How I Answered Voices.com’s Inquiry

hey there it’s David H Lawrence the 17th
I got a piece of email today from
voices.com
and they wanted to talk to me they were
reaching out to see a fella
let me just read the email to you and
then I’ll tell you what I how I
responded I came from a Joleen Vander
Kolk jolene jolene Joe
hello David my name is Jolene and I work
on establishing partnerships with
voiceover coaches schools and Studios on
behalf
mm voices.com and our talent roster
I enjoyed checking out your vo to go go
website and would enjoy learning more
about your coaching offerings and your
team of coaches so we may establish if
there’s an opportunity for us to work
together we are teaming up with coaches
to assist talent in finding the right
coach and making coaching all the more
accessible for our talent roster I
appreciate your time and look forward to
hearing from you thank you Jolene Vander
Kolk coaching partnership Account
Manager at voices.com
when I got this email it didn’t take me
long to craft the single sentence that I
wrote back
thank you for reaching out but I’m not
available to work with you nor are any
members of my coaching team David took
her an hour or so and then she replied
with one of those Gmail suggested
replies I guess maybe jima they’re using
Google Apps to run their stuff because
this is exactly what Gmail would suggest
as one sentence that says understood I
appreciate you letting me know not
understood period I appreciate you
letting me know new sentence but
understood comma I appreciate you
letting me know it just reeks of a gmail
suggests you see those new things use a
gmail app on your iPhone or and if you
use the Gmail app and on your desktop
they give you a little suggested replies
I don’t know that that actually helps
the discourse in the world but it sure
is convenient yeah and that was that I
checked in with all my coaches as I was
creating that response every single one
of them was like absolutely and if you
don’t know why I responded that way I
urge you to Google the words voices and
then you can do do TCO em rather than
voices comm because that may cause your
browser to search on the voices comm
site for the rest of the search but if
you google voices.com
transparency interview or voices.com
managed projects
you will read why most of the voice-over
talent in the industry that knows what’s
going on doesn’t want to work with
voices calm anymore voice is calm
legally did a lot of things that ruined
the livelihood of many many voiceover
talent up until about two three years
ago I don’t know when you’re watching
this so could be longer than that there
were two really great sites that the
professional voice over industry relied
on for casting for finding agents for
finding work for being exposed to
producers directors etc and new talent
one was called voice bank net and the
other was called voice registry and
voice bank net was the mothership it was
the place where agencies and casting
directors would go and post projects
that were well-paying mostly Union and
where talent agencies would list their
talent and their talents demos and I
think the agency is paid a certain
amount of money per month when you’d
post a project if you were a casting
person it would cost you a certain
amount of money to do that you could
invite whoever you wanted and every
agency that was legitimate was listed on
the site as was their talent
voice registry was kind of the bridge to
voice bank net because you couldn’t be
on voice bank net as an independent read
that non-represented voice talent and
have an agent
and voice registry allowed you to do a
lot of the things that a lot of the you
know stepping-stone sites like actors
access and and other sites allow you to
do to just gain exposure they had weekly
workouts they had feedback meet and
greets they would bring in guests for
seminars casting directors agents things
like that it was great and then the
people that created voice bank got a
knock on their door one day from
voices.com who had just received a whole
bunch of venture capital money
and they said we want to buy you for
millions and millions of dollars and I
certainly don’t blame Jeff the guy that
created voice bank net invoice registry
says a lot of money it’s hard to say no
to that he sold to them and voice bank
and voice registry were no more once
they were purchased
they were submarined couldn’t find him
anymore couldn’t post anything anymore
you were redirected to their new owner
voice is calm and voice is calm has this
thing
where they want everybody to post on
their site whether they’re legitimate or
not whether they’re Union or not voice
bank net was kind of the breakdown
services of voice over and I think
that’s what voices.com wants to be but
they haven’t succeeded they haven’t
succeeded because of something called
managed projects
if a voice buyer or somebody who wants
to buy voice services goes to voice bank
net and posts a project say it’s a
commercial for a windshield repair shop
in Fargo North Dakota they’ll post it
