Hey there, it's time for VoiceOverBodyShop and we got a great show tonight, George, because we're going to be talking with Karen Barth and Joe Davis, who's over there somewhere. Wave hello and say hi, guys. Like talking to old friends, or actually in current friends. That's right. Yeah, we're going to talk about websites tonight because Joe and Karen run VoiceActorWebsites.com and we're going to look at a bunch of different websites. People sent us a bunch of URLs and we're going to have some fun with that. And hopefully you can take some criticism. But anyway, are we ready, George? Yes, we're ready. Are you ready, guys? Okay, that's good. VoiceOverBodyShop, right now. V.O. Universe, they bring it to you now. George Widom, the engineer to the V.O. Stars, a Virginia Tech grad with the skills to build, set up and maintain the professional V.O. Studios of the biggest names in V.O. today. And you, Dan Leonard, the VoiceOver home studio master, a professional voice down with the knowledge and experience to help you create a professional sounding home V.O. Studio. And each week they allow you into their world, bringing you talks with the biggest names in the V.O. world today, letting you ask your questions and giving you the latest information to make the most of your V.O. business. Welcome to VoiceOverBodyShop.  V.O.Heroes.com, become a hero to your clients with award-winning VoiceOver training, JMC demos, when quality matters, and VoiceOver Extra, your daily resource for V.O. success. And now, live to drive from their super secret clubhouse and studio in Sherman Oaks, California. Here are the guys. Hey there, I'm Dan Leonard. And I'm George Widum. And this is VoiceOver. Body Shop. Or V.O. B.S. Whoa, is there another voice in there? Or what? There seems to be another voice in there. Well, welcome to another edition of VoiceOver Body Shop. We've got Joe Davis and Karen Barth are going to join us in a second.  Now, I got to do something last night that nobody would have thought of. I got to go to the opera last night. But it was the Pacific Opera Project does great stuff, and they did an opera in a parking lot in a Methodist church in Camarillo, California. And it was great because, and then they broadcast it on our radios, and when people finished an aria, everybody honked their horn. So I guess we can be very innovative. How are you spending your time these days during all this? I'm trying to not watch and listen to the news, but it's like heroin now, so I can't stop doing it. Just a lot of bicycle activities, which is what I do to stay calm, spending time with family, my daughter, and my girlfriend, Ella. I was basically, I was in full on dad mode this morning, getting my kid in class at 8 AM. Kids these days on laptops, she's more of a power user than I probably ever was on my MacBook Air. The thing is overheating, the battery is swelling, it's full of cat hair. I got it cleaned out today, and I'm going to mention that later as a power user tip. Are you having fun taking fifth grade again? Oh man, I mean, I can't teach her math because I don't know how to teach math to fifth graders in 2020. I know how I learned how to do math, and it ain't the same. So I'm not very helpful. I have to literally relearn how to teach math from a teacher, but what I did get to do that was really special today, was she took a clarinet lesson with the teacher, and then after the class, I played duets with her. We played Hot Cross Buns, Neon trumpet, and her on the clarinet, and what's cool is they're the same key. That was super mega dad moment because my dad did the same with me at the same age. That was pretty special, and now you're a band. Anyway, so today we're going to talk about websites for your voice acting business, and there are no two better people to talk about this than the people who run voiceactorwebsites.com. So let's welcome the voiceover body shop, Joe Davis, and Karen Barth. Hi guys. Hey. Thank you very much. Good to see both of you. Good to see you guys too. Yeah. Now I have to apologize to Joe every day for giving him the idea to start this business. It's all dad's fault. It's all my fault, but I find it fascinating because the business has grown and you're working with so many different people and so many different cool websites, but not everybody uses you, and we wanted to make sure that people could get their site reviewed, so we'll get to that in a second. But let me start off by asking you this. How are voiceactorwebsites different from all other websites? I was hoping you'd ask me what I've been doing during COVID because I prepared a little presentation for you. Please, please do. You call that a spiel? Yeah. Please hold. Hold on a sec. Here we go. I decided to make masks more fun. Oh, geez. That is brilliant. Brilliant. Okay. Now it's the fun question. Yeah. So what makes voice actor websites different from every other website that we see? Well, so I think what makes them similar is that it's a portal to the world. So especially in COVID times, every business needs to be digital because in-person business really is not going on. But where it changes is that voice actors have some very specific needs that other businesses don't. So audio obviously plays a huge role because at its core, every voice actor site should give talent seekers the ability to hear you and hire you. And so presentation of audio in the right way with the right options is probably the most important part. And when I say presented in the right way with the right options, you want it to play on everything, all devices, all browsers. You want it to not just be playable, but downloadable. And having it downloadable is important because talent seekers are, you know, they're agents. They're casting directors. They're producers. There's the guy with a camera shop on the corner. It's Pandora. It's all these places that have different ways of consuming your audio. And many of them don't make a decision right then or maybe you're not the right fit for that project, but they want to keep you in mind for another one.  And when they're downloadable, that brings in a whole new equation. So you have to name the file correctly because if you don't, someone downloads it. And what do people name their demos? Commercial demo dot mp3 narration demo dot mp3. And so someone saves your demo, they like it. And then a week later, they play it.  Who was that? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So putting your name in the file name, extremely important, embedding it in the metadata so that when someone opens the mp3, they can find your website, your email address, your name. Those are all really important things. I have a lot more to say about what makes voice actor sites unique, but Karen, do you want to fill some in? Sure. Having video content, if you have it, is super important. You want to keep people engaged. And if they're not downloading it, and they want to see it in action, it's nice to have a video, your bio, studio information. Right now, everybody wants to know that you have a studio in-home studio, professional sound. That's really important. If you use SoundConnect, a source connect, or IPDTL, any of those modes of connectivity that you're remote ready, excellent things to have on your site, contact form, all really good things. And of course, your contact information front and center. Don't forget that. So, and I think, you know, with something that's becoming more popular is having video presented on the site with your voiceover, obviously. And I think it's great. It's always good to have video because it's more engaging than audio. But I don't think it's a replacement for audio because they serve two different purposes. Video can be played and watched on the website, but no one's going to download that while an agent or casting director might download your MP3 and send it off to a client to say, hey, do you like this person? So I think including video when you can is great, but it's not a replacement for just audio. So what kind of mistakes do people make when they're trying to set up their website? I mean, because I've seen a lot of websites and it's like, why did you put that there? Of course, we'll get a chance to look at some of those and I'm sure you'll probably ask that question. But what are some mistakes that people make? I think that one of the top mistakes that we see is not making an easy path to hearing your demo. And so some people don't put it on the front page. Big mistake. We talk to casting directors and agents and we do websites for those folks too, but we also help with casting. And one of the number one complaints that we hear is if I have to hunt for your demo, I'm just going to leave because you're, you know, even if you add 30 seconds or a minute to my day, you multiply that by all the different talents that I have to look at, and it can add hours. So making sure that demos are playable and downloadable above the fold on the homepage. And when I say above the fold, I mean without scrolling. So you want it that first screen that people hit to be able to take the actions that you want hear you. And as Karen mentioned, contact information. You know, if you don't want to put your personal phone, get a Google voice number, they're free. And Google's changed things a little bit. So if you use G suite, they from what I've heard, they have started charging for Google voice. But if you use a regular Gmail account, it's still free. And you just go to Google.com slash voice sign up, and it's a free forwarding number. So you don't have to put your personal cell phone on the website. Karen, what do you think other mistakes that voice talent make? Other mistakes, probably will besides that, you know, what you mentioned, when people put their name in the form of a logo. So it's an image and Google can't see that. So when people sometimes contact us, they're like, you know, I type my name into Google, and I can't find my website on the first page. There's all these other sites that come up. Well, if your name is never mentioned in real text, then your site, Google doesn't know what your site is about, doesn't know it's about you. So that's, that's a thing. Well, yeah.  Well, we got tons of them, meaning that you guys are actually reading the promos, which is great. So you guys ready to analyze some of these and give some critique? Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, let's start with this first one here. Okay, let's get that one up. There we go. Millennial Mama Vio. Okay. Whose website is this? I can't read the URL. It's too small on my screen, but I can see the site. Yeah. It's, it's, it's someone named Megan Vio. Okay. So we'll, we'll assume it's Megan. Yeah. Okay. So very simple front page. The demos are above the fold, which is good, and they're clearly labeled the three dots next to each one. Is that an option to download or can you see what those are? Those are download. Yes. Okay. So if possible, I would make it a single action, meaning you don't have to click the dots and then download, just have the download arrow and someone click on it because that kind of three dots might not be obvious what it is, and it also might not function on mobile. Another thought is that there's no clear call to action. So when I look at the site, I can hear demos right away, which is great, but you're not telling me what you want me to do next. Book me. Contact me. Let's work together. Have my voice on your project. Whatever fits your brand, that should be the messaging that's the call to action. And there is a menu in the upper right, which is good, but there's no email address, phone number, and the contact doesn't quite stand out. So these are not major problems, but I think it would be good to have the phone number, email address on the homepage also. So this way someone doesn't have to take a second action. And again, just give a little bit more of a call to action. And really on these internal pages, I think a call to action would be a good idea too. There's Megan. Yeah. But what we know is that her name is Megan. We don't know her last name. I guess that's on purpose. It's possible. She could be hiding her identity for privacy's sake. I mean, I don't know, but there's your picture right there. So, so much for that. Well, yeah, I don't know. I gotta ask her what the reason for she's, I mean, when somebody goes out of their way to not reveal their last name, it seems to be for a reason. So. And so I think the picture of her is very nice. But the, it says confident, caring, a bit of a boss. Okay. That's cool branding. It's a nice brand message. But if Megan has chosen not to put her last name for privacy reasons, then that might run counter to the brand message. And so I'm not sure we're making assumptions. I'd love to hear from Megan if possible. Another thought is if you scroll down to the bottom, Megan has a copyright notice, which is good. But then there's no privacy policy. And the privacy policy is important for a couple of reasons. One, Google will, there's something called, there's an acronym called eat. And it stands for expertise, authoritativeness and trust. So they're, they're factors that Google looks at when calculating a website's rank and the algorithm looking at it. And one of those trust factors is what are you doing with my private information? And whether people realize that or not, all websites are collecting private information. So if you go back to that site for a second, you click on the little lock in the upper left hand corner in the URL, the law over, over, you see the other left hand corner. Oh, that guy. So it says seven cookies in use. And most people don't realize that their websites are using cookies to collect information, but pretty much all modern websites do. So if you don't have a privacy policy, but you're collecting information, that's kind of a no, no from Google's eyes. The other reason to have it is because there is a European privacy standard called GDPR and other countries are passing similar things. Certain states now are passing these where you're required to put certain information on your website saying what you do with other people's private data. And if you don't, you're in violation of that. I think largely for most voice actors, they're never going to have a problem with it. But if you want to do business in the EU, that is an important thing to have on your site. So overall, I don't think that the site was bad, but there are certainly some things that you could do there to improve it. Do you think there's an issue of, I don't want this to be come off wrong, but of an ageist issue, like if a website is designed by somebody, maybe a more younger generation, millennial or younger, there's a certain amount of literacy that's assumed of the user that they do know what the three hamburger button means, the three dots. They know that it's called that, you know, things like that. And then if you're someone that's of another age group, 50 and up, you just may not assume to know what those buttons are doing. So I think that's something you have to look out for is whoever's designing your site should be very aware of, you know, making sure that it's not too slick, not too minimalistic. So yeah, I mean, I'm just reiterating what Joe said, but in a different way. But yeah, watch out for that. Make sure that the site isn't overly simplified. The only other thing I would add is that on the homepage, there's no text. And so again, back to what I was saying about the logo being an image, if there's no text on the page, Google doesn't know what the page is about. And so if somebody searches for her, maybe her bio page would come up, but not her homepage. And that's the page they'd be entering the site through, unless they had some prior interaction with her direct marketing or something of that nature. So it could be below the fold. There could be a bunch of copy down below the fold. That's fine, right? Exactly. All right, cool. All right, let's learn a lot. Yes, let's move on to the next one. Let's see. Moxie. Okay, now. See, I was able to get into that site. And we know whose site this is. This does is a Google site, isn't it? This is a Google site. So the first thing that strikes me is that the URL is sites.google.com slash a whole bunch of different things. And I think there's a couple challenges there. One, if you're putting it on a business card or telling someone over the phone or you meet someone at an event or whatever it is, it's going to be difficult to remember that URL. The other one is if you were hiring an accountant to handle your finances or a lawyer to handle something for your business. And they gave you a website that was sites.google.com slash something else. I think the impression is that maybe this person is not doing this full time, or this is not their primary business. So while it certainly could be, or maybe you're doing this part time, I think the messaging there, if you have your own domain name, it's something like $10 or $15 a year to get a domain name. And so I think the level of professionalism that having your own domain brings to the table is worth the investment. Great. Okay, well, having the diamonds above the fold. Yeah, I mean, that just looks like a business card. And then we get into this stuff. And there's his demos, but you gotta, you gotta, gotta find them. And then there's all this stuff down here. Well, that's fascinating. So I think Rich, I think he embedded his resume from Google Docs, maybe. Huh, I've never seen anybody do that. Clever. So I think Is being clever bad or good? Sometimes. I love clever, man. I'm all over embedding and all that slick stuff. So tell us how that's a good or a bad idea. It's, it's interesting because it might allow you to export it as a PDF and that sort of thing. So there might be some functionality that Google gives through Google Docs that you couldn't do with a normal website. The potential downside is that I don't think most people will know that they can scroll through that. And if you're on mobile and there's an embedded block, and there's a scroll in there, when you hit that with your finger, you're not going to be able to go further down the site, because it's just going to keep scrolling in that box. So it does present some challenges on mobile. And then the other thing is that embedded content from elsewhere doesn't necessarily get credited to the website where it's embedded, because it's not the original generator of the content, the content was generated wherever it's being embedded from. So I think what Karen was saying about having content on the site, she's 100% right. I'm not sure that site would get credit for the content that was in that block. But it is an interesting use of Google Docs. I haven't seen anybody else do that. Fascinating. Yeah, look at that. The use of SoundCloud, I think it is. Yeah. Do you recommend using SoundCloud or cons of SoundCloud? Yeah. I'm not a big fan of that personally, because typically what happens is after something plays, it goes to the next talent, another talents demo. It might not even be you. I don't know how his settings are set up, but that typically happens if it's not set up correctly. It's like the YouTube of audio. Yeah. You play something on YouTube and it takes you off some other direction. And again, looking on mobile, something that SoundCloud tends to do is if you're looking at a website where it's embedded on mobile, instead of playing, it'll say play in SoundCloud app, because they want you to download the app. And so then somebody would have to go to your iTunes store or your Google Play store and download the app and then play it. So I think having that challenge eliminated is a good idea. All right. Let's move on to the next one. Here's one for Ebony McKinley. Very good. Sure. Yeah. So I like that the demos are above the fold. I don't think they're downloadable. I can't tell. So that's something I guess we've been talking about that would be good if they could be downloadable. And then the contact information at the top of the site so they can listen to you and then hire you. And I'm not sure if the logo or the name is text or if it's a vector, but since it's just text, if you click on it, can you drag it? Nope. Okay. So maybe it's not an image. No, I think it is because when you hovered over it, there was an alt text. Oh, yeah. So because there's nothing going through it, anything graphical going through it, I think I would turn that into real text. There's no reason why it shouldn't be. And then Google could actually see it. Mm-hmm. And she's got like testimonials. That's awesome. There's a testimonial. I like the contrast on the testimonials.  Yeah. Interesting. Generally, white on black, a lot of white text on black is hard to read. But here, because it's a small block of text, I think it works well because it really draws the eye there. Right. And if you click on it, that changes the, I guess, a place for as long as you can take you to read it, I guess. Mm-hmm. All right. Then she's gone. So even though those demo players, they may or may not be downloadable, but there should be a very clearly, painfully obvious button maybe underneath each player that just says download. Yeah, right beside it, like a little arrow that's down there. Yeah. Speaking of downloading, can I ask you a little slightly geek thing? How do you force the web browser to actually download the file and not then try to play it itself, which Google does, Chrome does all the time? It's a very good question, and it varies by browser, which makes it difficult. So Safari within the last year or so made it really challenging because now you have to do separate code just for Safari. And so there's an attribute that you can add for download this instead of play this. And that works in everything except for Safari. Okay. There's some JavaScript that you can insert, which works in Safari unless you have JavaScript disabled. And then it doesn't work. So there's, depending on your goals, you kind of have to, the kind of perfect way to do it is have the browser identified by the web server. So the web server says you're using Google. Therefore, we're going to serve this code or you're using Safari. We're going to serve you this code. So it knows what browser the person's using and then presents the right download option. But the download attribute generally was the standard until Safari went off in its own direction. Wow. Now here's the thing like Safari is definitely not the world's most popular browser, but it could be the most popular browser among your client base. If your client base are creatives or Hollywood types, which are a lot are on Mac, and they're more probably likely to use Safari, right? I mean, I could use the default browser. Right. You have to know your audience. It goes back to what you were saying before that if someone is, you know, young and hip and very aware of what certain things on websites mean, but then some of your audience is of a different demographic, then you have to take into account the lowest common denominator. You don't want your website to be brown. You don't want to learn how to browse a website the way you learn how to use Snapchat. I don't see anything ever use Snapchat. I still don't know how to use Snapchat. It's so cryptic. Right. Well, we got a lot more websites to look at here. So stay tuned. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back with Joe Davis and Karen Barth from voiceactorwebsites.com and looking at all these great URLs you set us. So we'll be right back after these messages. Hello. Welcome to voiceover body shop. It's a place where you can get your body shopped with voices. Come on. Look at Dan's head. So shiny. Well, hello there. I bet you weren't expecting to hear some big voice to announce her guy on your new orientation training for Snapchat, were you? Stick around. You don't want to miss this. Power 1039. At Target, we want you to come as you are. Be comfortable. Okay, maybe not. Bathrobe comfortable. Pants for the customer on aisle four, please. Nuevo México necesita un cambio. La representante Michelle Lujan Grisham ha luchado por nuestro estado en la cámara de representantes. Watch anywhere, anytime on an unlimited number of devices. Sign in with your Netflix account to watch instantly at netflix.com. The ice cream maker is a big risk that can have huge reward until you forget to turn it on. That's it guys. Time is up. Are you ready or looking to get there? Check out JMCDemos.com and see a sample of our work. Now let's get back to Dan and George and this week's tech wisdom. Getting into VO is quite an accomplishment. And accomplishing anything in the world of performance can be really tough. Getting great information is tough. Getting the right advice and mentoring is tough. Simply getting ahead is tough. And the best way to get ahead is to simply get started. Let's make it simple. To get started in voiceover, the best way is with VO Hero's free online course, Getting Started in VoiceOver. You'll learn everything you need to know to create a successful, satisfying, and profitable voiceover career. The link is really simple. Here it is. VOheroes.com forward slash start. Again, that's VOheroes.com forward slash start. Get ahead in voiceover simply by getting started. Go to VOheroes.com forward slash start. Well, we may not be traveling a whole lot, but if you are and you've got to be able to record on the road, here's the way to do it. With a Harlan Hogan porta booth plus easy to handle, easy to get onto a plane. It fits right into a luggage rack. No problem. And more importantly, the porta booth plus is made with real Aurelex. Not that fake stuff you get at Banjo and Porium. This is specially made to make sure that your sound is just right when using the Harlan Hogan porta booth plus. Where can you get one? Very easy. Go on over to voiceoveressentials.com. That's voiceoveressentials.com. Look on their front page. You'll see the porta booth plus and the porta booth pro at voiceoveressentials.com. Voiceoveressentials.com. Get your porta booth plus now. Yeah. Hi, this is Carlos Ellis Rocky, the voice of Rocco, and you're watching Voiceover Body Shop. And we are back here on Voiceover Body Shop with Joe Davis and Karen Barth from voiceactorwebsites.com. Got a couple of questions before we move on with a couple more sites. One from April Richwine. She says, I was advised to only have one page site. What's your opinion on that? It depends on your goal. And I think defining your goals before you build a site is extremely important because if your goal, there's basically two ways that voice actors use websites. There's the extension of a business card, meaning you have some sort of interaction with someone and you're sending them there to hear you and hire you, as I said earlier. And then there's a website that generates business or traffic without you taking an action. And that would be a website that's focused on SEO, or at least partially takes SEO into account. So for the extension of the business card, you want people to have the simplest path to what you want them to do. And so one page website is fine for that. And especially if you're just starting out, I think a one page website is probably more than enough. If you care about SEO, a one page website is probably the single worst thing you could do because Google is a relevancy engine. It's trying to serve the most relevant result to a searcher's intent. And the more granular your website gets, the more powerful it is. What does granular mean? Good question. So this is a very large granular. I mean, let's say someone is looking for government e-learning voiceover. And you have a website about voiceover. Is it related? Yes. But could it be more specific? Absolutely. So then let's say they have a secondary level of navigation where there's a page built out for each genre of voiceover that they do. One for commercial, one for narration, one for e-learning, one for IBR. So Google looks at that and says, all right, the website's about voiceover. Check. And it's about e-learning. Check. So it's more related. Now, let's say you dig a little deeper and you have a tertiary level for each of those genres. So subgenres where for commercial, you might have automotive commercials and toy commercials and pharmaceutical commercials. And for e-learning, you might have aerospace e-learning and government e-learning. And so you have pages for each one of those genres with content on it. And when you do that, you become one of the most relevant results on the internet. And so if you search for government e-learning voiceover, Kim Handyside is going to come up because she has, well, we handle her SEL and there's other factors for sure. But the fact is she has the most relevant result on the internet for that. And so having a one page website does not give you the ability to break things down in that organized way. The other part of it is that there's something called authority. So every page on your website has a certain level of authority from one to 100 and your domain overall has an aggregate called the domain authority of all the pages. And so if you have multiple pages, each one can have a certain level of authority and then pass it to the others and your whole website gets stronger. If you just have one page on your website, then you just have one option. You have one page to build authority and that's it. And when Joe was talking about content, he was talking about text on a page, not just your demos and videos because that's the only thing that Google sees. Again, just reiterating that. All right. George, you get to ask the next question. You got it. This one is from our very own Jeff Holman. Obviously, you'd prefer we use your services, but what are your professional opinions of some of those other ones like Squarespace and Wix and things like that? So those CMS, I guess they call those things? They're do-it-yourself, you know, whizzy-wig builders, basically. Whizzy-wigs. And so I would prefer that someone uses the service that's best for them, meaning if you have the ability to design something nicely on one of those do-it-yourself sites, by all means do it. If you want something professionally designed by us, that's great, but those platforms do serve a purpose. And I think the two reasons perhaps not to use them would be, one, some people find it challenging to create something that looks really professional and has the functionality that a voice actor needs. So when we're building something, we build thousands of these things, so we know what works for talent and for talent seekers and that sort of thing. With these builders, it's hard to do things like make your demos downloadable, which we talked about before. The other reason, and if we pull up a Wix or a Squarespace or a Weebly site and then look at the source code, because these platforms are drag and drop editors, they have so much code behind them that it makes a website load slower, and Google has to look through all that code and a web browser has to look through all that code. So if you do a website and one of those, what might take 500 lines of code on a different platform like WordPress might take seven or 8,000 lines in Wix, Squarespace, Weebly. And so that is a challenge for the web browser and for the search engines to sift through. So those are probably the two number one reasons not to use them, but again, they do have a place and if you're just starting out and you're investing in equipment, you don't want to invest in a website right away, that's a good option. Or if you're really talented on one of those and you know how to design on them, then yeah, by all means, use them as long as you can get the functionality out of it that you want. Okay. Nisnic Joe says, asks, what should we use to upload our sound clips? A good question and it depends on what platform you're using.  Many of them are free. WordPress has its own built in player, which is free. And then there are ones that you can pay for too. And they have all this functionality that we've talked about and even, you know, statistics behind how many times something's been played or downloaded, all that's built in. And so you don't have to build it from scratch or even pay someone to build it from scratch, because it all exists there.  