Why DIY Demos Are a Bad Idea

There’s a great moral throwdown in the original Jurassic Park movie when Ian Malcolm, (Jeff Goldblum) tells the park founder, John Hammond (Richard Attenborough), “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.”

As so it is with DIY voice-over demos: Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

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The Number One Threat to Your Voice-Over Business

Most of us mistakenly tend to focus on external threats to our well-being. We endlessly worry about the things that could do harm to us, that threaten our physical, psychological, social, or financial well-being. Psychologists call this rumination.

The problem with focusing on the external is that we waste an inordinate amount of time and useless energy on things we can’t control.

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Quoting All-Media Buyouts in Voice-Over

A fellow voice actor recently reached out to me on LinkedIn:

Hey Paul!

I was wondering if you had a quick minute to help me price a VO project. I'm not great at pricing things, tbh, and I don't know what to do with the GVAA rate guide when it comes to multiple usages. I could really use your guidance!

It's a [foreign] production company that's doing a [category] campaign. They want a :90 script with multiple cut downs, a :20 script, 5 years, worldwide, all media.

I'd love your thoughts on this!

Let’s discuss the All-Media Buyout.

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Quoting Voice-Over Rates: Abundance vs. Scarcity

I’ve been pretty vocal on social media about so-called “coaches” in this business who purport that Fiverr, Upwork, Craigslist (for chrissakes), and the like are the key to a career as a professional voice actor.

My problem is not with these sites. My problem is with the scarcity mindset and the so-called “coaches” who teach it.

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How To Handle Lowball Budgets – 2 Real World Examples

It can be very confusing trying to figure out how to handle casting notices that come in that are well below the going rates.

This week, I thought it might be useful to show two real-world examples I’ve received very recently as well as my actual responses so that you can see how to handle these less than ideal requests.

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