 Hey, it's Monday once again. And with us tonight on VoiceOver Body Shop, is our good friend Matt Dubois from voiceovers.com. You've got a question for him. Now would be a fabulous time to throw it in the chat room. I said, would you want to get that in here tonight? You don't get to me opportunities like this. That's right. Jump in here in the flesh, you know, driving down the fives, you know, which is always a lot of fun. But we also have tech talk tonight and we've got some cool stuff from everywhere. A lot of topics to talk about. So if you got a tech question, also throw it in the chat room so George and I can address it. Anyway, are we ready to go? Let's make it happen. All right. VoiceOver Body Shop coming up right now. George Wittem, the home studio engineer to the stars, a Virginia tech grad with an unmatched knowledge of all the latest gear and technology in voiceover today. Dan Leonard, the home studio master, a voice actor with over 30 years experience in broadcasting and recording, and a no holds barred myth busting attitude for teaching you how easy it is together to bring you all the latest technology today's voiceover superstars and leading the discussion on how to make the most of your voiceover business. This is VoiceOver Body Shop. VoiceOver Body Shop is brought to you by VoiceOverEssentials.com, home of Harlan Hogan's signature products, source elements, remote connections made even easier. VO to gogo.com, everything you need to be a successful voiceover artist, J. Michael Collins demos, award-winning demo production, voice actor websites.com, where your voiceover website won't be a pain in the butt, and VoiceOver Extra, your daily resource for VO success. And now, live from their super secret multimedia studio in Sherman Oaks, California, here are George Wittem and Dan Leonard. Hey, I'm Dan Leonard, welcome to VoiceOver Body Shop, and time to introduce our guest who's driven all the way from what San Juan Capistrano would wait down there. Practically San Diego as far as we're concerned. But let's talk about it. Our guest tonight, Matt Dubois, is what we happily call an entrepreneur. He saw some needs and an opportunity in our marketplace and has jumped right into what we hope is the right thing when it comes to a system to help us all secure more voiceover work. He first launched VoiceCasting Hub last year to great fanfare, and his latest venture is an entry into the casting site world called Voiceovers.com, which is launching this month. Let's welcome to VoiceOver Body Shop, Matt Dubois. And there he is. Thanks for having me, guys. All right, all that canned applause. That was expensive applause. It was. Anyway, welcome back to the show. Great to have you here. Life Studio audience, too. Yeah, it's wrong, Sarah. Theater of the mind, my friends. Yes. That bottle of water seems to be enjoying. Anyhow, you've been a busy guy. Yes. Now, you started VoiceCasting Hub last year. How has that been going? It's been going pretty good. There was a little bit of challenges launching, and that's an entirely different space than we got into at Voiceovers.com. It's a little more complex dealing with agents and producers and talent. But we kind of found our way a few months in, and every month we've been getting more and more auditions. We're growing at about, geez, almost 10% a month right now since we started giving away auditions to producers on there. That was a big thing we did earlier this year. That's how you kind of seeded it, so to speak. Kind of get the ball rolling. We were giving the first audition away for free for a while and charging per audition, which was kind of the common business model for a site that was out there before that shall remain nameless. The market's changing a lot, and we saw that that business model wasn't working. We said, we need to provide more value and just kind of change a little bit of the revenue model. We started giving away for free, so make it more accessible to casting directors and save a lot of paperwork for producers. They were doing POs just to cast, and then we cut their paperwork in half, and we took a little bit of a financial loss with that. Because of the front end development to make that happen? About 70, 80% of our revenue was from audition postings. In order to, there's another reason we gave it away for free, and that had to do with voiceovers.com and being able to have these two platforms work together and be complementary rather than competitive. So it was okay in letting that revenue go, because I felt we can recoup that somewhere else and we can make it for the greater good of the industry. Well, that's the most important thing. So what prompted you to start a casting site in a vast world of pay-to-play casting sites out there? Well, I appreciate you calling a casting site, because I can't stand the P2P moniker. I always say casting site, casting site, casting site. So thank you. The same thing with voice casting, I just saw a need. I felt that the voice, I mean, I met a lot of voiceover actors in the last year at conferences from Voice Casting Hub prior to, two years ago, I only knew one, Jules, my wife. Hey, you upgraded. All right, man, because last time you were on, it was your girlfriend. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Way to go. Thanks, yeah. I guess the website worked out. So, yeah, I saw a need and talking to all these voiceover actors, I realized that they weren't just actors, but these people were entrepreneurs. Oh, man. That's so true. That's the kind of business it is. It's not what it was 20 years ago. The casting sites out there, I thought were just kind of geared towards voice actors and they didn't serve the entrepreneur. It's only serving one side and these people are so multifaceted. They're not only great talent, they're accountants, they're marketing, they have websites and brands. I mean, these are full-blown business owners. I needed to create a site that saw them as that and treated them that way. I saw some ways that we could help with the rate deterioration as well. So how does it all work? I mean, what's the difference about this particular casting site than