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Content provided by Anne Ganguzza. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Anne Ganguzza or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://player.fm/legal.

How do you determine your worth as a voice actor, especially when you're just starting out? Join Anne and Tom as we unravel the complexities of setting rates in the voiceover industry. We challenge the misconception that newbies should work for less and emphasize the need for a solid base studio session fee. From understanding SAG-AFTRA and Global Voice Acting Academy (GVAA) rate guides to navigating the nuances of broadcast and non-broadcast work, we provide practical insights that empower you to establish your value right from the get-go. Efficiency and quality are your best allies in commanding higher rates and securing repeat clients. Learn the essential strategies for managing your career, from cultivating new leads and staying updated on market trends to understanding client churn. We'll share actionable advice on how to keep your pipeline full and stay ahead of the curve in this ever-evolving industry.

00:01 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey boss listeners. Are you ready to turn your voiceover career goals into achievements? With my personalized coaching and demo production, I'm here to help you reach new milestones. You know you're already part of a boss community that strives for the very best. Let's elevate that. Your success is my next project. Find out more at anneganguzzacom.

00:26 - Intro (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next project. Find out more at anganguzacom. It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss, a VO boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza. The boss, a VO boss.

00:46 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza. Hey, hey, everyone, welcome to the VO Boss Podcast. I'm your host, Anne Ganguza, and I am here on the Real Boss series with my co-host, Tom Dheere. Hey, Tom Dheere, how are you?

00:57 - Tom Dheere (Host) Hello Anne, how are you doing?

00:58 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Real boss. Yeah, hey, Tom, as a real boss. How's your year going? By the way, it's gone by so fast already.

01:06 - Tom Dheere (Host) First quarter gone.

01:07 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, first quarter and tax season is already coming.

01:10 - Tom Dheere (Host) Well, I mean, we filed, I filed and I got paid already. So yeah, oh, very, very nice.

01:15 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So, speaking of numbers, you're a numbers guy, so how's your year going?

01:20 - Tom Dheere (Host) It's funny because I just did my first quarter analytics financially and I think I'm like literally like $300 ahead of first quarter 2023.

01:32 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Congrats.

01:33 - Tom Dheere (Host) Can't complain about that.

01:34 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Being ahead is always a plus, always a plus and myself as well, and I'm ecstatic that I got paid already from the government, so that's good. I'm going to reinvest that in my business. But I love talking real numbers, like real money. So I thought it would be good to talk about real money, because so many times I have students who just get into this industry and they get that first job where somebody's interested in their voice and then they panic and they say, oh my God, they've come back to me and they want to know what I'll charge for this job and I thought we should actually. Let's talk about that. Let's talk about those numbers. How do people come up with those numbers?

02:13 - Tom Dheere (Host) Right. It's funny because, like we could just say, well, just go look at the SAG-AFTRA contract if you're union, or go look at the Global Voice Acting website if you're non-union, and this will be the world's shortest podcast episode.

02:24 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That's it. Gvaa rate guide and SegAftra Boom and you're done.

02:28 - Tom Dheere (Host) But, as you well know, it's a lot more complicated than that. But I want to do a little bit of myth busting real quick. A lot of voice actors coming into the industry think hierarchical. They think vertical, as in. Since they're just entering the voiceover industry, they should get paid the lowest and the people who have been in here the longest should get paid the highest. And that is not necessarily true. I mean, if there's one thing I've learned in the 25 plus years I've been doing this is that the last gig I got isn't always the worst paying gig I've got, and then the next gig I've got isn't always the best paying gig that I've got.

03:08 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It fluctuates, it just does right. I mean, before the rate guides. Well, I think there was always SAG-AFTRA, but SAG-AFTRA mostly concentrated on things that were national and broadcast right, and so national, regional, local, anything that was broadcast. So what was a girl to do back in the early years when I was there trying to figure out what do I charge? And literally it set myself into a panic and I always, tom, had to pretty much just kind of wing it and guess what? I think that that's even still true today.

03:44 - Tom Dheere (Host) I mean, now we have guides that we can look at as benchmarks, but in reality every job is absolutely different, especially when you're talking non-broadcast rates, so broadcast rates, radio, tv, cable, internet, streaming right, all the front-facing stuff, where there's going to be a session fee, which is how much you get paid to record the voiceover audio files, and then the usage fee, which is how much you get paid for giving license, because you're literally licensing your voice to the voice seekers for them to use your audio files in a certain period of time and in a certain area.

04:31 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Absolutely.

04:31 - Tom Dheere (Host) Right. So that's broadcast in the broadest sense, for lack of a better term, and just by giving your listeners that basic explanation. That's what sets up this avalanche of other questions. It's like how big of a market, how many listeners, how long are you getting paid for? It's, in simplest terms, the more listeners or viewers, the more you get paid, and the longer that they're going to air this spot, on whatever medium they decide, the more you get paid. So the question is where do you start with that? So actually, that leads me to a question. Anne, do you have like a turning?

05:13 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) on the lights fee. Do you have a base studio session fee? Yes, I absolutely do. For me to step into the studio, I have a certain fee and a lot of my work is non-broadcast. So if I am doing any work that's broadcast. Typically that's either handled by my agent, right? Who's negotiating that for me? Which is why it's awesome to have agents, because they handle that and they're always fighting for the most part, if you've got a good agent for your best interests.

05:35 If it's not an agent fighting for the rates, then I have to go to a rate guide to start somewhere and figure out what that is. But for non-broadcast, absolutely. I have a rate for stepping into my studio and that is my studio session fee, which.

05:51 I try to equate everything non-broadcast to the same equivalent on the broadcast side, because these days, with synthetic voices right, I want to make sure that nobody's going to be using my voice for a purpose that it wasn't intended for, and so I will actually put and I'm probably getting ahead of myself on my non-broadcast, I will put an actual length of time, whereas previously this was not something we talked about in perpetuity in another episode. But I want to absolutely address that. For non-broadcast, typically it was you gave somebody a rate for usage of that file and it was forever. And now, with synthetic voices and the fear of getting our voices stolen or used for purposes other than intended, I now put in for non-broadcast. I put in a length of time that they can use that for as a safeguard.

06:42 - Tom Dheere (Host) Right and for certain things I mean there's explainers and corporate and e-learning and stuff like that.

06:47 Most of that stuff isn't evergreen anyway, because, like an explainer video, for example, the company's branding may change, the name of the company may change, the product, the service, the widget may change, so they're going to need a new explainer video.

