← Everyday VOpreneur® with Marc Scott
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- [00:01]
Mark Scott
Let's talk about software.
- [00:04]
Podcast Host/Announcer
You're a voice actor. You're an entrepreneur. You're a Veopreneur. Welcome to the Everyday veopreneur podcast, your guide through the business of voiceover.
- [00:14]
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- [00:44]
Mark Scott
Hey, it doesn't suck.
- [00:46]
Podcast Host/Announcer
Not as funny as Conan, not as cute as Seth Meyers, not as smart as Colbert. But he's one of us and that counts for something. Here's Mark Scott, the original everyday Veoprene.
- [00:58]
Mark Scott
Hello and welcome to the Everyday Vopreneur podcast, your guide through the business of voiceover. I'm Mark Scott, the original everyday Vopreneur, back with another summer series episode. What's the summer series? These are quick hit episodes designed to be short, sweet, to the point. One good piece of actionable, practical advice that you can apply to your voiceover business and then get you back off to enjoying the summer and all the things that go along with it. So this week we are going to talk about software. Now, there are standard pieces of software that every voice actor knows. You've got to have your daw, right, your digital audio workstation. You've got to have a solution like Microsoft Office or Google Workspace or Apple's work apps, you know, pages, numbers, keynote. There's all kinds of software that you know you have to have. But there's a couple of things that maybe you're not thinking about, and those are some of the ones that I want to share with you today. I've got five pieces of software that have become absolutely essential to my voiceover business. But they are things that I maybe didn't think about when I was first starting out. In fact, some of these software solutions are things that I hadn't even implemented into my business until probably the last couple years. So that's what I want to give you today. Five pieces of software that I think are worth investigating because they may be something that you want to incorporate into your voiceover business first and foremost. Number one on the list is is backblaze. Now, if you have ever found yourself in a situation where you've experienced a hard drive failure or something tragic and dramatic has happened to your computer. Maybe there's been a software meltdown in your computer, a hardware meltdown in your computer. Maybe you've been hacked and you've experienced a loss of files through something like a ransomware attack, then you probably know how important it is to have a good backup system in place. But if you've never experienced any of those things, you may not necessarily be thinking about a backup. Because for most of us, we don't think about backing up until we are in a situation where we need a backup. I have had a computer blow up on me before. Not like physically explosion, but just, you know, fried. I have had two external hard drives fail on me in the past before. And so I know how important it is to have a backup. One of the reasons why I like Backblaze is because it is a cloud backup. And so I feel that much more secure that if something physically happens in my home or if something physically happens to my equipment, I know that there is a backup in the cloud. I do use an external hard drive with Apple Time Machine that's in my office. I also have a secondary external hard drive that I regularly backup key files to. But then I have a backblaze subscription which is backing up all of my computer every single day. It's constantly an ongoing thing backing it up to the cloud. And one of the things that I really, really like about Backblaze is that I have access to my files all the time. So if I'm traveling, for example, and I need to get access to a specific voiceover file for a client, I can do that through backblaze without having to download an entire backup of my computer. I can actually access individual files, which is really nice. So if you do not have a backup system in place, it is definitely something that you should be thinking about. That is an insurance policy for your business. You have so many important files on your computer. Think about it. You've got your voiceover files, you've got client files and emails, you've got financial data, all kinds of stuff. Everything is there on your computer. You want to make sure that you are protecting it. And with Backblaze for about, I think it's around $7 a month. That's a pretty affordable solution. So that's number one on the list, backblaze. Whether you choose that or some other kind of cloud based backup software, I think you've got to have it. Number two on the list is waveapps and the website is www.waveapps.com. it was actually My accountant that turned me on to Wave Apps and he did it. I want to say, man, I bet you it's been five or six years now since he turned me to Wave Apps. It's a really great invoicing and accounting software. It's very, very intuitive, very easy to use. And the best part about it is that it is free. And because they have other