Watch out boys… they've got us surrounded…

If you'd told me a year ago that I'd be attending a conference for Women in Voiceover, I'd have looked at you askance. So I was somewhat surprised to find myself in Charlotte, North Carolina this weekend at the Voxy Ladies Summit. The Voxy Ladies describe themselves as “a collaborative of individual voice artists, passionate about our craft, coming together to market our close-knit sisterhood of professionals”.

Yeah, that's not my usual arena…

I’ll admit to some trepidation going into the weekend. How would I (and the precisely three other men who were delivering content) be received by a room full of 70 women? That’s a lot of oestrogen in one room, right? I figured they’d either love us, or eat us alive. Fortunately, I soon realised that we had nothing to fear, and we couldn’t have asked for a warmer welcome, or a more positive, upbeat and supportive group to talk to.

The Voiceover Value Proposition

I’d been invited to speak on a subject I’m passionate about – something I call the “Voiceover Value Proposition”. It’s a talk I’ve been working on at intervals since before leaving London in 2014.

If I ask Google to define “value proposition”, I get “an innovation, service, or feature intended to make a company or product attractive to customers”. The problem, as I see it, is that voice talent often don’t realise the innovations, services and features – over and above the recording itself – that they provide to their clients everyday. Why is this the case?

A changing landscape

The truth is, the voiceover industry has undergone massive change over the last decade or so. The traditional model – whereby the majority of work was done in recording studios, with jobs finding their way to actors via agents – has largely been replaced by online casting websites and voice talent working from home. (I recently heard that as much as 60% of voiceover work worldwide is now done by talent in their home studios.)

There’s more work available than there’s ever been, with the proliferation of new outlets like e-Learning, Gaming and Audiobooks. That’s before we even get into genres like Explainers and Web Video, and Interactive Voice Response for phone systems. And there are more voiceover artists popping up every day to meet the demand. This leaves us with a talent landscape consisting of established voice actors who’ve been at this for years – many of whom haven’t stopped to look at what’s changed in the world outside their booths – and a lot of newcomers who don’t yet know the business well enough to know how things work. The risks are twofold: we risk looking uninformed and unprofessional to our clients, and leaving money on the table during the booking process.

The solution

In a 45-minute session that’s equal parts pep-talk, mindset training and practical tips, I encourage the room to realise their true value, to get comfortable reflecting that to their clients, and then to have the confidence to negotiate and charge what they’re really worth on any job. I’m pleased to say, it went down a storm.

Why am I so passionate about this? To be honest, it’s fuelled partly by a genuine desire to help my voiceover community put its best foot forward, and partly by self-interest.

The rapid growth of our industry, both in terms of work and of new talent, means that market forces are at work – and not always in a good way. With what’s been referred to as the “Walmartisation” of voiceover, there’s been relentless, downward pressure on rates for a start. Inexperienced producers often don’t know (or care) about how things were done in the past, or what a reasonable budget looks like. And from the talent side, many of our newcomers don’t know either what their work is actually worth, or how to communicate that to voice seekers. I firmly believe that we look better, as a voiceover community, when we treat our businesses like businesses and interact on that level with our clients. When there's no booking agent in the picture, we become our own managers and negotiators. I want to inspire my fellow voice actors to get smarter about how we all handle those transactions.

The self-interest part is about doing whatever I can to make sure my own business remains viable in a changing marketplace. Left unchecked, that “race to the bottom” on pricing, and that lack of care and attention – from both voice bookers and voice actors – is potentially tremendously damaging to our industry. I love what I do, and I want to be able to carry on doing it until I either retire or expire. The cost of living isn’t going down any time soon, so I need to be able to charge fair prices that enable me to stay in business and keep a roof over my head for decades to come. Helping my colleagues to consider their true worth to producers, and to acknowledge what I can their “Hidden Value Services” during negotiations, isn't just good for me, but good for all of us.

Many voices, one collective

I think the Voxy Ladies set a great example: they demonstrate that we may be individuals, but collectively we’re stronger when we’re also savvy businesspeople who know our stuff. We all look better, and we serve our clients more effectively, when we’re good businesspeople – as well as being great behind the microphone.

The next stop for my Voiceover Value Proposition session is VO Atlanta in March. It’s the biggest voiceover conference in the world, with over 600 attendees this year, from over 40 US states and more than 15 countries. I think it’s the perfect stage for something I’ve been told, time and time again this weekend, is of tremendous value to those who come to hear it. If you're a voice talent who's keen to take your business to the next level, I hope to see you there!