and they’ll post you know we’re willing
to pay a thousand dollars for a spot and
we want to find a talent that’s x y&z
the way the process usually works is the
person that posts the project which
might be the guy that runs the store not
really well trained in how to handle
auditions and you know picking talent
and so on
they would be the one who’ll be making
those decisions and kind of running that
little project on voices comm voice
talent would see it post to it
audition for it and hopefully book it
and the voice talent would get there
thousand dollars well what happened was
voices.com decided that they were going
to insert themselves into the process to
help the voice buyer
they said to the voice buyer look you
got a thousand dollar budget we’ll take
care of everything for you keep your
budget the same you’ll pay the same
amount of money we’ll go find the talent
we will audition them we will give you
finalists or we’ll tell you who we think
would be best you can go about you we’ll
help you
and what was found out was that voice is
calm even though the client was willing
to pay a thousand dollars for that spot
and these are just made-up numbers but
they’re kind of typical it could be five
hundred dollars could be two hundred
dollars whatever it is depends on the
level but they had a budget and that
budget was meant for the voice talent
voices.com sees that money and they go
okay we’ll take care of this for you but
it’s not going to be for free
they offer the voice talent $300 because
there’s voice talent that’s Debora nuff
to do that or $200 or $400 and they keep
the rest of that thousand dollars as a
management fee I hate doing air quotes
but I’m trying to trying to let you know
that I have disdain for what’s going on
and it’s why I responded the way I did
in general I don’t think in any any
website has made as many gaffes when it
came to when it comes to professional
voice talent as voices.com
and the husband-and-wife team of David
and Stephanie chick or Ellie who run it
have done they’ve done very well
monetarily they’re they’re a company
that is supported by the Government of
Canada and also by their investors some
of whom have put in tens of millions of
dollars to help them you know facilitate
what they want but we as a professional
industry are left with no mothership
nobody wants to work with voices comm
none that I’ve spoken with there’s no
place that aspiring pro talent can go
for development
and this whole idea of having voice
talent bear the burden in lost income
for them to do maybe half an hour’s
worth of work listening for some talent
and and making a recommendation because
from there the voice buyer the voice
seeker it still has to produce their
project voice is calm isn’t doing that
for them
and today here comes voices.com wanting
to partner with me to get access to
their talent I’m not going to take
advantage of their talent the way they
do she’s not going to do it these are
all my opinions the facts that I’ve
given you are facts that you can look up
you can refer to interviews that the
chick or Elly’s have given you can refer
to analyses by other voc coaches other
voice talent organizations
voices.com is not the place I want to be
now I may easily have given up hundreds
of thousands of dollars in potential
referrals I don’t know what their
programs all about I don’t care maybe it
was if we refer somebody to you
we need a management fee I don’t care
they have a lot of talent that could use
my help
on their site it tends to be people who
are willing to work for a lot less money
then I want you to work for if you’re a
voice talent or an actor and there are a
lot of people that I’d like to educate
about the industry properly
I don’t think I could do that with
voices calm so that’s why I said what I
said if you’re familiar with the
voices.com situation what are your
thoughts go ahead and post in the
comments below
what do you think of my response should
I have been more detailed sounds like
with the response I got she’s getting
more than just me responding that way
and I’m sure that they know as a team
why they’re getting those kinds of
responses they may be getting tons of
responses from other voice coaches to
the positive to the affirmative just
can’t do it
let’s can’t do it I’m getting mad right
now
anyway that’s what I spent my afternoon
doing thinking about this and you know
the response that I gave and all that
sort of thing give me your thoughts in
the comments below I do appreciate you
watching these videos every day we’ve
been putting them out every day and this
is number 61 crazy and I’ve got a whole
bunch more to tell you if you want to
subscribe to my youtube channel go ahead
if there’s my head over there go ahead
and click on it there’s no head look for
a subscribe button somewhere on the page
and subscribe to the channel you want to
see my latest episode that frame right
there click it and YouTube will play it
for you because they do that I’m David H
Lawrence the 17th I sure hope this
helped and I’ll talk to you tomorrow.