Take Control and Start Marketing Your Voice
Join Voice Over Expert David Bourgeois as he presents you with some guidance and marketing ideas in his lecture “Take Control : Marketing Your Voice”. The president of Voice Coaches discusses the importance of marketing your voice over business and references leading industry professionals who can help you take the next steps in promoting your voice.
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Tags:
David Bourgeois, Voice Coaches, Marketing, Voice Conference, Expo, Voice, Voice Overs, Schenectady, NY
Transcript of Take Control and Start Marketing Your Voice
[Opening Music]
Julie-Ann Dean: Welcome to Voiceover Experts brought to you by Voices.com, the number one voiceover marketplace. Voiceover Experts brings you tips, pearls of wisdom and techniques from top instructors, authors and performers in the field of voiceover. Join us each week to discover tricks of the trade that will help you to develop your craft and prosper as a career voiceover talent. It’s never been easier to learn, perform, and succeed from the privacy of your own home and your own pace. This is truly an education you won’t find anywhere else.
This week Voices.com is pleased to present David Bourgeois.
David Bourgeois: Well, hello everyone. This is David Bourgeois from Voice Coaches and I am delighted to have an opportunity to be back on voiceover experts. If you’ve listen to in the past, you’ve probably notice that I tendency to talk about affective self-marketing and others subjects related to putting yourself in the best position to win the job.
Well, here we go again. Now, the motivation for this particular conversation I want to have, initial come about when I invited David and Stephanie from right here at Voices.com to join our team at Voice Coaches and some very specially guests at our advance marketing expo coming up on May 3rd. David and Stephanie are absolute experts in the field of effective self-marketing via the internet for voices. Well, about a week ago Stephanie contacted me and strongly suggested that we try to open our event up to the general public.
Now, this was not something I had ever considered but I have a great deal of respect for the network of professionals and friends that Voices.com has built. So, this week we decided for the first time ever to make our event generally intended specifically for clients of Voice Coaches open to the general public. Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not going to use my time here today to directly promote the event that we’re doing. If our event interests you, you can learn more on Stephanie’s blog Vox Daily.
What I do want to talk about however is the individuals that I’ve chosen to speak at this event and benefits that each individual specific experts might have an voice actor like you. That why even if you can’t be there in person, I hope you’ll gain a basic understanding of the types of individuals I’ve chosen to speak and I why I feel that learning from individuals like this throughout your career can benefit you.
First of, never hesitate to surround yourself with people who have build great success doing that thing that you want to do. Well, that’s what prompted me to pick the phone and call fellow Voices.com voiceover expert Rodney Saulsberry.
This guy is a legend. Rodney had built a long history of success as a top voice actor, performing countless commercials, narrations, major television promos and movie trailers.
Rodney is also the author of two of my favorite books related to the voice industry. “You Can Bank on Your Voice” and “Step Up to the Mic”. I am delighted to have Rodney join us from California for this event and what is my motivation of having him to speak to our clients? Is the motivation that he’ll provide our clients and I strongly recommend you pick up his books. This is the guy who loves what he does and as a result he does as well as anyone.
Next, if your goals as a voice actor include moving on to regularly performing top commercial work. It will benefit you to understand how work is cast at the top level in our industry. That prompted my call to Billy Serow. Billy is the head of the commercial voiceover department for Abrams Artists Agency in New York, one of the most prestigious talent agencies in the world. Billy routinely plays voice actors and some top commercial jobs today and in additional he lecture on voice acting at Yield University. Throughout your career sees any opportunity. To understand the methods and perspective use by individuals who can put you in tremendous work situations.
Now, whether you’re just beginning as voice actor or this is something you’ve done most of your life. It’s always great to learn from someone who has built great success doing the thing that they wanted to do and even if you build success to yourself, you can always gain perspective from others. So, I call them a favor and call then Evan Farmer. Now, you may recognize Evan as the host of TLC’s hit home improvement show while you are out but in addition to his on camera and voiceover duties with that television show, Evan is kept busy as the voice for one of the characters on MTV, Daria and the comedy Celebrity Deathmatch. Evan is a great example of someone who’s willing to talk frankly about building success as a professional actor and voice actor.
Next, many individuals and organizations who hire voice actor still do so through conventional methods. In other words, they respond to demo that were specifically send to them, usually on audio CD. But today an increasing range of opportunity in our field can be gain through effective self-marketing via the internet and I am fortunate to have develop a friendship and professional work relationship with David and Stephanie at Voices.com and I am further delighted to have them.
Once again, make the trip or our event to speak with our clients about getting the most our of web base marketing. All of you listening to this are fortunate, you have access to David and Stephanie experts on a daily basis and I feel strongly that Voices.com is the best combined of market of place and community resource for professional voice actor today. But effectively using a website like Voices.com, in most cases is going to require you to do something that some people find it a little frightening, home recording.