Sorry. I was going to say to upload MP3s as opposed to WAV files, because WAV files are so large, they take so long to load because they're so big that people might think your site's actually broken or the player is not working. So definitely use MP3 files. Go ahead, Joe. Sorry. All right. Let's get on to the next website that was submitted to us from Ebony McKinley. Did we look at this one? We got that one. Okay. Jim McNicholas. There we go. Jim, yeah. Where is the demo? It's very small up here. So I think the first thing that struck me is it goes back to something that George was saying that you don't want to teach someone how to use a website for the first time by looking at your website. You kind of want them intuitively to know what to do. And I automatically looked to the upper right-hand corner for navigation, because there's that thin white line with the logo, and I don't see navigation there. Then there's the logo, which it could be a part of a mic. It could be a setting sun or a rising sun. It could be an eyeball. So it could be different things. And it's interesting to me. That's the next thing that my eye is drawn to. And then what I'd love to see just below that are audio demos that someone could play. And it says essentially what Jim is available for below that, which is good. There's a Gmail address listed, which it kind of goes back to what I was saying before, just from a professional standpoint. I think it's a good idea to have an email address at yourdomain.com. So I would swap that out. And then there's not a lot of issues with those email, those mail to colon, as well, because so many people when they click on it, it's going to open up maybe a mail application on their system that they've never used in their entire lives. Yes. And that becomes a point of frustration instead of them wanting to contact you, they're trying to close everything down. So maybe giving them the option to call you or a contact form to just fill out. Contact form, contact form. Definitely recommend that. And with a contact form, you don't reveal your email address. So if you don't have at your domain or you don't want to get spam, that's a good alternative. Yeah, right. And he has a lot of, looks like video demos on here, which are just like that. So you could, those are good to have. Yeah. So video demos are really popular right now. A lot of talent like to put them on their sites. They even sometimes have them professionally produced from their audio. But I don't think that it replaces the audio demo because like what Joe was saying before, when talent seekers are listening to several talent, you know, 30, 60, 90 people for one specific job, they're downloading them and listening back to see who they're going to call or who they're going to contact. So not giving them ability to do that. I think to me, I would add that functionality. Yeah. And then a big picture of him and then talks about himself. Yeah. I mean, it's a one page site, right? He went with that sort of one page simple website. And so what I would recommend from the one page website standpoint is on that top bar, which stays, you know, when you scroll, that top bar is staying there. It's a sticky bar. And so I, if you're going to keep that bar there, put something that's, you know, very important there, either contact information and or navigation, and you can just have it slide down. So, you know, when someone clicks demos, slides down to your demo section. If it, you know, bio, it could slide down to the bio section. All right. Let's take a look at our next one here. Let's see. It was, ah, this one. There we are. AVS Voice Home. Okay. Brad Ovenew. Cool. Can you click on where it says commercial to see if there's other genres listed in his player or if he has one demo? Okay. So the only thing I would say about the, about this is that if somebody's not familiar with this player, it's not super intuitive to the user how many demos are there. Because there's an arrow pointing down that says more demos. So typically when people see that if they're not familiar with it, they think that it's saying click on one of these spots below. They don't understand that there's multiple genres and you have a nice breadth of work here. So it would be good to either have some sort of control panel, like buttons that would control what's front facing on the player, or find another way to also display that you do those genres because, like I said, it's not super intuitive to people who are not familiar with it. I have no idea what Brad sounds like. I have my opinion about having a photo at the top of the site is sometimes I think it's a great idea and sometimes I think it's not because if you have a large range and you have a lot of gifts to your voice, I think that sometimes when you put your picture up there, you're pre-vicing the listener. So they automatically assume you sound a certain way or you sound like a certain age and maybe you don't. So depending on what you sound like, maybe it's a good idea. I do like having the picture on the page because I personally like it when it's lower down unless it's a perfect match in the bio or in the context area where they've already listened to you and they haven't thought, oh, this is not going to be the sound I'm looking for, then have your photo down below so they can see who they're going to work with. And then he's got all his clients on there. Now everybody asks, can you have all those on there? I know that voiceover lawyer, frozen caveman Rob Siglum-Heglia says, unless you're going to get permission from all these clients to use these, you're really violating copyright by putting these things on there, are you? So neither of us are lawyers. I'm going to preface it with that. I have asked several intellectual property attorneys and their answer was that if you're not representing yourself as the business, if you said I am McDonald's or I am Microsoft, that's a problem. But there is, and again, this is not me giving a legal opinion, this is just what I was told, that if you are saying we have worked with this entity, then there's a fair use clause where essentially you can use it and if the company contacts you and says take it down, then take it down. But again, that's what I heard and I personally don't know of any voice actors that we've worked with who have had a problem. But I have heard of people that I've had problems, just not people that we've worked with. So I would say if you are very concerned about that, you should ask an attorney. But I also have a tremendous amount of respect for Rob and so if he says it, you know, it's something to consider. All right. Okay, let's go on to our next one here, Moxie Labouche. I love your name, by the way, first of all. That's right up there with Nicola Lambeau. What do you think? Do you want to go or should I? Sure. Okay, so I would say the contact information at the top would be nice to have. And again, the menu, so it's easy to use and navigate through even if it just anchors down to those sections. Okay, hold on. Okay, so at the top there's an e-learning explainer. And then two coming soon, and then what's below? Are those more spots below? Or are those examples? So I think at the top are demos that are produced in below are samples of voice work, I'm not sure. Yeah, and these are audio books. There's audio books. And then there's miscellaneous. So it's sort of, I mean, if we click on more example, yeah, this is, it's kind of a mishmash. Mishmash. Or a mishmash. That's the thing on whose kitchen you're in. The correct, it is, is mishmash. Mishmash, I'm sorry. So I like the colors. I like, I think you need to have your demos downloadable. Sure. That would be really helpful. And I'm not sure if the top is demos and below are samples of work that you've done, or if they're all demos. It's all over the place. It's all sorts of stuff. I mean, there's podcast intros and a phone system. So it's, it's lots of different genres. So it's not really specific. And if you don't know what you're looking for, you really got to like hunt around to find it. Yeah. So maybe I would organize it a little bit differently. But to understand what those are would be helpful to know how to get better, give better advice as to how to maybe organize it. Right. Now, why do you put these things down at the bottom with Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus and Instagram and that stuff way at the bottom there? Yeah. If you want, if you want people to go to your social media channels, then that's great. They can see you there. It's, I like it down at the bottom and not front and center personally, because I think that once you take somebody off your site, once you finally get them there, you want to keep them there. If you take them off the site and they go to Facebook or whatever and then they, oh, I got a message from this person. Oh, look what this person posted. And then you forgot what you were doing in the first place. So if you're going to have it on there, because it's important to you and you want to show that you're active on those platforms, great. But then the downside to it is you've gotten to your site and now you're taking them off your site. Okay. And I just want to add one other thing. If you notice in the address bar right next to the domain name, it says not secure. And so that's on the left hand side. Yeah, right there. And so that's related to an SSL certificate and an SSL certificate. It's a little bit counterintuitive for a voice actor because you're generally not doing, you know, financial transactions on the website. It's not an e-commerce website. So why would you need an SSL? In the past, I would say you don't. The two reasons now to have one are because Google Chrome is putting that big fat not secure up there and that scares people. And the other is that Google now weights that as a ranking factor. So if you care at all about ranking in Google, Google is giving preference to websites that have SSL certificates or a different way of saying it is that it's penalizing websites that don't. And many web hosts do give SSL certificates for free, some charge extra. We often work with upper level hosting with Brad Newman and he provides a free SSL certificate. So I think definitely get the SSL if you can, if it's not exorbitantly expensive. All right. Let's move on to our next one. This one is, boy, a lot going on here. Pretty clear who it is and where he is. Yeah. I like how I can see his contact information front and center. I also feel like I get this, I haven't heard his demos, but I feel like I get a sensorous personality with his picture there. I hope he doesn't sound like this. That would be bad. So I noticed that way down on the left hand side when you scroll down there are more demos there. And where are those buttons that trigger the player? I don't know. No, they're individual players aside from the voice sand piece. Okay. So I think I'm a little confused why those are there. I don't have a problem with having demos in different formats or different players, but I'm just not, I think making it clear why something's there is important. And they're kind of a little hidden. Yeah. He's got a lot of stuff going on here. Yeah. A lot of content. That's good. And the contact information is front and center at the top. I like that. He has demos. There's a lot of content, which is good. And a little trick that you can do is you can go to Google and type in the search box site colon and then your domain name with no space. So in this case, it would be just his name.com and it'll tell you how many pages Google has indexed for your site or whatever site you're checking. And so my guess is that Rick has at least a dozen pages, which is good for a voice actor. No. Okay. Let's go to our next one here and Phyllis Fort. We know the name. We see the headphones. We see what she does. We see two demos and her mission. What do you think? And I really keep scrolling along here to get where you want to go. Okay. Scrolling is okay, right? As long as there's hot, what do they call them anchors or whatever that? Yeah, like a contact, sorry, a menu at the top so that it can anchor down to those sections. Well, she's got contact up there. And that anchors down. I would add the anchors for all the sections at the top. And the blank space beside the bio, I thought a picture was trying to load in, but it was taking a little bit longer because it's a lot of space on the left. That's what I presumed was happening, but when you scroll back up, I still didn't see it. So maybe just make the bio all the way across as opposed to just in a column like that. And then if possible, maybe shrink the logo down a little bit and scooch it up and bring the demos above the fold. So before somebody has to scroll, they can see your demos and hear them. And if they're not downloadable to make them downloadable. And the imagery on this site, even though it's faded into the background, it's very prominent. And so I have a sense of what I think Phyllis's voice sounds like. And so that's an important thing about branding is that it's going to give someone a feeling for how you sound. It's kind of like what Karen was talking about with putting a picture of yourself. So just make sure that there is, you don't want to position yourself as something that you're not, or if you have a broad range, you don't want to position yourself as just one thing. So that's something to keep in mind. And that's just a general bit of advice. Again, I haven't heard Phyllis's voice, but I have a sense of what I think it sounds like. Hey, we got time for like one more here. So let me grab one more here. And let's see here. I sort of like this one. What do you think? I like the photo a lot. Yeah. I like the field too.  