Hi, my name is John Omokubo and I am the Director of Technology for St. Matthew's Parish School. We are a preschool through eighth grade Episcopal day school in Pacific Palisades, California. And in addition to directing the program and managing the technology in the school, I'm fortunate to be able to teach a seventh grade technology class and a seventh eighth elective class that I've been able to design from the ground up. It's called Creator Studio and that'll be the focus of this video. Before I get into the details, however, I feel it's necessary to give you some background as to how this all came about and what led us into the direction we are heading now. About three years ago, we had the opportunity to create a new space from the ground up. Our old computer lab wasn't getting much use since we had implemented a one-to-one program and so we had a nice space to work from. Our goal was to design a learning environment where we could encourage project development and making, using tools like new tools, 3D printers, laser cutters, and old tools, drill presses, miter saws. All within the context of expanding our efforts into more project-based learning. We wanted the space to be flexible so that students could make the space work best for them and so this meant things like a furniture on wheels that folded and nested tables, walls with large writable surfaces, shelves that could be arranged on the fly. We started our research by looking at some schools that were already doing these things. So we visited some schools up in Northern California that were sort of deep into this stuff already. We also read the book Make Space from the D school at Stanford just to get our brains around the idea of looking at spaces differently. And we also visited places like Apple and the Exploratorium up in San Francisco just to really wrap our heads around what it was that we wanted to accomplish. And all of these things helped us to formulate our own ideas for our spaces. The end result was actually two spaces. Our first space, what we kind of call our clean space is Pearl. This was the former computer lab. Pearl stands for Project and Idea Realization Lab. And it's a place for 2D and 3D design and coding electronics, robotics, using microcontrollers, things like Arduino and Hummingbird. And the second space is a somewhat semi-outdoor space. And that's called Pearl Terrace. And Pearl Terrace has a location for students to work outside underneath a canopy. But inside, there's also room for our tools like the drill press and the miter saws and handheld power tools, along with the laser cutter. Now that you have some background, we can dive into the details of Creator Studio. Creator Studio has actually itself gone through a few different iterations and it's currently designed as follows. Students learn about and experience three key topics, electronics, mechanical motion, and a quick introduction to physical computing, which is really robotics. Each of these topics is covered in the context of a project and they're all open-ended so that students determine the direction, the design and the end result in each. I used to teach 2D and 3D design and digital fabrication in this class, but I realized that it was only, you know, hitting those kids that were in this elective. And so now it's embedded into the technology course I teach so that all students get that exposure. And so given that, I can now expect all students who walk into Creator Studio to have that background as well. After experiencing these three projects, students spend the remainder of the course pursuing their own personal project. It can integrate electronics or mechanical motion or robotics or it might have nothing to do with any of those things. It just depends on what they want to pursue. The key is that their personal project is original. Even if it's inspired by something they saw online or elsewhere, they just they just can't put together a kit that they purchase. Kits are great, but the outcome is known. And so there's very little creative design involved. In going through each of these projects, students follow the design, build, iterate process. That's something that I explicitly teach about. And in the design phase, students must come up with an initial idea which is then sketched out and then shared amongst their classmates. They discuss their ideas and their given time to change things, modify things just on the piece of paper itself or the workbook. And so sometimes projects are changed entirely based upon the feedback and the sharing out. The design is then refined to include a materials list and true measurements, if possible, or at least as far as their as far as their strand of thinking would go and then once approved, they can move on to building. During the build phase, students gather the materials that they had on their list of materials. They might also in in going through all of this find that there are other materials available that they want to use, and that's fine. And they generally begin with paper and cardboard prototypes. Before moving on to sturdier materials like plastic or wood, but it really depends because sometimes projects stay within those prototype materials. Sometimes cardboard is good enough. In fact, in some cases, cardboard is better because of the type of flexibility that it has over something like wood or plastic. After their initial build phase, students move into what we're calling the iterate phase. And this is where they can make changes to their their build, their prototype, or they might also at this point move into some of their final materials to start to start building and creating. It's it's interesting. I think it's important to state that all of these things, this design, build, iterate process, while concrete in terms of being able to say this is one phase, this is the second and this is the third, that works for explaining it. But in real terms, these things are much more fluid and much more, I guess, organic and less staged, meaning that the designing and the building and the iterating all kind of happen in some ways together. We I try to distinguish the point at which we move from one phase to another, especially at the beginning, because they don't really understand that part of it. So it's helpful to say we've now moved into the build phase. But what happens in real life is that they sort of move through these three phases and they they go back. They go back to the design phase when things don't quite work the way they should. They come back and redesign the way that a lever works or the way that a circuit is wired or what have you. And then they come back and they build again. And so it really is something that's much more fluid than than what's on paper. The first project is called Light Up Spin. And this project is designed to give students experience in designing and building a very simple circuit. The students start by getting some hands on practice using some prebuilt circuit blocks. We discuss the concepts of power and load. So, for example, battery blocks or power, while an LED block or a incandescent bulb or a motor would serve as load. We then introduce other blocks like switches, which are considered control blocks because they can determine if power is turned on or off or switched in one direction or another. We'll spend one class period experimenting by connecting various blocks together to predict and to see what happens. After this point, students begin to think about their own circuit block and they have the following criteria to go by. The project must fit on a three and a half inch square wood block. It can be no no taller than 10 inches. And it can include one of the following elements, LEDs, incandescent bulb or motor. Because it's powered by a battery, the choice of options is small and you can't use more than one and it allows really sort of encourages them to think creatively about which direction they want to head. So it must be powered by a battery source and we include a switch into the circuit. And then most importantly, it has to represent something in real life, whether that's a car or a a daisy that turns in circles or in some cases like this year, a pineapple. So it just depends on whatever they choose to allow them, obviously to be as creative as possible and what they want it to represent. But it must be something that we can that relates to real life. Project two is on mechanical motion. It's called Shake Your Groove. And this second project is brand new for me this year. Having done Creative Studio for a couple of years now, I've always felt that one missing piece in my curriculum was an opportunity for students to experience and design a project that involved mechanical movement. It turns out that oftentimes during their personal project, they end up with some need for a mechanical element but they don't really have any prior experience in how to use it or how to do it. For example, how do you apply gears or levels or cams to a project if you have no idea how they work? And so I believe personally that a really creative way to introduce this concept is through automata. Students are introduced to the concept of automata on day one of this project. They see a few video examples online and learn about the concept of motion. And they see examples of key components like levers and cams and cranks and shafts and gears and how those things interact with each other to make things move. I have some examples in class that I built for students to test out and observe and to really look and analyze how one kind of motion might lead to another. This is the only project that students work in pairs or small group. The reason I've chosen to do this is that there's both a coding component and a building component. So it benefits students to work together to coordinate tasks and establish roles. We use the Hummingbird Robotics Kit and the Create Labs Visual Programmer. My first year, I used Arduino, but the learning curve was a little high for the amount of time we had available in class. And so Hummingbird allows students to get up and running pretty quickly. After learning how to use the coding interface, students build a project that interacts with the environment. They can choose to make it detect something in front of it using a distance sensor or it can hear a sound or sense a light source. In reaction, the project can move with servos or DC motors. It can light up or even change color. It can talk back or play music. I enjoy seeing the creative solutions students come up with in response to this task. That's an overview of the first three projects. And while they are each important in their own way, the final personal project is where students are completely challenged to bring out their creative mindset. As you know, in the end it's all about the kids. So I thought I would finish with interviews, covering three different personal projects from the student's point of view. Hi guys. Can you tell me what motivated you to sign up for Creator Studio? Do you wanna go? Sure. So I didn't even know a 3D