07:03 If they have just like one explainer video which is parked on their website and their social media channels just saying we are this company, this is what we do, in two, three years, maybe five at most, they're going to need a new video and they may go to you and they may go to somebody else. But when you see non-broadcast in perpetuity, you want to be smart about it. You want to give it some form of shelf life, and that's a big part of this conversation, anne is how do you communicate this? How do you educate your clients? By explaining, like look, in a few years you're going to need a new one of these anyway, because I've noticed that for like non-broadcast, most of them want it in perpetuity, not because they want to synthesize your voice or because they want to hose you financially, it's just because they just don't want to be bothered. They just want to do this and it's done, and it's there and now they can go focus on other things.

07:48 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, they say that it's theirs.

07:49 - Tom Dheere (Host) And they say it's theirs. For non-broadcast genres there's a whole bunch of different ways to charge. Sometimes you charge by the finished minute. If it's an audio book, you charge by the finished hour. If it's long form e-learning modules, you could get paid by the word.

08:06 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Exactly, I mean, those are the big ones there used to be per page but I don't remember the last time I got paid per page and you know what. I'll be completely honest, tom, I don't remember the last time I quoted an e-learning module on a per word basis, because most of the companies or most of the people that I'm working with I'm not on a roster that is paying on a per word basis or working with an instructional e-learning company, that usually is on a per word basis.

08:31 Whenever I get e-learning clients, I always price them on a per hour, per finished hour basis and I get paid the same for e-learning as I do for corporate pretty much.

08:41 - Tom Dheere (Host) Yeah, I mean they're both informational, non-broadcast, so in the broadest brushstrokes they're pretty much the same genre-wise, with the exception that e-learning is usually used to train students and new employees and corporate is for internal communications, like an HR video or a memo, or here's how you pick your employee benefits, and stuff like that.

09:01 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Or even a corporate narration video. That's what I meant. Corporate training and e-learning to me is the same. Do you know what I mean? Corporate training and academic e-learning rates are the same to me, except most educational institutions can't afford what a company can Right.

09:15 It's harder for them to get the money, but I think one thing that I want to emphatically tell the bosses out there that are just beginning for non-broadcast is that really every job is unique and we don't always have a rate guide to go to, and it's up to you as a business person to understand what would be an acceptable market rate for that and price it accordingly to that and also know your worth because, again, like you had mentioned before, you think that just because you're newer, you should charge less, and that is probably not the. That is not the way I would be thinking about it at all as a new person into the industry. Because you're being paid for your voice right, you're being paid for your voice. You can get just as much as I can or Tom can for that voice. It is your business.

10:11 - Tom Dheere (Host) Right. Here's the thing about that is that a lot of my students immediately devalue themselves. Yeah, and you shouldn't do that to yourself, because, think about it on the other side of the equation is that if you're a voice seeker, do you care how long the voice actors have been doing voiceover Really? I mean in the abstract. Well, of course we would like an experienced narrator, but when it comes down to the audition, within two, three seconds, either they like you or you don't. It doesn't matter how long you've been doing voiceover.

10:43 Now there is obviously a correlation between the ability to tell a story effectively and how long you've been doing this. But ultimately, if you've got quality training from Anne and a quality demo and that demo is submitted and you've been trained by Anne to audition effectively for projects, I'd say 90, 95% of the time, it's a level playing field. Regardless of how long you've been trained by Anne to audition effectively for projects, I'd say 90, 95% of the time, it's a level playing field regardless of how long you've been in the industry, and I agree with you there, completely agree with you.

11:10 So you take that data point and then you extrapolate that. Well, if that's the case, then that means everybody should get paid the same who's auditioning for that, because if one of my students auditions for an e-learning project and I audition for an e-learning project, if I book it, I shouldn't necessarily get paid more than they should.

11:28 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I agree with that, completely agree with that. Again, they're paying for the voice. They're not necessarily paying for the experience. However, in dealing with the client, your level of experience might have a part in it because after you get the job, in order to maybe keep the job or have the person keep coming back, that's where your experience and customer service comes into play and that's where I feel that you can command. And again, you can command just as much if you can give them a good experience.

12:00 - Tom Dheere (Host) Right. This is what I tell my students is that your talent will book you the first gig with a client. Your project management skills will book you the next gig with the same client, because if me and a student are auditioning for the same gig and they book it. Great, they should get the same that I get, but then they better deliver the goods, communicate the retake policy, understand how to use their DAW, understand how to edit and deliver the audio files, being able to take direction if it's a live setting those are skills that.

12:31 Yes, there is a correlation between your experience level and the ability to execute good project management, but if you work with Anne or if you work with myself, part of our jobs is to teach you that and how to be able to be professional and communicate effectively and do all those things, because it's not just getting the first gig, it's getting the next gig and the next gig and the next gig without auditioning.

12:56 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Exactly. And it's funny because it reminds me of a conversation I had in my Voices in Podcasting Clubhouse the other day with Jodi Krangel and Cheryl Holling, where we got into this discussion about acting right, because a lot of coaches these days will say it's more important now more than ever to have your acting skills so that you can separate yourself from the synthetic voices. And Jodi said you know, I don't know if I'm completely convinced about that, because in reality it also has to do with your customer service. And I'm like, yeah, well, you've got to get the gig first right, which is your auditioning talents and your performance talents and your acting talents are going to get you the gig.

13:34 Then what's going to help you keep it is going to be that customer service that business aspect that you just mentioned, in order to keep them coming back and then commanding that good rate, moving forward.

13:48 - Tom Dheere (Host) And that's when it comes into so for the audition, to book the audition it's about your talent and your storytelling ability. After that, it's about your ability to manage the project effectively. Because, also, if you can demonstrate that you can deliver the goods and do it quickly and do it right, then, yeah, you're in a better position to command higher rates and slash. Or you're in a position to just get more bookings without having to audition for this end client that you got that initial gig with and other end clients at this production company or recording studio or ad agency or marketing firm or political production company or explainer production company has they're like yeah, you work with Ann. Ann delivered the goods on this series of explainer videos. She can do that for you and your series of explainer videos too. So it's not just about getting as much as you can for the project in question, it's about delivering the goods so you can get paid over and over and, over and over again.

14:44 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And aren't those the best jobs?

14:46 - Tom Dheere (Host) Well, we all want regular clients, like everybody, everybody, in every part of the country.

14:50 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) You don't have to audition for them, that just takes out a complete amount of steps. And it's funny because I think for me and for my business right. I'm always telling people you always have to cultivate new leads, because if you've been in the business for a long time, undoubtedly you'll probably have repeat clients. Right, tom? You must have lots and lots and lots of repeat clients Many, many, many, many, many repeat clients and me too, and I'm grateful for them.