monetization models built into their business, I think the basics of what we're doing on waveapps, if you know, you and me as a voice actor, the basic things that we would be doing will always be free, which is really nice to know as well. It allows me to send invoices, it allows me to accept credit card payments. Of course there is a processing fee for that, but there's a processing fee if you're using Stripe or PayPal or any of those other services as well. So for me, I just, you know, consider that cost of doing business, but also I consider it ease of use for myself and my customers. It also allows me to keep track of all of my expenses. And so at the end of the year, my accountant logs in to my Wave account, gets whatever reports he needs, does my tax return. It is simple, it is easy. And by the way, did I mention that it is free? So if you are looking for a really great system for doing invoicing for your business and being able to track all of your expenses and something that is friendly for your accountant to use at the end of the year as well, and being able to process credit card payments directly through your invoices, you want to check out WaveApps, the website again is www.number three on the list. I mean, I guess this is technically software, it's cloud based software. I have become addicted to Canva and I haven't decided yet whether it's a healthy or an unhealthy addiction, you know, the jury's still out. But I have definitely become fully addicted to Canva to the point where I actually did spend the money to upgrade to the pro version of Canva as well. And because I wanted access to all of the things. If you are creating content for social media in particular, but even just content creation in general, something like Canva is going to become invaluable to your business. So if I'm looking to create anything graphic, whether that's a picture for Instagram, for LinkedIn, for Facebook, for, you know, any of my social media profiles, you can even create basic videos in Canva. You can create cool stuff for your stories for your reels. So anything that is graphic oriented, you can create it in Canva. YouTube thumbnails, another big one, but also documents, right? You can create slideshows, you can create a resume, you could create a PDF download for your website, you could create a rate guide if you wanted to have something that you could send to your clients. Like anything that is graphic design related, you can do it in Canva. It is exceptionally easy to use. There is one of the largest libraries that I have ever seen in my life when it comes to fonts, pictures, graphics, all of the sort of stuff that you need to do the design. Like, I mean it really is probably one of the coolest pieces of cloud based software that I've ever played around with. And I'm a guy that has used Photoshop for years. I don't even use Photoshop anymore because I basically do everything in Canva because it's so much easier and I love having access to their massive library for all of the design elements that I want. You can do a lot still on the free version of Canva, but if you are doing content creation on a regular basis, I would say spend the money, it's worth it. Because one of the things that I found was you, even though you can do so much in the free version, so much of the library of graphics, images, photos, fonts, et cetera are part of the premium subscription. And so it felt like every time I wanted, you know, I found the perfect font, for example, it was a premium level one. And so I finally just said, this is crazy, I'm just going to pay for it. And it wasn't that expensive. I think it maybe cost me 150 bucks a year. I don't even remember. Doesn't matter. Point is absolutely amazing. And for creating marketing material for your voiceover business, for creating content for social media, absolutely worth every dime. Check that out@www.canva.com. number four on the list is Express VPN. Now the irony of ExpressVPN for me was I signed up for it in it was either January or February of 2020. So prior to the pandemic, I was a voice actor who spent an awful lot of time on the road. In fact, I probably spent about three plus months of the year on the road and traveling for conferences, vacations, visiting family, all of that sort of stuff. And so having a VPN was really nice. A vpn, by the way, if you don't know, is a virtual private network and it's basically a way to secure your connection when you are connected to public wi Fi. Now, I am not an IT guy. I'm not a cybersecurity expert. I just do what people who are smarter than me tell me to do. And people who are smarter than me said you should get a VPN if you're spending a lot of time connected to public WI fi. It's a way to protect yourself, to secure your connection and to secure your device and ultimately your data. So that's what I did. So I signed up for ExpressVPN and even though I haven't been able to do a lot of traveling ever since I signed up, there are still times when we travel to visit family and I'm connected to Hotel WiFi. There are still times when I might be in a restaurant or a coffee shop and I'm