How to make a ton of money in voice over. Or anything.

I just finished three books by famed multi millionaire Real Estate agent Gary Keller. Yes, I'm a voice over guy, but I love real estate too. In fact my degree is in Business/Real Estate.  One piece of wisdom I've gained in my half century on earth as that if you want above average results in your chosen industry, its extremely helpful to look outside your industry.  Two of the books I read are specifically about real estate - The Millionaire Real Estate Agent and The Millionaire Real Estate Investor and the third was less specific - The One Thing.

As I listened to all of them, I thought a lot more about Voice Over than real estate!  "How can I apply this to my voice over business?"

Here are a few things I learned or was reminded of:

Many of us have heard of the 80/20 rule.  It was originally discovered in 1906 by Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto who determined that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population.  It is also true in business that  about 80% of your results come from about 20% of your efforts.  Want bigger results?  Figure out what that 20% is and do more of that!  Bill Dewees, successful voice actor, marketing genius and voice over coach talks about this in his training.

In real estate, you are virtually guaranteed to be successful if you spend 4 hours a day, 5 days a week marketing and prospecting.  In voice over, assuming you have the training, a decent recording studio and a place on the web for people to find you, I have no doubt that the same thing is true.

The trick is to ACTIVELY and CONSISTENTLY let the world know you exist!  And you can't give up after a week or a month or even a year.  If you have the luxury of being able to dedicate full time to your voice over career, MOST of your time should be spent marketing and prospecting when you start out!  You could be rocking the greatest pipes on earth into your Neumann U87 being fed into your Avalon 737 in your custom VO booth after having been trained by the greatest coaches on earth (Nancy,  Marice and David) - but if no one knows you exist, you ain't gonna book a thing!

In fact, you should never stop marketing yourself.  Gary Keller says you can NEVER have too many leads.  You may think, "sure, for real estate thats's true, but there are only so many hours in a day I can sit in a dark room and talk to myself".  Well, that's true, but there's a great way to deal with "too much work".  First of all, LEVERAGE yourself.  Once you get to that point where you've got SO much money and SO much work, figure out what the best use of your time is.  I'm guessing its not invoicing, maintaining your website, updating your social networks, and editing your VO work.  If you're THAT busy, the best use of your time is talking into that mic!  Pay someone $15/an hour to do THAT stuff so you can spend your time making your $500/hour.

Secondly, raise your rates!  There's a number that will give you that perfect balance.

But I digress.  More on how to get to "too much work".  In The One Thing, Keller convinces the reader to focus on One Thing.  Find that driving force in your life that makes you want to get up and take on the world.  It may be voice over.  And it this point in your career it may be marketing and prospecting.

Once you find your passion and your purpose,  focus on it. Literally block out 4 hours per day 5 days per week in your calendar to do that one thing.  Make that time sacred.  Don't skip.  Don't allow interruptions.  Learn to say "no" when someone needs you for something during that time.  Remember, when you say "yes" to something, you're saying "no" to everything else!

But how do you market your voice to the world?

Ahhhh.  That's a topic for another day.

In the meantime, check out Keller's books.  You won't regret it.

Portable Voice Over Studio - VO on the Road

Every once in awhile, I'm able to escape.  I mean, full on escape.  Just leave town, alone.  At this stage of my life, a solo 7 hour road trip is really a lot of fun.

I recently took such a trip from my home in California to meet up with my brothers, one of my sons and my nephew for a guy vacation.  We met in St. George, Utah for some amazing mountain biking.

Along with my mountain bike, luggage and a crate for my new Border Collie to be picked up on the rebound, I also brought my portable voice over studio.  My travel studio consists of an iPad, Twisted Wave, and an Apogee Mic.

But come on, its vacation, do I really want to WORK on vacation?  Well, sort of.  I actually love doing voice over.  And while I don't go out of my way to audition on vacation, if I client needs something right away, I want to be able to provide it...

