Welcome back! 

This week, I’m going to stray from talking about voice over directly and instead spend some time talking about it peripherally.  The title may seem a little self grandiose, but it is a direct quote by the Admiral I work for, so I feel good about using it.

I’m going to apologize for getting this posted late this week, but It’s been a weird week for me (ALREADY!) as I have spent a good bit of time contemplating my career at my “day job” because of my imminent retirement coming up on the 31^st of this month.  Monday, my employer held a retirement ceremony for me, and last Saturday I packed up and moved out of my office there.  It’s real folks, after 41 years I am leaving the government (Navy) and finally getting ready to do something I love doing instead of working for, and having my priorities established by, Uncle Sam.  A huge milestone such as this in a person’s life causes one to contemplate how they got here, and I have been doing a good bit of that lately.  So I’ll ask you to take a brief (OK, maybe not TOO brief…41 years after all) trip down memory lane with me.

It all began…

The story begins in August of 1979 when, realizing my pretty much completely blowing off High School may have been a huge blunder, I decided that if I ever wanted to have a skill that someone would actually PAY me for I was going to need to do something drastic…I enlisted in the navy!

High School…

All the way through grade school, I was pretty much a nerd and got straight A’s on every report card.  I did OK for the first year of middle school, but got in with the “wrong crowd” and my grades, and frankly behavior, saw a steep decline.  The decline continued through High School where I “majored” in metal shop and pretty much failed most every other class.  It’s likely my grades were a direct reflection on how often I actually attended classes, and it was my favorite thing to attend all three lunch periods, even though I was only assigned to one of them.  I also discovered two things that assisted in my decline: girls and “chemical compounds” (Hey, it was the ‘70s!).

At the end of it all, I barely squeaked by, graduating with a D average (thanks to straight A’s for the final 9 weeks of my senior year).  No way I was getting into college, and honestly no way I could afford it anyway.

When I graduated, I was working full time days in a body shop and nights in a machine shop.  I never knew from one day to the next what color the tissue would be when I blew my nose from inhaling paint spray, and all the hair on my legs was gone thanks to the oil soaking my work pants at the machine shop.  I decided I was tired of being dirty all the time.

The recruiter…

So, I called the Navy recruiter (I would be the first one in my family to join the Navy, but not the last.) All my relatives had served in the army.  I headed downtown to take the enlistment exam and scored quite high (despite not doing well in school) which excited the recruiter.  After reviewing my high school transcripts and then looking at my score, of course they were sure I had cheated, so back into a room, by myself this time, I scored just as high the second time.  After some wrangling (they wanted me to go to nuclear power school, but it was going to be 6+ months before I could leave) I selected an advanced electronics field, was sworn in (the first of many swearing ins) and set a departure date.

Boot camp and training…

Like the naïve dummy I was, instead of selecting boot camp in Orlando, I decided to stay closer to home and was on my way to Great Lakes Illinois, just outside Chicago.  In the winter.  By the time I finished boot camp on the day after Thanksgiving in 1979, it was like the frozen tundra.  Not a smart move.  I spent two years at Great Lakes in training finally leaving in June 1981 for my first ship.

And Beyond!

I was part of the pre-commissioning crew of the USS Carl Vinson, CVN70.  Two more years in the shipyard to finish being built, then builders and acceptance trials with deck and engineering certifications thrown in, and we finally left for deployment in March 1983.  What was supposed to be a six month deployment with a change of homeport to Alameda California (from Norfolk Virginia) turned into eleven months, crossing the equator twice.  I only spent three weeks in Alameda before heading back to the east coast for my next ship.  Literally around the world in one year.  Quite a first experience.

I joined the Navy to get an education and to have a skill I could carry forward as a career, but ultimately, I went on to stay for 20 years, serving on the USS Carl Vinson (CVN70), USS Nicholas (FFG47), USS DeWert (FFG45) and USS O’Bannon (DD987) as well as several shore commands.  My career culminated in a five-year assignment to Fleet Technical Support Center, Atlantic Detachment Naples Italy (FTSCLANT DET NAPLES), retiring from active duty in 1999.

It was QUITE a career and experience.  So MANY interesting things happened if I tried to write about them all it would turn into a full length novel, and I’d never get this post published (it’s ALREADY a day late!), but the TL;DR version is this:  a young, uneducated kid from Cleveland Ohio turned into a man who spent twenty years travelling the globe and seeing some of the places most people only dream of.  From Europe, to the Middle East, to Asia and the Far East, northern and southern hemispheres.  I was blessed to spend time in more countries than I can count, experiencing cultures from across the globe.  All of this colored the man (and the voice) I am today.

