Focus, VOBiz, and Subs!

Hey neighbors, it's so good to be back here in the booth with each and every one of you. We've got a very interesting weekly update for you as well as a fantastic amazing food adventure. So you're not going to miss this one. Make sure to stick around all the way through. All right, our weekly update, we're gonna kind of go backwards we're gonna start with today. So I sat down and I was ready to record everything today for this vlog and for the blog, whatever you're looking at, so I sit down, I record everything. I record everything except the food adventure and then I look at all of the the sound waves and everything and I realize everything was clipping. And so I freak out and I go and look and windows had bumped everything up. To 100 and that made everything go super, super loud. And I was so confused. Because this hadn't happened before. And no matter what I did, it kept bumping it up every time I tried to record it using this microphone here in the booth. My 80 4040 My very fancy microphone. So I'm sitting there like What the crap what am I supposed to do? So I get on to some of my VO, like group ideas and I start talking to people and we start bouncing around ideas and one guy's like, make sure Reaper Reaper is the DAW that I use the the software I use to record and edit my audio. He said make sure it's using the driver for the focus right my interface that my XLR cable goes into to plug into my computer. Make sure it's using that driver and not the Windows driver. So I go into Reaper. I go to my options. I go into where it's pulling the sound from and sure enough it's pulling the sound from Windows and that's why it was getting so loud. And that's why it was clipping so much. So then I go and I try to switch it to the the driver for the focus right. And that's when I realize that the drivers are not there. It's not finding them anywhere. So I go and look and look and look and look and for whatever reason I don't really know why or how but the drivers for my focus right were gone and so it was using it just as another audio interface using Windows different things, which is not what you want to have you want to use the actual drivers for everything so everything sounds better so I hope my audio quality sounds a whole lot better it should this should up my my auditions and get everything sounding a whole lot better. So that was a mess. It took me about an hour to get everything solved. It's just one of those days, you know what I mean? But moving on. I think one of the greatest things that I learned this week is to make sure that you're focusing on the right things, which is exactly what I wasn't doing with this situation with my microphone and everything but the reason I bring that up as because I spent a lot of this week really looking into and trying to identify what I needed to do to make my voiceover business a lot more focused and progress better. So there are three ways that you find jobs in a voice over world. The first one is traditional way. And that traditional way is the way that all actors because I'm a voice actor, right? I'm in acting. I don't really necessarily care about pet food or about some corporate training I've got to perform. So I'm an actor, that's really what it is. So that first way is to get an agent right sign with an agency and then that agent goes out and finds you jobs. And then you go ahead and you do those jobs and you pay a small commission fee to that agent. Then the next thing that you do to find jobs or I guess the next type of way to find jobs is through a thing called pay to play sites. What that means is that you pay a monthly or a yearly subscription, and you're able to have access to essentially a job board. And what happens is clients will post auditions and based off of your profile, you will get sent different auditions throughout the days and weeks and you're able to audition for those and then if chosen you work with that client to bring to life their project. The third way is through your own marketing whether that's cold emailing, whether that's social media, tick tock anything like that. So excuse me, so I'm not going to be able to get an agent right now. That's a whole nother ballgame that we could talk about. It just goes into the logistics of what agencies are looking for right now.