15:10 but I always have to be cultivating the new clients as well, and that means I have to really continually assess and understand rates and what I should charge and understand my worth in the current market, in the current market.

15:24 - Tom Dheere (Host) Yes, my friend Adam Werner, audiobook narrator, fellow FAFCon attendee. He taught me about client churn, which is every quarter. I look at all of the voiceover gigs that I booked and all the clients that I worked with and the genres that I booked and how I got the gig whether it was through my representation, whether it was through an online casting site and whether it was through my self-marketing strategies and I look to see how many new clients did I gain and I keep a very close eye on how many new clients I'm getting, because if I'm getting a regular stream of new clients, that means my marketing strategies are working well, yes, yes and your marketing strategies.

16:03 Is your self-marketing strategy? Cold calls, cold emails, indirect marketing, social media, blogging, whatever. But also, am I just auditioning better through my representation? Am I auditioning better through my online casting sites? Because clients are just going to naturally go away, they're going to retire, they're going to go out of business, they're going to change their business model.

16:23 They're going to hire their nephew who wants to do musical theater, to do their phone greets. And now you're out. Ai is going to replace and already has replaced some of us voice actors. For certain clients, that's just going to naturally happen. So you always want to keep the till full.

16:39 Yep, yep, absolutely absolutely want to keep the till full, yep, yep, absolutely, absolutely, and making sure that you understand what you're worth in today's current landscape on a per word, per finished minute, per finished hour, per studio hour. You always want to keep an eye on that, yeah. So how do you keep an eye on that, anne? How do you keep an eye on current rates? What are your go-tos? What are your habits?

16:57 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, my current rates. I actually make sure that I check the rate guides frequently because they're continually being updated by people more than me out in the industry. Back in the day I was a core contributor to the GVAA rate guide and I think you were too Tom like e-learning and corporate and telephony and medical and those were the rates that I helped with on that rate guide. I make sure that I'm continually assessing those rate guides, but I'm also assessing the market. I mean, I work in the market and so I do a lot of research on the client and I try to understand, like, where else could they be going for potential business or another voice, and how can I remain competitive with that voice? And so how do I keep myself current? It's continual research, really, and assessment with the rate guide and some of it, honestly, is just pulling it out of the air. That is really what happens Sometimes. It's nowhere to be found and you just have to use your best judgment. Always use your negotiation 101 tactics on asking what is the budget?

18:06 That's like the most important first question I think you can ask a client.

18:10 - Tom Dheere (Host) Do they have a?

18:10 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) budget, and if they have a budget, can you work within that?

18:13 - Tom Dheere (Host) Right, my go-to's is just looking at my agent casting notices and looking at my online casting site casting notices yes, yes, yes.

18:19 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Market assessment notices. And looking at my online casting site casting notices Market assessment.

18:23 - Tom Dheere (Host) Market assessment and what Ann does and what I do. You should be doing both of those. You should be doing both of those because when you get a casting notice from your representation, it's been pre-negotiated. They've already gone through the rigmarole of negotiating with that particular client, so what you get is most likely the finished product of what the actual rate is going to be for that project. So that will let you know, because, along with that casting notice, in addition to the rates, is the specs, the session fee, the usage fee, the market, the exclusivity and conflicts and the rate of usage, how long it's going to be used for. So you can use that to greatly inform your broadcast rate sheets. And then for non-broadcast, looking at the online casting sites and just noticing trends in e-learning versus corporate, versus explainer, versus telephony, versus medical versus voice of.

19:17 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) God. And in order to do that, in order to do that, do you need to be a member, tom? I know, because some of them will post job rates without you necessarily actually being a paid member if you're a free member, but I believe you've got to be a paid member to get that information these days.

19:33 - Tom Dheere (Host) For places like Voice 123, I believe you won't have access to the casting notices unless you're on the tier, because the only way you'll get them is if they make it to your inbox, and the only way it makes it to your inbox is having a subscription tier, unless you have a free site, a free membership and some casting notices come in and some say here's the jobs you missed and here's the money.

19:53 Right, voicescom, I think you can run searches but you can't audition unless you're a paid member. But you know what? There's other places to go. I mean you could look at Backstage and Badalgo and Casting Call Club, even Twitter. Now Casting Call Club and Twitter, there tend to be lower no-pay jobs, which is why a lot of voice actors early in their journey go to Casting Call Club because it gives themselves a great opportunity to kind of develop their audition skills, their rate negotiation skills, build up their portfolio, resume, genre awareness and confidence, all of which are extremely, extremely important things. But if you're able to hit the ground running and you have more resources at your disposal which I've got, a pay-to-play site like a voice123 or voicescom you can get a much better idea of what current trends in the rate structure is for voiceover gigs.

20:38 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And you know what's so interesting. What I'm hearing from you, interestingly enough, is not just understanding the rate guide and then understanding the principles of negotiation and what you're worth, but also your audition techniques, right. Auditioning techniques, it's a first impression, right. And so if you're looking to command a particular rate for a job, even if you don't get a job that you've auditioned for right, you're submitting auditions into your agent and you're just, you're nailing time after time after time, or you're nailing the auditions in the pay to play, right, you're getting consistent in people's minds and that is building your value.

21:16 And it's interesting because when people come to me and they say I want to get a corporate demo or I to get a medical demo or I want an e-learning demo, I've, over the years, evolved into the type of coach that is really coaching how to do the audition to get the gig first, because, honestly, we all can do that. Read, that's a really pleasant, nice read. You know that's reading the words, but it takes acting skills to really tell the story. And so I really work on building up students' storytelling skills and acting skills and that, I feel, is going to command you the higher rate.

21:51 - Tom Dheere (Host) Yes, I've got some numbers for you.

21:53 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I know you love your numbers, I do, I do, I do. Tell me Okay.

21:56 - Tom Dheere (Host) In 2019, I auditioned roughly 400 times. Okay 1% of my voiceover revenue came from representation. 18% came from casting sites. I wasn't on any paid casting sites back then. Fast forward to all of 2019, 5 years later, 2023, I did 1,854 auditions. My online casting site revenue percentage grew from 18% to 50%.

22:24 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Wow, that's incredible.

22:26 - Tom Dheere (Host) My representation revenue percentage went from 1% to 12%. Wow, that's incredible, and my overall revenue increased by 20%.

22:36 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And now, what would you say that was due to then?

22:39 - Tom Dheere (Host) Auditioning Auditioning right and auditioning skills.

