Many of you are working from home for the first time and it can be a difficult transition. As someone who has been working from home for over 15 years, I’m happy to share some tips.
If you have any questions about working from home, please comment on this blog post or email me at tom@nulltomdheere.com. I’m here to help!
TIP OF THE WEEK
Stick to your old routine as much as possible. Wake up, exercise, shower, eat, get dressed, and be at your desk at the same time you would as if you were working at your place of business. It’s okay to take a five-minute break every hour to stretch your legs, but don’t lollygag! Your body, your mind, and your boss will thank you for it.
Keep your social media and your TV turned off. They can be VERY distracting when you’re trying to get stuff done while working from home. There are many apps out there which can limit your social media time or block it altogether like Offtime, AppBlock, SelfControl, Cold Turkey, and FocusMe.
Make sure your computer is in good shape. If it crashes it will be MUCH harder to get it fixed/replaced right now as many computer stores are shut down. Back up your hard drive daily using programs like Carbonite. Use Disk Cleanup and Disk Defragmentor (or whatever the Mac equivalent is) to keep your hard drive lean & clean. Norton and Malwarebytes are good programs to protect your computer from viruses and malware.
For Voice actors: Voice seekers are scrambling to find quality voice actors who can both record from home and phone patch. If you have a phone patch like ISDN or Source-Connect; make sure all of your potential, current, and past clients know that. If you don’t, get one as fast as you can. It will increase your value as a business in general and make you more available for work now and down the road.
This is also a great time up create or update your CRM database, build a marketing campaign, and practice with copy.
Be kind to yourself and those in your home. Working from home for the first time can be difficult for you and your family. Kids may not understand that you need to focus on your work so set ground rules with your family about what they can and can’t talk to you about while you’re working. Of course, there’s advice and there’s reality so I know it won’t be that simple, especially when it comes to younger children. Do the best you can to communicate effectively.
This is a very stressful situation for everyone but you’ve got this. 🙂 Stay cool and stay safe!
NEWS AND NOTES
SOLD OUT!!! Tuesday, March 24th @8PM EST: My next Edge Studio Marketing 201 webinar will be ‘The Sales Funnel’. In this one-hour webinar, we’ll talk about what the Sales Funnel is and how to push voice seekers through it. This webinar is capped at 25 attendees. Click here to sign up!
SOLD OUT!!! Thursday, March 26th @8PM EST: “eLearning Praxis! (that means practice)”. In this FREE one-hour webinar, we will be flexing our eLearning muscles! Brining your own eLearning, corporate, industrial, or medical narration scripts and I will have some on hand as well. Please email your scripts to tom@nulltomdheere.com so I can display them for all to see. This webinar is capped at 6 attendees. It sold out in 20 minutes so I may schedule another one next month to give more people a chance to participate. Stay tuned!
Thursday, April 16th @8PM EST: My next Edge Studio Business and Money 201 webinar will be ‘Cost/Benefit Analysis’. In this one-hour webinar, we’ll talk about how to determine how & why you generated your voiceover revenue and how to repeat what worked. This webinar is capped at 25 attendees and sells out fast. Click here to sign up.
Tuesday, April 30th @8PM EST: My next Edge Studio Marketing 201 webinar will be ‘What Your Website Says About You’. In this one-hour webinar, we’ll talk about how your website can help you gain or lose clients without you ever knowing it. This webinar is capped at 25 attendees and sells out fast. Click here to sign up!
Wednesday, May 27th @2:00 PM EST: even though the Audio Publishers Association Conference (APAC) has been cancelled, my meeting table has gone from live to virtual! From 2:00-3:45, you are welcome to book a FREE 15-minute consult with me. We can talk about audiobook marketing, business, or just chat. This is capped at 7 slots and will fill up fast so sign up ASAP. Click here to book your free 15-minute consult!
Thursday May 28th @2:30 PM EST: my “Learning to do eLearning” workshop has also gone from live to virtual! In this two-hour workshop you will learn what eLearning narration is, it’s sub-genres, narration tips, how much to charge, demo specs, and there will be live coaching! It’s $100 to attend, but if you use the promo code EARLYBIRD528 you get in for only $75! This webinar is capped at 50 attendees and is filling up fast so sign up ASAP. Click here to register!
HAPPY HAPPYS
Happy Melba Toast Day and Chocolate Covered Raisins Day!
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
Tom Dheere is a 20+year veteran of the voice over industry who has narrated thousands of projects for hundreds of clients in over a dozen countries. He is also a voiceover business & marketing consultant known as the VOStrategist and produces the comic book “Agent 1.22”.