And beyond even further!

Returning to the US from my assignment in Italy (I mean, who wouldn’t want to live in Italy for five years, right?), it was time to find a “real” job.

Dragging my family from Naples to a small southern Indiana town (Bedford, near Bloomington) was QUITE a culture shock I can tell you!  I began my civilian career as a support contractor at Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane Indiana (Yep, that’s right.  I “left” the navy, only to join them again in a different capacity!) where I repaired electronic equipment and returned it to the supply system in support of the ships around the world.  It wasn’t long before I was hired as a government employee to begin my NEXT career with the Navy as a GS civilian.

Off to the nation’s capital!

Almost immediately, a new position opened in Washington, DC managing a radar refurbishment program.  It should be noted that throughout my entire twenty-year navy career I avoided the DC area like a PLAGUE (maybe not a good word choice given the present circumstances?) Nevertheless, I accepted a position as Deputy to the Program Manager and after spending several months commuting from Indiana every other week, I finally moved to the DC area on Labor Day weekend in 2001.  Yes, I moved to DC ONE WEEK before the 9/11 tragedy.  Talk about timing!

And we’re off!

Over the course of the last twenty years, I’ve managed numerous radar acquisition programs, spent a year at the Missile Defense Agency (Remember the “Star Wars” program from the 80’s with President Reagan?  Yep, THAT Missile Defense Agency!) and then back over to Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) to manage some MORE radar programs.  I managed to rise through the ranks from a deputy, to a Project Manager (where, over time I managed 8 different programs) to an Assistant Program Manager responsible for 2-3 programs and finally to a Principal Assistant Program Manager responsible for nine programs, with over 400 systems on every single ship in the fleet across the globe.  I was trusted with a team of more than 1000 people, from multiple organizations and disciplines in locations spanning from DC, to Indiana, California, Hawaii, Japan and Bahrain.  Literally AROUND THE GLOBE.

As far as “day jobs” go, you couldn’t ask for a better (or, at times, worse) one.  As I look back over the last 40 years, it is difficult to believe it all happened to me; a kid who barely graduated high school.  There is a message here for any young people reading this and struggling to get their feet under them thanks to bad decisions as a kid.  Work hard, keep pushing forward, never give up.  As Churchill once said:

Don’t give up…better days are ahead and your perseverance will pay off.  I am living proof of that!

Reflections and waxing a bit philosophical…

Besides persevering, one of the MOST important things I’ve learned over all this time is:  People make the world go ‘round, and without them NO organization would exist.  The most important thing anyone, in any organization, can do to succeed is to treat people well.  Understand that everyone has a back story, everyone is struggling with something, everyone is trying to succeed.  We all want the same things in life after all; to have a safe warm place to live, food on the table and a little extra cash for entertainment.  We want our families to be protected and happy.  We want our kids to have a better life than we did and we want SOMEone to recognize our hard work.  That is, of course, somewhat oversimplified as we are, if nothing else, complex creatures, but in the end it all boils down to these simple things.

So, the take away here is to treat people well, especially if you have the honor of managing them in an organization.  But even if you don’t manage them, remember a couple things:

• Everyone has a story and a struggle you may not know about
• Everyone is really good at something, even if they haven’t figured out what, and it may not be what you have hired them to do (and if you ARE their boss, it is your job to find out what that is and either “exploit” it, train them or encourage them to move on).
• Everyone can be trained to improve their skills
• KINDNESS goes a long way no matter what situation you are in.

If I had to sum up the lessons from the last 40 years in one sentence it would be this:  Persevere, be kind and understanding, treat people the way YOU’D like to be treated and remember that they are as imperfect as you are.

One other lesson…

The one other lesson I’ve learned in life is this:  You WILL fail.  Over and over again.  Never let failure stop you.  It doesn’t matter how many times or how often you fail, learn something from it then get back up and keep trying.  Any idea how many light bulbs Edison made before one worked?  How many times did Alexander Graham Bell try to get the telephone to work?  Here are a couple quotes from Edison:

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” and “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” (Thomas Edison)

It’s reported that Bell tried and failed 31 times to develop a communication system to replace the telegraph.  Imagine if he had given up before the 32^nd try?  Our lives would be far different today!