22:43 Getting my reps in on specifically Voice123. And you can hear, if you haven't watched our casting site VO Boss Video, go check that out. You'll hear me talk about Voice123 in severe detail, about my voiceover journey, the fact that I was auditioning so much on pay-to-play sites I was just getting better at auditioning. I was auditioning so much on pay-to-play sites I was just getting better at auditioning, which meant when I was getting those agent and manager-driven auditions, I was just getting better at auditioning there too and as a result, I booked more gigs and I booked better gigs.

23:12 So, if nothing else, don't put all of these things into separate buckets or silos, pass judgment on them and ignore them, or covet one and ignore the other. It's through data and money I've shown that the online casting site portal and the representation portal are clearly linked. There was clearly a synergistic relationship between the quality and quantity of my auditions on Voice123 and the quality and quantity of my audition efforts through my agents and managers. I love that you're backing it up with the numbers and quantity of my auditions on voice one, two, three and the quality and quantity of my audition efforts through my agents and managers.

23:43 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I love that you're backing it up with the numbers, because I mean, it's so easy right To point the finger and say, oh well, pay to play suck, or there's too many people on the pay to plays, or the pay to plays are bottom feeders. And so, therefore, I didn't get to the audition on time, which you know that plays a certain part in it.

24:03 But also it could be like my agent keeps sending me the same auditions to everyone. So it's easy to point the finger and lay blame. But I'll tell you what a lot of times, if you can increase your audition skills, you can increase your net worth, you can increase the rate that you can ask for. It's kind of like this what came first, the chicken or the egg, the audition or the value right that you can charge your potential client? I mean, honestly, it just goes hand in hand. If you are a better actor, if you are a better auditioner and that's going to require an investment, typically in working hard with maybe a performance coach that can give you good feedback. Because if you're like I don't know what's happening, the pay-to-plays suck these days. I'm not getting any work or my agent is not getting me work, and I hate it when people blame their agents for not getting them work.

24:50 It really is up to you to put in that investment into your business so that you can audition better and then command those better rates.

24:58 - Tom Dheere (Host) Absolutely so. Creating a rate sheet from scratch or using the SAG-AFTRA guidelines or using the Global Voice Acting Academy rate guides is an important thing to understand what is a voice actor's worth in relation to the genres and the broadcast versus non-broadcast market. But I'll be honest. I mean, yes, I have had rate sheets that I built from scratch and talked to other voice actors over the past 15, 20 years, but these days I don't really look at it anymore. I just kind of just know, through repetition, what I'm worth, what the genre is worth, what the gig is worth based on the broadcast or non-broadcast usage. Is it going to just be in a museum exhibition or is it going to be on a corporate website that has 10,000 employees?

25:40 After a while you just kind of get the hang of it, but that does not help our bosses who are early in their voiceover journey. So bookmark that SAG-AFTRA rates, Bookmark that GVAA. Have your own little Google Doc. Keep track of the agent auditions that you get if you have representation. Keep track of the online casting site audition rates. Just start to note them. Just make a little simple spreadsheet Genre rate terms.

26:03 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I did that right in the beginning of my career. It was like audition. Where did the audition come from? Did I book the gig? What was the price? Literally? That can really help establish for you rates to charge and just make sure that you're keeping up with those rates and really doing some market research. If you're new to the industry, those rate guides use them as a guide only. That doesn't mean that they're the be-all, end-all of what you as a business owner should charge. But I would say, rather than going to the lower number because you want the client right, make sure that that number is well within what you are worth. And just because you started just recently doesn't mean that you can't command the same rate that Tom and I can.

26:47 - Tom Dheere (Host) Right, and here's the thing about that is that the lowest bid doesn't always book the gig. It does not always. It does not always win.

26:55 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I get nervous when I buy things that are too cheap. Then I'm like oh, I don't know about the quality of this Right, because you know there's going to be.

27:01 - Tom Dheere (Host) Yeah, there may be a lack of quality. I mean, think of it this way Like my wife and I were just in the big Macy's flagship store a couple weeks ago to see the Macy's flower show, and we walked through the departments and you see, like on the top floor of Macy's is the luggage and you luggage and you've got five different suitcase sets. The first few are worth $100 and then the last one is worth $400. What are the ones people are going to look at first? They're going to be like why is this one $400? What is it that gives it more value than the other ones?

27:32 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And I'll tell you something too Sometimes I can't believe I'm going to admit this like on the air top as a female when I go shopping clothes shopping right and they have huge, huge sales. When there's like bins of clothing that are slashed 70%, sometimes that's almost too overwhelming and exhausting. And now that the prices have been slashed so much, I'm like I don't know people have been handling these clothes. I don't know. Are they not in fashion anymore? I question everything right.

27:58 Oh my gosh, they're so low, yeah, why are there so many of those in the bin of the same like style? Is that because it's not in style? And then I question all the other aspects of it. The quality, is it in style? And so, literally I will. To save my brain the overwhelm of low prices, I will go to the stuff that is priced higher and it's usually presented much nicer right and it's less overwhelming. Think about your voiceover right. Think about your voice and presenting it in a way that you are worthy, right. You are worthy of commanding that price. You are worthy of the elegant luxury brand of that voice, right and people paying that money. There is such an attraction to that for a lot of buyers it's like a psychological aspect.

28:45 - Tom Dheere (Host) Yeah, look, look, vo bosses. If you have gotten your training, if you have gotten your demos, if you've built your website, if you have your home recording studio set up and you have a rate sheet built, you're worth it. Yeah, absolutely, you are worth it. You are worth it and you have a rate sheet built, you're worth it. Yeah, absolutely, you are worth it. You are worth it and you are worthy, yes, absolutely Good stuff.

29:05 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) We could go on and on and on about this, but I find, tom, when I talk to you, like our podcasts run a little bit long because we have so much to talk about. You're so easy to talk to.

29:14 - Tom Dheere (Host) Aw, you too.

29:15 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Thank you, Tom, for the wonderful, wonderful, sensible business head that you have. I absolutely love, love, love our sessions together and, bosses, I'm going to give a great big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl, that allows me to connect with Tom and talk numbers, because I love to do that, and all sorts of other wonderful business things that we should know as voice actors. You can find out more at IPDTLcom, tom. Thanks again so much. I just love our sessions together and I can't wait till our next one.

29:45 - Tom Dheere (Host) It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me back.

29:47 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Bosses, have a great week. We'll see you next week. Bye.

29:52 - Intro (Announcement) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, anne Ganguza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at V? O bosscom and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business Like a boss. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via IPDTL.