say the 500 other ones that seem to be proliferating our entire industry? Well, it's going to be a lot better than all of them out there really. The ease of use is the key. We're really focusing on buyer acquisition. We studied a lot the top really two casting sites that are out there and one of the things that they had in common was they were dominant on Google and in digital marketing. They were very easy to find and very easy for the buyer to use. I figured the best way I could serve talent would be getting them more jobs. Works for me. I think we see some of the casting sites that are talking about this is what we could do for the talent and we're taking care of the talent and almost so much to the point where they've forgot about the buyer and they focus so much on the talent experience that it's hurt the buyer experience. I approached it a little differently and just wanted something that was really easy to use. That's kind of where I started. I got a chance to be the nerd that I am and do this decipher VO thing, which is something I'm excited to get everybody to get their hands on later this week. What's that about the server? What's that? Oh, that's this. That's the that's my chance to really be a nerd. That's an AI-driven rate suggestion tool. Okay, nice. Ready? Everybody's complaining about rates deteriorating and going down and casting sites right now. What I saw was, hey, here's posted from $500 to $5,000. I'm no fool. Somebody tells me I could pay $500 or $5,000. I'm paying $500 and getting the heck out of there. If I'm paying any more, I feel like it's going to be too much. Everybody wants a good value and I wanted to make sure that we led with value. I think if you lead with value, then price is a secondary conversation. I created this wizard that depending on who you were when you registered, if you're a small business owner, a producer, an ad agency, that you'd have a different set of questions that it would ask you. This was an AI bot, artificial intelligence bot that would ask you questions in your language about your project. Depending on the first answer you gave, it would change the second answer. What it was doing is basically it's a bot that's interviewing the buyer and it's cross-referencing a rate card. Then it's just giving them, presenting them with a price. Here's your price. Rather than saying, here's $500 to $5,000. Here's a link to a rate card. Good luck. We said, here it is. It's $900. Check out. There you go. So making it easier. Yeah. Well, that's a huge improvement over, say, a live person playing games with the potential client. This is totally automatic and it sort of takes some of the human out of it, I guess, but at least it's guiding the client in the right direction. Apple did a really good job with, when you're using technology in this way, Apple, I use Apple as example a lot because they do a great job at implementing technology to make things better. Actually, years ago when the RIA was fighting against digital music, Apple found a way to charge more per song and basically eliminate theft. They did that with iTunes. Now they're mostly a media company. In 2007, they stopped calling themselves Apple computers and they're mostly phones and music now. That kind of thinking where they made it easier than stealing. People were willing to pay more than they were before. It's easier than stealing and now artists are making more than ever, arguably, with digital music. Yeah. Now, of course, I still have things for Napster on here. So I know exactly what you're talking about. But they're still not convenient because now that you've got another way of listening to music, unless you figure out a way to get it in there. Exactly. It's, yeah. I'm paying, gladly paying for a service that arguably I was probably able to get for free before because it's easy. It's easy. Yeah. It was 20 years ago that that happened. If you're just joining us here on VoiceOver Body Shop, our guest is Matt Dubois, who is the CTO of voiceovers.com, which is launching this month, a new casting site. And if you've got a question for him, throw it in the chat room and we'll be able to ask Matt that question. Hopefully I'll cover as much as I can, but I know you guys have lots of questions out there. How are you pricing this for the average voice talent for starters? We had an early bid special that's over now, but we're looking at there's an annual fee for $299. And then there's a gold option that's $4,900. And basically the $299 option gets you on the site and gets you access to auditions. The the gold upgrade is a little different than the other casting sites out there in that because I saw these voice talent as entrepreneurs, this is really a marketing upgrade. We have three dedicated staff for the gold, for the gold members. There's the gold memberships limited to 60. And it's basically a company within a company. So there's a essentially a marketing and digital marketing company in voiceovers.com that has 60 exclusive clients. And what are they doing for to help people with their marketing? So there's a lot, you know, we focus a lot on SEO, but we invested in this probably the best domain name you could get. And, you know, that was that's a good start. It was it's not our whole strategy, obviously. But their gold members are able to have public contact information or contact information and their website on their public profile. And we're building up backlinks to it, the their public page. So we're going to drive more traffic to the talents website and get them direct business as well. We're going to highlight them in on the on the top of the web page. So right above the fold, you're going to see like a rotating, rotating banner that it's going to be gold talent. So and so here's their name. Here's a little bit about them. And then here's their profile link. We're going to send that out to buyers in the email. We're going to highlight it in social media. We're basically going to be relentlessly promoting them. And that's really what the gold membership is all about is helping the talent get be able to get a return on investment with marketing. And how's the interface