Sure enough, after I left the house, a client emailed and needed a script read.  So I drove up I 15 and found an offramp to nowhere.  I pulled down a dirt road, where the only noise I could hear came from the shrieking cactus.  I whipped out my studio, put a towel over my head, recorded, edited and sent.

If you're serious about voice over, a portable rig isn't a bad idea.

Trevor

http://www.trevorjonesvo.com

The Ultimate Portable Voiceover Studio

Most of the time, I'm within about 30 feet of a voice over booth.  But sometimes I'm on the road.  Yes, I know, I should take a real break every once in a while and totally relax.  But, I  love voice over - even doing auditions. Sometimes, a client needs a job done, no matter where I am in the world.  I've traveled with a big chunk of my real studio and I've also left town without anything.  Neither option worked.

I researched and tested and finally found what I think is a pretty amazing travel studio.  It consists of the iPad 3, TwistedWave, and the Mic by Apogee. 

When the iPad first came out, I thought it was a waste.  Just a big iPhone.  Now that I have one, it's indispensable.  I use it all the time - from email, to reading auditions and of course, recording auditions.

I tried other apps for recording on my iPhone and later on my iPad, but nothing met all of the features I needed. Specifically - recording quality of at least 48k/16 bit, the ability to easily and quickly edit and exporting options that included both mp3 and AIFF.  TwistedWave meets and exceeds my needs for voiceover. 

For a mic that costs $199, the quality is incredible.  Joe Cipriano AB'd the Mic against his Sennheiser 416 and the results are impressive.

I thought I was the first one to notice this exact set up, but right after I recorded this video, I saw a post on Kara Edwards wall on Facebook and she found exactly the same thing!  Brilliant minds think alike.

Check out the the video to learn more.

Go ahead and shoot me an email with your questions, I look forward to connecting with you.

trevor@trevorjonesvo.com
www.trevorjonesvo.com

Cars 2!

Here's some CARS 2 action for you!

 

www.trevorjonesvo.com

Top 10 Most Popular Voice Over Mics

The first question any aspiring voiceover artist might ask is "Which mic should I get?"

As a tech nerd myself, I know when I decided to get into voice over, I was pretty excited at the prospect of a trip to Guitar Center.  But which mic?  There are SOOO many really good options. There's one thing most voice over professionals will likely agree on:  Get a large diaphragm condenser mic with a cardioid pattern for your primary voice over mic.  Yes, there are a few exceptions, but a condenser mic is what you want.

As soon as you start digging around online, you'll find that some of the standards the pro's use are:

Neumann 103

Sennheiser MKH-416  (An exception!  This is a shotgun mic.)

Neumann U-87

You might think:  "I'll just get one of those!  Ben Patrick Johnson uses the Sennheiser, and if I do, I'll sound just like him!"

Well, maybe, but not likely.

There are several things you need to consider when buying a new mic.

USE

First of all, what are you using it for?  If it's just for general auditions from your home studio, and you never plan on submitting finished audio with it, a less expensive mic might do just fine. What about for that real "conversational" sound that pretty much every commercial audition is asking for these days?  How about narration?  If someone has to listen to your voice for an 8 hour audio book, which mic will make that the most pleasant experience?  Would that be the same mic you'd use for, say, a trailer for a horror movie?  There are mics with properties that make them more suited for different uses. 

However, the reality is, if you're just starting out, you'll likely just get one mic to do everything for you.  Down the road, you might get another mic or two for different kinds of jobs.


COST

This will be the limiting factor initially for most of us - how much mic can you afford at this stage of your voice over career? If you're just starting out, other equipment costs may include a D/A converter, a mic pre amp, recording software, and possibly a computer upgrade - so a mic isn't the only thing you need to think about.

Here's the good news: a really GREAT sounding mic is not that expensive.  Here at my day job as an editor, we finish audio every week for national TV spots and theaters with narration recorded on a Marshall MXL V69.  In fact, here's a spot I finished on that very mic - I just read the open, you can skip the rest: 

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides Sneak Peek

You can get one for like $300, complete with shock mount, power supply and even a boom stand.  Now I don't love this mic - a lot of the stuff we do here is at high volume levels, and this mic doesn't hold up well for that.  But speaking at conversational levels, it sounds fantastic.