printer existed and I thought it was really cool that you could print something that would turn out 3D and something that had never been created before. And the laser cutter, how you can cut perfect circles or perfect anything into what I thought that was really one more opportunity to use it. Yeah, and when Mr. and Mr. Kumbo gave us the presentation about Creator Studio, all the different like buildings and stuff that they made were kind of amazing. And so I just wanted to see if we could be a part of that. Terrific. Can you tell viewers about your personal project? Sure. Well, we built this like wooden light box with different circles on the side so the light would shine through. And originally we weren't gonna have this like rice kind of paper that we used to kind of like block the light a little bit. And so we just used LED lights and we built like a light kind of box. We wrapped the LED lights around a cardboard cylinder and put it inside of the box, which we soldered to wires and then to an adapter. So we have a remote that can dim it and turn it on and off. And then it just plugs into the wall. What words of advice would you give to future students of Creator Studio? Definitely, when you introduce a topic, start thinking about your project then and not just making lights work. Don't leave it to the last minute. Don't leave it to the last minute and definitely think about your process because when we were building our lights we originally meant to build one or to build one and we ended up building two. And so we had to use wood glue, which you could only do like one side at a time. Otherwise it would stick together and then come out when you're doing the lopsided. So we had to use rubber bands on yours to hold it together and then on my second side. Yeah, certainly managing your time is a big key. And also dream big. There isn't anything you can't do in this class. I did things that I didn't think were possible and so definitely go for whatever you get. Yeah. Ryan, can you tell me about your personal project? So we decided to make cryptics and most people don't know what that is. It's actually a term coined by the author Dan Brown in his novel, The DaVinci Code. But it's basically a Hadlock but inside there's an open space for whatever you want put in there. And it slides in with its keys and there are different locking holders for the turning wheels that go around. And once you have to slide the key in it's just basically a giant key. So I go. And once it slides in. You don't wanna show us your key at this point. Yeah, so the key goes in. Nice. And then you can lock it. Cool. And you can't get it out unless you get the exact combination. Terrific. So that's my cryptics. Thanks, Ryan. Lena, what area of study was particularly interesting for you? I really liked laser cutting or I'm sorry, 3D printing and soldering on because you can really do everything with it. You can make anything out of 3D printing. You can just design, you know, the possibilities are endless and you can create anything you want. And soldering is cool because it really gives you like a better understanding of how things work, how your project works and you really like put it together from every little piece, that's what makes it cool. Lena, can you tell me about your personal project? Yeah, this is my personal project and what I did was I 3D printed my last name in the 3D printer in white and I included these little holes to stick LEDs in there. And I put the LEDs in there. I glued them in hot glue and then I used these red and white wires to circuit them all together and I soldered the LEDs to the wires and then I put restrictors on them as well so in case they kind of soak up left over voltage. Resistors. Resistors, I don't know, I don't know. Okay, that's okay. And then all the other wires to these two final wires that went into this and went into, I think it's called 12-fold. Uh-huh, 12-fold adapter. And that will just be plugged into the wall and with this remote, you can turn it on and it'll change colors. You can also dim it. You can dim it and it'll just change colors on its own. Awesome. Did you have any, if given more time, would you have changed the project at all or? So all you can see was, but that's pretty much all I would do. Thanks, Lena. Thank you.


Hey, it's time for voiceover body shop. How's everybody doing tonight? We got a great guest tonight, George It's a guy who just knows a lot about Marketing for voiceover and that's mark Scott mark. How you doing? It's not so much that I know a lot It's just that I sound like I do and then people believe me, but that's half a voice over It's the acting and you convince them you tell a good story All right. Well, hopefully we'll convince lots of people and George you've got lots of stuff tonight, too And we're gonna have a great time, right? Yeah, I've got the tech talk later. You guys can tune in for that. All right, excellent All right time for voiceover body shop right now From the outer reaches they came Bearing the knowledge of what it takes to properly record your voice over audio and Together from the center of the VO universe, they bring it to you now George Wittem the engineer to the VO stars a Virginia Tech grad with the skills to build set up and maintain The professional VO studios of the biggest names in VO 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 VO studio and Each week they allow you into their world bringing you talks with the biggest names in the voice over world today Letting you ask your questions and giving you the latest information to make the most of your voice over business Welcome to voiceover body shop voiceover body shop is brought to you by voiceover essentials comm home of Harlin Hogan signature products source elements remote studio connections for everyone voice actor websites.com where your VO website isn't a pain in the butt VO heroes.com become a hero to your clients with a word-winning voiceover training JMC demos when quality matters and voiceover extra your daily resource for VO success and now Live to drive from their super secret clubhouse and studio in Sherman Oaks, California Here are the guys Well, hello everybody out there and all the points in between and outside of those I'm Dan Leonard and I'm George Whitton and this is voiceover body shop or VO BS Alrighty well, welcome to the show.  She jabbed her glasses right into my eye It was a lot worse Physically taking her head with her glasses and jamming it in your eye. It was like that. That's exactly what happened Right. It's nothing like blood coming out of your eye to go. This is not good But yeah, it looked a lot worse than it really was but you know didn't affect my vision missed my cornea by that much We all have those stories. Yes Corneas by that much right and and the older you get the more you have of them Sure Anyway, we we're we're gonna talk about voiceover marketing tonight And so if you've got a question again throw it in the chat room whether you're on Facebook or whether you're watching on YouTube Or wherever it is that you are watching the show if you're watching it live, which is the advantage of watching it live you you can you can do that and so let's introduce our guest tonight and So you can understand exactly who he is and why it's so important that we have him on tonight Mark Scott is a business and marketing coach for voice actors His objective is very simple to give you the tools resources and coaching you need to help grow your voice over business and his website is The Viopreneur, which is a great title mark. Welcome to a voiceover body shop I gotta tell you guys when I saw the opening to the show and all of these people that you've had on I suddenly felt very Intimidated and a little bit unworthy. So now I'm all nervous and self-conscious and whatever, but that's okay We'll still talk marketing. I find that hard to believe but it's like a list after a list after a list And then some guy in plaid from Canada You you're you're not far from where I'm from and was it Port DeLuzzi, Ontario I am I'm near Port Dover, Ontario. Oh Port Dover. Yes Because nobody can pronounce Port DeLuzzi. It's like how does that set anyway?  So yeah, we got we got a foot overnight and it was very unexpected You know, it's coming. They said look, they're gonna get lake effects.  That's enough Snow day. Yep anyway, so You know, I've been following your stuff for a long time. You've you know, you've got the Viopreneur site You know, you're doing what are some of the things you do you've got a wet a podcast You've got the web page What is what is all the stuff that you do and tell us a little bit about what you do? I mean it all started out as a blog and I remember long for many many years and then I decided to blogging was hard work So I thought it would be easier to do YouTube videos And so I then I started doing YouTube videos and then YouTube videos were like wow, this is really hard work They became really hard work like I'm gonna do podcast because you know, I'm a radio guy How hard can it be to do a podcast? Let me tell you I should have just stuck to blogging guess what that's hard Even harder than YouTube videos and so now I actually do the podcast and the YouTube videos at the same time Which just you know like double the pleasure there double the fun But there's there's always some sort of new content going out somewhere into the interwebs That's our that's our gameplay to we we'd simulcast all this stuff then put it out on podcast Cuz just know there's little time to produce a separate show for each anytime somebody comes to me It says mark. I'm thinking about starting a podcast. What's your advice? My advice is don't Yeah, as we always say, you know, everybody can do a podcast. It doesn't mean everybody should Agreed. Yeah, but if you know how I mean if it came out of radio doing a podcast is just like, you know Like you were the public service director opening body clothes out of there And just having technical issues live on the air, right? Exactly Everybody else thinks you're my jisher. I just really thought it was gonna be so much I So grossly underestimated how much work goes into doing something like that. So I very much appreciate what you guys are doing right now Well, we appreciate you coming on tonight. So let's talk a little bit about you know marketing I mean and not marketing in general.   