profile

The Voice-Over Roadmap

VO Pro Tip: A Quick Story/Lesson from my own VO Business

Published 2 months ago • 1 min read

Quick Story

Hey Reader,

I just wanted to share a quick story in this week's tip, and hopefully you can glean something from it.

I have a client I've been working with for probably about 5 or so years at this point, doing various commercials - TV, Radio, CTV, Web, etc...

The sessions always go super smooth, the jobs pay very well, the producers are great to deal with, everything is great - except....they almost always pay late.

We have a net 30 agreement meaning they pay within 30 days of project completion - and they almost never do. I have to follow up several times.

So one of the recent times this happened, (It was probably the 4th or 5th) I told them I'd have to enforce my 10% late payment fee, which I mention on all of my invoices, but almost never enforce. They pushed back and asked if I could let it slide and apologized, etc... but I told them that I already had let it slide the first 3 or 4 times it happened, and even on this specific payment I had already followed up several times and gave them extra time and we were almost 2 months out from the invoice and still it was unpaid.

They ended up paying me the full amount, and my 10% late fee.

I worried this might hurt the relationship, and so I was hesitant to do it, but it was too much of a recurrent thing and I had to let them know it was unacceptable.

Well, that was a few years ago, they still come back several times a year with new projects, and I just did 2 more for them over the past few weeks totalling a couple thousand dollars.

So the lesson is, be professional, be flexible, communicate well, and stand firm on your principles. By all means give people a pass in situations like this if they are a good client and it's the first time it happened, or even the second, but the 4th or the 5th means you need to speak up. If you are a quality talent and have value to them, they will keep coming back.

-Michael

​

If you have a question or topic you'd like me to address in a future email like this - just reply to this email and let me know!

Hope you find this useful! Feel free to reach out with any questions! And if you find these emails helpful - please share VoiceoverRoadmap.com among any VO groups your part of - Facebook, Reddit, etc... or just tell others about it!

Thanks so much!

-Michael

Curious about my own personal VO Work?

​www.MichaelLangsnerVO.com​

Want to help support future content from VORM? Use our Amazon Affiliate link when shopping on Amazon by clicking the link below!

​VORM Amazon Affiliate Link​

318 east 34th street, New York, NY 10015
​Unsubscribe · Preferences​

The Voice-Over Roadmap

The Voice-Over Roadmap is an educational platform for Voice-Over Talent of all experience levels to start, grow, and sustain a profitable business as a professional VO Talent. It is the creation of Michael Langsner, Professional VO talent with over 12 years of experience voicing projects for brands like Adidas, Google, Dell, Levi's and many others.

Read more from The Voice-Over Roadmap

Auditioning Efficiently Hey Reader, Let's talk about the audition game. For many voice actors, especially those working on pay-to-play sites, the key to success isn't just winning a high percentage of auditions—it's auditioning for scale. Think of it like being a sales rep. You have a good product (your talent), but you know you need to make X number of calls to get one client on the hook. In voice-over, you need to submit a high volume of quality auditions to keep your booking ratio healthy....

2 days ago • 2 min read

File Naming Hey Reader, We talk a lot about performance and audio quality, but sometimes the simplest business tasks make the biggest difference. A consistent, professional file naming system is one of those tiny details that tells a casting director or client, "This person has their act together." You want your file name to be a clean, clear calling card. 1. The Audition Naming Rule The goal of an audition file name is purely identification. The client needs to know immediately who the file...

9 days ago • 2 min read

Input Levels Hey Reader, When you’re recording and processing your auditions or final files, you should aim for your absolute loudest peaks (usually a plosive or a sudden loud word) to land around -6 dBFS to -3 dBFS. This crucial bit of space is your headroom. It ensures two things: Safety: You guarantee that you won't accidentally clip or distort your signal during an unexpectedly loud read. Flexibility: You give the client or the mixing engineer plenty of room to apply their own...

16 days ago • 1 min read