Among my worst habits: Putting off important work. New in '08: I'm going to do stuff right away!...and I plan to start next week.
I kid, but can I be a little cliche' here and post publicly my list of Voice-Over things I MUST DO in 2008?
Yes, it's basically a list of New Year's resolutions with a voice-acting bent, but from what I know of the psychology of embarrassment, when you state openly to your friends and acquaintances that you're going to do something then you feel greater pressure to carry through, for fear of losing your integrity, the value of your word, or risk appearing like a hypocrite.
That being said, here's my list of MUST-DO's in 2008 for my Voice-Over business:
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2. Post at least one, if not two entries EACH DAY in this blog.
3. Post along with each Blog entry, the Podcast .mp3 OF the entry.
4. Do a new Commercial Demo. This may take a good bit of time and effort, but by the end of '08, it's GOTTA be done....that's all there is to it.
5. Launch an entirely new AudioBook demo from scratch.
6. Market more aggressively the following two segments of this industry: AudioBooks and E-Learning
7. Re-vamp my website, embedding all my demo's INTO the site with Flash Players
8. Re-vamp my website some more. It's a work in progress...never done, really.
9. De-code and actually try to understand what my Google Ad-Clicks are doing, with the goal of tweaking them to better use. I'm getting cold-calls from people searching for VO talent...but I'm sure it could be better.
10. Learn Pro-Tools better. Despite what Frank Frederick says, I believe there are features within that program that can benefit my VO product. I just upgraded to M-audio Pro-Tools 7.4, and I hope to learn new features each week.
11. Talk to my friends on the VO-BB at least once a day. I've been neglecting that outstanding online VO community of late.
12. Attend at least one, hopefully two coaching sessions, seminars, or VO conferences this year.
13. Do some voice-work each day. That's the reason behind #3. Some days, I just don't even speak into the microphone at all. Those "dry" days of no work are not "free" days. They should be used to try new things, and expand my repertoire. Yes, I anchor 3 newscasts each day, and that is a wonderful, and dutiful, if somewhat formulaic practice, but I shouldn't take for granted what a wonderful gift that is.
14. Despite it's absolutely mind-numbing concepts, I promise to myself to give more serious attention to branding. With a name like COURVOISIER, there's got to be an angle somewhere.
15. Offer help, support, consideration, and encouragement to my fellow VO artists. When other VO artists reach out to me, it's incredibly lifting. I can do this too!
There. That's it. I reserve the right to augment this list as I see fit, whenever the need arises. It'll be interesting to see how well I've done, come Jan 1, 2009.
Please hold my feet to the fire if you see me procrastinating.
courVO
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