Peter O'Connell responds.

Voice talent Peter O'Connell took time from his busy schedule of bagel noshing to respond to my breakfast story with a wonderful & hilarious post about networking and marketing. Peter is a very funny guy, but his post is not purely comedy - it is full of excellent ideas for voice actors (and all business people).

And, I'm very relieved to report, Peter has excused me for the time being from the requirement to leave my grape-nuts, Kefir and berries behind and go out into the world for bagels with potential colleagues. It isn't the time, the venue, or the meal that matters, of course - it's networking early and often. Take karate for example - one of my few long-term rituals. A few weeks ago I read about a medical communications company I had not heard of (it's huge, so I must have been networking with ostriches before this). I entered a few key words into Google to learn more about it and try to find someone whom I might contact about medical narration. To my astonishment, Google Desktop turned up an email in one of my very own folders from a karate colleague in New York. She is the Creative Director at this company! And she put me in touch with the head of the video department there - who as it turns out attended the same small private school I attended in Manhattan years ago.

I assure you that no bagels changed hands in all of this. And no grape-nuts. No food at all. As in karate, I realised (again) that you must always keep your eyes open and be aware of your surroundings.

Which is what Peter O'Connell has been saying all along. So take a marketing and networking lesson from Peter. He knows his stuff. And if you ever have him over to breakfast, give him a cinnamon raisin bagel, not toasted, with butter. Hold the Pepsi. Now, stop reading this post and go read his!!

Why I Don’t Conduct Voice-over Business Over Breakfast Like Peter O’Connell Does.

My friend Peter O’Connell is a voice talent, producer and marketing expert, and he is one of my heroes. He’s full of ideas and of energy that he invests in his business and in his family, friends, and colleagues and he’s always coming up with something new. So, when Peter says that over the years he has conducted a lot of lucrative business at the breakfast place he visits every single morning of the work week, I feel I should be listening, but the fact is I cannot bring myself to do what he does. Why is that?

In science one often speaks in terms of proximate and ultimate explanations. The latter are the “real” ones, the former are the superficial ones that sort of masquerade as explanations. Let me first talk about the proximate explanation for why I breakfast at home. This is best represented by the photograph I took of my breakfast this morning: Grape-nuts and Kefir with flax seed meal, topped with fresh and frozen berries, with a side of Celestial Seasonings Honey Lemon Ginseng green tea.

OMG. So yummy. The only place I know that serves this nutritious repast bursting with beneficial phytochemicals is my own place here by the river with the newly arrived Eastern Phoebes (the first insectivorous migratory birds of the season in this region) buzzing their euphonious song from the leafless branches. So there’s that. Then the fact that I seem to spend my first waking hours in service to the other members of my family – getting the kids to school since invariably they miss their ride these days because they are young teenagers and the school system’s start times are designed to give the most sleep to the kids who need it the least (the elementary schoolers) while those who need it most have to be out the door at an inhumane hour (or maybe it’s because they have a lousy mother who lets them stay up too late). And to save on gas my husband takes public transportation to work, but I drive him to the bus. Three days out of five, I then park the car at the college and spend the morning in my Spanish and German classes (you really don't need to point out that we should be riding our bikes. We already know it and are actually going to do it today). The other two days I get to spend the whole day in the studio and am glad not to have to go anywhere.

So the truth is, fitting a business breakfast into my daily routine is not something I have felt strongly motivated to do – the quarterly Chamber of Commerce breakfasts are a different story entirely – I look forward to those tremendously, as well as the monthly Arrive@5’s and the Chamber’s Tourism Committee meetings. But I often think of Peter’s daily ritual and wonder what I am missing out there. I wonder, does it have to be breakfast? Perhaps this fixation on breakfast is a matter of convenience and economy – breakfast is early and cheap. But what about a mid-morning coffee or tea – we could bring back “elevenses”! And, would it have to be every day? I don’t do well with ritual that requires effort. And finally, where would be the best place in my area for this to occur?

I have thoughts of experimenting with breakfast and elevenses and visiting a different local establishment each week to try to determine where the most interesting people are hanging out, and if it is a regular occurrence for them. But I suspect it’s an experiment that’s doomed to fail. This is because you can’t go out a few times and expect something to happen RIGHT NOW. Business relationships are cultivated over the long term - and many of them, as with Peter's breakfast, probably start out as a social thing, not as an overtly business venture. You meet people and get to know them and trust them and vice versa, and maybe some day one of you can do something for the other in business. And I just know that I don’t have the personality for a daily or even weekly ritual that requires what would be required for me to have what Peter O’Connell has developed over many years. I think you have to LIKE doing it in order for it to work. The closest I have come to ritual is going to karate class several times a week, which I’ve been doing for 7 years – but that is a ritual with infrastructure that makes it easier for me to go (I have friends there, my husband also goes, there are health benefits and a sense of accomplishment as well as spiritual peace). As for voice-over and marketing rituals, though, if it’s daily and it requires going somewhere, it just isn’t going to happen, which is a much simpler explanation and among the penultimate reasons why I don't do it (for clues to the ultimate reason, see yesterday's post on brain chemistry).