More good news:  A $3000 Neumann U-87 isn't going to sound 10 times better than a quality $300 mic, like the Audio Technica AT 4040 I have in my home studio. Once you have a mic at a certain level, it takes a lot of money to make a small difference.  Don't believe me?  I came across a mic shoot out of sorts done about 5 years ago.  Not exactly a perfect scientific test, but 18 mics, priced from $79 to $2,600 are compared.  You can listen to the mics blind - and try to figure out which ones are the pricier ones:

The Transom Mic Shootout: Blindfold Test

I'm sure some über sound geek can tell you which mic is which just by listening - but I'm no audiophile, and I sure couldn't.  I was able to identify a couple of the low end dynamic mics as sounding not so great, and some mics as better than others.  However, I couldn't blindly pic out the most expensive mic of the lot, the Neumann U87, as sounding the "best".  The other mics I preferred weren't necessarily the most costly either.  One I really liked the sound of was the Shure KSM44 - about $700.  You try the test and see if you can pick out the, um, "better" mics.

YOU

The biggest factor by far is YOU.  What mic do you sound good on?  Your voice is different than everyone else's on earth.  Sure, more expensive is generally better, but you may not sound your best on the most expensive mic.  You need to find the mic that fits your voice.

How do you do that?  First, identify some of the mics you'd like to try.  I'll give you a list of some of the Top Ten Most Popular Voice Over Mics at the end of this article for starters.  You can do some research online. 

Once you've got a list of several mics, and a couple scripts, do what I did:  Head on over to Guitar Center, or some place like it, and try the mics out.  Hopefully, they'll give you a quiet room and headphones, but don't hold your breath.  I stood at a noisy counter with a mic pre and headphones, and had the sales guy bring me mics to try.  For my first mic,  I ended up with the Sterling Audio ST55, a Guitar Center knock off of a Groove Tubes mic.  The mic was OK, but I later found that my voice didn't really cut well with it - the highs didn't seem high enough.  That all ended when I knocked my mic stand over.

Fun fact:  Condenser mics aren't durable.  Don't knock yours over unless you need to come up with an excuse to justify to your wife that you need a new toy, er, mic.

For round two, I didn't really follow my own advice.  I DID do a bunch of research online, and found a mic with very favorable reviews in my price range, but I didn't try it out first.  I just ordered it online.  Luckily, it works pretty well with my voice.  I love my AT4040.

Finally, an amazing mic isn't going to cure cancer. It won't fix lack of training, mouth noise, the neighbors dog barking or your kids flushing Barbie dolls down the toilet in the background.  All of THAT, is a topic for another post.

So what's my next toy, er, mic?  Well, I'll have to run over to guitar center to try em out, but my next mic is likely to be either the  Sennheiser MKH-416 - reportedly great for promos/commercials/trailers  or the  Neumann TLM-103 - one of the quietest mics out there.  But first, I'm looking into building a VO booth...  I'll let you know how that goes.

Now here are some of the Top Ten Most Popular Voice Over Mics I've found, priced from low to high. Remember, this is a starting place. Find the mic that fits your use, your budget and your voice.

Top Ten Most Popular Voice Over Mics

$99   Audio-Technica AT2020 USB

$229 Rode NT1-A

$285  MXL USB 009  

$301  AT 4040 (Audio Technica)

$529  Rode NTK

$699  Neumann TLM-102 

$999  AKG C 414XLII  

$1099  Neumann TLM-103 

$1199  Sennheiser MKH-416 

$3199  Neumann U-87AI 

You can buy all of these mics here the the Trev's Top Pics Store.

To hear and see more examples of my work, check out my website:

TrevorJonesVO.com

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

I was fortunate enough to be able to narrate the open for three spots that aired on Disney Channel, including this sneak peek at a scene from the movie.  Piratesfans won't be disappointed!