And she has a podcast, which she promotes there. So just in that navigation, it's kind of standard practice to put contact as the right most thing. So you don't want to, again, have people have to relearn how to use a website. And so I would just swap podcast and contact. And then I think you're golden. And I do like that it says at the top, you know, smart witty voice actor. So you know what she does right off the bat. Yeah. A lot of text. And nice picture. I like that there's a Neumann mic there because I want to ask everybody here, how important it is to show that is it that important to show a microphone A and B, what brand of microphone do you show?  I guess is what I'm saying, being that it's the, you don't show a snowball. I'll show you mine if you show me yours. Right. It's a, do I put a mic on my website is a huge question that we get because I'd say half the people that we talk to say, whatever you do, I want a microphone on my website. And the other half say, whatever you do, I don't want a microphone on my website. It's cliche. And so I, George, I think you're right. If you are showing a certain level of professionalism, especially again, now that everybody or most people are recording remotely, if you have great equipment, I think it's okay to show it off, but you don't need to put a mic just to show that you're a voice actor. Right. All right. But if you do make it an expensive one. Yeah. Right. Exactly. Well, Joe and Karen, it's always a pleasure to hang with you and learn all about websites and stuff. And if they want to get a hold of you guys, where do they go if they want to get a really good website? You can come to my house. If you go to www.voiceactorwebsites.com, you'll find us. There's a very nice contact form on there. Or you can reach out to Karen or myself. And we're happy to talk to you about it. And then also just another thing that I'm doing is my father founded a cancer research foundation. And I've been helping with that as well. And they actually have had some tremendous results. It's cancerantibodies.com. And they achieved a breakthrough. And so I'm helping with that. And you can check that out too. Cool. Well, guys, thanks so much for being with this. Always a pleasure. Let's do this again sometime, like soon. Anytime, hopefully in person. Yeah, absolutely. Well, yeah, I miss you guys. Alrighty. Good to see you guys. All right, we'll be right back and wrap this up in just a minute. Thanks, everybody. Voices, one place wasn't VO Buzz Weekly. Voice over body shop, the better one. In these modern times, every business needs a website. When you need a website for your voice acting business, there's only one place to go. Like the name says, voice actor websites.com, their experience in this niche webmaster market gives them the ability to quickly and easily get you from concept to live online in a much shorter time. When you contact voice actor websites.com, their team of experts and designers really get to know you and what your needs are. They work with you to highlight what you do. Then they create an easily navigable website for your potential clients to get the big picture of who you are and how your voice is the one for them. Plus, voice actor websites.com has other great resources like their practice script library and other resources to help your voice over career flourish.   Your dynamic voice over career requires extra resources to keep moving ahead. Now there's one place where you can explore everything the voice over industry has to offer. That place is voiceoverextra.com. Whether you're just exploring a voice over career or a seasoned veteran ready to reach that next professional level. Stay in touch with market trends, coaching, products and services while avoiding scams and other pitfalls. Voice over extra has hundreds of articles, free resources and training that will save you time and help you succeed. Learn from the most respected talents, coaches and industry insiders when you join the online sessions bringing you the most current information on topics like audio books, auditioning, casting, home studio setup and equipment, marketing, performance techniques and much more. It's time to hit your one stop daily resource for voice over success. Sign up for a free subscription to newsletters and reports and get 14 bonus reports on how to ace the voice over audition. It's all here at voiceoverextra.com. That's voiceoverXTRA.com. This is the Latin Lover narrator from Jane the Virgin, Anthony Mendes and you're enjoying Dan and George on The Voice Over Body Shop. Alrighty, well this is the time of the show where we talk about source elements, the creators of Source Connect, which yes, many, many of you at this point probably already have. That's because, man, since the pandemic started, Source Connect has been probably the most requested technology of the voice actors, probably anything else out there. I don't have that information in a graph or some data to show you, but I can just tell you from the videos I've done on these products, my video on Source Connect has by far the most views. So a lot of people are needing it. And so if you want to get set up with Source Connect because you're being told you need to have it to complete your sessions with your clients, because their engineer is somewhere and the client is somewhere and you're somewhere and you're not all the same place, you'll want to get that set up. Go over to source-elements.com. They have a new website. Hopefully you find it a little easier to navigate and get your way through ordering and setting it up. And if you do have trouble, I do have some helpful, helpful free guidance over at georgethe.tech.sc that you can check out. And if you really need help, you can also book support there. But anyway, that's Source Elements. We appreciate their support of us and what we do. And Source Connect is a part of many, many of our lives at this point after 12 plus years of them creating that product. So anyway, thank you, Source Elements. Now back to you, Dan, back in the studio. All right. Thanks, George. In other news now.  Every time they're on, we know there's a lot of people watching because what's the secret? Go to voiceactorwebsites.com. That's the secret.  And that's usually helps me out. Next week on this very show, which we will get to in a couple of minutes, is Tech Talk number 45. 45. We can do 45. My fingers will do that. Okay, good. All right. And, and then we get into the holiday season, you know, you know, I know that we're not going to do a show on December 28th because that will be my 64th birthday. And it's like, we're not going to do it. But we will have a couple more great guests coming up in the next couple of weeks. Thank you. Who are our donors of the week? Donors of the week. We got a lot of familiar names, which is always great. We've got Michael Kearns, Christy Burns, Graham Spicer, Alain Productions, Michelle Blanker, Sarah Borges, Rob Ryder, and Michael Gordon. I believe they're probably all subscribers. I believe you are correct, sir. Oh, we also need to thank our fabulous sponsors like Harlan Hogan's Voice Over Essentials. Voice Over Extra, Source Elements, voheroes.com, voiceactor websites.com, and JMC demos. All right. Thanks to Jet Holman for chat room duty tonight, getting us some of those questions. Thanks to all of you for sending all those URLs in. That was always fascinating to get to that wave of them. Absolutely. And our technical director, Sumerlino, because she's just so good at what she does. You have to see what she does before the show gets going in order to see why it goes so well when we're actually doing it. Anyway, that's going to do it for us this week. And tech talks coming up next. If you got tech questions, stay tuned for that while we're, if you're watching live and you can put your questions in the chat room. So stay tuned for that. In the meantime, I'm Dan Leonard. And I'm George Whitton. And this is Voice Over. Body Shop. Or V-O-B-E-S. Whatever.


All right, so we're gonna shift a little bit and get into talking about regulations So you already covered some of the basics, you know everything about the economy itself. Let's talk about how to screw up the economy Okay, so First things first though, if you don't already follow me on Twitter That's the important part of the lecture So how can we study? regulations Well the common way would be to study statistically look at empirical data And try to figure out okay. Did this cause a a problem or did it make things better, right? So we can capture actual magnitudes so we can just look at Say the unemployment rates we can look at the average wage for people after say we have Increase the minimum wage. Let's see how does wages do wages go up or do they not that sort of thing? Of course with data, we know the data is history Data only tell us what happened at that point in time and they only tell us About that specific situation The other way to do it of course is theoretically as we prefer as Austrians because theoretically we can be very specific and we can tell some tell what would happen universally and It would always be true Right the problem with theory though is that it doesn't tell us anything about magnitudes So we can't say beforehand that oh this minimal wage is going to increase wages by this much Overall, we also cannot say say that unemployment is going to have an effect on these many people This many jobs will be created or destroyed or or forgotten or whatever Right, we can't really get get to this data because that's specific for the situation On the other hand theoretically we can look at what will happen versus what could otherwise happen So we can have a the economic trade-off right look at Either this or that the counterfactual and of course theory will help us Look into the future and see