So it'd be very hard for me being a straight white male, to be able to find an agency that's willing to take on me currently. I've been told that by multiple casting directors, so that's not my big area of focus right now. So I am on several pay to play sites and they're great, but you're competing against like, hundreds of 1000s of other voice actors that are trying to get the same job. So it's very, very cutthroat. It's a lot harder to find things you're not getting sent every single job and there's different tiers. On these different platforms. There's even a platform that has a $12,000 a year, tear on it as part of their membership so that you're getting more and more auditions so some people are playing paying exorbitant amounts to get these auditions in now I'm not paying that much but I am on three different ones. And I do get a few small jobs here and there but I really want to kind of like explode I want to make this my my day to day work. I want this to be my thing, my full time job, my career. So I'm looking at my marketing and I really want to step it up. Currently, I do about 10 emails a day before my work that leads to about you know, 40 ish emails in a week, which is not that many. Let's be honest, it really isn't. So I'm really stepping up on going to take take some accountability and responsibility and understand that I need to really step up right. It's the good, better, best thing. It was good that I'm doing these emails. You know, I'm not just sitting on my hunches. I'm not just being lazy about it. I was going out I was doing things but it obviously wasn't better and it wasn't the best like we've talked about before on this podcast. I'm wanting to step into the better. I'm leaving the best right now. That's that's full time job right. That's me every morning having the time and spending that time doing that marketing. I can't right now because I'm tied down with my with my with my seven to 3:30pm job. And so, what I'm going to do, going forward is my goal and I'm using this as accountability as well. Like I've mentioned before, my goal is I want to do 25 emails a day. Now that should net me about 100 emails a week because I don't send emails out on Fridays because who reads emails on Fridays? Let's be real right? So what my goal is, is many of you have seen recently if you follow my socials well enough that I've been doing a lot more streaming lately. Now, streaming and video games is a great hobby of mine. It's something that I love to do. Makes me feel connected. I've got lots of friends. That's kind of my social out out thing. That being said, it is a distraction. It can be and I want to make it less of a distraction. So what I've always said when I start my stream says I don't have a stream schedule, like many other streamers, and the reason for that is because I want to make sure that VoiceOver is my focus and if I have too much going on and voice over that day, I'm not going to stream. So my day is going to kind of fall out as follows. If you want to look at it, we're going to kind of look at a two day piece of the picture. So when I wake up my goal is to go and wake up and to workout. That's my goal is to work out in the mornings. If I don't work out we'll get to that but my goal is to wake up about an hour before work workout for about 30 minutes shower, eat a small breakfast and then jump into my day job. My job my day job is very flexible. So I do do auditions from time to time during it and that's exactly you know what I need to do. It's very flexible and I very much appreciate that. It's something that I I'm very grateful for right now is that I do have the time to be able to do that because I work from home. I just work on the other side of my my office my booth here. That's the word I'm looking for my booth here and so, you know bust out auditions but as soon as work is over if I didn't work out that day. My goal is to then work out after I finish up with work give myself some space away from my little dungeon downstairs. And then after that, a cook dinner, eat dinner and read scriptures with my wife. And then after that's done, I want to come down and I want to get 25 emails ready to be sent out for the next day.

Right? And make sure the next morning that those emails are good to go and all follow up emails are ready to go as well. So that's my goal is to get all of that ready to go the night before, right and if that eats into my stream time, so be it because guess what VoiceOver is what I'm going forward with. Eventually, when I am full time in voiceover I would love to be able to stream a little bit more because I'll have that freedom. I would love to be able to do more commentary on eSports especially with Overwatch to coming out in October. I would love to be able to do some casting for that. But they're not my focus. Those are my hobbies. VoiceOver is my focus and my career. So that's what I'm going to be doing so as far as anything else in the weekly recap, nothing too exciting water softener was delivered. I might have to have somebody come out and install it because I don't think the people that told us that were plumbed for it more speaking correctly. I could be wrong. I just don't have anything in that knowledge. That's why I'm going to hire somebody make sure it gets done right Matrice we're still waiting on that. So I'll give you guys an update on that a little bit later. But other than that, that's everything that has happened this week for me. I hope that you guys understand and know that I really appreciate everybody that takes the time to listen. I do ask that if you can please just like the videos, or comment on the blog, the podcast, whatever it may be, like it on Spotify, like it on my website, whatever it may be. I would love to see that kind of interaction and it helps me out a ton. Also, if you are watching the video portion of this, make sure you hit that subscribe button and that you're hitting that notification bell as well. It seems like a really simple thing and a lot of people don't like notification, things like that. But it does really help everything on my end and helps get me out there to more people. That's exactly what we want. But again, I want to thank each and every one of you. We're gonna get ready for our food adventure for the week. So give me just a moment to go and get that all set up and I'll be right back with your neighbors.