connected to public WI fi. Maybe I'm at the mall with my kids. I'm able to connect to the mall WI fi and I'm able to connect more securely. So if you are somebody who travels, whether that's to conferences, vacations, traveling to visit family, or if you're somebody who likes to work out of the office, like I talk often about how nice it is to pick up the laptop and head to the local coffee shop and sit there just for a change of scenery so that I'm not just constantly sitting in my office all day long. If you are someone who is in a situation where you are regularly connecting to public wifi, then something like a VPN would be a really good solution for you again to secure your device and your data. There's a lot of creepy people out there trying to do nefarious things these days on the Internet. So ExpressVPN was the one that I settled on. Been using it for two years. Absolutely love it. I have it on my laptop, I have it on my phone, I have it on my tablet, I have it on my MacBook or my iMac rather than. So all of my devices are now secured with a VPN and the website for that one, www.expressvpn.com. and then the final piece of software that I am going to mention is a CRM. Now I will say that I am a big fan of Nimble. A lot of people know that Nimble is the CRM that I use. Again, it is a cloud based CRM solution, CRM being Customer Relationship Management. This is a way for you to maintain and organize your entire database of lead prospects and clients while making sure that nobody's falling through the cracks, that you're always making regular communication. You're keeping yourself Top of mind. You're, you're not losing track of projects and all of that sort of stuff. So that's what a CRM will do in its most simplistic form. And I'm, I could do a whole other episode about CRM and maybe I will one day, but that's the gist of it. So for me I've chosen Nimble. There are a lot of other options that are out there. You will hear voice actors talk about HubSpot, you will hear them talk about upper level CRM. Gravy for the Brain offers a basic CRM. Bidalgo offers a basic CRM. Voiceover View is another form of a CRM. Close is one that people have talked about in the past. Zoho is another one that people have talked about in the past. So there are a lot of different options that are out there. But if your plan is to do direct marketing for your voiceover business, that is to say that you are going to go out and find your own leads, you are going to connect with those leads, whether it's through email, through in person networking, through social media, through cold calling, whatever it is. If you're going to be maintaining a database of leads, prospects and clients, then a CRM is an absolutely brilliant and I think essential piece of software for your voiceover business. If you would like to give Nimble a shot, you can do that by going to Nimble.com markscottvo that's Nimble.com markscottvo and that's going to give you a free, fully functioning 45 day trial of the software. Play around with it, determine whether or not it's right for you. But I definitely think that a CRM is something that you should be putting into the mix. So there you go. Five pieces of software that I think are essential for your voiceover business. And if you have not incorporated any of these pieces of software yet, maybe while you've got a little bit of time over the summer, maybe that's the time to explore and play around and experiment with some of these different solutions. So again, number one was Backblaze for backing up your computer, a cloud based backup system. Number two was Wave apps for your accounting, invoicing and collecting payments on your invoices. Number three, Canva for your graphic design, any kind of graphic design that you could possibly want. And there is a free version of Canva that you can play around with. I'd encourage you to go check it out. If you've never checked it out before, just be careful, it's one of those rabbit holes that you can fall down and be like, oh, it's been two weeks and I'm still playing with this software and it's so much fun and I love these fonts. And that's kind of what happened to me in the beginning. But that was number three on the list. Number four was ExpressVPN, a virtual private network for securing your device and your data while you're connecting to public WI fi, and then finally a CRM solution. And for me, that was nimble. What is a piece of software that is essential for you and your voiceover business? And I'm not talking about, oh, I use Adobe, I use Reaper, I use whatever. Is there some other piece of software that has become integral to your business, that has become essential to your business that you can't imagine running your business without? I'd love to hear about it. Take a picture of it, share it in your Instagram stories. Tag me as well. Arkscott, thanks so much for listening and I'll catch you on the next one.
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Podcast Host/Announcer
And that's a wrap. Thanks for hanging in. Thanks for hanging out. Want more? Veopreneur? Goodness. Jump online@veopreneur.com.