All right, that's one edit. Okay. So What's it all Dan what's it all? Why are people so intimidated by marketing? I mean, I know why I am but what are you finding with new Talking to you know your clients about it. I think the biggest thing is a misperception of of what it is and I think that Somewhere along the way it got associated with The telemarketer The used car salesman, you know all of the dirty aspects of marketing the robo calls that we get at, you know Eight o'clock at night when we're trying to just relax on the couch or whatever we've we've got this real negative image this negative Narrative around what marketing actually is and so I think that part of it because I can tell you hands down The number one thing that I hear from voice actors when I ask them about why they are or aren't I don't want to be annoying. I am afraid of being annoying. That's that's it. And so it's it comes back to that whole Used car salesman, you know the dirty feeling of I just sold somebody something and now I've got to go take a shower Because I feel bad about it. It's it's that that side of marketing Which so much of it is just narrative based and it's a narrative that's not Based on any actual reality And so I think that's honestly where where a lot of it stems from is is just learning that we need to Flip the narrative on what marketing actually is and and stop making it to be such a A dirty thing because it's not because at the end of the day the way I like to look at it is I know That I offer something of value to my clients I you know the example that I love to give because I've been there and done it and I think most people can identify with it At some point if you've had a job outside of voiceover You've probably sat through some form of employee training And if it was recorded you probably wanted to smash your face off the brick wall Because it just couldn't wait for it to end because you know bob from accounting No offense to bob but bob recorded it because the the boss asked him to and you had to sit and suffer through that I know I can make that better I know that I bring something of value to every project that i'm Going to work on with my clients and so when I think about it from that way I get excited To work with them. I get excited to tell them But I get excited to have the opportunity to partner with them because I know that we're going to create a great Product in the end So I try to encourage people to think about that side of things as opposed to the dirty used car salesman side of things Right. Well, yeah, I mean and you don't want to go out there and say hey, you got to hire me because I got a great voice It's not that at all. It's you know, there's so many different pieces to it But people have to understand it's not about getting into this business and getting an agent and they're going to find you All this work The people who really succeed in this business Are the ones that go out there and make the cold calls and send out the emails and Do what it takes to get their own work You get an agent when you're making money because of all the work you've done and and that's really what it's about So, you know, we're going through this pandemic now. I think I think most people are aware of it now Um, you know something about it in the news has the covet pandemic created a need for Perhaps a different marketing approach for the time being I think in the beginning You know, so we're talking like spring of of 2020 there was definitely a different approach that had to be taken because Everybody at that point was impacted in some way Right. I had businesses that I've worked with for years that don't exist anymore I had clients that I used to work with multiple times a month who couldn't get a video to save their lives because All of the clients that they worked with were closed, right? So it did take a different kind of nuanced approach to to Reach out to people and you don't want to run the risk of Sounding like you're asking for work from somebody who just got laid off or just lost their job or their company just went under or whatever I think that that went on for the the first part of 2020. I think last year Like look nobody thought we were still gonna be here at this point. I don't think anyway Nobody thought we were still gonna be here in this pandemic at this point 2021 there was There was waves of a lot of optimism and then there'd be a wave of covid and then the optimism would fade away And then that wave would fade down and optimism would come back again And so there was a lot of back and forth. I think the biggest thing now is people are over it and it has become incredibly political and divisive And so it's something that i'm trying not to talk a lot about anymore And so I still see emails from everybody once in a while I still see emails from voice actors and even from clients every once in a while that are like, you know Talking about these unprecedented times. Yeah, we we stopped wanting to hear that in you know, april of 2020 We were over that that phrase. It happened last year in the year before. Yeah, I'd say it's been president Yeah, there's a precedent for it now, but but I do think that it's I do think as much as possible Just moving on from that not talking about what's going on, you know, not talking about People start to feel sorry for them. So, I mean, we're locked down here again in in ontario. It's incredibly frustrating I'm I'm totally over that again too, right? But nobody wants to hear me whine and gripe and complain about that either and so I really think that Now it's I mean what I say that it's a full return to status quo and how I'm marketing. I mean probably for the most part Trying to be sensitive to recognizing that there may be certain regions certain countries certain areas where things are a little bit different But by and large it's like just kind of move on past that message and and let's kind of focus on What's going to happen on the other side of this thing? Yeah, yeah I've sort of noticed that you know, we a lot of people are aware of this when we started the read was We're going to through this together And then it became more forward thinking and then I was watching tv last night and there was a new commercial Because of you know, amicron. It's like we're going to go through this and I turned to my wife and I go together She knew what I knew it was coming We want to get out of it. I mean everybody everybody wants to get out of it I know that the reads and again, it's it's just because nobody thought we were going to be here, right? If you asked anybody in what october november in most parts of the world We thought we were pretty much on the other side of this and then all of a sudden this new variant comes and boom Here we are cases spiking all over the world and Vaccinated not vaccinated.  I mean it It is still a factor maybe in in reads and in the types of voices and all that sort of stuff But strictly speaking from a marketing standpoint at this point It's not something that i'm really talking a lot about anymore I've just kind of accepted that people are Pretty much over it regardless of how they feel about it. They're just over it. It's not like it's insensitive to ignore It's not like we're we all know it's going on. It's not insensitive to To not acknowledge it anymore Right, you totally different now from if you had ignored it in the beginning, right? Right, and that's the thing right we're two years in it's just it's kind of I mean I would To say it's run its course obviously it hasn't but From a new norm up to be honest from a public standpoint from a marketing standpoint all that sort of stuff for most of it's it's kind of It's like yeah, it's run its course. Let's talk about something different now. Yeah, yeah But I I would think though that it's probably changed some things forever and how we communicate Because it's opened up opportunities certainly stopped some things But I think it's probably opened up more opportunities because you know a lot of people lost their jobs and decided to go into voice over um It's like there's no other things you could be doing but on the flip side of that too There's a lot of people that lost their jobs and have gone into Animation that have gone into video production that have gone into some of these other trades that we might And so where where some of the clients that I've worked with some of the production houses that I've worked with Some of them went under in the beginning, you know in march and april and may of 2020 Now there's a whole new batch of people who you know the great resignation is what everybody's talking about now, right? It's it's one thing that cova did was it caused a lot of people to reevaluate Reevaluate their priorities and where they want to be in life and what they want to do in life And so I think that there's a whole new crop of Of opportunity that is going to come out of that because hey the other thing that I think that cova proved is the absolute utter importance of video in every capacity And so I think that you will see video used I mean it's always been used for websites and social media and youtube channels and all that I think that's we're going to see an exponential Growth in that because I think that people are finally starting to recognize Companies that maybe before wouldn't have done it are going to do it Companies that before maybe only did one or two videos. Maybe they do 12 So I think that's where there's a potential upswing in this too. And that's just because simply we're not sitting physically face to face With each other anymore Well, you know one of the things that did it for me and I think a lot of people think this way too is We go back to 2020 to early 2020 when the whole world was locked down and you couldn't go anywhere, right? I'm used to going into a store and when I want to buy something I go into the store I pick it up. I look at it. I touch it. I read the packaging all of that sort of stuff, right? I couldn't do that for months And so I found myself in a place where I was on Amazon or on youtube or on vimeo watching videos on products that I never would have watched a video on before Because how else was I going to know if this is actually what I'm looking for this actually does what I want it to do And so, you know, I've got some friends that do uh amazon e-commerce and there's like, yeah You get you pretty much have to have a video for everything that you throw up on amazon because people have come to expect it we know that we needed that when we couldn't go to the store and Look stores are going to open up eventually. I mean in a lot of places they already have But do you think that people's buying habits are going to change drastically or have we gotten accustomed to the convenience of just watching a video? Yep, that's what I want one click online delivered to your door the next day Absolutely. Once again, we're talking with mark scott and we're talking about voiceover marketing Which I guess marketing for all sorts of other things probably applies to depending on what type of type of business you're in But specifically to voice over so How do you go about finding leads now? I used to sell life insurance So finding leads was everything, you know, you get the done in brad street to catalog of every business that you you know That that could be listed in your town or whatever But voice over leads are kind of specific. How do you how what's the best way to go about and find leads? I think we think voice over leads are specific But I think that the category is actually much broader than we give Credit to because of the fact that voice over can be used in so many ways now And so we think about traditional things like You know radio and television