what will be the case So if we look at what mainstream economists do when they study regulations, they of course they have this Fetish for data and empirical analyses So what they do is they they compare and try to figure out excuse me the social cost and the social benefit and the economy overall And they look at the statistics and of course they temper with the statistics a little bit To make sure that it fits the models and things like that So they sort of hypothesize that oh this is what it will look like or if they look at Historical data they say oh this is what happened of course that's the statistics and then they calculate This is what would have happened without this regulation or without this support or what have you okay? The problem here is of course that you can't really be forward-looking and you don't have data About this alternative world. So if you in if you implement a regulation, how do you know what otherwise would have happened? Well, there are some statistical Tools you can use such as synthetic controls is one of those ways which basically means that you create a Statistical entity that is or looks like what are you are actually studying? So if you raise the minimum wage in Texas say maybe you can take the Relevant variables from other states and combine them in a certain way with weights So if they historically look just like Texas and then you assume that oh They will in the future behave just like Texas too And then you enforce this regulation in Texas and real Texas with regulation and then the synthetic Texas without regulation You can't compare the two obviously there are some assumptions involved right a lot of guesswork But what they're really trying to capture of course is the scene and the unseen right because the scene is obvious That's in the statistics. The unseen is not seen obviously and it's also not captured in the statistics But what is missing? Well, what is missing is the long-term effects and unfortunately tend to miss those also in Austrian economics sometimes They also don't have a proper economic theory Some of them might not like me pointing that out, but that's that's true And they have no clue how entrepreneurs make money Because there are no entrepreneurs or as I tell my students at the beginning of an entrepreneurship course I put the economy on the board supply and demand right and I tell him here. Here's the marker. Please point out. Where's the entrepreneur? Well, where can you put the entrepreneur in a an equilibrium system? There's none, right? So Obviously entrepreneurs are not in the picture, but we need Entrepreneurship to understand what are the impacts of regulations and where's the economy heading? How is the economy a process all of these things right? Without a change agent, how can there be change? There is not so of course the mainstream view of the economy is just a static system where nothing really happens There's not even action because we're in equilibrium already So for a proper economic theory and this old gentleman approves We need to recognize that value is subjective that the market is a process and it's not Economics gang sign Entrepreneurship is at the very core entrepreneurship is sort of the creative force in the economy And we need to understand economic calculation Because without economic calculation when you heard Dr. Lerner the first day of me says you economic calculation it Well to put it in technical terms, it's the shit Okay, so how do we then study? Regulations theoretically what does it mean and what can we learn about regulations? Using economic theory proper sound Austrian economic theory well if we We was first defined. What is it a regulation at all? What does it mean when we enforce or implement a regulation? well After that how does it affect human action because human action as you know is at the very core of what makes the economy? So first we need to know what is it? What is the regulation? How does that affect the? the action of people and What about people's value scales? And you've learned about that too, you know what those are right? And then we can start talking about what are the short-term and long-term impacts of regulations on the economy? Because it's not that obvious and Statistics don't really tell us a whole lot about people's actions or their value scales or anything like that, right? So then we can start talking about okay So what is the effect on entrepreneurship on production on economic calculation? questions that mainstream economists don't even ask ask right and Why don't you ask a question that it's obvious because you don't have any answers? Okay, so what I'm gonna do is talk about Regulations sort of contrast them with other forms of destruction because you you might have the the idea that regulations destroy things That's not actually true. So I'm gonna contrast regulations and their impact on the economy with actual destruction And you'll see that destruction is no biggie Okay, so let's take an example Let's assume that there is a city in in Germany somewhere called Dresden Let's assume that someone drops a lot of bombs over the city purely hypothetical Now there's a miracle sort of so these bombs they destroy a whole lot of things basically everything But no one is really harmed so let's get personal harm and death and such things out of the way but The city is just flattened people's homes people's cars machines factories all these things They're gone. Okay, so what happens the next day say the bombing is over. It was just an afternoon bombing so So that wasn't a big thing really What happens? Well, everybody's without a home So what are they gonna do you think they would work harder or just as hard as before When they find themselves without a home Harder, right? They would put in a lot of effort trying to rebuild their homes because Well, we sort of like having a home and the shelter somewhere to live, right? So people get really busy They probably sacrifice a lot of leisure time in order to just rebuild their homes, right? So they've changed their value scales and Building a home Recreating those buildings is very at the very top and we'll get to that This is what Paul Krugman would call economic growth right Because there's a lot of activity a lot of creation that everybody's rebuilding their home Economic growth is awesome lots of jobs Right. No one with a home doesn't matter but lots of jobs lots of stuff going on Of course after they have finished rebuilding Where are they at? Well exactly where they started just before the buying so much for economic growth, right? But Paul Krugman's world it is economic growth okay, so What happens then in Dresden this hypothetical city?  They're gonna bid up prices so a lot of these materials that were used in neighboring cities and Maybe far away cities as well will be reallocated to Dresden because they would be willing and probably able to pay A whole lot more for them of course this is nothing strange right if you were without a home you'd be willing to Pay quite a bit for some wood and so forth to rebuild your home Right so resources will be shifted into Dresden Probably some businesses will increase their production as well People will work longer hours just to produce the materials so that they these people can rebuild their homes That's pretty obvious stuff right so I hope no one is surprised by this analysis Well, there might be disaster relief and so forth as well Maybe if you're lucky even the government will do something Something productive that is But the thing is with destruction. Yeah, it's a setback But everybody's still pursuing their highest valued ends Which in this case is the lost buildings. They're lost homes, right? They're trying to recreate them Okay, so what do we have them with destruction in this case of bombing? That's definitely destructive We have a temporary loss a setback Right, everybody lost their homes. We didn't lose anything else. We just lost our homes So we lost the wealth that we had but Well, and then and our increased demand for rebuilding these homes because that's highest on our list, right? Bids up prices for the all the materials It also means that all the resources are put to their most highly valued ends Right because these people are really desperate for housing. So of course Resources will shift to where the higher prices are which is for the people to get houses again No, no strange nothing strange about that analysis, right? And of course for people in general that means that Their value scales are perhaps intact. They lost This this end that they were already satisfying home a shelter But now they can continue in their actions and just pursue their highest valued Still unsatisfied end. It's a different end. But in terms of value scales, it's the same thing, right? so it's a temporary shock this follows by Still acting in the same way action is still the same They're still trying to achieve that highest valued end that is remains unsatisfied. Does it make sense? So the structure of action is the same. There's nothing strange going on really So how are regulations different from this? How many of you would say that bombing a city might be worse than regulation? It's your hands. Are you really Austrians? Okay, so Let's look at how regulations are different Of course, I didn't bombing a city and the minor regulation You might think that regulations aren't that bad, but let me show you how From an Austrian perspective, it's really terrible Okay, so a regulation is really a restriction imposed on action So it just says that you cannot do this or you cannot use this means and you cannot pursue this end whatever it is Right, so it's a restriction that is imposed on you. It's nothing you choose yourself, and it's necessarily a restriction That takes that option away from you Why because what is a regulation that doesn't affect you it's ineffective Doesn't cause any change whatsoever. The point of a regulation, of course is to effect change It's intended to change the world Which means it has to affect you in some way, right? It has to affect someone. It's like setting the minimum wage at negative two dollars. Is it an effective regulation? No Unless someone wants to want to work for negative three dollars, but not a whole lot of people want to do that Right, but if you set the minimum wage at a hundred dollars an hour It's gonna be very effective Because a lot of people make less than a hundred dollars an hour Right. I'm not saying it's necessarily efficient or that is good or anything like that I'm just saying it's an effective regulation and the sense that it causes change Right, it has an effect Okay, so it is really a prohibition on certain types of actions or ban on those types of actions Okay For it to be effective it has to be a ban on such actions that are possible So if I tell you that from tomorrow the Brandon administration Is banning hovering in the air Well, okay, you wouldn't be able to do that anyway, so it doesn't matter right for it to be effective It has to be something that you could potentially do right so as I put it here they have to predict private actions that are Physically and economically and formally