All right neighbors Welcome back. As you can see, we've got a little bit different lighting going on. I've got my actual studio lighting going on rather than a ring light and that's because I want to be able to show you the food and I learned my lesson from trying to shoot it with just a ring light when doing the heartland challenge with my wife. So our food adventure today took us to the land of sub sandwiches. That's right. I'm talking about subway ladies and gentlemen, and what that means is we're testing out a new bread that they have now. I am getting older. I'm 31. And as such, my metabolism is slowing down and I'm gaining weight. So I've tried to reduce the amount of sugars and the amount of carbs coming into into my body and subway has come up with a new bread to help people with just that. Now let me I took a picture of this. I'll make sure I get it on the the video on everything. But essentially, it's called their hero bread. That's what it's called. And this hero bread is a little bit more expensive. Keep that in mind for our review here. So for a six inch at 50 cents for footlong at $1. So not terrible, nothing crazy. But essentially, this bread is a hero a hero right? So H E R O hero and that's because it has zero sugars in the bread. That's a plus because that'll help me you know, reduce the amount of weight 100 calories and 13 grams of protein and not just that it will only have one net carb. That's right you heard it one net carbs. So after, after everything evens out the fiber, everything like that one net carb. So I went to the store and I was like, hey, I need two footlongs one from a wife. Right? She got her normal sandwich and I was like I need one of the hero bread and I was just gonna compare those two and they're like, we only have one six inch piece of the hero bread left. I'm like okay, well give me a six inch of the hero bread and give me a six inch on regular Italian so that's what I did. So we're gonna we're gonna take school sandwiches both sandwiches are made the exact same exact same ingredients, exact same toppings and everything. We got the it's one of their new sandwiches. I can't remember it's an Italian type sandwich. It's got a cup of gold. It's got pepperoni. It's got ham on it. So banana peppers, tomatoes, spinach, and a parmesan vinaigrette. So we're gonna test taste this first. So this is the regular Italian. Let's give that a shot just like a Subway sandwich. No, it's a very, very classic American bread tastes right. Nothing wrong with it. Nothing bad. I'm taking another bite because I'm starving. All right. Now we're moving on to the hero brand. First impressions is way thicker than the Italian Let me hold up the Italian as well. Look at this. Is your flat the Italian is how round this other one is. This one's so much rounder. It looks like like a meteor. A meteor bread. I don't know. It's a weird like concept to say but it looks like a meteor bread. So let's give it a taste okay, it's definitely a lot denser of a bread. There's a lot more bread there to bite through. Which is fine. The flavor of the bread itself is you know compared to like an Italian style Italian loaf, an American style Italian loaf. I know words I do voice over once once I got that figured out. Oh gosh, my brain.

I want to take another bite. And try to get a little bit more meat it's definitely a different taste. And if you're like a huge bread lover, which like I know my wife and her family are all huge bread lovers,

my extended family my like my brothers and sisters. They all love bread. I'm not huge on bread taste. Bread is like a vessel to me. It's like a vessel for sandwich anything like that. I would say taste wise as you would expect if you're going based off of the bread alone. The taste of the Italian regular loaf is better. But just slightly. The the hero bread is not bad tasting. It's just different tasting. It tastes healthier. Right healthy things taste healthier, so it takes a little bit healthier. I think if you are looking to lose weight you're looking to maybe eat a little bit healthier, be a little bit more conscious. And you're going to sell boy, here bread is a fantastic choice. I give it a solid eight out of 10 on the bread well done subway. I'll definitely be getting this bread more often in the future. But that's going to wrap it up for today's episode. Guys. Thank you so much again for being so supportive. And I'll catch you guys next week.