stations that are creating commercials or Maybe we think about, you know the video production company that this is what they do is they create video But maybe we're not thinking about the doctor's office down the street that has a phone system Or anybody that works in radio, you're going to understand this once upon a time There used to be eight announcers in the building and those eight announcers spread all the commercial work across all eight of them Now there's two announcers running a radio station 24 7 and there's seven car dealerships in town And one of those car dealerships is going to want a voice That isn't one of the two announcers at the building And so you could go and potentially have a direct relationship with that car dealership and pick up their monthly automotive ads It's there's so many different ways that it can be used over over the last two years I picked up a couple of universities that I've never worked with before but when they started going into Uh Lockdown mode and they were moving classes online They started creating e-learning content in a way that they had never done before So I had the opportunity to do a a lot of narration for college or college and university classes And so I mean the one question that I always say is who needs a voice over And if you really ask yourself that and allow you to brainstorm it out You realize that just about anybody in some capacity could probably use one whether it's a A commercial that they're creating for broadcast a video that they're creating for their website or their youtube channel their social media platforms Uh a training course that they've got to deliver to their employees IVR phone systems I mean there's a thousand different ways and so when you allow yourself to think about it from that perspective You realize that there's a lot more places to find work than maybe you realized But when all else fails if you go into google right now and do a search for corporate video production I did this the other day. I think it's like 1.4 billion results So, you know contact to start contact 20 of them a day and you know talk to me in 570 years when you've run out of leads Once again, we're talking with mark scott We're talking about voice over marketing if you've got a question a specific question for mark about your voice over marketing stuff Or some ideas perhaps you have or you want, you know, maybe a little bit more information about What's the best way to do it throw it in the chat room and the amazing jeff holman will get that question to us um Now the thing I remember from college was the different forms of marketing, I mean you've got email cold call social media And everybody's like and some people try to master one of those or try to master all of them Is one more effective than another I I guess it sort of depends on what it is your type of work you're looking for I think the the one that is the most effective is the one that you will actually do Find me probably and I say that in all seriousness because One of the one of the things that voice actors are absolutely amazing at is finding barriers for why they can't do this And so they can come up with a hundred excuses why I can't do email Why I can't do tiktok why I can't do twitter why I can't do instagram whatever And so my whole thing is I don't care what you do as long as you do something You will never get me to make a cold call like you could Pin me down and shove the phone down my throat And I would choke on it before I would ever make a cold call like i'm not gonna do it And so that's not my thing, but I know other voice actors whose entire business has been built on cold calling, right So my whole thing is do what you enjoy doing because then you're so much more likely to do it So if you're somebody who is very Visually creative and loves photography and all of that sort of stuff You know use a platform like instagram as a way to express yourself or Flip it and do like pulse recorded does and he's turned instagram into a microblogging platform And that's working out tremendously well for him If you are okay doing video if you're comfortable being on camera Take advantage of a platform like tiktok. I interviewed staphon johnson on my podcast recently That's a voice actor with over six million followers on tiktok. That's a guy who has found A comfortable place to market himself and he's doing it incredibly effectively if email is your thing do email I will never tell you that one is better than the other that one is more effective than the other only to the extent of Whatever you will do is what is going to produce results for you Yeah, that makes total sense.  I broke several phones It's awful. Oh, it's the thing is as voice actors You would hope that we would have a little bit more Wouldn't be quite as shy about it But you know, it's about rejection and as voice actors That's our way of life is rejection. You know audition audition audition nothing nothing nothing nothing You know, we used to go by the rule of 25 Uh, you know, if you made 25 or 21 it was if you made 21 calls, you might get one. Yes But and then there's the other thing of every no is one no closer to a yes So it you know Or and as my father-in-law used to say the harder you work the luckier you get Yes That's awesome Yeah, so my father my stepfather had a lot of good ones too and and you know and and then of course there was the other one You know my my other stepfather larry who always had this great expression when you really don't want to do something One excuse is as good as another I deal with that every day. That's that's that's my whole entire coaching business right there is dealing with people's excuses So i'm very felt very well familiar with that side. Oh, yeah. Yeah, and then it's always like, why don't you do this? Uh, you know, either they're intimidated or you know, they just don't really know or they don't want you to know that They don't know and that's why they don't do it. Here's the thing I have worked with hundreds maybe thousands of voice actors and Whether it's through courses that i've taught or through one-on-one coaching or speaking at conferences, you know Wovalcon, Veo Atlanta, whatever I know thousands of voice actors that have done marketing and at this point And I've asked I do not know of one voice actor Who has ever been called out publicly and shamed for sending a marketing email Or sending a linkedin request or following a potential lead on instagram or whatever Like I don't know what we think is going to happen But nobody is going to take out a billboard on the side of the freeway And slap your picture on it and say this lunatic sent me a marketing email Can you believe the audacity of this person like I don't we I don't know what we think is going to happen But like they're already not hiring you you have nothing to lose send the dang email Make the connection request post the video on tiktok.  Somebody laughs at you. Yeah, but maybe they laugh at you and then they tell your friends and then Or they tell their friends and then their friends watch the video and then one of their friends happens to be a video producer Who then reaches out to you and hired like you don't know right? We always assume the worst-case scenario The worst-case scenario never happens, right? No, that's true and and chances are you're not going to hear anything And if you do hear anything It's probably something positive because somebody saw what you said It's a complete stranger If they don't respond to my email. It is not going to hurt my feelings. I didn't know them anyway, right? So get over yourself and send the dang email Wow, that There's a there's a cold nugget right there. People got to follow that one So after you've done all this And you've made some cold calls and you've set out some emails and you've made a few tiktok videos And perhaps you've targeted them to certain areas or two specific people How important is follow-up? I think anybody who's ever looked for a job and they applied and they following up is very important How important is it when you know in doing a voiceover work? Follow-up is probably the next most important thing and I guarantee you that it is where most voice actors are leaving money on the table I I did a coaching session with somebody this week And we talked about he was you know, I'm a very gifted voice actor very talented Has worked with some big name clients, but was just going through a drought and I said, all right Well, let's look at your database of of your prospects and your clients When's the last time that you reached out to any of these clients that you've previously worked with and he'd never done it And I said, all right.  He says mark. I need to talk to you. I got a problem Like what's your problem? He's like, what do you do when you have too much work? That's all it took he went from having nothing on monday To having more jobs lined up than he can handle on tuesday just because he followed up We assume that if we send one email Or we send one connection request on linkedin that that's all it's going to take or We send the email we we have the interaction on social media. We get a positive response Dan your demos sound great. We love you We definitely know that we've got some projects that we would love to work with you on some time And then what do you do?  We like George We're gonna hire George because George is who we're thinking about right now, right?  