going to work? I mean, if you've got, you know, you've got clients and they're looking for talent, are they just posting jobs? And it's being automatically directed to the people who fit that that profile or what? Yeah, the so most of most of the time, most of the buyers, what they want to do is they don't want to select talent. They just want to post their job. And then we have we're light on the algorithm on the talent selection side. And this is something to focus. I talk about a lot is we're heavy on algorithm on the buyer side. I think, you know, there's not a lot of sites that do this is that we put all all that algorithm work in making it easier to buy and finding the right rate, right? And we put less of this algorithm work in the in the talent selection side. And the reason being is we have limited not just the gold members, but the pro members. And if you it's limited based off projected project volume right now, and it will be limited off actual project volume as the site goes. The if you're if your talent roster size is in direct relation to your project volume, you don't need a lot of algorithms to help you figure out how to invite talent. The the people that have allowed 5,000 10,000 20,000 or 250,000 whatever they say, so they say on their site, you know, they and they have, if you have 15,000 talent and a thousand jobs, you need an algorithm to help you figure out how am I going to balance these jobs, but not enough jobs to too many people. And so they had to create these algorithms to address a problem. They started that they created. So, you know, our approach is why create the problem just totally different approach. How are you going to market this to the people who hire us voice actors? What's your what's your thoughts on that? The well a lot we're doing a lot with SEO. I talk a lot about that. The the two dominant players in the casting site space really are top on on on Google and Bing. And, you know, again, that goes back to why we started with having that domain. I couldn't do with any other domain. It had to be this word. The we have a heavy budget. There's about 80,000 searches for a higher voice over a month. You could check that up on Google Webmaster Tools. If you bought every single first place for every single search, it'll cost you 18 to 22,000 a month. About a quarter million dollars a year. Yeah. So, we put a quarter million dollars in the marketing budget and we will buy first place search for every term in the United every every search in the United States and Canada higher voice over. We will be number one. All right. Period. That's one strategy. Nobody can outspend us because that is the max that somebody can spend equal. Yeah. But there's no more volume. You can't buy up any more space. So, you know, good luck to whoever wants to do that. Putting the money where the mouth is. Yes. The definition thereof. Yes. Wow. How appropriate in this business, too. How are you marketing to people who do what we do? Mostly voice actors. Well, of course, you're here. Yeah. There's sitting in traffic. The oh, there's besides besides the search engine have two full time sales people. And the cool thing about voiceover.com, it's an entirely different experience than voice casting hub. As far as like the front end, the types of buyers that use voice casting are not the same types of buyers that use voiceover.com. All right. And it's not some people ask, you know, is it bigger jobs or smaller jobs or certain types? The it's it really came down to honesty to age. They were high level producers and advertising production houses and ad agencies that wanted something that was more something they actually preferred a simplified casting interface. And there there were some of the people that helped us build the buyer interface or voiceover.com. Generally, it was the baby boomers who really like getting, you know, they're like 40 for 40 fields on a form, right? And they're like, you know, if you put five more, I'll like it 10% more. They really like to, you know, to fill out everything. They're very technical. Generally. And then there's millennial Gen Y and Gen X, who he give them a form that has like 12 fields. And they're they're, they're, you know, sending a message. How can we get this down to 11 or 10? I'm busy, you know, how can we cut down to right? And that's it. One of them is a highly automated and kind of predictive experience. And the other is a very granular and detailed approach. So no, nobody that likes this is going to use that. And so now our salespeople have a, actually have a full spectrum of offerings for every type of voice buyer. Do you want to get, you want to get down to the nitty-gritty or you want to do salespeople are selling both. They're kind of feeling out who it is they're selling to as to what product is better for them based on who they're selling to. You can't push one type of person into the other into another platform. So you know, when we have, we had some agents asking, Oh, are you going to start pushing this? We can't. It's not going to, they're not going to be happy. It's not a good fit for everybody. We can't push people. I mean, we could try, but it's not going to be voice casting hubs staying up. And we're actually putting some cool new features in it. That, you know, I could talk about a little later, but the, and that's why we gave it away for free. So we could really make sure they're complementary and help each other out. Are they integrated in any way? Do they work together or are they really two? Yeah. How do they intersect somehow? They do work together. They're not entirely sharing the same database, but we're able to push a project from one side to the other. You know, a good example is the union projects. We can't do those directly on voiceovers. So we have to push those over. Yeah, to the hub. There's, there's some other more complex projects that require special contracts that we'll need to send over to, to agents. So, you know, there's video game stuff, maybe there's some video game stuff. You know, I, I know about the software stuff. They be getting into like the actual terms that there's a, I have agents