Show notes
What would it look like if you could harness the energy of a conference and convert it into effectiveness? What would it feel like to be your own boss in the voiceover industry? Our esteemed guest, Tom Dheere, joins us as we unravel the answers to these thought-provoking questions. We share valuable insights on setting the right objectives, maximizing conference experiences, and the commitment required to become a full-time voice actor. Plus, we examine the liberating perspective of entrepreneurial freedom offered by the voiceover industry. 0:00:01 - Anne Hey everyone, welcome to the VO Boss podcast and the real boss series. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza and I am so happy to bring to this series Mr Tom Dheere. Thank you so much, tom, for joining me on this. 0:00:15 - Tom Yay, thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited about this. This is going to be great. 0:00:19 - Anne Oh, tom, first of all, it was so awesome to see you at the One Voice conference. 0:00:25 - Tom Yes, likewise. 0:00:27 - Anne I know we just had. You were just a guest on my podcast and, lo and behold, like two times I see you within the span of a month or two, which is really incredible, right? Sometimes we have to go to conferences to just meet in person so whew, I was exhausting that conference, but super motivating, and I know a lot of people who went to that conference are all revved up and ready to go, motivated, inspired. We took amazing classes and so I think it's a good time to talk about. You know, what do we do with all that amazing energy that we just absorbed in that conference? Because I'm revved up, I'm motivated, ready to go. What can we do to, I guess, keep ourselves or keep the momentum going, tom? 0:01:16 - Tom That is a fantastic question and I know you've been presented at dozens and dozens of conferences over the past 10 years, and so have I, and we go and we meet wonderful people and we present and we also attend workshops and panels and we learn a lot and we get to commiserate with our peers, voice actors and coaches and other producers and stuff like that. And then there's this glow. 0:01:42 - Anne There is a glow. It's wonderful glow. There is a glow. 0:01:46 - Tom And then you go home and then for the vast majority of people that go to these conferences, it's like whew. 0:01:53 - Anne And then life sets in right. I have laundry to do. Yeah, family, yeah, right Bills and auditions and stuff like that. 0:02:02 - Tom So it's great. Conferences are great for, obviously for education. They're great for networking, they're great for renewal of purpose, refocus, re-energizing. The trick is how to take all that positive energy and inspiration and revved up-ed-ness and coming, taking it home with you and turning it into effectiveness. Because the positive attitude, while great it can only get you so far, it's not going to get you home. You're going to run out of that momentum and now there's work to be done. 0:02:37 - Anne Interesting, tom. Before we went to the conference, I think somebody had actually created a note sheet of like here are the I guess the talks that I want to go to, here are my goals, or here's what I got out of it, and I thought it was a really great way for people who like that type of thing and they take a lot of notes to write down your objectives. What are you hoping to get from that? And then what do you hope to do once you get, maybe once you get home, to put those lessons learned in place? And so I think that maybe everything should start even before we go to the conference in terms of writing things down and what is it that you hope to get out of this conference. And I'm a big planner, so I am a big proponent of yeah, you guys should plan out what sessions you want to go to, look at the schedule multiple times and just see how you can get the most out of the money that you've spent on that ticket of yours. 0:03:33 - Tom Yeah, absolutely, and different people at different points in their voiceover journey go to different conferences for different reasons, if it's. I've never been one to been one to one before, and I just want to. I haven't even produced a demo yet. I just want to see what this universe is like. 0:03:47 - Anne Great. 0:03:48 - Tom If it's, this is my 15th conference. I've had all these demos done, I've gotten all this work. What am I going to get out of it this time? Or some people go because they specifically want to meet you, or they want to meet another coach or demo producer to see, I want to get in the same room with this person and see if we click because I may want to work with you as a coach or a demo producer. Um, you know, and some go purely as presenters and you know, and then they, you know, do their stuff and then they get out of there and yeah, which is which is which is cool too. 0:04:19 - Anne I think there's such a, there's such a momentum to be gained by just joining forces with like-minded people and, just you know, renewing um relationships, and that just keeps you going, because it's so isolating sometimes just what we do