They're gonna see me on youtube or they're gonna see me on instagram or linkedin or they're watching right now Right, like they're they're remembering me. This is part. Why do you think we're here right now mark? Why do you think you've been doing this for a long time? This is the follow-up strategy right people don't forget you and that's why when they need tech They come to you guys because you're who they're thinking of because you're there in front of them all the time The follow-up strategy is so key You cannot let them forget you because they will go with the person who they're thinking about at the time And if that's not you you just lost the job Absolutely once again, we're talking with mark scott about marketing for your vio business Again, want to remind you voiceover is an entrepreneurial business It's not show business unless you're in show business and those people are already in show business It's it's a totally different thing the successful people are the ones that are doing this kind of stuff Now once you start doing all these things and you have perhaps a couple of different irons in the fire when you're doing your marketing You you you talk about you know cold methods of doing this. How do you keep track of How you're doing with these sort of things. I think you call it, you know cold marketing metrics What's that all about? I think that when you're doing any of these strategies I do think that it's important to track the data to a certain degree because if you send 100 emails to Cold leads so you know you did that search for corporate video production on on google And you got your 1.4 billion results and you reached out to the first 100 companies that came up in the google results If you don't get a single response There's a problem and that problem could be your email It could be the person that you sent the email to It could be a problem with your website. It could be a problem with your demos It's hard to say but if we know that you got zero responses We know that there's a problem and we can try to fix it So I will sit down and I will look at it and say, okay, you know what? Here's what I think let's try wording your email this way And so then we change up the email now go send another 100 Well now this time you write me back and you say, okay, well out of the 100 I got about a 15 percent response rate. I'm like, all right. That's a lot better. So we've we've improved We got 15 responses where before we got zero So I do think that it's important to track some of those metrics to a degree Just to figure out whether or not what you're doing is working because the last thing you want to do is sit down and Send a thousand emails and never get a response because the email was bad, right? We want to fix it before it gets to that point And so that's where I think don't obsess over the data But I do think that if you're doing cold email marketing I always say that you want to see at least a 15 to 20 response rate Now that's not specifically a 15 to 20 higher rate That's a 15 to 20 response rate. So on 100 emails 15 to 20 people are going to write back to you if you're around there You're probably doing okay And if you are really targeted with your messaging and if you're sending a really great email and you've got really killer demos You know, maybe you get that number up to 25 or 30 percent Absolutely Once again, we're talking with mark scott if you've got a question throw it in the chat room a couple people thrown them in there And uh, we're going to continue our conversation talk a little bit maybe about some content strategies for social media But right now we're going to take a break and we'll be right back on voiceover body shop with mark scott This is bill radner and you're enjoying voiceover body shop with dan lennard and george widham v obs dot tv Well, hello there I bet you weren't expecting to hear some big voice announcer guy on your new orientation training for snapchat. Were you This is virgin radio Well, okay. We're not that innocent. There's genes for wearing and there's genes for working Dickies because i ain't here to look pretty. She's a champion of progressive values A leader for california and a voice for america. It's smart. It's a phone It's a smartphone, but it's so much more. It's a the files are ready. Don't forget to pick up the eggs What time is hockey practice? Check out this song. It's the end of the road for red When hope is lost the i8 from bmw Who said saving the planet couldn't be stylish Hey, it's j michael collins.  I think they speak for themselves, but I will give you my email It's j michael at jmc voiceover dot com now if they will stop waxing this mustache for a minute. We'll get back to the show A domestic bliss now as a voice talent You know that running a voiceover business with family around can be quite a challenge How do you manage the need for quiet with the noise others in your household make? Voice over essentials by harlon hogan has the answer. 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That's vo heroes dot com slash accents Before time began there was vobs dot tv watch or else All right, we're back talking with mark scott, you know harlon hogan wanted me to mention something So if uh, you know, if you like the sign the the voiceover, uh Sign that he has the special multicolor vo Voiceover sign If you want one, he's running a contest right now And because we you know in that commercial we talked about the different codes you could use for you know, you know, I'm recording I'm doing this All I can remember is yellow. It's cocktail time And that's always the one that makes sense to me But if you if you write to uh to terry who's uh terry lee who is you know works with him They're having a contest if you would like to win A voiceover sign from voiceover essentials write to terry at terry dot lee at voiceover essentials dot com and tell them what your code is What depending on the color that you would use on your sign? And They're looking for the most creative one And the most creative one will win a free sign. So harlon just wanted me to tell you that All right. All right back with mark scott right now We got a bunch of questions and uh, we'll get to those right now. So uh, george from the top First one in the queue is from jim mcnicholas and youtube chat Um, he says mark, where would you prospect to get a bunch of new clients? Any interesting places to prospect? I mean, we already talked about cold calling, but uh, What are your places of favor? I think part of it depends on what you're looking for. So if i'm looking for e-learning For example, i'm probably going to spend a lot of time on linkedin I've had very good success on linkedin in that genre Uh, if you're looking for something in the character space, maybe you want to do Video games or animation or something like that I would probably spend some time in twitter because that's a spot where there's a very active community in that genre And so I think that's part of it is it depends a lot on the the type of work that you're looking for I do think I mean for me linkedin is probably one of my favorite places to go And and build relationships with people because ultimately that's what marketing is is building relationships But I think there's a lot of good opportunities to be found in that platform. So it's definitely my favorite I would say All righty. Yeah now from the one and only rhymes with orange fred north. What's that one george? Fred north says question 99% of my work is retainer based with radio and tv stations Build on email marketing. I really audition or market to anyone else It's a good living, but I'd like to expand my horizons. What are your top five areas to market? And what is the proper approach? So Kind of dovetailing a wide question I think it's important your fault the floor is yours I think it's an important question because one of the things that I will say when you've got 99% of your work coming from one specific genre is that you run the risk that if anything ever happens in that space I mean, look what is more volatile than radio? I mean anybody that's been I mean I always say that you have not had a successful radio career until you've been downsized by a conglomerate At least once I think that's the way that it has to work, right? So You got all your business wrapped up in radio And all it takes is for one company to sell out to another and there goes half your client base, right? So it's expanding out to having a couple of different areas to work and I think is really key I mean, I love e-learning. I think there's a lot of money to be made in e-learning. I think that it is a growing genre I think a lot of people are worried that the robots are going to take over e-learning And I think to a degree that will happen on the lower scale of e-learning But I still think that there's going to be a place for a lot of years going forward for a really professional voice actor to To narrate and do a lot of courses. So that's a genre that I think is really good I think corporate narration is another area We you know, we talked earlier in the show about video is exploding, right? And so all of these companies that Are have used video in the past that are only going to use it more and companies who haven't tried it are Going to be more willing to try it And so I think there's plenty of opportunities in that space and the nice thing about that is that it's really easy To go out and get on your own, right? I mean, I could tell you go get the national commercials There's big paydays there But there's also gatekeepers around a lot of that stuff So if you're looking specifically for what can I go get on my own a lot of non-broadcast stuff Corporates explainers e-learnings all of those types of things. I think are really good areas And I think there's going to be opportunity in automotive I know that that's a sector that was just crushed hard From from covet and you know the chip shortages and all of that sort of stuff But I think it's an area where it's going to start to bounce back. I think advertising is going to start to happen there I think you're seeing now Ford has just announced its suite of electric vehicles gm has announced a bunch of electric vehicles Like that's an area where I think there's going to be a lot of new advertising opportunities So, you know dealerships might be a place that you could go and look for So I think there's a lot of spaces where you can go and find voiceover work on your own for sure Absolutely Jim McNichol is Watching on youtube mark talk about how to use social stuff like Twitter linkedin facebook and instagram and those are all very different platforms and I I imagine they probably require different strategies We mentioned a second ago that you you use them you fragment how what you market where depending on where the best platform for the genre, right? I think each one of those platforms offers different opportunities I mean linkedin so far Dear lord, please keep it that way It has still remained a professional network for professionals looking to connect with other professionals every every once in a while It feels like somebody starts to try to degrade it into facebook territory, but it usually bounces itself back, right? Yeah, so, you know linkedin is still very much a professional network So i'm very cognizant of that audience when i'm posting content on linkedin and making sure that it's more professional business oriented Business orient and entrepreneurial stuff like that, right? Instagram is a place where people get to know me on a more personal level I mean if you ask a hundred voice actors who are familiar with me They're going to tell you something about the red socks dr. Pepper or barbeque, right? And then they know that because they've probably seen me share that stuff on my instagram platform So do I talk about voiceover on instagram? Of course I do Do I share some of my coaching stuff on instagram? Absolutely, but do I sprinkle in my life throughout? Absolutely, I do because again, you know, I said earlier marketing is about building relationships How do you build relationships? You give people a chance to get to know you to get to know the authentic you? I mean, I can't tell you one of my best e-learning clients Like i'm talking like a healthy five figure e-learning client is from the new england area And we connected because of our love of the red socks like I didn't have to sell the guy Voiceover we just started talking baseball and then the opportunity presented itself, right? So using some of these platforms to give people a chance to get to know you a little bit better You know twitter we talked earlier twitter's a really got a really really active