And a bit about the government…

I can tell you from personal experience that working with the government is an exercise in frustration and futility.  You’ve all undoubtedly heard stories about government inefficiency and waste.  I’m here to tell you those stories are just skimming the surface.  The government is a HUGE behemoth, with so many tentacles that reach in thousands of directions and rarely if ever talk with one another.  It’s enough to drive a sane man bat-crap crazy (hey this is a family friendly blog!).  From the outside looking in it seems as though the people who work for the government are lazy, greedy and not at ALL good at their jobs.  That could NOT be farther from the truth.

Over the last 40 years I’ve had the pleasure to work around some of the smartest, most well educated, hardest working and servant minded people on the planet.  With VERY few exceptions these people get up, fight traffic (and DC traffic really IS a battle) and come to work to fight bureaucracy every day to serve the people of the United States in the best way they know how.  It is a well-known fact within the government that to leave government employment for the private sector generally means not just a less secure path, but about 25% more salary for the same job.  Yeah, senior people in the government can be well paid, but their industry peers are MUCH better compensated.  Some stay for the security, but many (most?) stay to try and affect positive change.  This is like trying to push a fully loaded dump truck up a steep hill by yourself.  It’s almost impossible, and a thankless job.

Most are resigned to the fact that their sphere of influence in the government is small, but they strive to improve within their sphere of influence anyway.  The lesson here is this: Even if you don’t have a large influence, work to improve the areas you CAN influence and make it better.  Also, no matter how frustrating it may seem at times, KEEP PUSHING THAT TRUCK UP THE HILL!

So, what does this have to do with VOICE OVER?

I’m glad you asked!

In a way it has EVERYTHING to do with it.  As my 40-year long stint with the navy is “past and opening” as of December 31^st, the lessons I’ve learned from that time will serve me (and you if you’re paying attention!) well in my THIRD career in voice over.  Just getting started seems, again, like pushing a fully loaded dump truck up a steep hill alone.  Only THIS time it truly IS alone much of the time.  Not a lot of room for extra people in my very small sound studio.  Having said that, I can say that this business offers some of the kindest, most helpful and least competitive people in any industry, so it’s not REALLY alone…but I digress.

As an unknown artist this career is fraught with failure and rejection.  It can be disheartening at times.  But I just keep remembering that even with 10,000 failures, Edison did in FACT succeed at lighting our home and offices.  I’m reaching for the 10,001^st audition (or later?  Man, I HOPE NOT).

Also, this career is ALL about relationship (and YOU thought it was about talking!  HA!).  No matter how frustrating or discouraging, if nothing else I will be the kindest, friendliest most understanding artist I can be.  Even clients have bad days, are frustrating and need compassion and understanding.

The biggest thing for me to remember is that it takes a long time, a lot of hard work and a little luck to become an “overnight success” in any endeavor, and this business is no different.

COME ON 10,001

If you enjoyed this, please leave a comment below to let me know.  If you DIDN’T enjoy it, well, I’d like to hear from you too!

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Welcome back!

This week, let’s discuss rates when bidding on voice over work.

OK since rates are perhaps one of the most debated subjects in the industry, this may be somewhat of a touchy topic.  In this post I will try to lay out a reasonable discussion of rates and, with luck, avoid getting flame sprayed by my peers.

Let’s spend a few minutes talking about your rates for voice over.  How do you determine what to charge?

Tread carefully!  Here there be monsters!

The topic is touchy, because one side of the debate believes that every VO artist, regardless of their level of experience, should charge professional rates such as those negotiated by collective bargaining groups like SAG-AFTRA, while the other believes it is perfectly acceptable for new artists entering the world of voice over to work for reduced rates based on their experience.  In all honesty, there are some salient points made on both sides of the argument and there is really no definitive answer to the question.

Professional Rates

First, one of the main points made by the “professional rates” group make the case that artists accepting reduced rates for their services drive the rates down for the entire industry.  They have a point, to a degree.  If client A can get their project voiced for $100 (and that is not really an exaggeration) why should they pay someone $1000 to do it even when the VALUE of the project is $1000?  Well, since every business is IN business to make a profit, they probably wouldn’t…or so the thinking goes.  In reality, what happens is the number of clients willing to pay professional rates for work is certainly reduced, but not to zero.  We’ll talk more later about how you should think about calculating rates, and what considerations there are, but suffice it to say that “bargain basement” VO rates will drive the average rates for the entire industry down.