and yeah and I will tell you, though, that the other day I was I don't even know what it was that made me think of it, but I I think I was getting ready to, you know, start. I had a full day of students, and I said, I don't know what made me think about, oh god, what if I had to go to work for somebody? um, you know, back in my days of corporate and I'm like I I could never do that again. So boss is out there. This is just a little segue. If you, if, if you know that this is what you want to do and you end up pursuing it full time, I don't say rush into it with your, you know, with your eyes closed. But, um and Tom, we can talk lots of strategies about that, but once you make that decision to go full time, I don't do you know anybody who's actually gone back because they've been unhappy being their own boss um, I know lots of people who have gone back to a regular job because they just couldn't book enough right they needed the money. 0:05:24 - Tom Yeah, exactly, it was purely financially, like I've been trying this and I just, I just can't get enough work to sustain myself and they've come gone back. Um, I can't think of anyone specifically, but I'm sure there are people out there, because there are people who just like to be told what to do, because then they don't have to think about it and there's a level of security in that and I totally that's sympathize with that. 0:05:45 - Anne I'm not one of those people, I can't. I don't, I don't think I could, I could not go back to taking now, I think, now I can take. I can take instructions from my client. Sure, I can be directed um, and then I want to get paid and be done with it. I think that's really it's. It's an interesting. It's an interesting, it's a different dynamic, because that's a, that's a, that's a business to business thing where you and the clients are on equal footing there's no high. There's no hierarchy. 0:06:10 - Tom It's it's you and the client trying to make this finished, great finished product, which is, you know, the audio files that you're gonna send to them or their, their source connecting you through. But with what? When it's a, I am in charge of you and. I'm telling you what to do, and this is when you can go to the bathroom and stuff like that it's like ah, I don't know if I could. 0:06:29 - Anne I don't know, I don't think I could go back to that it makes me think of okay, it's similar to I know I just went off on that on that weird tangent, but that happens sometime, bosses, sorry, um, but it was just a weird like. It just came to me. I was like I could not work for somebody now, so I will do everything in my power to make my business so that I do not have to do that. I think that also was leading into that. But I think isn't that similar to, let's say, I, I pay my money, I get my ticket, I go to a conference, I take these classes, I'm inspired for a new genre, I'm inspired to work with a new coach, and then we come back and, oops, we're by ourselves, right. So now, yeah, it's very similar to what now, you know, we're gonna be talking about is we've got to take the reins and we've got to do the work and it's, it's now up to us, and we're not necessarily having that coach or that director saying, okay, do this, do this, do this. Now we've got all of this energy and this motivation. How do we cement that and you know, and and start to just really move forward on that? 0:07:27 - Tom right. The trick is if you want to be the vo boss you need to learn how to be your own boss. Yeah, yeah, you know it's empowering to like be the boss. Yeah, I'm a tough boss. I'll tell you that my boss is a jerk my boss, I would say my boss is a bastard oh, I just said that oh. I had another word in mind, but I didn't use it. 0:07:49 - Anne I'm not sure if we'll bleep that out, but yeah woo, I'll tell you what. I've never worked for a harder boss, but isn't that true? 0:07:57 - Tom yeah, yeah, I'm hard on ourselves. I'm pretty real, I'm I'm often pretty relentless and I have to be because I have this bad habit. 0:08:05 - Anne It's called eating and and having a roof over my head, yes, and not living in a cardboard box, yes, yeah, you know. 0:08:14 - Tom So yeah, the motivation is like there's no net yeah, you know what I mean. If I don't audition for this, there's a 100 chance that I'm not gonna book it well, yeah, and I think that's what propels me for sure you know what I mean to get work done, I mean right the fact that I need right. 0:08:30 - Anne I need to be able to pay the mortgage right, and that's the, and that's a. 0:08:33 - Tom That's a great point, anne, is that different people need to find different motivations. To stay motivated when you are alone in your booth talking to yourself? You know, so that's a big part of you know I talk about effectiveness. There's a difference between talent and effectiveness. There's a lot of talented aspiring voice actors out there with interesting voices but like I have an interesting pen, it doesn't make me an author, you know. 0:09:02 - Anne I own a wrench. It doesn't make me a plumber, so having talent, voice doesn't make me effective. Yeah absolutely. 