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How do you determine your worth as a voice actor, especially when you're just starting out? Join Anne and Tom as we unravel the complexities of setting rates in the voiceover industry. We challenge the misconception that newbies should work for less and emphasize the need for a solid base studio session fee. From understanding SAG-AFTRA and Global Voice Acting Academy (GVAA) rate guides to navigating the nuances of broadcast and non-broadcast work, we provide practical insights that empower you to establish your value right from the get-go. Efficiency and quality are your best allies in commanding higher rates and securing repeat clients. Learn the essential strategies for managing your career, from cultivating new leads and staying updated on market trends to understanding client churn. We'll share actionable advice on how to keep your pipeline full and stay ahead of the curve in this ever-evolving industry.

00:01 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey boss listeners. Are you ready to turn your voiceover career goals into achievements? With my personalized coaching and demo production, I'm here to help you reach new milestones. You know you're already part of a boss community that strives for the very best. Let's elevate that. Your success is my next project. Find out more at anneganguzzacom.

00:26 - Intro (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next project. Find out more at anganguzacom. It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss, a VO boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza. The boss, a VO boss.

00:46 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza. Hey, hey, everyone, welcome to the VO Boss Podcast. I'm your host, Anne Ganguza, and I am here on the Real Boss series with my co-host, Tom Dheere. Hey, Tom Dheere, how are you?

00:57 - Tom Dheere (Host) Hello Anne, how are you doing?

00:58 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Real boss. Yeah, hey, Tom, as a real boss. How's your year going? By the way, it's gone by so fast already.

01:06 - Tom Dheere (Host) First quarter gone.

01:07 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, first quarter and tax season is already coming.

01:10 - Tom Dheere (Host) Well, I mean, we filed, I filed and I got paid already. So yeah, oh, very, very nice.

01:15 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So, speaking of numbers, you're a numbers guy, so how's your year going?

01:20 - Tom Dheere (Host) It's funny because I just did my first quarter analytics financially and I think I'm like literally like $300 ahead of first quarter 2023.

01:32 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Congrats.

01:33 - Tom Dheere (Host) Can't complain about that.

01:34 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Being ahead is always a plus, always a plus and myself as well, and I'm ecstatic that I got paid already from the government, so that's good. I'm going to reinvest that in my business. But I love talking real numbers, like real money. So I thought it would be good to talk about real money, because so many times I have students who just get into this industry and they get that first job where somebody's interested in their voice and then they panic and they say, oh my God, they've come back to me and they want to know what I'll charge for this job and I thought we should actually. Let's talk about that. Let's talk about those numbers. How do people come up with those numbers?

02:13 - Tom Dheere (Host) Right. It's funny because, like we could just say, well, just go look at the SAG-AFTRA contract if you're union, or go look at the Global Voice Acting website if you're non-union, and this will be the world's shortest podcast episode.

02:24 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That's it. Gvaa rate guide and SegAftra Boom and you're done.

02:28 - Tom Dheere (Host) But, as you well know, it's a lot more complicated than that. But I want to do a little bit of myth busting real quick. A lot of voice actors coming into the industry think hierarchical. They think vertical, as in. Since they're just entering the voiceover industry, they should get paid the lowest and the people who have been in here the longest should get paid the highest. And that is not necessarily true. I mean, if there's one thing I've learned in the 25 plus years I've been doing this is that the last gig I got isn't always the worst paying gig I've got, and then the next gig I've got isn't always the best paying gig that I've got.

03:08 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It fluctuates, it just does right. I mean, before the rate guides. Well, I think there was always SAG-AFTRA, but SAG-AFTRA mostly concentrated on things that were national and broadcast right, and so national, regional, local, anything that was broadcast. So what was a girl to do back in the early years when I was there trying to figure out what do I charge? And literally it set myself into a panic and I always, tom, had to pretty much just kind of wing it and guess what? I think that that's even still true today.

03:44 - Tom Dheere (Host) I mean, now we have guides that we can look at as benchmarks, but in reality every job is absolutely different, especially when you're talking non-broadcast rates, so broadcast rates, radio, tv, cable, internet, streaming right, all the front-facing stuff, where there's going to be a session fee, which is how much you get paid to record the voiceover audio files, and then the usage fee, which is how much you get paid for giving license, because you're literally licensing your voice to the voice seekers for them to use your audio files in a certain period of time and in a certain area.

04:31 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Absolutely.

04:31 - Tom Dheere (Host) Right. So that's broadcast in the broadest sense, for lack of a better term, and just by giving your listeners that basic explanation. That's what sets up this avalanche of other questions. It's like how big of a market, how many listeners, how long are you getting paid for? It's, in simplest terms, the more listeners or viewers, the more you get paid, and the longer that they're going to air this spot, on whatever medium they decide, the more you get paid. So the question is where do you start with that? So actually, that leads me to a question. Anne, do you have like a turning?

05:13 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) on the lights fee. Do you have a base studio session fee? Yes, I absolutely do. For me to step into the studio, I have a certain fee and a lot of my work is non-broadcast. So if I am doing any work that's broadcast. Typically that's either handled by my agent, right? Who's negotiating that for me? Which is why it's awesome to have agents, because they handle that and they're always fighting for the most part, if you've got a good agent for your best interests.

05:35 If it's not an agent fighting for the rates, then I have to go to a rate guide to start somewhere and figure out what that is. But for non-broadcast, absolutely. I have a rate for stepping into my studio and that is my studio session fee, which.

05:51 I try to equate everything non-broadcast to the same equivalent on the broadcast side, because these days, with synthetic voices right, I want to make sure that nobody's going to be using my voice for a purpose that it wasn't intended for, and so I will actually put and I'm probably getting ahead of myself on my non-broadcast, I will put an actual length of time, whereas previously this was not something we talked about in perpetuity in another episode. But I want to absolutely address that. For non-broadcast, typically it was you gave somebody a rate for usage of that file and it was forever. And now, with synthetic voices and the fear of getting our voices stolen or used for purposes other than intended, I now put in for non-broadcast. I put in a length of time that they can use that for as a safeguard.

06:42 - Tom Dheere (Host) Right and for certain things I mean there's explainers and corporate and e-learning and stuff like that.

06:47 Most of that stuff isn't evergreen anyway, because, like an explainer video, for example, the company's branding may change, the name of the company may change, the product, the service, the widget may change, so they're going to need a new explainer video.