community in the in the Character animation gaming, you know that whole space and so Building out your network accordingly to to get connected to those people and find those opportunities would be a really smart way to Use a platform like that. So it's just trying to a big part of it is figuring out Who's the audience that you're trying to reach and what platform are you most likely to be able to reach them on? Well, this one came from jackie lin. I already know the answer and you because you've been giving it to us the last 10 minutes But she asked how important is linked in clearly? It's uh for e-learning. It's extremely important Yeah, I do think for e-learning for corporate for explainers I mean even commercial you can find those opportunities there. I just again because it's a professional network The nice thing about it is that people aren't surprised when you connect with them to talk about business Business to business. Yeah to be to be a place, right? Yep 100% And she also asked do you do do you do demos? Is that in your bailiwick at all? Absolutely not There are people that are so much smarter and more qualified than me for for demos. Actually, you know, it's funny You want to talk about good marketing? The j michael spot that ran in this episode here this last break He said you probably think i'm going to try to sell you a demo, but they really sell themselves That's marketing right there. And that's what I tell voice actors Your job is to get people to your website to listen to your demos. And if your demos are good You won't have to sell them anything You'll just have to work out the finer points of the contract, right? I'm counting on the quality of my demos to do all of the selling for me So I don't have to be a sales guy. I just need to be a marketing guy that gets people to listen to those demos Absolutely Jim Mcnicholas asks and this this is really important too because we were talking about metrics before Um, and this this is probably where you get it from Which of the thousands of CRMs do you recommend for voiceover? I mean, what's your favorite clearly what you like might not be what somebody else likes This kind of goes back to what's the marketing tactic that works and my answer was the one that you will use My favorite CRM for voice actors is the one that you will use For me, I'm a nimble guy and that was I I'm one of those people that I could have literally flushed a year of my life down the toilet deep diving into the top 25 CRMs and looking through every feature and benefit of every one of them comparing them back and forth Trying to decide here. Yeah, right trying to just and then at the end of the year I'd been like I still don't know And so literally This was at a woevo con actually Uh, somebody was teaching a class on nimble at that point in time and I was like, all right, that looks good I'm just gonna pick that one and I'm just gonna make it work for me or get to a point where I decide it doesn't And I saved myself a year of anxiety and stress and and you know researching and deep diving into everyone And so I've been using nimble now for probably Five or six years maybe and it does everything that I need it to do I mean, there's a lot of really good CRMs that are out there. Most of them do basically the same stuff But you know, we talked about the importance of follow-up strategy earlier You can't I don't think you can have an effective follow-up strategy without a CRM system in place because Unless you're I mean genius level I can't remember all of the people and I can't remember when I talked to them last and when I need to talk to them again And so I need my CRM system to do that for me Yeah, does that generates, you know reminders for you and that sort of thing? Yeah, absolutely Most CRMs will give you the ability to build in reminders or Some of them like nimble has an automated reminder cycle that you can set people I want to contact them every 30 days or you know every Every quarter or every year or whatever and so you can build in a lot of those reminders Automatically then you sign into your CRM in the morning and you're like, oh Here's a list of people I need to contact today and then you reach out to them Do they do a good job of the emails making it into people's inboxes versus getting spam filtered or showing up in You know, I've had I've had a great right I've definitely had pretty high success rate with it because it does use my email address So the email shows up as being from market mark scott voice over dot com I'm also very careful though Like a lot of CRMs will give you the ability to send group messages And if you're sending a group message through a system like MailChimp You can email 2000 people at one time and there are protections that are built in place To to allow you to kind of drip those 2000 emails out If you're doing it at a CRM some of them aren't set up for that the same way And so if you do a big group message you run a lot higher risk of maybe getting triggered to spam And so I just limit the number, you know rather than sending out a group message to 100 people at one time I might do 25 monday 25 tuesday 25 wednesday 25 thursday, right? So I still get 100 out, but I save myself the potential of trip and spam filters and stuff And do you use any other third party tools for social media stuff or just the native platforms themselves? I have played with a whole bunch of different platforms for social media. Uh, I have tried Zoho has a social media manager. I've tried post planner. I've tried hoot sweet Um, oh man canva. I've used a bunch of different ones. The one thing that I found consistently across the board was When I would post to my social networks from a third party I would not get nearly as much organic reach As if I posted directly in the platform itself So if I go into canva and I create a graphic in canva and I have canva Send that graphic to facebook I will get this much organic reach But if I download that graphic from canva go into facebook myself and then post it natively in the platform I might get this much organic reach And so that's the one thing that I seem to find Over and over regardless of which one of those tools that I used and so I'm at a point now where I just I'd rather just take the couple minutes and post it natively to each one Just to know that i'm getting better reach All right great. Yeah All of this is is golden. I'll tell you right now Uh question from marybeth scriven george What has to do with what we were just talking about and sending out emails. What's that one? Are there templates out there for appropriate wording for effective emails? So how can you get some help and what's really funny is The last name scriven scriven. There's a app called scrivener for better writing. Yes So I know that's a weird coincidence, but it's just what I saw that missing an ER there Yeah, yeah, I've heard of that before if you want to write your book. That's the app that your screenplay or something, right? Yeah Um, I mean there are lots of different places you can get templates from I sell templates as well I think the biggest thing is Keeping them short. That's that's a big part of it I think that email marketing is so much better when it is done on an individual basis Which I know seems counter-intuitive most people would rather just write a generic message blitz it out to 100 people And see what sticks My whole thing is if I take the time to write the email for each individual with a certain portion of it being a template I know that I'm going to get my open rates a lot higher, right? We talked about tracking the data earlier If you send a generic message to 100 people you might get one or two responses But if you send a more personalized email to 100 people, that's where you might get that 20 or 25 responses And so I obviously want to get my numbers up. So I think making sure that the email is is short Is a big part of it. I think making sure that there's an element of personalization is a big part of it and I think the other thing is We tend to talk about ourselves I'm a voice actor. I can do this. I can do that. I have this microphone I have this studio. I have source connect blah, blah, blah, blah What you need to do is you need to write All of those how do you write those things in a benefit for the recipient? So If I tell somebody I'm a full-time voice actor, they're like big deal But if I write in an email that I'm available for quick turnaround and can provide scripts in Four hours or less. I just that speaks to the client Full-time doesn't mean anything but quick turnaround that means something, right?  But if I say I can deliver you clean audio that you can instantly drop into your project That speaks to somebody and so it's learning how to take those things that you have that Make your business good, but writing them in a way that shows the benefit to the recipient Yeah, they went on the solutions. Yeah, I don't know how you got to the solution I use the strongest ca glue. Yes Interesting question here from Peggy at wood. What about using a stage name? Does that impact building a network? I would prefer people not know my personal information I always find that one kind of weird, but what do you think about that? Mark scott's not my real name Okay, well there you go There you go No, that's I mean for me that was that was that was a radio thing actually actually was this television When I went into television, I went into the booth. I went into the voiceover booth to record my first tv show And it was going out national across canada in the united states and my producer comes walking and he's like By the way, did you want to use your name and I was like, oh, I never even thought about that We should probably change that up because I don't want everybody in you know national audience So I mark we like literally on the spot. I was like mark scott. Yeah, that sounds good. Let's go with that So I used it like that's literally it happened in like 12 seconds in the booth as we were about to record And I've stuck with it ever since and I don't think it ultimately makes any difference I mean my real name is on my invoices so that my clients, you know, if they write me a check They can put my real name on it. But I mean for me, I don't know. It's never been an issue I just burst the bubble and everybody knows it's not my real now everybody's gonna be googling trying to figure out What is mark scott's real name? We're having a little contest on that so right to us and my real name is a secret. I'm not telling you Yeah, that's Yeah, it's a good question because I totally understand that from a privacy standpoint. It's like I get that 100% Yeah, yeah, I remember once I was at a rival radio station while I was still working with the other one And I went with my middle name and went by dan roberts And you know, did I keep that job? No, but that's a whole other story Um Nobody in radio gets to keep their job. Dan come on No, that's true. They as you as I like to say we're going in another direction. Yes One of my favorites george. What's this