0:09:11 - Tom You know, because no one's going to get discovered, you're not going to get your big break. It doesn't really work that way. 0:09:16 - Anne It's what you do with that pen that matters. It's what you do with that voice that matters. 0:09:20 - Tom Exactly and consistently. Yes, absolutely so when you get home from that conference and you've got all that positive attitude. That's great If you can bottle it and put it on a shelf for later. 0:09:30 - Anne That's great. 0:09:31 - Tom But when you get home, it's about what can I do to be effective today, tomorrow, next week, month, quarter year, two years, five years? And I'm not necessarily talking about writing a business plan, which is something I do do as the, as the video strategist, but it's about how do I think about myself to stay motivated. How do I think about and understand the voiceover industry? So there's a reality, because that's the other thing and, as you know, people coming into the industry have no idea what the industry is. They just have this odd preconceived notion of what it is. Oh yeah, I talk interesting. I got to just get an agent and then they'll just throw Saxa cash at me. 0:10:10 - Anne Exactly and I think, yeah, you don't know what you don't know right. 0:10:13 - Tom You don't know what you don't know. 0:10:15 - Anne And especially not only that is it a new industry for a lot of people, but it's also the fact that there's a lot of people who are very unhappy in their current job situation and get out of that work for somebody else, but then working for yourself is a whole different animal and that really is, I think, where the double it's. The double whammy comes in for those people new to the industry, because not only are they trying to acquire the skills to be a good talent, but now they also have to have good business skills as well, and they're not used to working for themselves or having to go out and market themselves and get work and all those hats that they've got to put on. 0:10:58 - Tom Yeah, I had a maybe 15 years ago here in New York City. I had a 10 minute meet up with an agent I don't remember which one but he said tell me about yourself. And I talked about all the things I do. He's like, wow, you got a lot of hats. And I'm like, yeah he's like but you only have one head and I'm like, yeah, so you kind of to be an effective voice actor, you need to kind of be the Dr Seuss Bartholomew in 1001 hats and have all those hats stacked up on. Some of them, some of them, you can take on and put on and take off, but a bunch of them you have to have stacked on your head at the same time, because there is no job description for being a voice actor. I mean, there is, but nobody knows what it is, until you get here and it's like unlocking these doors and you know, moving these hedges aside and going oh, I need to do, I have to do that. You know it's like. It's almost like a maze, which is the logo of the VO strategist. Now that I think about it helping you navigate the voice over the industry, absolutely. So, navigating the maze of what it means to be an effective voice actor, and staying motivated at the same time. Because, yes, invoicing. 0:12:08 - Anne Staying, staying motivated when you're doing something like accounting. 0:12:12 - Tom Like for me. 0:12:12 - Anne I mean, well, I'm not. I mean, there are some people who love accounting, right, so there's accounting for me. How do there you go See for me? I'm like, oh God, actually I will tell you, tom. So for me, staying motivated while I have an S corp, right, and an S corp is creating all of this paperwork for me and for me, I can't, god it's, and it's just like I need to, either just, you know, be educated about, you know, the entire S corp thing, or I outsource, right. So I think if I had to do all that paperwork and try to understand it all and to stay motivated, it would be very, very difficult for that to happen, and it may discourage me from wanting to have a voiceover business because of this paperwork that I continually have to supply to the government, to you know, support this business, but I, you know, for me one of my solutions is to outsource that right. And make sure that I have somebody that I trust and can go to if I have any questions, that can handle that aspect for me. So if I'll, I know, constantly get mail, mail, snail mail saying you need to provide this information, or you owe us this amount of money, or you need to prepay this or you know whatever that is, and so I literally will just be like, oh my gosh, this is a lot of paperwork. So I will literally scan that in and send that to my accountant, which, by the way, I will say to the to to my dying day, I will say my accountant was my very best investment for this business. I just I can't. I can't do the numbers. 0:13:45 - Tom Right, well, and that's that's a very important point, and is that if you're getting into the voiceover industry, obviously you need to understand what does that entail on you know soft sk…
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