07:03 If they have just like one explainer video which is parked on their website and their social media channels just saying we are this company, this is what we do, in two, three years, maybe five at most, they're going to need a new video and they may go to you and they may go to somebody else. But when you see non-broadcast in perpetuity, you want to be smart about it. You want to give it some form of shelf life, and that's a big part of this conversation, anne is how do you communicate this? How do you educate your clients? By explaining, like look, in a few years you're going to need a new one of these anyway, because I've noticed that for like non-broadcast, most of them want it in perpetuity, not because they want to synthesize your voice or because they want to hose you financially, it's just because they just don't want to be bothered. They just want to do this and it's done, and it's there and now they can go focus on other things.

07:48 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, they say that it's theirs.

07:49 - Tom Dheere (Host) And they say it's theirs. For non-broadcast genres there's a whole bunch of different ways to charge. Sometimes you charge by the finished minute. If it's an audio book, you charge by the finished hour. If it's long form e-learning modules, you could get paid by the word.

08:06 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Exactly, I mean, those are the big ones there used to be per page but I don't remember the last time I got paid per page and you know what. I'll be completely honest, tom, I don't remember the last time I quoted an e-learning module on a per word basis, because most of the companies or most of the people that I'm working with I'm not on a roster that is paying on a per word basis or working with an instructional e-learning company, that usually is on a per word basis.

08:31 Whenever I get e-learning clients, I always price them on a per hour, per finished hour basis and I get paid the same for e-learning as I do for corporate pretty much.

08:41 - Tom Dheere (Host) Yeah, I mean they're both informational, non-broadcast, so in the broadest brushstrokes they're pretty much the same genre-wise, with the exception that e-learning is usually used to train students and new employees and corporate is for internal communications, like an HR video or a memo, or here's how you pick your employee benefits, and stuff like that.

09:01 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Or even a corporate narration video. That's what I meant. Corporate training and e-learning to me is the same. Do you know what I mean? Corporate training and academic e-learning rates are the same to me, except most educational institutions can't afford what a company can Right.

09:15 It's harder for them to get the money, but I think one thing that I want to emphatically tell the bosses out there that are just beginning for non-broadcast is that really every job is unique and we don't always have a rate guide to go to, and it's up to you as a business person to understand what would be an acceptable market rate for that and price it accordingly to that and also know your worth because, again, like you had mentioned before, you think that just because you're newer, you should charge less, and that is probably not the. That is not the way I would be thinking about it at all as a new person into the industry. Because you're being paid for your voice right, you're being paid for your voice. You can get just as much as I can or Tom can for that voice. It is your business.

10:11 - Tom Dheere (Host) Right. Here's the thing about that is that a lot of my students immediately devalue themselves. Yeah, and you shouldn't do that to yourself, because, think about it on the other side of the equation is that if you're a voice seeker, do you care how long the voice actors have been doing voiceover Really? I mean in the abstract. Well, of course we would like an experienced narrator, but when it comes down to the audition, within two, three seconds, either they like you or you don't. It doesn't matter how long you've been doing voiceover.

10:43 Now there is obviously a correlation between the ability to tell a story effectively and how long you've been doing this. But ultimately, if you've got quality training from Anne and a quality demo and that demo is submitted and you've been trained by Anne to audition effectively for projects, I'd say 90, 95% of the time, it's a level playing field. Regardless of how long you've been trained by Anne to audition effectively for projects, I'd say 90, 95% of the time, it's a level playing field regardless of how long you've been in the industry, and I agree with you there, completely agree with you.

11:10 So you take that data point and then you extrapolate that. Well, if that's the case, then that means everybody should get paid the same who's auditioning for that, because if one of my students auditions for an e-learning project and I audition for an e-learning project, if I book it, I shouldn't necessarily get paid more than they should.

11:28 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I agree with that, completely agree with that. Again, they're paying for the voice. They're not necessarily paying for the experience. However, in dealing with the client, your level of experience might have a part in it because after you get the job, in order to maybe keep the job or have the person keep coming back, that's where your experience and customer service comes into play and that's where I feel that you can command. And again, you can command just as much if you can give them a good experience.

12:00 - Tom Dheere (Host) Right. This is what I tell my students is that your talent will book you the first gig with a client. Your project management skills will book you the next gig with the same client, because if me and a student are auditioning for the same gig and they book it. Great, they should get the same that I get, but then they better deliver the goods, communicate the retake policy, understand how to use their DAW, understand how to edit and deliver the audio files, being able to take direction if it's a live setting those are skills that.

12:31 Yes, there is a correlation between your experience level and the ability to execute good project management, but if you work with Anne or if you work with myself, part of our jobs is to teach you that and how to be able to be professional and communicate effectively and do all those things, because it's not just getting the first gig, it's getting the next gig and the next gig and the next gig without auditioning.

12:56 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Exactly. And it's funny because it reminds me of a conversation I had in my Voices in Podcasting Clubhouse the other day with Jodi Krangel and Cheryl Holling, where we got into this discussion about acting right, because a lot of coaches these days will say it's more important now more than ever to have your acting skills so that you can separate yourself from the synthetic voices. And Jodi said you know, I don't know if I'm completely convinced about that, because in reality it also has to do with your customer service. And I'm like, yeah, well, you've got to get the gig first right, which is your auditioning talents and your performance talents and your acting talents are going to get you the gig.

13:34 Then what's going to help you keep it is going to be that customer service that business aspect that you just mentioned, in order to keep them coming back and then commanding that good rate, moving forward.

13:48 - Tom Dheere (Host) And that's when it comes into so for the audition, to book the audition it's about your talent and your storytelling ability. After that, it's about your ability to manage the project effectively. Because, also, if you can demonstrate that you can deliver the goods and do it quickly and do it right, then, yeah, you're in a better position to command higher rates and slash. Or you're in a position to just get more bookings without having to audition for this end client that you got that initial gig with and other end clients at this production company or recording studio or ad agency or marketing firm or political production company or explainer production company has they're like yeah, you work with Ann. Ann delivered the goods on this series of explainer videos. She can do that for you and your series of explainer videos too. So it's not just about getting as much as you can for the project in question, it's about delivering the goods so you can get paid over and over and, over and over again.

14:44 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And aren't those the best jobs?

14:46 - Tom Dheere (Host) Well, we all want regular clients, like everybody, everybody, in every part of the country.

14:50 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) You don't have to audition for them, that just takes out a complete amount of steps. And it's funny because I think for me and for my business right. I'm always telling people you always have to cultivate new leads, because if you've been in the business for a long time, undoubtedly you'll probably have repeat clients. Right, tom? You must have lots and lots and lots of repeat clients Many, many, many, many, many repeat clients and me too, and I'm grateful for them.