and lawyers that know that better. So don't, don't, don't troll me on that part. That's what they're there for. But our guest is Matt Dubois here on voiceover body shop tonight. And again, if you got a question for him, throw it in the chat room. Um, you know, I think one of the questions that a lot of people have had has to do with the ownership of the material that we as voice actors are creating, uh, that, you know, say, I go into my booth, I record something, I send it to a client. Uh, is it running through the, the, the voices, uh, the voiceovers.com site and are you sending it to them? Are you acting as a middleman? Who has possession of that material once it's sent to the client? So all the jobs are submitted through our site and we do collect the payment. Um, and we distributed the payment to the talent. Um, but we don't own, if you're talking about ownership, we don't own, um, any of the content. That's either the talent owns it or the client owns it, right? Depending on obviously the, the type of work. Um, and we actually, um, we just posted our terms of service on our Facebook page, which is not the most exciting move, but we know it's a hot button topic. Yeah. Read the TOS guys. It's really important. It says stuff like we own your firstborn child in perpetuity and stuff like that. But yeah, we've, um, we've, we're proud of the, our terms of service specifically for, um, you know, the con, the content section and, um, we, we encourage people to take a look and, you know, go take a look now. And if you want to quiz me on it live, then go for it. But it is, it is, um, it's very fair. It's, it's nothing like you've seen on some other talent sites where they actually say that they own it, um, in no circumstances do we, um, do we own any of your, there is some language in there that is setting up for voice lease, which is coming out in six months. Um, that's our answer for not residuals for non-union. Um, that's an interesting concept. Yeah. So that's something that, uh, very excited about. We're not able to get that out in the initial release, but, um, sometime towards the end of summer, we're going to be able to offer buyers talent can opt in on this. But, uh, if they opt in, we can offer buyers the ability to license your voice. And then, um, I already have a recurring billing accounting automation software. So we're using some of the code in that and integrating it into voiceovers.com to be able to bill people on a, you know, 13 week or six month, they could license it for six months. So we could help voice talent get recurring revenue. Wow. That's mailbox money. That, that's a really cool concept. I haven't even, nobody's thought of that one before. Yeah. That's different from a retainer. Yeah. That somebody pays into and you, yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. So it's, you know, because everybody in, in so many industries, people are looking at not buying things anymore and right. Yeah. And leasing things or paying monthly subscription, subscription stuff, right? Subscription buying of voice talent in a way, in a way. Yeah. Yeah. Cause, you know, it's, cause some of the, um, you know, even, even some of the paid placement stuff, you know, you're, you're, you're licensing it to them to use for six months. Right. But right now it's like, you have to set a reminder. You have to go do, I mean, there's, there's extra work for you. And as entrepreneurs, if you can just kind of set it and forget it, it rebuilds and you get paid. I love it. Yeah. You know, in this case, we're, we'll be rebuilding for you and you get paid. We're not just keeping all of it, which I've heard is the things that's happened. We won't mention any names. So, but do tell us what, what, what the page structure is and how someone gets paid and, and, you know, what, for all the effort and time and money you've put into it, what, what, how does voiceovers.com work with all this? The, um, so we take, we collect the money up front and, um, the entire entire project. So say it's a thousand dollars. Um, we're going to collect all that upfront. If the, uh, if the buyer is using a credit card, we're charging a 5% project fee. We can't say processing fee, but, um, that's just because there's legal, some states you can't do a credit card surcharge, but we call it a, a project fee. And, um, that's just to cover our credit card processing, which is about 4%. The default option is each act. If they do each act, there's, there's no processing fee or no project fee. Um, so that full thousand dollars gets deposited into escrow. Um, the, the great thing about that is when people pay, they're serious. They're going to hire. So, you know, when they, when they post there, they're ready to take the heck of a lot of the guesswork out of it for the talent. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Do I want to trust this client? Am I, you know, is this going to come together? Do I, should I put watermarks on my auditions for this stuff? You know, I heard, I heard horror stories that, um, on another site that was south of the border that had people posting 40 or 50 jobs and never hiring. So these people were, you know, flat out stealing or using it for demos, which is really just another form of stealing. Well, yeah, that happens in our business. The, yeah, I was, I was going to keep going on how please go out. So there's that, there's that thousand dollars. And, um, then, you know, talent can audition there. They would get, um, the, that minus the 20%. We get a 20% fee on our end for, for the marketing and, uh, liability. Um, the, one of the cool things is we're going to take all the liability from, um, processing. So if they paid with a credit card, um, they could charge back up to six months. Uh, if they do charge back, we're not going to go and take that money out of the talents account. We actually assume 100% of the liability. And, um, so we'll go through the chargeback resolution process and dispute with the bank to make sure we get that. Um, it doesn't happen that much, but, but, you know, but you have a good guaranteed system like this that's going to help a lot. Once again, we're