Rates for the inexperienced

The “New artists can’t charge those rates” crowd ALSO has a point.  Consider a client willing to pay top dollar for services.  How likely are they to take a chance on an artist who is just getting started in the business and who they can’t feel reasonably confident can deliver consistently?  New artists are competing with well-established and experienced artists for this work. Without a body of work, and the experience from doing it, these new artists will always be new artists and will never be able to compete with the “Big Boys”.  There has to be a compromise.

An exercise in hiring

Imagine you are the hiring manager for a firm, and you are looking for a design engineer to fill a critical spot in your company.  You post a job requisition online and begin receiving resumes, maybe you get 100 or so (not at all unusual).  You review the resumes and decide on 20 people to interview.  After the interview, you have whittled it down to two promising candidates who both meet all your qualifications and interviewed well.  One is an engineer with 20 years’ experience, several patents and an impressive list of successful design programs.  The other graduated from a well thought of engineering college 2 years ago, has limited experience and only one successful project under their belt.  They are each seeking the same salary.

Which engineer are you most likely to hire?

I’ve been there!

Having been in this position in my “day job” several times in the last 20 or so years, I can tell you from experience that all things being equal, the experienced engineer will get that job 99 times out of 100.  There is, in this example, a much higher level of risk with the less experienced applicant.  Organizations don’t like risk.  And neither do VO clients.

But, what if that less experienced engineer was seeking a much lower salary than the more experienced engineer?  The odds of them being selected for the position go up dramatically!  The cost or “investment” in that employee being lower reduces the risk dramatically, and companies are more willing to take the chance, because while the (for all you risk nerds out there) probability of realizing the risk remains the same the consequence is reduced because of the lower salary.  The investment loss is less. If the risk is low enough, it is worth taking it for a fresh new person with limited experience.

Lower rates MAY compel a client to “Take a Chance”

By seeking a lower salary, the less experienced applicant makes himself more attractive to prospective employers, but at the same time WILL drive the average salary for an engineer down as well.

Of course, average salaries for engineers are determined by years of experience and are usually set for entry level, mid range and expert levels.   Not really so with voice over rates.

But, you are NOT a design engineer

Voice over rates tend to be what they are regardless of experience level.  I have searched and cannot find and “entry level” voice over rates.  All of the rate guides I’ve found so far are based on several factors related to the JOB.  In establishing “standard” voice over rates, no consideration is given for the experience level of the artist.

“STANDARD” rates?

But let’s start out with an elephant in the room:  There really ARE no “standard” rates for voice over, just rate “guides”, and unless you are a member of the union, each artist is free to charge whatever they wish for their services.  In truth, even if you ARE a union member, joining the union is really just that decision (in a long line of decisions for your business) relating to how you set your rates; in essence joining the union, and agreeing to abide by charging union rates, is a rate setting decision by itself.  So, setting aside all arguments on either side of the debate, remember that this is YOUR business (and it IS a business) and it is completely up to you to decide what your time, effort and investment in your business is worth to YOU.  Study the rate guides, but then set your own rates.

In part, calling something a “standard” rate is disingenuous because the rate guides all make distinctions based on the job, and there is hardly a “standard” job.  The voice over industry is so varied with numerous genres and sub genres, so that each voice over job is nearly unique from all others. But…and this is a BIG but…there are standard aspects that should be considered when determining what rates to charge your clients.

What are these considerations?

Type

The first consideration is:  What type of work is it?  An audio book’s rates are going to be far different than an explainer video, or a radio or TV commercial.  Is it a long form narration?  Short?  Somewhere in between?  Is it for eLearning, animation, documentary?  You see where I am going here…you have to determine what type of work it is first to establish a baseline.  A 3-hour audiobook and a 3-hour documentary are going to have different values, even though they are both 3 hours long.

Usage

Next, what is the application?  Will this be paid placement?  Radio?  TV? Local? Regional? National? International?  Will it be used corporately just for clients?  Employees?  On the client’s website?  How the client intends to use the work is important in determining the value of the work.  You should never work for $100 on a project that can reasonably be expected to net the client 10’s of thousands.  Usage is a key consideration.

Length of usage

Length of time is also a key consideration and goes to the same idea as usage.  How long does the client intend to keep using the piece? Something that will run for 2 weeks, versus something running for 13 weeks, 6 months a year or (GASP!) in perpetuity will derive different value and different rates.