Now, as a producer and a studio owner, I’ve done a lot of business when it come purchasing, recording equipment. My retailer of choice is Sweetwater in Fort Wayne Indiana, why? I’ll tell you their prices are always competitive but their technical support and customer is absolutely second to none. Assuming that most of you aren’t full time audio engineers, it is a wonderfully reassuring feeling to have someone on the end of that phone who can help you make your equipment work when you’re auditioning for that big job. That’s why I’m flying in Mark Magdich from Sweetwater in Fort Wayne. Mark is a recoding studio and home recording equipment expert and I strongly suggest, regardless of your ability to attend our even, try to learn from individuals who can make today’s technology work for in away that’s understandable to you. Remember your first goal is to be a voice actor not an audio genius.
Now, to finish things up because I see computer gaming as a tremendous growth area in our field, I’m welcoming Evan Skolnick to our event, who is a producer for games including Spider Man 3 and Guitar Hero. Also the nuts and volts of basic marketing concepts remind important throughout your career, studio I’ve asked marketing and entrepreneurial experts Jay Silverman to talk about foundation in marketing concepts.
In addition, I’ll have experts in graphic design, home recording equipment, developing and maintaining vocal health and effective self-marketing on hand throughout the event to answer questions though I hope to meet many of you on May 3rd. You can also seek our individuals like those I’ve chosen to appear at this event and learn from them on our own. I secretly suspect she’s a much faster typer than I am.
Again, for information about our event give our offices a call, toll free 866-887-2834. Again, 866-887-2834 extension 100. Thank you so much for listening and I will leave you with comments from some of folks who attended and spoke at last year’s event. I wish you the best.
Male: Very helpful, It will you a lot of insight into the industry and the way approach people in ways that I really never thought about before.
Male: It’s just so cool that you actually are being paid for doing this.
Male: I was pointed in the right direction. I was told the resources that were out there, the things that I could do.
Male: I don’t think without the formal marketing training, I would be able to nowhere to go or what to do.
Male: I’ve been to Broadcasting School, I’ve been to other companies and this company by far the Voice Coaches is the number one best.
Female: Very helpful. The guidance and the knowledge that they contain and the experience that they had, this was fantastic. This is my first experience and I just loved it.
Female: First of it was fun. I really love this program because it was an opportunity to really explore something that I wanted to do for a long. It was fun, I mean the best word to describe is, fun.
Male: Could I say one more thing? One more thing, I’m sorry. The reason why I’m here is because of this organization being one of the few organizations that I’ve come across that understands and there are so many repose out there, I’ve been actually appeared on television and been interviewed several times about this and it’s really to the organization credit, David. Thank you so much for inviting me and you can all feel really secure that you’re not wasting your time and your money.
Female: I mean this isn’t recording, right?
Julie-Ann Dean: Thank you for joining us. To learn more about the special guest featured in this Voices.com podcast visit the voiceover expects show notes at Podcasts.Voices.com/VoiceoverExpects. Remember to stay subscribed.
If you’re a first time listener, you can subscribe for free to this podcast in the Apple iTunes Podcast Directory or by visiting Podcasts.Voices.com. To start your voiceover career online go to Voices.com and register for a voice talent membership today.
[Closing Music]
Links from today’s show:
Information about the Advanced Marketing Expo and Conference, May 3rd, 2008
Your Instructor this week:
Voice Over Expert David Bourgeois
President and Creative Director
David Bourgeois has worked in professional music and audio production for more than 25 years. Compositions and audio post-production for film, television, advertising and multi-media are all part of David’s resume. As the CEO of White Lake Music & Post, David produces music, audio and voice over content for clients including Discovery Networks, TLC, HGTV and the WE Network as well as numerous other regional and local clients. David recently completed the original music score for The Last Round, an independent feature starring former X Files Smoking Man William B. Davis.
Since 1990, David has been active in developing training methods in effective communication through conversational reading. His effort was initially aimed at helping clients get better performances from their Voice Actors in the studio. David’s methods soon became the model for Voice Coaches’ individualized training process.
Today, David and his team provide training to aspiring Voice Actors and communication professionals across the country.
Comments
Was it just me or was this simply a 10 minute ad?
Hi Jeff,
Thank you for your comment.
I asked David to put something together that incorporated marketing for voice actors and that also mentioned the conference to be held in Schenectady. We are very proud to be part of what David and his team are doing and wanted to share this information with our audience as Voices.com will be speaking at the event as well.
That being said, coaches are allowed to do a little self-promotion in these podcasts as they are offering their expertise and tips on a pro bono basis and are sharing it freely with the world to the benefit of professional and aspiring voice actors.
It would be nice to meet you in Schenectady, but if we don’t see you there, you can read the coverage of the event on VOX Daily as we’re covering each lecture while we’re there.
Thank you for your feedback,
Stephanie
Jeff,
Thanks for commenting.
It was tough for me to talk about the event without sounding ad-like. The event, however, is primarily intended for our clients across the US and Canada. We have never opened it up to the public until now. Stephanie asked me to speak about it and I tried to do so without mentioning event specifics like location and pricing.
What I hoped to do, is convey that any voice actor can benefit by interacting with other professionals who have similar backgrounds to those who are speaking at our event.
I did the best I could to illuminate the positive concept of interaction with other professionals throughout your career, regardless of one’s intent to attend this specific event.
Best Regards!
David at Voice Coaches