talking with Matt Dubois from voiceovers.com. And, uh, one last question before we start to get, uh, to the break and then some of the questions, which are probably piling up from our, our viewership. Yeah, we're going to view, uh, there's going to be the inevitable comparison to all the other casting sites. How do you, how do you plan to really be different from them? And how do you answer that criticism that perhaps you're just like the rest of them? Depends on what time of day you catch me. And if I've You know, when people ask me how I'm different, I love to, to talk about it. One of the things that, uh, frankly has been frustrating, but I try to deal with it is people just go, how are you not like this person? You know, and they, they frame it in a way of, I need you to defend yourself. That's a tough way to start. It's, you know, I've heard that a lot. The better conversation is, is that like, tell me how you're going to be different. Tell me what you're doing and what you're thinking. I love to, I love to talk to talent and agents and buyers about all the cool things that we're doing to actually make it better. Um, you know, with decipher VO in, in, in making the process for buying even easier, um, with how we're aligning the, you know, our project fees are where we make all our money. Our, our, our membership fees just keep our doors open. It's the support staff, the hosting, the development. Um, we're not making any money on, um, the membership fees. The, um, you know, because we're spending, you know, $20,000 a month on projects, on, on just Google AdWords alone and not even counting the buyer conferences, you need money constantly flowing in to continue to make money. Yeah. The, how we're different is I'm only making, I'm making money when the talent's making money, right? The, our financial interests are aligned. Right. Um, the more projects make us happy. That's the most important thing. Well, the more projects we get, the more money you make, the more projects come in, the more money you make. Right. And then the more money I make, right? Now, if this site was set up, if our company was set up where, um, my world, there's, there's, there's two other top casting sites out there, one of them has the majority of their revenue comes from membership sales. And the other one, 100% of their revenue comes from membership sales. Now their financial interests are are, get more members. Right. Uh, more members will lower your chances of booking. So your financial interests are not aligned. Um, and that's where I thought, that's not, I mean, I see all the talent members as partners. And, um, that's what I thought we could do. There's, there's a way we could do better. That's refreshing. Yeah. Um, and we sent no marketing emails and this was all, we had 2,600 applications so far for 1,000 open spots. And, um, all word of mouth. Right. No advertising, not a dollar spent. And only 1,000 people on a site, the odds of you getting, coming up in a search much better than say the 250,000 others are bragging about. Definitely. All right. Hey, again, if you got a question, throw it in the chat room for Matt Dubois from voiceovers.com here on voiceover body shop and we'll be back with him right after these incredibly important messages. Yep. This is VOBS proven anybody can have a show these days. What question do we get most often? Well, far and away it's, how do I even get started in voiceover? And we have a great answer to that question. Take VO to go goes free getting started in VO class. You heard right. It's free. And it's available online 24 seven at getting started in VO.com. That's getting started in VO.com. 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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 smart phone. 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 Rick. When hope is lost. The I8 from BMW. Who said saving the planet couldn't be stylish? Hey, it's J. Michael Collins. Bet you think I'm going to try and sell you a demo now, huh? I think they speak for themselves. But I will give you my email. It's J. Michael at jmcvoiceover.com. Now, if Dan will stop waxing his mustache for a minute, we'll get back to the show. And we're back with Matt Dubois from voiceovers.com here on VoiceOver Body Shop. Mr. Wittem, have we gotten several questions from our voluminous audience? Indeed, we have actually. I'm starting right here at the top from Sean Cordy on Facebook, on voiceovers.com, I'm assuming. Are there a limited number of each type, or each voice talent type, accepted? Roughly how many of each are accepted, if that's the case? Now, when he says type, I don't know what he's referring to. I don't know if he's referring to male, female, style, genre. That it's a little... But is there any kind of... Well, we've got 50 of this, so we don't want any more of those. Are you doing that? Yeah. I'm not great at talking and speaking, but I'm really good at numbers. What we did is we determined the thousand. That just wasn't the number we picked out of our... Out of thin air, right? We looked at what the searches were, and we made some assumptions based on... Google says if you get all 80,000, you're going to get about 7,000 clicks. If we get like one out of every eight clicks, we're going to get about 1,000 conversions, plus some of the buyers we have from Voice Casting Hub that helped with this. We have a good idea of how many projects we're going to get and what that breaks down to each day. Also, we have data from the Hub. We know... We have a good idea of what the makeup of the projects are. 56% asked for male voices, 44% asked for women voices. Our roster is 56, 44. And we have the data that further breaks down in subcategory. 