Happy Holidays from VO Chef Deb
Posted by John in Articles
Happy Holidays!
I can’t believe how busy things have been and how much time has gone by. I’ve had an incredibly crazy year this year so thought it was about time I updated you with a year in the life! The opening of the year started off well with lots of Ontario snow and steady work. We were anxious for spring so that we could do some more work on our backyard retreat. We built some paths on our hilly acreage and cut out a large fire pit area, carved out a putting green, built a garden, painted the back of the house and took down a ton more trees. We were able to enjoy our pool from May all the way to October, so we had an incredible time over the spring/summer on our property however the industry took a serious dip for me in the spring. I was the slowest I think i’d ever been in my entire career and I began to second guess myself and wonder what I was doing wrong. It lasted for a while as well so I was on a roller coaster ride and it was painful.
However that being said I decided that I could just sit and complain about it, or i could do something about it. It was time for me to go back to my roots and start aggressively marketing to potential clients for work and focus on staying fresh on my skillset. I even went back on P2P sites and successfully booked, so was able to prove that they can still make you some money – not like they used to, but I had success. My hard work and perseverance paid off, but it was definetly a challenging year. I constantly studied current commercials, narratives, narrations and games so I could make sure i was remaining current in the industry. I produced varying types of demos to reflect an upgrade. Even in my coaching career we stayed aggressive. With John Harris’s amazing help we created a brand new training site allowing talent to train on a low budget at their own pace called VoiceActorTraining.com. I also worked hard as a singer in a new band that we have formed called BootLegged (you can check us out at BootLeggedForHire.com. We were lucky enough to write and create a new song for the HolidayMagicCD.org foundation, which you can check out here. We are now gigging at bars and venues and having a very good time, so as slow as things got, there was always something cooking in my kitchen.
Each month I have a quota that I need to meet so that I am able to accomodate my assistant John and all my bills. Somehow in all the scary time, I managed to meet my quota, just not exceed it. I tried very hard to keep positive and visualize meeting more than my quota, but miraculously by late Sept things took the exact opposite turn. I started getting shortlisted for several auditions, booking several of them, and then every aspect of my business started to pick up and it hasn’t slowed down since. So much has been happening over the last few months that I can barely keep up, so once again the industry keeps me on that ever changing roller coaster. I have voiced hundreds of commercials, narrations and other types of projects over this past year and helped several students achieve some pretty incredible projects, demos and training.
There are many ups and downs, but at the end of the day I love what I do and I’m so greatful for every day I get to do it. Another year is around the corner so it’s important we stay on top of our career and keep moving forward. There are many people that are actively pursuing this industry and succeeding because they just don’t give up! I am one of them, so join me in this upcoming 2016 to stay current, aggressive, dedicated and keep LOVING what we do.
Until next year everyone
All my best
VO Chef Deb
All my best
VO Chef Deb
22 Dec 2015
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