feasible. That's what makes regulation effective, right? What I'll show you now is that this is not destruction, right? It doesn't destroy anything which is why a lot of politicians prefer regulations, but it's destructive in a sense Okay, so let's look at an example. So let's go back in time to 2006 Beautiful year that most of you probably don't remember at all but let's assume that there's this government agency hypothetical called the CDC and That they're doing great work Saving us from a virus There's some disease that is spread and they think it's because you touch surfaces So they outlaw touch screens That's a regulation right and back believe it or not, but in 2006 there were touch screens Okay, so here is Dr. Anthony iPad Fauci So he is the main regulator in this case, okay So let's do a value scale analysis of what happens in this case here Okay, so there were no iPads of course back in those days But there was this new thing where you could have a thousand songs in your pocket Doesn't sound all that revolutionary. I know not today, but back then it was huge Because most of us were used to using Walkman's and things like that and Walkman is Never mind But you could also have a portable radio and you know what radio is, right? It's like Spotify in their waves Okay, so Without a regulation people would start to buy these iPods right these music players In this case the iPod touch because it was the second next generation sort of iPod where you could actually have it You had a touch screen and you could you could scroll songs and things like that, right? So without a regulation Apple would produce the iPod iPod touch And for whoever has the iPod touch at the high high end of their value scale and It sort of out competes it provides them or they expect to get higher value out of the iPod touch Then from a Walkman and a Walkman is also higher value than they would get from a portable radio With regulation of course there can be no iPod touch because it's we're banned touch screens So you would have to choose the Walkman instead Okay So it will affect whoever wanted to get an iPod touch, which is also the point, right? That's why you regulated this you didn't want anyone to have a touchscreen Okay, already we can see a difference from destruction Because this is not really anymore a one-time loss like bombing of hypothetical city Dresden That happened once and then people started rebuilding No, this is every time that you Wanted to enjoy music You can't have an iPod touch Right every time every time you go to the store to buy a Walkman or a portable radio or something like that You probably wanted to have picked up instead an iPod touch The same thing every time you use your Walkman that you bought instead Like oh man if this had been an iPod touch instead Right, so it's less value every time you use it every day every day every time you commute or whatever it is Okay, so the option to choose that is gone because of your relation Okay now It also means of course that whoever would if you already bought one before the ban If you break it you can't replace it Because they're not allowed to sell and produce them if You wanted to get a next generation Well, that's not gonna be produced. So that's not an option either. Okay, so those values are also gone Every day every time you were basically reminded of this right so until you change your value scale You will have a loss over and over again and this loss between the iPod touch and the Walkman okay, and Of course, you can't rebuild it. That's it. That's what dressed Okay, so This is also a process, right? There's more going on than simply having consumer goods available in Best Buy or whatever There's also a production side. So what we talked about with value scales. That's consumers so on the comes on the producer side Producers are not available and they're not allowed to produce touchscreens So obviously what will they do? Something else So they will shift their efforts and their investments to do something else so whoever had a factory for producing touchscreens well change Whatever needs to be changed in that factor to produce something else Or they might just sell it to get rid of it and maybe there's like scrap value or someone finds another use for it It's a lower value use Right well what that means from a consumer point of view of course is that there's an under production of touchscreens But since we're shifting these investments elsewhere in the economy We get over production of those things Because we would net not get production of those things If we could produce the iPod touch because iPod touch is the higher value or at least entrepreneurs think so, right? so we get under production of the iPod touch and anything touch screenish and We get more over production of other things wherever those This capital is reallocated to Okay Well, this is mal-investment right the whole production apparatus is distorted Depending on of course where where all these resources end up, but we have under investment here and over investment here This is already out of whack with consumers actual wants Like cuz cuz entrepreneurs can't pursue them Is that easy? Okay, so so far you're wondering what the heck is this guy talking about because nothing new really just maybe the little bit different terminology a little different words used but Obvious stuff for Austrians So why does the Mises Institute give this guy time? That's what you're thinking. I can see it okay, so What we have just to summarize is spend some more time Regulations distort the production structure as we saw right under and over investments in different things that are not they actually aligned with consumer wants Regulations cost losses because those options that would have been there the higher valued options in this case the iPod touch It's not gonna be there So we lose that value and whatever difference there is between the iPod touch and the Walkman Is there more? Yeah, there is more The problem here is that what we haven't considered is that the market is a process There's much more to this right and it's not only a process in the sense. Oh, yeah, it's always adjusting a little bit No, it's a process in terms of being cumulative right we talk about capital Being accumulated over time and we're investing in more capital and we're saving and therefore we can have more capital Well, the specificity of capital is changing too, right? Because we're investing in these these machines over here and Then we figure out a way to make a better machine based off of the knowledge that we got from using this machine Right, so we're learning and we're adding to the capital structure based off of what we learned so Very often the product is the result of having tried some other product before which is the result of having tried another product before that and if you search Wikipedia or or Rely on your own memory you would know that the iPod was a success the iPod touch too and That led to creating the iPhone which you might have heard of I mean, this is now it I fall I fall iPhone 35 Is this slab thing that was basically like this, but it cost about three thousand dollars more So the iPhone was possible because of what Apple learned and all the machines and everything like that that they had to create to Produce the iPod touch the iPhone was a success because people really wanted it the iPhone and The experience is from producing the iPhone made the iPad possible and of course So on and so forth right because there are more generations and it's it's a it's an evolutionary process in retrospect with revolutionary revolutionary within our Innovations that cost the process right so This has an effect too on how we study regulations Right because if we ban a certain action at some point, we're not gonna get this process We're not gonna get this cumulative process. It's gonna end right Okay, so the unfolding of the market the whole production structure is going to change Okay, so let's look at the implications of CDC's banning of of the touch screen Okay, so of course no one can continue to Innovate using touch screens whatever Kinds of product they would produce using touch screens no longer possible The resources are instead directed to other types of production not involving touch screens right The knowledge and the competencies the types of jobs and everything like that involved in producing and developing touch screens and evolving touch screens into the Fantastic ones we have today, which are definitely better than what we had back in 2006 Will also not happen So the business is doing this would also not happen Like all those businesses created by to produce the materials used to produce touch screens the factories used to produce the touch screens themselves Specific transportation whatever there is maybe a private university That would educate people in the art of touchscreen production or whatever it is Those things would never happen either Okay, and so forth right all those businesses that would have been created to support these businesses that I just mentioned would also not happen Okay, so this is what I call the unrealized Because all of this did not happen Okay, but it's not simply the scene or the unseen it's not what happened versus what did not happen based off of one change This are the long-term consequences the implications of it right so This how long does this continue for how long will we have a distorted Production structure based off of regulation Well for as long as the regulation is there right and the economy will produce completely different things But those different things will also have support organizations and innovations and entrepreneurs and new jobs and new types of education And so forth right to support those things which are really mal-emessments They're over investments in things that consumers did not actually demand Right starting to see the picture It's pretty nasty If you think about it, right? So structurally speaking what it takes is one regulation That distorts production a little bit To force the whole economy the production structure to become out of whack with what consumers would want Or at least what entrepreneurs would expect consumers to want right so where entrepreneurs if they were allowed to go wherever they wanted To satisfy consumers that would have gone over here, but some regulation just one is all it takes Will cause some entrepreneurs to not go in that direction They will instead choose something that is of a little lesser value or choose not to start a business at all Right and the investment will happen there instead Which of course changes the structure Because there's suddenly more demand for things over here But there should have been over here had entrepreneurs been able to To pursue consumers actual wants Okay now This causes a change to a lot of things that you might not even imagine different types of careers Just one regulation means some careers are gone that are directly related to that regulation in this case So you're a touchscreen engineer of course that job is not gonna exist But then anything else to write anything else that has Something to do with touchscreens or the