15:10 but I always have to be cultivating the new clients as well, and that means I have to really continually assess and understand rates and what I should charge and understand my worth in the current market, in the current market.

15:24 - Tom Dheere (Host) Yes, my friend Adam Werner, audiobook narrator, fellow FAFCon attendee. He taught me about client churn, which is every quarter. I look at all of the voiceover gigs that I booked and all the clients that I worked with and the genres that I booked and how I got the gig whether it was through my representation, whether it was through an online casting site and whether it was through my self-marketing strategies and I look to see how many new clients did I gain and I keep a very close eye on how many new clients I'm getting, because if I'm getting a regular stream of new clients, that means my marketing strategies are working well, yes, yes and your marketing strategies.

16:03 Is your self-marketing strategy? Cold calls, cold emails, indirect marketing, social media, blogging, whatever. But also, am I just auditioning better through my representation? Am I auditioning better through my online casting sites? Because clients are just going to naturally go away, they're going to retire, they're going to go out of business, they're going to change their business model.

16:23 They're going to hire their nephew who wants to do musical theater, to do their phone greets. And now you're out. Ai is going to replace and already has replaced some of us voice actors. For certain clients, that's just going to naturally happen. So you always want to keep the till full.

16:39 Yep, yep, absolutely absolutely want to keep the till full, yep, yep, absolutely, absolutely, and making sure that you understand what you're worth in today's current landscape on a per word, per finished minute, per finished hour, per studio hour. You always want to keep an eye on that, yeah. So how do you keep an eye on that, anne? How do you keep an eye on current rates? What are your go-tos? What are your habits?

16:57 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, my current rates. I actually make sure that I check the rate guides frequently because they're continually being updated by people more than me out in the industry. Back in the day I was a core contributor to the GVAA rate guide and I think you were too Tom like e-learning and corporate and telephony and medical and those were the rates that I helped with on that rate guide. I make sure that I'm continually assessing those rate guides, but I'm also assessing the market. I mean, I work in the market and so I do a lot of research on the client and I try to understand, like, where else could they be going for potential business or another voice, and how can I remain competitive with that voice? And so how do I keep myself current? It's continual research, really, and assessment with the rate guide and some of it, honestly, is just pulling it out of the air. That is really what happens Sometimes. It's nowhere to be found and you just have to use your best judgment. Always use your negotiation 101 tactics on asking what is the budget?

18:06 That's like the most important first question I think you can ask a client.

18:10 - Tom Dheere (Host) Do they have a?

18:10 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) budget, and if they have a budget, can you work within that?

18:13 - Tom Dheere (Host) Right, my go-to's is just looking at my agent casting notices and looking at my online casting site casting notices yes, yes, yes.

18:19 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Market assessment notices. And looking at my online casting site casting notices Market assessment.

18:23 - Tom Dheere (Host) Market assessment and what Ann does and what I do. You should be doing both of those. You should be doing both of those because when you get a casting notice from your representation, it's been pre-negotiated. They've already gone through the rigmarole of negotiating with that particular client, so what you get is most likely the finished product of what the actual rate is going to be for that project. So that will let you know, because, along with that casting notice, in addition to the rates, is the specs, the session fee, the usage fee, the market, the exclusivity and conflicts and the rate of usage, how long it's going to be used for. So you can use that to greatly inform your broadcast rate sheets. And then for non-broadcast, looking at the online casting sites and just noticing trends in e-learning versus corporate, versus explainer, versus telephony, versus medical versus voice of.

19:17 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) God. And in order to do that, in order to do that, do you need to be a member, tom? I know, because some of them will post job rates without you necessarily actually being a paid member if you're a free member, but I believe you've got to be a paid member to get that information these days.

19:33 - Tom Dheere (Host) For places like Voice 123, I believe you won't have access to the casting notices unless you're on the tier, because the only way you'll get them is if they make it to your inbox, and the only way it makes it to your inbox is having a subscription tier, unless you have a free site, a free membership and some casting notices come in and some say here's the jobs you missed and here's the money.

19:53 Right, voicescom, I think you can run searches but you can't audition unless you're a paid member. But you know what? There's other places to go. I mean you could look at Backstage and Badalgo and Casting Call Club, even Twitter. Now Casting Call Club and Twitter, there tend to be lower no-pay jobs, which is why a lot of voice actors early in their journey go to Casting Call Club because it gives themselves a great opportunity to kind of develop their audition skills, their rate negotiation skills, build up their portfolio, resume, genre awareness and confidence, all of which are extremely, extremely important things. But if you're able to hit the ground running and you have more resources at your disposal which I've got, a pay-to-play site like a voice123 or voicescom you can get a much better idea of what current trends in the rate structure is for voiceover gigs.

20:38 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And you know what's so interesting. What I'm hearing from you, interestingly enough, is not just understanding the rate guide and then understanding the principles of negotiation and what you're worth, but also your audition techniques, right. Auditioning techniques, it's a first impression, right. And so if you're looking to command a particular rate for a job, even if you don't get a job that you've auditioned for right, you're submitting auditions into your agent and you're just, you're nailing time after time after time, or you're nailing the auditions in the pay to play, right, you're getting consistent in people's minds and that is building your value.

21:16 And it's interesting because when people come to me and they say I want to get a corporate demo or I to get a medical demo or I want an e-learning demo, I've, over the years, evolved into the type of coach that is really coaching how to do the audition to get the gig first, because, honestly, we all can do that. Read, that's a really pleasant, nice read. You know that's reading the words, but it takes acting skills to really tell the story. And so I really work on building up students' storytelling skills and acting skills and that, I feel, is going to command you the higher rate.

21:51 - Tom Dheere (Host) Yes, I've got some numbers for you.

21:53 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I know you love your numbers, I do, I do, I do. Tell me Okay.

21:56 - Tom Dheere (Host) In 2019, I auditioned roughly 400 times. Okay 1% of my voiceover revenue came from representation. 18% came from casting sites. I wasn't on any paid casting sites back then. Fast forward to all of 2019, 5 years later, 2023, I did 1,854 auditions. My online casting site revenue percentage grew from 18% to 50%.

22:24 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Wow, that's incredible.

22:26 - Tom Dheere (Host) My representation revenue percentage went from 1% to 12%. Wow, that's incredible, and my overall revenue increased by 20%.

22:36 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And now, what would you say that was due to then?

22:39 - Tom Dheere (Host) Auditioning Auditioning right and auditioning skills.