20-something voices, 30-something voices, Spanish accents, British accents. So we have all these ratios and numbers. And those are actually going to be posted for transparency in your portal. And you'll be able to see what the project ratios are and what the roster, membership roster ratios are. And our goal is to try to keep those close as possible. We don't want to allow a hundred native Mandarin Chinese-speaking people on the platform if I can't give them the work to give them a positive ROI. So absolutely, it's not just limited to 1,000. That number didn't come from thin air. And that number is actually broken down to this many men, this many women, this many accents, this age category. So, yeah, there's a lot of categories that were very saturated early on. And there's people that got... They received some of those waitlist and rejection letters that said, try again in six months. It's full. Yeah, because you'll have attrition. I mean, people will drop off. They're not getting work because maybe they're... But are you vetting people at all? I mean, you want the best people on the site, so... The vetting part was eye-opening experience, too. There was some very experienced talent that thought it was... We weren't really serious about that. And they submitted subpar auditions. Really? Yeah. And when we denied them, they even called and said, hey, don't you know what you're doing? And you are... It was like, well, buyers don't care. This isn't what they want to hear and nobody cares what voice you were for. Unless you're Sam Jackson or Sam Elliott or something like that. One of those Sam's. So, that was it. So, yeah, we're vetting and we have everybody categorized by their belong to certain voice categories. We got most of that data from the hub. So, we have a good idea of what the range is. Yeah. I mean, coming in and making voiceovers.com, you had a tremendous amount of data and research backing all that up. That's my thing. Research numbers, data. Cool. That's my zone. All right. What else we got here? Joni Silva from Facebook says, so, Matt, those of us who pay for the professional membership will be in line behind the gold members? How does that work? So, I guess maybe a little bit of a feeling like, well, if we don't pay, they're gonna get to be seen first before us. How it works? There is a couple-hour head start for gold. So, gold will get access a little earlier. It's not the... There's some other sites to give it like a full day. That's just a bad experience for the buyer. Oh, yeah. It's bad for everybody. Yeah. Coming in a day late, it's like, why bother? Yeah. So, we're giving gold a few hour head start, but that's not the... For those other sites, that's the main... That's really all the value they provide is. Don't give jobs to the pro or give it to them so late that don't even give it to them at all. We're giving it a few hours head start. Actually, it's so small that some of the gold members were asking for more, but I wanted to make sure it's fair. It's really important that everybody gets a positive ROI from this site. That's why we're limiting the numbers. I want to make sure... I want to virtually eliminate attrition. These recurring revenue businesses, I have others, and that is the key to longevity is attrition is your number one enemy. Because acquiring new people is costly. Yeah, it's a cost per client there, absolutely. The kind of general rule of thumb is that it's like 10 times more expensive to get a new client than to keep an existing one, but it's even higher in subscription businesses. Oh, well. So, yeah. I'd rather spend no money acquiring talent and use that, return that money to getting more buyers. If I have more buyers than I have a demand, I have a line out the door of talent willing to come in, and I've had some talent. How are you going to do that? Prove that you could do that. And I go, well, we've already proved that. There's 2,600 people outside the door who are only letting 1,000 in. So, if you do something right, then people notice it and it makes a big difference. Yeah, give them wristbands. I do look like a bouncer a little bit. Yeah. Really. Who was this from? From Marty. From Marty, yeah. If you only need 1,000 talent and had 2,500 apply, are you still looking for talent applications? So, yeah, that waiting list, you have no reason to want to shut down the waiting list, I guess, right? We'll see how everything goes. I want to allow on more talent, but it's only going to be dictated by the project volume and making sure that, again, not just the gold members get a positive ROI that the pro members do, too. I guess you have to wait and see. Yeah. Right. So, what comes to the sales? Definitely apply. It's going to put you on the list and get you, save your place in that line. And I'll be, again, the more projects that we get in, the more money that's where I start to make money. So, I want to get more projects in and then allow more talent on and rather than making a little bit of money together, a lot of money together, or nothing together, but we're doing it together. That's the deal. Next question is from Tyrell Kennett. Yes. Tyrell asks, who pays your 20% project fee, the buyer or the talent? It comes out of the, so if there's a, if the buyer posts a project for a thousand dollars, talent, we get 800. And that's where... And that's flat across the board the way set up. Yep. That's it. And it goes, that's where, that's what replenishes the marketing budget first. And then there's a small amount of that that goes to the liability fund. And then that's where I make money on the rest of it. So, if somebody posts a job for a thousand dollars and you're saying the talent would get 800 of that, is there transparency to know that the client knows that you're posting the job for how much is it it's for? Yes. Which is a problem in other places. And you, and as they, as the, and it's flat, there's no, we're not charging any managed service fees or anything extra. We're very transparent on the talent we have to see if this is what they paid and this is what, this is what your cut is on that. So, excellent. Next up, we have David Davis. How are the talent profiles portrayed? And for example, as a direct access for the buyer to talent, etc. So, I think you mentioned that earlier, like the gold folks, their websites will be directly available from the profile, that kind of stuff. Yeah. So, everybody on the site will have a public profile that's going to be voiceovers.com forward slash actor forward slash Matt dash Dubois, like that format, right? So, a great SEO optimized