Week 3 Thoughts - Reality of Business
This week was incredibly productive in my voice over (and music) aspirations. I entered the week with two goals: read Running a Successful Voice Over Business by Joshua Alexander (now known as Aaron Alex) and work on the homework assigned by my voice over coach. I found myself so motivated by the book that I did some extra research on the management side of a business. Before I get into those details, though, I’ll share with you my thoughts from my homework.
Voice Acting Homework
After the coaching session I attended last Saturday, my coach emailed me a list of homework items and resources for me to work on before our next encounter. These tasks are designed to train my ear for animation character work, practice creating the character for realism, and drill the classic tongue twisters to help prevent me from – well – getting tongue tied in a read.
Ear training is almost passive – turn on well renowned works and just listen to how they are performed. The list I was given has a variety of media grouped by age group as well as historical importance. Each age group in animation has a slightly different speech pattern and cadence, so being familiar with which is needed for a particular project is important.
Google has been my best friend this week between searching up the suggested clips and finding some of the many tongue twisters available online. My personal favorite tongue twisters are Dr. Seuss as they bring a little nostalgic joy. If you repeatedly read Oh Say Can You Say like I did growing up, then you know what I mean. I’m only slightly embarrassed to share that I would take it off the bookshelf on occasion in high school with the flimsy excuse it was for reading to one of my much younger siblings. The goal is to find a good variety to work on the different difficult sound combinations possible in English. If you’re following me on TikTok or YouTube, you may have seen a post about an early morning session before going into my office job displaying the discombobulation I felt trying some of these. “Twelve twins twirled twelve twigs” had me in all kinds of knots.
The part I find interesting – and slow to start – is developing the character for a performance. I’ve found I work best following a multi-step process for practicing, but I know when I get around to the audition phases I'm going to have to have this streamlined.
Read through the prompt detail and do a plain read of the script (no emphasis, no character, just as flat as possible)
Analyze the plain words. Where are the technically correct places for emphasis and pauses?
Discover who the character is. What is their (or MY as it were) biggest flaw? What do I want in this script? Who am I talking to? What is my tactic to getting what I want?
Play with the vocal placement that will give the vibe I want based on those characteristic answers. Is it in the mask, chest heavy, or heady? Do they speak with an expressive mouth shape or barely move their lips? Try a take with just those pieces of information in mind.
Create a scenario that happened before the scene begins. This should give the emotional oomph.
Do a couple more takes and listen back to each one. Here I want to see what I liked about each take and what doesn’t work.
By the time you all read this, I will have already attended my next coaching session, but at the time of writing I am excited to share all the hard work I’ve put in this week. It is surely going to show during our hour of work.
Business Things
I mentioned in the introduction that I am reading through a business book. The focus of the book is very much ensuring that any aspiring voice actor that picks it up knows they need to tread this industry like a business, not a hobby, if they want to grow and make it a full-time gig. I would presume anyone picking up a book titled Running A Successful Voiceover Business would already be in that mindset but hearing it re-iterated solidifies the thought.
Now, what about the book made me do a ton of extra research? In one of the chapters the author mentions getting a client relationship manager (CRM) tool to help with maintaining your relationship with clients. I, as a Software Engineer who happens to be really good with spreadsheets and data management, decided I can just create my own tool. This tumbled from a basic sheet containing client information to a complete business management system. I created tabs for:
My clients
Project’s I’ve booked
Auditions submitted
Business expenses
Taxes!!!
These tabs are all detailed with the intent to allow data analytics on audition to project conversion rates, track how many projects come from each source to help with refining which sources are worth putting effort into and preparing the quarterly and end of year tax documents required for a sole proprietorship.
That’s a major concept I had to verify my understanding of. Sole Proprietorship. According to my research, as a performing artist we ARE the business. For my fellow US Citizens, that means we can file all our income with a standard 1040 for individual tax returns and business expenses through a 1040 Schedule C form. The source of truth on the documents required for a sole proprietorship’s taxes are on the IRS’s website. As an entrepreneur, the end of year taxes isn’t enough. We are also required to submit the 1040-ES for estimated taxes throughout the year.
Regarding how deductions work, I found CentSense has fantastic information on their website. They are paid tool for managing all this, so if you don’t want to go through all this trouble of creating your own tool they might be an option. That, coupled with the IRS website for validations, is how I built out the tax summary section of the spreadsheet. Through use of a pivot table and VLOOKUP, and a slice filter I created a way to quickly see the year-to-date expenses mapped to the line the sum should be on the tax form and my gross income.
Other aspects that needed to be tracked were receipts and invoices. I did this by adding a column in the project and expenses tables with a data type of a File so files within my google drive can be linked directly. This will help if I’m ever audited to have all the information I could possibly need. As someone who has been audited before -- and was found to have been correct in my reporting – I find that to be an important factor.
If you want a clean copy of this for your own needs, feel free to email me at info@sammichelle.digital!
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