last question from joe voice over from joe voice over When emailing what type of job titles are we looking to send to avoid the middle man? So who who who do we want to approach? In our I guess assuming cold emails. It's a great person that does this That's a great question and I think it's going to depend again on the genre that you're going after And so if you're looking at contacting advertising agencies in the commercial space, you might be looking for a creative director If you're looking at contacting people in the e-learning space You might be looking for an instructional designer or an e-learning developer If you're looking to contact somebody in the video production You could be looking for a video producer. You could be looking for an executive producer You could be looking for a production manager possibly, you know If you're in the radio imaging you're probably looking for a program director So a lot of it depends entirely on the the type of work that you're going after the one thing that I always hope for is Don't ever let not knowing who to send it to keep you from sending the email because best case scenario If you pick that what feels like the most obvious choice and you get it wrong You can always hope that they're going to either forward it to the correct person Or they're going to respond to you and say, you know, I don't do this But so and so does and now you know, it's better to get a reply saying that's not the right guy Then just nothing into the void and then you're never hearing anything. Yep Exactly. Well mark, this has been Amazing how fast it goes by when you got lots of great information to to give out there We really appreciate you coming on if people want to go to your website. Where do they go? Oh, there it is Right there. Or calm. That's the that's the podcast the podcast comes out every week All business and marketing related and I mean my whole thing is just giving you Really actionable practical advice. None of the fluff and crap that you don't need but you know Here's actual strategies to try things to do things to experiment with Covering a broad range of business and marketing topics So that's the that's the podcast is view open or calm wherever fine podcasts are given away for free All right, we'll probably find ours there too mark. Thanks again for being with us and stay warm stay healthy And keep that snow blower lubricated and ready to roll I'm hoping I'm done with it now for the rest of the year like one good snow storm. Okay, that's enough You know it runs put it away. Yeah All right. Take care mark. All right. We're gonna take it We're gonna take a break here and we're gonna finish up this particular segment right after this So don't go away. We'll be right back Yeah, hi, this is Carlos Ellis Rocky the voice of rocko and you're watching voiceover body shop 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 dot 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 dot 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 dot com has other great resources Like their practice script library and other resources to help your voiceover career flourish Don't try it yourself.  It's that time in the show where we talk about our long time sponsors and friends source elements the creators of source connect and a lot of other tools One of the things you want to keep in mind when using tools like source connect is There's a lot going on behind the scenes to make it work It's not like a typical app that you just install and run and send files Like we're used to things that have been much more simple to use like twisted wave It's an application that has an entire back end behind it a server Network and a support team to keep it running And keep that in mind It's a it's a challenge at times to keep everything running tip top shape and it requires Some patience to get it running. So if you're interested in getting source connect I highly highly recommend either working with their team or You can also get support directly from you know what you that's me George the tech if you need a little extra helping to get yourself over the hump of using Source connect, but that all said they've got tons of training and really great support staff to deal with all your technical issues and help you through The hurdles of getting it running and optimized You know, we don't have ISD anymore. We don't have a phone company to call and support it We have to rely on these new technologies and source elements is there to help you source connect get a trial Go to source dash elements calm get a 15 day free trial and get used to how it works Anyway, thanks for listening.  Well Uh Next week on this very show and by the way mark scott was great That was I knew he would be a great guest and give us the right information that people all need Next week on this show we'll be doing and if you stick around live you get to watch it live tech talk number 71 Believe it or don't it just keeps going on and on who are our donors of the week How to scroll down and read some of these names. Yeah, they're a tag team like we have before sure I'll start with rob rider patty gibbons. Greg thomas Shanna pentington baird. Yes icon productions. That's samartha con don griffith steven chandler sandra man willer robert ledham ant land productions. Shelly avaleno Thomas pinto brian page george widham sort of senior. Yeah, uh, nathan carlson george grand spicer And the one and only lee penny Hey join our mailing list because I think a lot of you probably are watching the show because I sent out the Email right before the show. Oh, that's on tonight. Famous to help. It really does. Um Let's say you're blogging again if you know, I am So chances are if you post something on a facebook group and I have something the same that's more than a phrase or a sentence Probably gonna answer it in blog form. So I'll be blogging about it on my website and then posting it back on facebook because Well, it helps everybody including myself, you know seo and all right the more you blog on your own domain The more your own website the better it helps people find you Yeah, I recommend you do the same spend less time proselytizing on facebook And spend more time blogging and creating useful content and letting people know where to find it right good marketing strategy Uh, we need to thank our sponsors like harlan hogan's voiceover essentials voiceover extra saras elements Vio heroes voice comm dot com. Yes, uh voice actor websites dot com and jmc demos Alrighty thanks to jeff holman for doing a great job in the chat room tonight lots of the chatter in there lots of people in there Uh, sumer lino for getting it done and pressing all the right buttons and making sure that you know We can actually see us and hear us And of course lee pinney for being lee pinney and for being a donor. We really appreciate that Well, stick around don't go anywhere quite yet Because george and i are gonna do our tech talk segment next and if you've got a tech question Throw it in the chat room. That's the that's the advantage of watching the show live tell all your friends Hey, watch the show live. It's more fun that way. Anyway, uh We're here to help you out with your home voiceover studio and your voiceover business So join us here every week for voiceover body shop because you know if it sounds good It is good. I'm dan lennard and i'm george wittem and this is voiceover body shop or vo b s Stay tuned for tech talk. We'll be right back


The most iconic Cajun phrase is les élèvres en roulet. It means let the good times roll, and that really truly expresses the heart and soul of the Cajun culture. I'm Colby Abert, the Cajun Hatter. I build and design custom hats inspired by local Louisiana cultural views. Since I was very young, I've always had a great interest and pride in my culture. My grandfather would always teach me French and tell me about our ancestors' family names, where we came from. I was working in the film industry as a costumer, and that cultivated my interest in fashion. I've always been a creative and artistic person, and so I had this desire to express myself, and for me, the hats became that avenue. So in the beginning, I really focused a lot on developing and cultivating the know-how. How was I going to make a hat? And also figuring out what aspects of my own nature was going to put into this business. This is the first hat that I ever made, and working on my first hat was a truly phenomenal experience. The feeling of grabbing the felt and stretching it over that block for the very first time. For me, it really empowered the way that I felt about the future of this as a career. In this particular hat, in the beginning, I branded on the sweat pan, Le Chapeller Accadien, which means the Cajun Hatter in French. And so that's something that is only secretly sort of on the inside of my hats. When I come into my hat shop, I just feel a sense of freedom, and that really is important to me. I'll typically turn the lights on, I'll start to burn some incense, make sure the music's going, and just try to cultivate a good energy and feeling and mood that also contributes to the story that I'm trying to tell here.  I'm not really so concerned about, oh, I need to be the greatest hat maker in the world, or even the greatest hat maker in New Orleans. I'm just concerned about being the best me that I can be, and being true to myself, and working hard on my craft.


Hello I'm Vanessa Moon, CIM course director on this popular one-day workshop. The day is all about how to develop more successful employee communications and engagement programs. How to genuinely engage and motivate employees. We look at what it takes to build a robust internal communications plan and the fit with organisational strategy and leadership and culture. We'll cover the alignment of objectives, focusing on outcomes, appreciating internal audience segments, think about the channel mix and how to show the value of our efforts by using the right measures. We also look at the role of communications during times of change and what often goes wrong and think about what it takes to deliver effective internal communications in a crisis. We get under the skin of helping employees find meaning and feel engaged and see examples of those companies who make organisational purpose and values so powerful, meaningful and personal for employees. Internal communications has risen up the organisational agenda fast with shifts to greater home working and the enormity of change most companies are going through. So the need to bring the right value and make positive impact via internal communications is ever more vital. There's lots of useful guidance, case studies, frameworks and tools to support you in this session. It's an informative, eye-opening, practical day, ideal if you have responsibility for internal comms or indeed touch the subject via a broader marketing role or if in HR or PR. You'll all be keen to discover techniques that win greater employee engagement and unlock ways to strengthen the impact of your communications.