URL. And it's going to have your highlight demo and all the information you have in your profile there. They're able to click a button and contact you, but it's going to go through a contact. We have a messaging system built in that's actually based off Slack. Cool. And so, it's real time. We're not, we're not filtering the messages. So, you'll get an alert if somebody's messaged you and you can message it back and that messaging stays within the platform. That's different than some of the other platforms where it's not real time and they filter it and they remove stuff. There is a bit of an honor system there. We do monitoring though. So, if you try to take stuff off the platform, you will get in trouble. Because that's how we make money and having that return. If a buyer invites you to go off the platform for the next project, that's fair. If you solicit to take them off, not cool. That's all in the terms. And I think that's, those are reasonable and fair. You know, makes sense to me. Okay. J. Horace Black asks, is voiceover.com more for non-union talent? I think you sort of addressed that a little bit before. The, I don't know, is it more for non-union talent? Maybe. Can union talent go on there and in, yeah, the, we have a, an option. If the job meets a certain requirements and the talent has put in their profile that they are a SAG member and put in their member number. If that job, if they're selected for that job, there's going to be a convert to union button that comes up on the top that, if they're awarded and they can press the button, and what it does is it overlays all their information from their profile and the job information. And it overlays it on SAG's actual form. And it goes to a separate interface that we have for signatories that they think of like DocuSign. It's, it's, it's just a scan form. This isn't super crazy technology. I wish, I wish we could use APIs and more technology, but SAG's not there yet. Not even close. So we're, we're using scanned informs, we're just overlaying the project data with your data. And it's going to a signatory who can manually review it and then print it out right there, sign it and submit it. And then it'll go to pending status in your profile. We're holding the money so then we can reroute it to the pay master. And so there's a process there. And we do make it easy to convert to union. We do want to, we do want to support the union. I definitely support the union. I'm often critical of their leadership, but I support the union. You don't, you could go on Facebook and find that out pretty quickly. Yeah, we got a time for a couple more. And no one from Marty went accepting talent. How important is previous experience versus talent? Boy, that's a, how do you vet that? Oh, leave it down for me lately. Yeah, I, I don't have any ear for it. So I'm not part of the actual listening to the auditions and vetting. The, it really comes down to talent and work ethic. Previous, if you're required to submit a demo, but we wanted to do, we had the audition, you had to do a read because we wanted to make sure that it just wasn't an amazing demo and that you could, we wanted to be able to hear what the client hears or would hear there. We didn't put a space on there. How many years have you been doing this? So, you know, if you're, if you're, if you work hard and you want to audition a lot and you can submit a clean audition and you meet a certain level, then it's, you know, you have a good, a good, a good shot. All right. Well, Matt, thanks so much for braving the traffic and coming all the way up here, up north, even though we're in Southern California to join us here and tell us about voice, voiceovers done. And good boy, you've been putting a lot of time and effort into it and looking forward to taking the seminar on how to use it all, which I've got to do so I can get in on the, the action, I guess, is how to put it, but back at those tomorrow. All right. Yeah, you're on the road today, so it's not happening. Yeah, something came up today. So, so it's voiceovers.com and the applications are there and that's where you'll find everything they need to know. Yeah. And we'll be doing our virtual ribbon cutting at VO Atlanta at the opening ceremony. So that's when we're going to open up the, the buyer interface. Outstanding. All right. Can't wait. Matt, thanks for being with us. Always a pleasure to see you. All right. George and I will be back with more stuff right after this. Your dynamic voiceover career requires extra resources to keep moving ahead. Now there's one place where you can explore everything the voiceover industry has to offer. That place is voiceoverextra.com. Whether you're just exploring a voiceover career or a seasoned veteran ready to reach that next professional level, stay in touch with market trends, coaching, products and services while avoiding scams and other pitfalls. Voiceoverextra has hundreds of articles, free resources and training that will save you time and help you succeed. Learn from the most respected talents, coaches and industry insiders when you join the online sessions, bringing you the most current information on topics like audio books, auditioning, casting, home studio setup and equipment, marketing, performance techniques and much more. It's time to hit your one-stop daily resource for voiceover success. Sign up for a free subscription to newsletters and reports and get 14 bonus reports on how to ace the voiceover audition. It's all here at voiceoverextra.com. That's voiceoverXTRA.com. So the Sentrance mixer face saved a session for Harlan Hogan last week. Now he was on a little, okay, nine days in the Bahamas spring break sailing trip and one of his very good political clients had five TV commercials to record for a focus group. Now it was a new client for them and the client insisted that they be conferenced in on a phone patch, remember those, to help direct. The client generally lets him do this kind of work undirected. Well, with the mixer face second input channel, Harlan brought the Skype audio into his headphones and the phone patch worked perfectly and so simply by design. The second channel