demand by companies producing touchscreens so maybe Maybe it is the case that touchscreen engineers all of them really like banana vanilla coffee Whatever that is But they're the only ones say so had They've been able to produce touchscreens There would have been a business or a bunch of businesses producing this type of of flavored coffee Without the touchscreen you would not have those jobs you would have not have those companies and coffee would instead go into some other type of production as you can see now The extent of it right? It's not only that you'll be regulated a little bit here And then the rest of it is intact. No, it's not because it has ripple effects throughout the economy Okay So what this does then is that it says to hold economy on a different trajectory and the economy in a sense If you want to think about it is as it process going somewhere. What's going it in a different direction? It's no longer pursuing the value that consumers had at the very top of their lists, right instead some regulation will Change the direction a little bit one way or the other and more regulations would change it even more Of course with each generation of investments You would just Increase this distortion Because you would under invest where consumers would have wanted it and it would over in West Invest where consumers didn't actually want it not as much anyway Right for how long well for as long as this regulation is effective Right because as long as this regulation Bands someone from doing what is at the very top of their value scale Whether it's a producer or a consumer That is lost And instead you get the distortion Okay, so I think now you're seeing the Austrian capital theory economic calculation Austrian entrepreneurship theory how they all go together you can't you can't see the economy You can't understand the economy without all of them, right? But now you're also see you can also see how everything fits together and is Distorted by just a tiny little change right because it changes everything okay, so Let's sum up a little bit so in this economy and let's assume that there is an economy where where there is regulations It's a one of those suboptimal economies So The economic effect is of course that there's distortions All processes are distorted in some way Maybe they're just doing more a little less than otherwise or maybe it's a new process or maybe that process would not exist Right that's different We can also see that destruction It's not really a big deal comparatively speaking right It's a bombing Dresden Destroying everybody's homes. That's gonna change people's actions. It's gonna change the magnitude in the statistics Right then Krugman would wave a flag and say we economic growth Because everybody's Investing all this material in buildings, but is that the very hot the very top of their value scales, right? It's how they can satisfy their their wants most It's a temporary setback But it doesn't change the economy the economy is still structured to satisfy consumers to the greatest extent possible okay, so Bombing no be rent control.  It's gonna have a disastrous effect throughout the economy probably and also as I usually claim What this means is the libertarians Don't they really understand how destructive regulations are Right because if libertarians especially people following the Chicago school when it doesn't matter how much you calculate Magnitudes using the statistics How wrong the economy is or how much is lost in terms of prices? Because that has nothing to do with value still right because that value can be really high and the price is still sort of low So you can't capture the value But even if you capture the prices, you don't capture this you don't capture the distortion You don't capture how the whole economy is out of whack. Okay So even libertarians don't really understand how destructive regulations are so how can we fight them? All right, so The book behind there is so where I elaborate on on these views all these views this theory on Regulations and what that means and there is the red one the new one which is All of you got a free copy right? There's a short summary of it at the very end in the last chapter so You should of course buy the expensive one All right, I'll stop right there and I'll take some questions for Thank you for your lecture. I really enjoyed it. So my question is What does the government get out of implementing destructive regulations? Destructive regulations as compared to what regulations? So, I mean they get control control right They get to Pretend like they are creating a better world Right, so there are plenty of gains for the political class if you will but for consumers as long as we see the economy as a way of creating value for consumers Any regulation is necessarily Detrimental to consumers right and I'm assuming of course that there is private property and all this stuff Right so that entrepreneurs can be real entrepreneurs and that entrepreneurs make money off of selling goods to consumers that consumers want There's no fraud and things like that right so it's pure economic system but politics is sort of the the opposite of of sound economics Would you have a similar effect with subsidies? So instead of like cutting of a value creation path off there instead incentivizing entrepreneurs to take one that and the same way you said isn't actually valued by consumers Can I answer just yes, I mean it's it's exactly the same thing I would say it's just the the opposite right instead of banning a certain action you would You would incentivize it by paying them extra, which is also a distortion of the whole incentive systems throughout the economy If I understood you correctly you said that the negative effects of the regulation go away once the regulation is removed It seems though that the effects of it would still go on permanently because say you have the touchscreen ban in 2006 But I wanted a touchscreen iPod in 2006 just because it's Repealed in 2015 doesn't mean I want a touchscreen anymore. So it seems the negative effects would continue perpetuity The question is do we continue distorting? Right. Yeah. Yeah, that's true So yes, the distortion that has already happened is still there and since the market process is cumulative Of course, it's going to linger But we're not going to reinforce it if the regulation is gone or if people change their value scales So it's ineffective. Hi. I wanted to ask you if any of this logic applies to economic sanctions on the country imposing the sanctions So if this applies to sanctions Yeah, I mean, yeah, sure it affects anyone. Well the country Is a tricky one but whoever is affected by the sanctions. Yes right because it affects Not necessarily everyone directly, but it does affect say exporters in your country and importers in the other country or vice versa And then whoever trades with them so yes Oops, I was gonna ask if We have a lot of regulations in the country right now if you could choose I mean, they're all bad, but if you could choose which regulations to get rid of first, let's say You gotta power which ones would you think need to go go away a right away? Yeah, that does make sense. I Mean I argue that any regulation will distort the economy and the production apparatus, right? So so as long as you have regulations, it's going to be suboptimal Distorted economy, of course, you still have the little issue here in a Money economy where basically one side of each transaction is money If you regulate and screw up money, you're gonna screw up every transaction so getting rid of of Government money and the central bank and then basically the banking system the way it looks there would be a big step forward Right, but it wouldn't solve everything of course, but it would solve some things All right So your explanation works for government regulation like national regulations of the economy But the what would happen if the regulations are imposed by other kind of institution let's say guilds or cartels or International standards organizations. Well, why would it be different? I mean if it's if it is if it is voluntarily adopted by users Then it's in line with our value scales Right, but if it's imposed it doesn't matter who imposes it But if it's imposed on you, then you have those losses and those distortions I mean whether it's the mafia or if you call the mafia the government it doesn't matter Firstly I was coming through your book yesterday, and I admired that your simplistic straightforward writing style but my question is is it possible that a regulation could incite a an entrepreneur to Allocate their resources to invent a more demanded product Yeah, of course But the thing is entrepreneurs invest under uncertainty, right? They are aiming for something that they expect consumers to value really highly So of course, it's possible that the government can subsidize a certain type of entrepreneurship and those entrepreneurs actually strike gold It's possible But why would you choose that method instead of letting entrepreneurs figure it out themselves? Because what you're doing is playing roulette, right? It's the chances the odds of these entrepreneurs who the government has chosen to subsidize Finding even more value than it letting entrepreneurs do it themselves Those chances are really slim. I think it's definitely possible But systematically no My question was going back to the bombing sample It seems that the hypothetical city. Yeah, well you're talking about Regulation and just talking about destruction as well. You're talking about how regulation has these effects on other fields as well But remembering the broken window fallacy fallacy, that's the same thing for the bombing of the city theoretically So why in that situation are destruction regulation different should be in my I think would be the same, right? It is the same in the sense that yes, you have these ripple effects, right? Like I mentioned when when you're rebuilding Dresden, you would have building materials Reallocated from neighborhood cities, right? So you would have those change but the big difference and what makes it a difference is that these changes are to Satisfy the most highly valued Want that remains unsatisfied, right? The buildings the houses the homes for those in Dresden Where as a regulation takes that option away from you So you have still have that want unsatisfied on your list high up, but you can't pursue it But in Dresden you pursue the highest one So just to tease out more of the idea to get a more comprehensive overview One of a potential counter not necessarily the strongest could be canned entrepreneurs Just try to bypass whatever the regulation is and still try to satisfy the same want Sure, and they do all the time, right The issue there is that you have you have artificially Increase the cost for those entrepreneurs, right? So what that means is that they will need to figure out a way to satisfy consumers to an even greater extent to make their Ventures profitable and if they were not, but they would have been the most profitable Otherwise, well then then there's a loss still, right? Are we out of time? All right. Thanks so much