But I would love to enjoy these rituals vicariously – and I hope Peter will now oblige me by writing a blog post about the famous Fire-Up-the-Toaster-‘Cause-O’Connell-Just Pulled-Up Daily Breakfast Routine. How about it?

If you have a social/marketing ritual, I’d love to hear about it.

Networking in voiceover

In voice-over as in all business ventures we think a lot about networking, and numerous articles have been appearing about it lately in various internet haunts that I frequent, including voice actor haunts like the Voice Registry Blog. It’s an indispensable activity, intimately related to marketing. But, it is not marketing and it shouldn’t look like it. It's just making connections of all kinds in all kinds of ways. What does it look like for you?

I have several formal outlets for networking: my local Chamber of Commerce, my local Ad Club, and another local group called Hidden Tech. The Chamber has the most regular meetings – a monthly “Arrive at 5”, quarterly breakfast meetings, and in addition I’m a member of its tourism committee. The Ad Club has a monthly luncheon series and an annual holiday party. Hidden Tech meets occasionally. I have not seen any measurable benefit to my business from the Chamber or the Ad Club - but then, I'm not measuring! A member of Hidden Tech needed a favor, which I was able to perform, which led to her giving me a spot as a speaker in a program she was organising, which led to a reporter writing a story about me for the local paper, which led to a call from a toy maker who needed a voice for a talking doll. My goal in participating in these various organisations is to be part of a community, which is especially important for those of us who work alone. When I go to these meetings, my challenge as a shy person is to talk to one or two people in some depth (not the trap-your-neighbor-and-talk-their-ear-off kind of depth, more like, find something that interests them and get them to talk about it). I want to make sure they know what I do for a living, and everybody asks, just as I ask everybody what they do. But nobody wants a sales talk at a party – what a turn-off! For thoughts on how not to network see a recent article by Ilse Benun.

I’m sure I’m not alone in this – at networking events, far more often than we voice actors hear “oh, you do voice-overs? I might have a job for you!” we hear, “I’ve always wanted to get into that – how did you get started?” There is nothing to be lost by giving a helpful answer to that question. Although I didn’t get started in this business by asking a voice actor how to do it – I was already in the demo-in-hand marketing phase before I ever talked to a working voice actor besides my coach – I hope I will never be too busy to try to give somebody a hand if they need one. We are always hoping somebody will give us a hand and we need to make sure the universe is balanced! I really like what casting director Bonnie Gillespie has to say about that in her column, The Actor’s Voice:

How often do you meet with new-to-town, enthusiastic, completely-clueless-to-the-biz actors upon whose lives you could make a huge positive impact, just by showing them how to format their resumé or where to download sides? Not too often, right? ("Why would I? What's in it for me? Who has the time?" Exactly.) Well, let's seek to change that. Do a little mentoring. Pay it forward. Invest in a relationship with someone who offers you absolutely nothing whatsoever in return....It could even connect you with someone whose career will skyrocket long before yours does, and that person might be so grateful to you for the early support that you'll benefit in ways you never imagined possible.


Hear hear! At the very least, being helpful makes the world a more pleasant place for our own selfish selves - that's worthwhile in and of itself, isn't it??

Blogging is another way that I network. Most of what I write is just more internet noise, but occasionally something will resonate with people and then I get a lot of email about it. Most of the people I hear from are other voice actors, which is a great boon in this age of isolation. It’s really nice when people email and leave comments at my blog, and I try to do it myself at other blogs. If you’ve never left a comment here, please think about doing it – as soon as you leave a comment, you become visible – people learn that you exist. That’s a good thing! So leave one here, and then go to some of the blogs listed on the right and leave a comment there too.

I have to say that, so far, social networking has not taken up much of my networking time-budget. I have a profile at the major sites and a bunch of others, and have spent some time reviewing others’ profiles for possible connections. But I spend more than enough time on the computer as it is, and I SO do not need another reason to be here – there are more efficient ways to connect with colleagues and with potential clients, and I’m too old to be using them for friendship-related stuff (as it was so well stated at Beyond Madison Avenue: “social networking is only social if you’re alone”).