It’s really not a simple question

You can get a good idea of how complex pricing for voice overs is, by reviewing the Global Voice Acting Academy (GVAA) Rate Guide online.  They do a really great job of breaking rates down by type, usage and time there.  But if you have been doing this a while you’ll notice that as thorough as they were in putting this together, it is not completely comprehensive.  You ARE going to need to bid on jobs that fall somewhere in between the rates given.

GVAA is what I use to establish a baseline for the rates I quote, but there are other rate guides you can consult.  Here are a few I’ve found:

• Gravy For the Brain (you may need to be a paid member to view these)
• SAG-Aftra
• com
• The Voice Realm
• Edge Studio

As you can see if you peruse the rate cards on these different sites, you’ll notice a difference between Union and non-Union rates AND that they don’t all agree all the time.  That doesn’t mean they are not good references, just that, as I mentioned earlier, there really aren’t any “standard” rates in this business.

 The most dangerous consideration

One other consideration that MUST be mentioned is:  The client’s budget.  While I do not suggest that the value of your work is determined by the client’s budget, I will point out that if the client has a budget of $100 for a job that should command $1000, spending (wasting?) your time auditioning and bidding far over their budget should be carefully considered.  It’s possible your time might be better spent auditioning for work that is more in line with the value of the project.  However, I encourage you to bid fairly and ethically on any job you audition for, even when it exceeds the clients stated budget.

 BUT – Only you can determine your own value

All of that said, at the end of the day YOU have to set your own rates.  Do you have a responsibility to the industry as a whole to keep rates from dropping across the industry!?  Of course, to some degree, you do!  If you ever want to book those high dollar jobs, working for pennies now will only serve to significantly reduce the number of them available to you later, and you’ll be competing with the BEST in the industry.  Keep that in mind when you bid!

But you ALSO have a responsibility to you, your family and your business.  It doesn’t do much good to take the moral high ground if you are going to get kicked out of your apartment, or have to scrounge for food.  The case can be made that if you are incapable of booking jobs at professional rates, you need to find another career or work to improve your craft instead of taking the low paid jobs just to eek by.  And that’s not completely wrong.  But I submit this:  There are always going to be people who either don’t really KNOW the value of the work you do, or how much time, sweat and money you have invested in the business or are just too cheap to pay professional rates.  SOMEONE is going to book those jobs, why shouldn’t it be you?

I agree, somewhat, with that sentiment.  You have to value yourself – not determine your value based on what others tell you – AND you have to feed your family. But a word (OK several words) of caution if you decide to pursue these jobs.

Proceed with caution!

First, and foremost, those people who legitimately don’t know or understand the value of what we as voice artists do are NEVER going to learn that way.  We also have a responsibility to inform clients what the true value of what they need actually is.  The people who know the value and are too cheap to pay it, are never going to pay reasonable rates.  But you truly never know which is which unless you’ve worked with them before.

Don’t become the VO thrift shop

Secondly, you come to be known as the “Dollar General” of voice over.  Not just by clients, but also by colleagues in the industry.  One of the things we strive for in this industry, as in many others, is repeat clients.  It is going to be virtually IMPOSSIBLE to raise your rates with a given client for future work.  Not only that, but some amount of work will eventually come in the form of referrals from colleagues, if you are Dollar General, no one is going to recommend you!  And after all, you DO want to be able to feed your family so if you are consistently working for below average rates, then you are going to be working twice as hard for half as much.  So be very careful if you decided to go down this road.

There is only one person you have to answer to about your rates (well, two if you’re married)

When all is said and done, the only person who can set your rates or decide on how much you are willing to work for is: YOU.  No one else can tell you what to charge for your service, but I sincerely hope this has given you some things to ponder when setting rates for your business, keeping in mind a responsibility to the industry as a whole as well as yourself and your family.  My suggestion is for you to study the rate guides and put together a similar rate card that fits you, your experience and your business model and will help you reach your goals to become successful in this business.  Like so many areas of life, there really is NO one size fits all solution to what you charge for your services.  Figure out what you have invested in your business, determine the value of your time and talent and then set your rates accordingly.  If you feel that your ability won’t command professional rates, then find a coach, find a mentor and IMPROVE your ability.  Then bid according to the rates you’ve set yourself, and whatever you do: DON’T undervalue yourself!

 

 

If you enjoyed this, please leave a comment below to let me know.  If you DIDN’T enjoy it, well, I’d like to hear from you too!

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