” So then more arguing, and literally he’s – if you’ve ever been in a bicycle rickshaw, you know those [beep] little carts bounce around like crazy. So I’m in the back, right, bouncing around like – [beep] it was just too funny after a while. I was just, I was dying. I was, and so I took pictures of the guy. I was dying. Finally we got there, and like all windblown – I’m windblown because he was hauling ass. But I was windblown and jostled, and I had – it was four hours, four hours from start to finish. I had a headache because I hadn’t eaten, I was stressed out because I was late. I literally got there late, and so literally I sat down and the next category they called was mine.
Gabby: How funny, oh my God.
Anne: But if you had seen me, if you have been on the rickshaw with me, Gabby, we would have had a blast.
9
Anne: I’ve gotta pee, do you mind?
Gabby: Fine, go pee.
Anne: But I’ve got a bidet now, so it might take me a little longer.
Gabby: Oh my God.
Anne: [laughs] No, I do. Hang on.
Gabby: Fine. Go, go spritzle your tinkle and your what-whatnots and hoo-has.
Anne: Hold on, hold on!