13132: Help People Work With You By Showing Them Exactly How

Raw transcript:

here’s a question for you what is the
one thing you can do it doesn’t cost you
any money
that will help your potential clients
hire you
as an actor or a voice Talent or a
writer or whatever you do for your
survival job and your performance job
what’s the one thing you can do to help
them do that I’m in the process of doing
that right now for one of the classes
that I teach and I’m going to share it
with you in this episode of the vo
Heroes podcast
one of the things you’ll notice about
companies that create software and
hardware and products and
courses and so on is a little side thing
that Harkens back to the days of the
pamphlet that was included with a
product on how to use the product how to
set it up how to use it properly
warnings uh you know don’t plug it in
when you’re sitting in the bathtub
things like that the one thing that you
can do to help your clients use your
services over somebody else’s
is some document or some video or maybe
some audio that shows them how to use
you as a resource how to use your
services
how to guide
and right now I’m in the process of
creating a template if you will that my
clients and students can modify to
however they choose to present
themselves
to be used right at that moment when a
client is deciding whether or not
they’re going to use you they’re going
to book you they’re going to consider
you as part of their finalists giving
them the opportunity to understand how
you work and best practices for taking
advantage of what you offer so basically
it’s like a user guide for a potential
client
and when you introduce that is a really
interesting moment
when you audition for something or when
you’re being told hey you’re in the
Final Mix you’re pinned
now this doesn’t necessarily
you know work or or is an option when
you’re working in a traditional casting
process where a casting office is
considering you don’t need to send them
a PDF file or a link to a video that
shows them how to work with you but
as an example for an audiobook narrator
it’s really a great thing if you clue in
a potential rights holder who may not
have any experience at all in doing
audiobook narration work or working with
a narrator
um how you work what they can expect
what your charges are when you expect
payment uh what you expect from them in
terms of review of your work deadlines
uh software or websites or places they
can find further information your email
address your phone number ways to
contact you how to contact you what they
can and can’t do in the review they
can’t direct you but they can correct
you right things like that little things
like that that we all think well of
course a right Soldier is going to
understand this that’s part of the
process as a professional well you know
a lot of them have been working on one
book for 20 years
and they’ve never done this before and
they don’t know how to do it so that’s
what I’m developing right now for both
vo Heroes and for the ACX master class
and
um we’re going to be giving this
template to the students to be able to
peel off a copy and send it to a
potential uh production partner
potential rights holder who will say now
so what do you do
that you could provide education
to your potential customers
that not only helps them understand how
you work
but in addition makes it easy for them
to decide to hire you because they know
what to expect they get that you
understand what their concerns are what
their fears are is this person that I’m
hiring is a talent going to take care of
me is this person that I’m hiring as a
producer going to do a good job do they
understand what they’re doing what tools
do they use now this doesn’t mean
sharing with them the gear that you have
you can if you want to but it really
doesn’t matter
what you want to share with them is that
you know what you’re doing
and that you understand that they might
be concerned about what they should be
doing in this process so giving someone
a real quick start user manual guide to
how you work
helps set expectations it also helps
settle things that may be a negotiation
or a uh a a question a point of
contention even maybe like rates and uh
late fees and what you charge for versus
what you don’t charge for so a real
quick one-page item that you can put on
your website or that you can send to
somebody as they’re about to make their
decision how I work with my clients or
how to best work with me or world class
uh practices you know this is what I do
this is how I do it
think about creating something that
helps your clients understand how to
work with you does that make sense
I’d love to see some examples too if you
have them put them in the comments below
this video because uh I I love seeing
examples of what people do I always
learn from checking things out on on
their websites or in PDFs if you like
what you’re hearing today feel free to
forward this to another actor who might
might benefit from it another voice
Talent hit the like button if you like
you can subscribe to the channel there’s
a notification Bell that you can click
to make sure you get notified when we
have new episodes that come out I’m
David H Lawrence the 17th I thank you so
much for watching and for listening and
I will see you in the next episode of
the vo Heroes podcast

(from YouTube)