22:43 Getting my reps in on specifically Voice123. And you can hear, if you haven't watched our casting site VO Boss Video, go check that out. You'll hear me talk about Voice123 in severe detail, about my voiceover journey, the fact that I was auditioning so much on pay-to-play sites I was just getting better at auditioning. I was auditioning so much on pay-to-play sites I was just getting better at auditioning, which meant when I was getting those agent and manager-driven auditions, I was just getting better at auditioning there too and as a result, I booked more gigs and I booked better gigs.

23:12 So, if nothing else, don't put all of these things into separate buckets or silos, pass judgment on them and ignore them, or covet one and ignore the other. It's through data and money I've shown that the online casting site portal and the representation portal are clearly linked. There was clearly a synergistic relationship between the quality and quantity of my auditions on Voice123 and the quality and quantity of my audition efforts through my agents and managers. I love that you're backing it up with the numbers and quantity of my auditions on voice one, two, three and the quality and quantity of my audition efforts through my agents and managers.

23:43 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I love that you're backing it up with the numbers, because I mean, it's so easy right To point the finger and say, oh well, pay to play suck, or there's too many people on the pay to plays, or the pay to plays are bottom feeders. And so, therefore, I didn't get to the audition on time, which you know that plays a certain part in it.

24:03 But also it could be like my agent keeps sending me the same auditions to everyone. So it's easy to point the finger and lay blame. But I'll tell you what a lot of times, if you can increase your audition skills, you can increase your net worth, you can increase the rate that you can ask for. It's kind of like this what came first, the chicken or the egg, the audition or the value right that you can charge your potential client? I mean, honestly, it just goes hand in hand. If you are a better actor, if you are a better auditioner and that's going to require an investment, typically in working hard with maybe a performance coach that can give you good feedback. Because if you're like I don't know what's happening, the pay-to-plays suck these days. I'm not getting any work or my agent is not getting me work, and I hate it when people blame their agents for not getting them work.

24:50 It really is up to you to put in that investment into your business so that you can audition better and then command those better rates.

24:58 - Tom Dheere (Host) Absolutely so. Creating a rate sheet from scratch or using the SAG-AFTRA guidelines or using the Global Voice Acting Academy rate guides is an important thing to understand what is a voice actor's worth in relation to the genres and the broadcast versus non-broadcast market. But I'll be honest. I mean, yes, I have had rate sheets that I built from scratch and talked to other voice actors over the past 15, 20 years, but these days I don't really look at it anymore. I just kind of just know, through repetition, what I'm worth, what the genre is worth, what the gig is worth based on the broadcast or non-broadcast usage. Is it going to just be in a museum exhibition or is it going to be on a corporate website that has 10,000 employees?

25:40 After a while you just kind of get the hang of it, but that does not help our bosses who are early in their voiceover journey. So bookmark that SAG-AFTRA rates, Bookmark that GVAA. Have your own little Google Doc. Keep track of the agent auditions that you get if you have representation. Keep track of the online casting site audition rates. Just start to note them. Just make a little simple spreadsheet Genre rate terms.

26:03 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I did that right in the beginning of my career. It was like audition. Where did the audition come from? Did I book the gig? What was the price? Literally? That can really help establish for you rates to charge and just make sure that you're keeping up with those rates and really doing some market research. If you're new to the industry, those rate guides use them as a guide only. That doesn't mean that they're the be-all, end-all of what you as a business owner should charge. But I would say, rather than going to the lower number because you want the client right, make sure that that number is well within what you are worth. And just because you started just recently doesn't mean that you can't command the same rate that Tom and I can.

26:47 - Tom Dheere (Host) Right, and here's the thing about that is that the lowest bid doesn't always book the gig. It does not always. It does not always win.

26:55 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I get nervous when I buy things that are too cheap. Then I'm like oh, I don't know about the quality of this Right, because you know there's going to be.

27:01 - Tom Dheere (Host) Yeah, there may be a lack of quality. I mean, think of it this way Like my wife and I were just in the big Macy's flagship store a couple weeks ago to see the Macy's flower show, and we walked through the departments and you see, like on the top floor of Macy's is the luggage and you luggage and you've got five different suitcase sets. The first few are worth $100 and then the last one is worth $400. What are the ones people are going to look at first? They're going to be like why is this one $400? What is it that gives it more value than the other ones?

27:32 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And I'll tell you something too Sometimes I can't believe I'm going to admit this like on the air top as a female when I go shopping clothes shopping right and they have huge, huge sales. When there's like bins of clothing that are slashed 70%, sometimes that's almost too overwhelming and exhausting. And now that the prices have been slashed so much, I'm like I don't know people have been handling these clothes. I don't know. Are they not in fashion anymore? I question everything right.

27:58 Oh my gosh, they're so low, yeah, why are there so many of those in the bin of the same like style? Is that because it's not in style? And then I question all the other aspects of it. The quality, is it in style? And so, literally I will. To save my brain the overwhelm of low prices, I will go to the stuff that is priced higher and it's usually presented much nicer right and it's less overwhelming. Think about your voiceover right. Think about your voice and presenting it in a way that you are worthy, right. You are worthy of commanding that price. You are worthy of the elegant luxury brand of that voice, right and people paying that money. There is such an attraction to that for a lot of buyers it's like a psychological aspect.

28:45 - Tom Dheere (Host) Yeah, look, look, vo bosses. If you have gotten your training, if you have gotten your demos, if you've built your website, if you have your home recording studio set up and you have a rate sheet built, you're worth it. Yeah, absolutely, you are worth it. You are worth it and you have a rate sheet built, you're worth it. Yeah, absolutely, you are worth it. You are worth it and you are worthy, yes, absolutely Good stuff.

29:05 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) We could go on and on and on about this, but I find, tom, when I talk to you, like our podcasts run a little bit long because we have so much to talk about. You're so easy to talk to.

29:14 - Tom Dheere (Host) Aw, you too.

29:15 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Thank you, Tom, for the wonderful, wonderful, sensible business head that you have. I absolutely love, love, love our sessions together and, bosses, I'm going to give a great big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl, that allows me to connect with Tom and talk numbers, because I love to do that, and all sorts of other wonderful business things that we should know as voice actors. You can find out more at IPDTLcom, tom. Thanks again so much. I just love our sessions together and I can't wait till our next one.

29:45 - Tom Dheere (Host) It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me back.

29:47 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Bosses, have a great week. We'll see you next week. Bye.

29:52 - Intro (Announcement) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, anne Ganguza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at V? O bosscom and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business Like a boss. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via IPDTL.

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