I think the most important thing to remember is that any networking you do as a voice actor and business person is like creating a garden from bare soil – you don’t plant only one kind of plant, such that your garden will look great for a week when all the flowers are blooming, and then there’s nothing going on at all. You’re planting for the present and for the future – a variety of annuals with different blooming times, a variety of perennials and shrubs and even some trees. Aim for great diversity, so that there is always something going on in your garden. Although I can't point to concrete ways that my business has benefited from all of my networking activities, I never know when some little seed I've planted at a party might take root and grow into something wonderful. It takes 3-5 years to establish a business, so get out there in the dirt and get busy!! And don’t forget to leave a comment to tell me how your garden grows.

Note on 5 Feb 2008: another article on acting and networking! It's in the air - as it always should be.

Community.

I have always found many parallels between the physical things I do, such as karate and ballroom dancing. Both are graceful and include choreography and require intense focus and stamina. More surprising perhaps is that so many of the principles of karate are related to what I do every day. Trying to adopt the “karate-do”, a way of life exemplified by the principles of martial arts, has helped me immeasurably, not the least of which is in a reduction of stress. So many things that used to bother me simply don’t anymore, as I gradually learn to lose the tendency to judge other people or to worry about what might happen with a voice-over audition. I worry less about what other people are doing in their own karate training and their lives and focus on what I can do to improve my own karate, my own voice-over career, my own life. This results not so much in self-centeredness but in a centering of self. And with this comes enhanced ability to reach out to other people and to help them along their way if I can see a way to do it unobtrusively.

This is all greatly on my mind in the week following a remarkable gathering in our nation’s capital, the celebration of the 45th anniversary of Ueshiro Shorin-ryu Karate in the USA. Over 100 people representing 11 karate schools were in attendance, including 15 people from my own school.

I belong to many communities, formal and informal: of family members, of people in my neighborhood, of parents of school-aged kids, of voice-over professionals, of practitioners of Ueshiro Shorin-ryu karate, of the members of my local karate dojo. I’ve been training with these karate people for 6 ½ years now and have gotten to know some of them very well. We see each other on the deck several times a week, gathering for picnics and for outdoor training, and have stuck together through upheavals at our dojo and the formation and dissolution of personal relationships. Traveling 8 hours by car to celebrate with them for two days and support those who were testing for a new rank, and then the (alas, 12 hour) ride home made me focus as never before on how intense is the experience of being human. These communities are incredibly important and sustaining. This particular one, for me, serves the purpose of supporting mental, spiritual and physical health. I especially encourage anyone who spends their days sitting in front of a computer, even though they may belong to vibrant communities of online friends and professionals, not to neglect their own communities of real people. Cultivate them. Cherish them. Allow them to sustain you.

MCM and friends – photo courtesy Sensei Boris Grossman

Going the extra 104.7 miles for a fellow voice artist…

Last week I exchanged some email with my colleague Peter O’Connell of Buffalo, NY, who had posted a request for foreign language voice-over for a piece he was producing as a gift for Freedom Radio in Baghdad (I sent him some German). Peter mentioned that he would be in Boston at the end of the week and wondered if there was a chance that I might meet him and D.B. Cooper for dinner. It sounded grand but I wasn’t sure I wanted to make the 2-hour drive there and then back again late at night, and I had just been out that way to see my brother a few days before so the trek seemed unusually onerous in the contemplation.

So, I was IM-ing with D.B. the afternoon of the dinner, and told her, well, I don’t seem to be going. I was about to head out to an early karate class and she said, “Please try to come”. At that, something snapped, and the lameness of all my excuses struck me in vivid technicolor. The kids were at a friend’s house for the evening, so they were all set, and my husband was planning to be at the karate class following the one I attended so I was able to discuss my plans with him briefly and he said, “Go! Live it up!” So off I went. It was close to 8:30 when I reached Boston, and later still when I got to the rendezvous point thanks to Boston’s egregious lack of useful signage. I dove into an underground parking garage that I hoped was somewhat nearby and had a rather longish walk in the rain to try to find where the Marriott was hiding, but I finally arrived.

As is almost always the case, I would not have wanted to miss this occasion. It was an absolute pleasure to meet Peter, a generous and very talented man, and a joy to see the incomparable Deirdre again. We talked non-stop for at least two hours and DB and Peter had had an hour before my arrival in which they also talked non-stop. The two of them got into an Irish riff together at the dinner table and I just settled back in my chair and let it wash over me like a gentle ocean wave, too tired to participate but so thankful to be with people who, like me, just can’t help “talking funny”. They get it. They get me. We get each other.

I love this crazy business. And I’m so glad not to have passed up the opportunity to turn an internet voice-over colleague into a real-life friend.

MCM, DBC & PKO