audio is not recorded. How about that? That's quite an accomplishment for a unit that was really built with us voice actors in mind by Sentrance. And one of the best places to get one of these is at voiceoveressentials.com, where you can get almost anything made for us voice actors with quick shipping and Harlan's legendary customer service. Voiceoveressentials.com. Go there right after watching this. Thanks, Harlan. Are you confused about how to set up and maintain a professional quality voiceover studio? No wonder. The information out there is mostly mythology. This is the best microphone to use. You'll have to have a preamp. You need a soundproof booth. This software is the best. Your audio must be broadcast quality. Consult with someone who knows the truth. Someone who's been there in the trenches doing voiceover for over 30 years. Someone with unparalleled experience with voiceover studios, who's worked with hundreds of voice actors and designed hundreds of personal studios. He knows how to teach and cares about your success. In one of the harshest environments known to voiceover, your home. Dan Leonard, the home studio master. Separate myth from fact and get a handle on your personal voiceover studio. Contact the home studio master at homevoiceoverstudio.com. Hi, this is Bob Bergen and the pokey pig and you're loving the voiceover body shot box. Okay, we're back to say goodbye, but don't go yet because there's still stuff we got to tell you. That's really important. For example, in two weeks, our guest is going to be Eric Shepherd, who happens to be my agent. A man with an opinion. Yes. Definitely got some opinions. Good night to ask an agent. Anything. Yes. And how appropriate that it's on April Fool's Day. So that'll be fun to have Eric here. Fool an agent here on the show. Stump the agent. It's like a daily thing anyway. Let's see here. We need to thank our donors of the week and who are they? Well, you've nicely listed them here for me, which is very nice. It only took me six years to figure out how to do that. Appreciate that. We've got Philip Sapir, Michelle Blanker, Ant-Land Productions at Uncle Roy, Gary Bongarts, Andrew Kaufman, and Christy Burns. Some of the names and these are names you've probably heard because I've read them many times because most of these are subscribers. They send money on a recurring schedule using PayPal and it's very kind that they do that. Thank you. And we appreciate your support. There's a donate now button right here on our homepage and we'd love if you give us some support. It allows us to maintain this magnificent technical feat that we do every other week here to bring you the show. I know we mentioned it last time, but did you know that when we had that amazing studio to use in Portland, that incredible space, that was because of Karen O'Brien. Yes, thanks Karen. A major contribution to the show. We really appreciated that. Hey, we need to see your booths. Now, this is a picture you took. It is. This is the Superbloom. This is the park that's been banned. You cannot go there now because it became so popular. Like Elsinore. Like Elsinore, it's called the Walker Canyon. This became so popular. You now can't even go visit it. So you have to look at this picture on our show to see what it looks like, but this is the Superbloom. I saw it on Thursday last week. The Superbloom is in California. Is this massive blooming of poppies and some other, what are the purple ones called? Lupin. Lupin? Lupin? Yeah. They just go for miles. It's kind of mind boggling, but if you want to see them, you just kind of travel north as they go north. So do you. You can go see them in other parts of the state. So it's like the Wizard of Oz. They're going through the field of poppies. Yes. Something with poison. I believe it is Instagram that ruined this place because that's where my girlfriend heard about it. And I think many others did as well. And unfortunately it became so crowded they had to close it down. But please, we want your booths. It's more fun to see your space. So send them in to the guys at vobs.tv. Absolutely. Put booths in the subject and we'll throw it on the wall. Make sure it's in landscape format, not Instagram story format. Not vertical, please. But my phone doesn't work like that. Try turning it. Just twist it. It's pretty simple thing. Let's see here. We're live here every other week now. We do the whole show and then we split it up so you guys can don't have to digest an hour and a half of stuff. You get 45 minutes of a great interview and you get 45 minutes of more tech than you can possibly handle in 45 minutes for your home voiceover studio. So make sure you join us for that. And if you want to be in the audience, all you got to do is write to us again at the guys at vobs.tv. Make sure that you're, you know, what week you're coming because we're now in alternate weeks. We'll be back on again April 1st and then April 8th and 7th. 15. 15. Thank you. So math has never been one of my four days. Maths. And again, you got a question, write to us at the guys at vobs.tv. Let's thank our amazing sponsors like Harlan Hogan's Voiceover Essentials, Voiceover Extra, Source Elements, Viotagogo, VoiceActorWebsites.com, and J. Michael Collins Demo. All right. We also need to thank the Dan and Marcy Leonard Foundation for the betterment of webcasting. Also our producer, Catherine Curridan, who got us mad in here this week, which was great. Mike Merlino for his ace work in the chat room tonight. Thanks, Mike. We like having him around. We like having his mom around too because Sue Merlino is our technical director and she does a bang up job of that every week. I think we got her worked in just right. Please don't leave us. That's right. And of course, we'd like to thank Lee Penny simply for being Lee Penny. Well, that's going to do it for us here on Voiceover Body Shop. You know, it's not an easy business. We're here to help you with your home voiceover studio because when it sounds right, it is good. Something like that. I'm Dan Leonard. And I'm George Whidham. And this is VoiceOver Body Shop or VOBS. Have a great week, everybody. Bye now.