My voiceover journey started 200 days ago
The week went relatively well. Productivity scores with at least 8/10 every day (Mon-Fri). The challenge since Friday was to take care of the animals (dog, cat, 7 ducks) in my brother’s house because he’s been on honeymoon with his wife for a week - especially the dog wants a lot of attention (I would never want to have a dog myself). Entering the new place and setting up my new recording environment in the closet took some time and getting used to.
The Saturday was a social and organizational day - I spent 9 hours doing that. On the 3rd day, I felt that now my mind had arrived as well.
Here’s the perspective as a worker and a CEO.
Worker
- Recap last week: how did it go with the thing you said you’d have completed by this meeting?
- What are you struggling with right now?
- What are you working on?
- NEW: What voiceover weaknesses have I discovered this week?
- What will you have done by the next time „we talk“?
Completed
- Briefing for programmer helping me build a voiceover demo reel player #voiceoversdream
- Every day (Mon-Fri) I worked on script 2/7 of the commercial demo reel which was the MIT (most important thing) of the day
- Daily stolenvoiceIGTV episodes incl. intermezzo videos
- Episode 10 of stolenvoice tv
What I said I would complete but didn’t
- Script 2/7 recording (commercial demo reel)
- Week 2 challenge of the animation course during the week I decided that the course is not as important and urgent to do it this week - I’ll do it later
- client work questionnaire for stolenvoice
- Identify what exactly I’m struggling with regarding my speech sounding robotic I figured during the week that I don’t want to spend time on actively working on my voiceover weakness. Instead, I first want to collect my weaknesses each week and then later review what weakness area I want to improve on the most because it benefits my business goals the most
- Editing part 4 of the London OneVoice conference material (I totally forgot about it) I’ll finish it at some point but for now it’s not my priority since it doesn’t immediately add value to the business - but I will do it, it’s just very time-consuming
What I didn’t mention I would complete but did complete
None
Struggling
The creation of the demo reel seems to take forever. Another week passed by and I still haven’t even finished script 2 out of 7. I started working on the commercial demo reel on June 7. That was 7 weeks ago.
I had some interesting conversations particularly on Twitter about voiceover. It took quite some time but it feels well-invested research time to get to know the voiceover industry better. The struggle persists: How much social (media time) is necessary, healthy and important for the business and what’s too much? When is it time to do the deep work instead of the interactive work?
Working on
- Script 2/7 recording (commercial demo reel)
- client work questionnaire for stolenvoice
New weaknesses I discovered this week
New discovery of a weaknesses/challenges:
- Sounding conversational while not sounding like I'm reading and still sounding energetic
- Forgetting to imagine who I’m to and what scenario I’m in
- „Bouncing voice“ (German: knallen) when starting a new sentence, I want to smoothen the start of a sentence more
- My non-native accent when speaking English (it doesn’t sound super German but it’s clear that I’m neither a native US nor a native British speaker
Here are the weakness I discovered before:
- Sounding less robotic when speaking
- Clear diction of words (no mumbling)
- Speak clear while speaking fast
- Sound like a native US-American speaker
- Sound like a native British speaker
- Sound like an English speaker with a German accent
Done next time
Keep in mind that next week is going to by 7-day-sabbatical. So, I’ll slow down my engines and use most of my time for another side project unrelated to voiceover, a book about my 3,5 weeks survival trip in Cuba last September 2017 (I had lost my credit card on the first day and had only 150 US dollars).
Nevertheless, I want to work on script 2/7 after working on the book to really finish the script this next week.
CEO (Hank Kock, or short Hank)
In Alexander’s priority planner he defined 9 items (also non-voiceover-related) and he accomplished 2, worked on 3 (not until completion) and didn’t do 4.
Except for Saturday (when he left the house early and in a relative hurry to be on time for long meeting) he didn’t fail doing his routine. Also, despite not being finished with script 2 he worked on it every (expected) day - Monday to Friday. So, I literally can’t blame him. There was also another peer who gave feedback to his voiceover recordings, so he has to manage input from two people which is a challenge itself.
I’m feeling Alexander’s impatience but he chose to go the DIY route of creating his demo reel and now I want him to finish it properly.
What Alexander did was good. I can’t blame him for anything, only his social (media) time was a bit too much. If he could reduce that and keep that discipline that would be awesome. There were also some social media posts that were interesting because they were about business and mindset. I see the value of him posting it - so I see it rather positive that I compulsively did that and took time of the clock.
All in all, it have been most disciplined days for Alexander because he had done what he. Self-discipline is a skill he wants to develop more because it’s ultimately about self-love as Will Smith explained.
Also, Alexander spent more time on sports and health which he benefitted from and loved it! For example, he played Hacky Sack more. I feel he’s been missing sports and being outside a lot. I’ll keep that in mind the next time his performance is suffering because it can mean he was simply not outside playing enough.
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