Hi, good morning everybody and welcome to this panel which I think may develop a few sparks as we go along here, if I've got my thinking cap on right here. I want to thank Terry for inviting me, this is my first world policy conference, so I want to thank him for inviting me to what has been a very interesting experience. We've heard a lot of interesting remarks all the way along the line. And I'd like to thank you all for joining us for this panel on the consequences of Trump. Let's see how far we can get before we get as divided as the American political scene is these days. And I, you know, it seems from the first few days here at Marrakesh that we've been talking around a subject that we're now going to talk about directly. It's the elephant in the room. And when I say elephant, I mean, anyone? Yeah, you've got it, Virginia. It's Donald Trump. And I didn't have to say it. He's always been sort of the orange-haired specter behind each one of these panels.  And so I think this morning it'll be interesting for us to see if we can analyze that impact a little bit. As I reflected on the subject, I thought, well, maybe I should look at this sort of geographically. You know, when you look at it a geographic frame, where has Trump had some kind of impact? Where are there some consequences of his three-year-old presidency? Well, it's just like everywhere. Chinese trade war, decoupling, India, the way that Modi was encouraged to go after Kashmir in Syria, what we're witnessing happening right now in Syria, and putting American armed forces in jeopardy along the way, with Iran, the JCPOA, Saudi Arabia, more weapons and American soldiers on their way, American mercenaries, maybe I should say, on their way. Israel, the way Netanyahu has been inspired, and Trump's son-in-law has come up with a rather one-sided Middle East peace plan in Europe, the encouragement for Brexit in Europe, the way he discouraged NATO in Europe, the encouragement of populism. So everywhere you look, and you include South America for that, Mexico and Canada, NAFTA, Japan and the threats of tariffs, North Korea, South Korea, you know, you name it. Everywhere you look, there's something, there's been some effect from Trump. As Thierry mentioned in his opening remarks here, you see the shadow of the White House everywhere. So we have panelists from everywhere who I think will be able to let us know about what they see as some of the consequences of Trump. We have Renaud Girard, who is the esteemed senior reporter and war correspondent for the Figaro in Paris, my colleague. Moto Shigaito, who, Moto is on the Japanese Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy, and he is known well in Japan as the father of Abe Namics. We have, next is Jean-Claude Gruffin, who is my colleague on the American Hospital Board in Paris, and he described himself the other day as a French banker in the United States and an American banker in France, who does both. Joseph Gruffin from Desite, the publisher and editor of Desite, and who else? We've got Lin Chao, Lin being the Chinese representative here on the panel. He is the vice chairman and secretary general of the Shanghai Development Research Foundation, which is an independent Chinese think tank. And finally, at the end, last but not least, John Sawyer, who is on the Newbridge Advisory Council, he's the executive chairman of the Newbridge Advisory Council, and a senior advisor of Chatham House, and more importantly, perhaps he's the former head of intelligence, British intelligence, MI6. So we have a pretty complete panel, and we decided at lunch yesterday, we had such an interesting lunch. We were so taken with our lunchtime conversation that we decided we would try to keep up our brilliant remarks for you today and kind of approach this panel somewhat differently. So I have asked each of our panelists to summarize in three words the first three years of Trump what their impressions are, what they would say, how would they react in just three words. So, you know, your three words, please. In three words only, after three years of Trump, what consequences do we have on the world? Well, we have a close-up between Russia and China. OK. Motto. Yeah, I just like to just emphasize only one thing about what I call the globalization dilemma, three lemma. I mean, the globalization and democracy and sovereign national sovereignty. That's three are very much related and maybe very convenient way to look at what happened now. OK. George Clarke. Jim, I give you two versions. You pick the one you want. The first one is unpredictable, erratic, versatile. That's the individual. And then on the policy side, a very consequential presidency. Very consequential presidency. Yeah. Maybe you can explain that a little later on. Joseph. In French, plus a change, meaning there's a lot more continuity between Trump and his predecessor Obama than meets the eye and that will continue even if we have a democratic administration in 1921. Edward Shaw. Three words I want to use. The first one is ignorant in foreign trade and a global supply chain. Second is stubborn or you may call persistent. The last one is impracticable. Unpredictable. And John, the view from Britain. Well, it's not so much a view from Britain, it's a view from me, but it's... I think the first striking thing about Trump is his approach to business and his deregulating style. I think we should acknowledge that as a significant shift from his predecessors. So deregulating is the first. The second, and you've described it, his approach to the world is disruptive. And the third, I think you have to say, is he's damaging. Damaging to the global public goods. All in all, I would say kind of a negative assessment of the Trump three years. There are few maybe positives in there. I could see maybe a few positive signs, but not particularly positive for Mr. Trump, I don't know how many Trump voters we have on the panel. But in any case, so let me just begin the discussion and feel free to jump in and disagree with each other.


TfNN, headline, News Update. Hi folks, Basel Chapman here for the Tiger Financial News Network, 11am market update, down's down 575 at 32,326. The 32,272 level, of course that left side low that we've been talking about as key support, will it hold this week or will it just go right through, that's going to be very important. The S&P at this particular moment is also down sharply, down's down 1.7, the S&P's down 2.5 at 4,018. Much weaker, took out that left side low and we've actually gone to the 4,017 level right now. That is just not good. Any turnaround by the end of the day has to see the volatility index which is at 34.59, start to break under 34 and then go down to the low 33s as the Dow comes back to it. At least it can't do anything unless it can get to a minus 220 after 220 this afternoon. We're looking at the QQQ also very, very weak, even weaker now, it's down 9 at 299.96. Key things are the crude oil is pulling back very sharply, crude oil is down 5 at 104.64. This should be giving some relief to the general market. The TLT, the TLT which is bonds and I've discussed this a moment ago at 113.45, this is the key moment where the bonds have to show some kind of upward movement so that yields can start to come down the next two days or so. It's kind of important and we're looking at the Bitcoin, Bitcoin is down sharply. I've been very negative on Bitcoin for a while. It's down 3,500 at 32,425. Even more important when we're looking at all these different aspects, what we've got to consider that, let me just do this right now, that key stocks, and let's go just for now as a generic thing, the ARKK, which is the ARK Innovation Fund at a lower low now. It's getting close to the low that was made back in 2020, I think it was down in the 30-something area. So we're watching this very closely because it's come back 33 round number low, March of 2020. It runs up to 125 and it's now trading at 42. Until you start to see signs that the very weakest stocks are starting to find some kind of a bottom and that some of the stocks in the big caps that have held very well are actually starting to move higher, I don't think we can get a rally that is significant in terms of weekly chart patterns. These big sharp moves to the upside, yes. We'll see what happens as I say. Day is young. Handing over to Larry Pizzerento who has his webinar. We'll come tomorrow. Thank you very much for joining us today. Thank you for that. Have a good start at nine. Tommy Jr., thanks, Mark. Have a great day.


Analytics is being used throughout higher education. It can help colleges and universities advance institutional goals, strengthen student outcomes, improve quality and efficiency, and enhance teaching, learning, and research. EDUCAUSE's showcase on analytics offers two lessons. Let's explore them, learn how to act on them, and put them in context. We've been working on analytics for over a decade, and yet in many ways, we're still struggling to build good foundations. In their recent EDUCAUSE review article, Laura Jones and Steve Burrell highlighted three challenges that you may find familiar. Everything takes longer than expected, staff will balk at adopting new processes, and prioritization is hard. How can we hope to get to more advanced analytics tools like artificial intelligence when we're stuck pouring the foundation? And in fact, a recent quick poll concluded that we're just not ready to adopt AI. About two-thirds of respondents reported that institutional deficiencies to support the adoption and maintenance of AI are the main challenges to using AI at their institutions. We need to replace our straw houses with strong brick houses. Where to start? EDUCAUSE has developed an analytics maturity assessment that you can take to identify your opportunities to improve. The rubric-based assessment will help you see the activities and capabilities that can strengthen your analytics programs. The self-assessment will help you create your blueprint, but how do you build that brick house? Learn from others. A new case study from Drake University describes how IT and IR leaders focused on meaningful data adoption by asking key decision makers what problems they were facing and what data outputs would help address those problems. And the article by Jones and Burrell describes the data governance journey at Northern Arizona University. What else has our showcase taught us? Well, it's easy to get lost on the journey from data to insight to action. At least we know now how important it is to put data to use, but there are a lot of ways to go wrong. The emphasis is on big data these days, but less may actually be more. There are many sources of bias in data, using past data to make decisions about future choices can prevent us from breaking out of the frame of the past and taking a new direction. That's little help if we want to support traditionally underserved groups. Our quick poll on AI found that concerns about ethics related to AI and about algorithmic bias pose significant challenges to adopting AI. And it's people who will use the data to act. Elena Zady offers thoughtful advice on how to avoid the perils of AI and on which ethical issues to consider. Her advice applies to analytics and data use beyond AI. Jack Seuss advocates for thoroughly understanding the data and how it led to recommendations rather than reflexively adopting algorithmic results and giving them to students or others to act on. It's people who will be applying analytics. That means we need strong leadership as well as committed capable staff. As Colleen Carmine says, we need to define the characteristics of a good practitioner in analytics. And so we've learned two lessons from Educa's analytics showcase. Where do we go from here? The 2021 IT issues report suggests three scenarios for higher education. Let's apply them to analytics. Each scenario offers a different path for action. Institutions on the restore path for analytics will begin a data governance program to manage data and analytics at the institutional level and focus on the highest priority decisions they want to use data to inform. Evolving from where the pandemic has left us may lead institutions to focus on creating standard processes and policies to ensure data are clean, used consistently and not misused. Those institutions will also focus on training the institutional workforce to understand and apply data more effectively. And those committed to using analytics and data to transform their institutions and to helping lead the way for higher education will recognize that analytics is integral to digital transformation. They will take an enterprise architecture approach to their analytics foundations and they'll ensure their DX and analytics efforts are part of a larger transformational agenda.