Venice Veg-Fruit Market

I came across a great article by Barbara Winter that’s loaded with useful, inspiring tips. As a voiceover artist, I consider myself a bit of an entrepreneur in my ongoing quest to find & open myself to opportunities where I can be useful and of service with my voice, for financial compensation.

Actually, anyone — in any field — can find gems in this article.

FOUR SUCCESS HABITS OF JOYFULLY JOBLESS ACTIVISTS

“There was an audible gasp in the Prosperous Author workshop when speaker Jerry Gillies told the audience, “Buy one hardcover book every week. Support the industry you want to be part of.”

Seems to me that the skeptics missed the point. What Gillies suggested was quite elementary: go beyond lip service and actively support something that matters. If you’re an author, don’t you want to see a lively publishing industry? If you’re a self-employed person of a different sort, it makes sense to support others who have taken this alternative route.

When enough people get involved, it can turn into a movement. Consider the growing number of folks who think of themselves as locavores. This interest in building self-reliant food economies by consuming things that are locally grown keeps spreading because individuals took up the cause.

What are the success habits of entrepreneurial activists? Here’s my short list.

Instigate. The late singer John Denver once confessed, “I was always waiting around for somebody to do something about the world. Then I realized nobody is coming to save me. It starts with me, where I am.”

Activists don’t wait around for opportunity to show up on their doorstep. They look for what’s missing and get busy filling the gap.

Adopt a protégé, organize a meet-up, share what you’ve learned about social media with a local group of businessowners. Keep asking yourself my favorite question, “How can I make it better?” and then follow the answers that you get.

Circulate. Your entrepreneurial success will expand more rapidly and easily if you actively support other joyfully jobless folks. Sometimes that means spending more to purchase a book from your independent bookseller or a tool from the neighborhood hardware store.

I like the perspective on this from Veronique Vienne. She writes, “The goods we get in exchange for what we pay are only a small portion of the full value of a transaction. A chance to put money back into the economy and give it to deserving people or causes is in fact an important part of the equation….Can you remember how you felt the last time you bought overpriced lemonade and cookies from a seven-year-old sidewalk vendor? Or how proud you were when you got a painting directly from an unknown artist and paid fair market value for it? Or how good it felt to buy a favorite niece a quaint dollhouse made of wood by a local craftsman instead of a plastic one with a clock tower and three-door garage?”

Collaborate. Business partnerships have a success rate lower than marriage, which doesn’t bode well for permanent relationships. If Lennon and McCartney couldn’t make it work, we need to rethink that model. (And if you have a fabulous business partnership, bless you.)

Collaboration, on the other hand, can be a terrific alternative that generates fresh thinking, new ideas and synergy. It reminds me of the first trip my daughter took to Europe when she was in college. Although the adventure was originally supposed to include several friends, the others dropped out so Jennie set off by herself. However, she met solo travelers along the way and would sometimes spend a few days on the road with her new companions. Then they’d go their separate ways.

This works just as well in business.

Celebrate. Yesterday my granddaughter went off to kindergarten dressed as a cheerleader. What  was the occasion? Happily,  Zoe has a teacher who loves to catch his students doing something right. When that happens, he adds marbles to a big jar. Once the jar is full, the class gets a special treat. The first time around it was Pajama Day and everyone arrived in their night clothes. This time is was Costume Day.
 
When you’re self-employed, sometimes the victories are known only to you. That doesn’t make them any less important. Find ways to celebrate even small advancements. Fill up your own marble jar.”

My ipodTouch app of the week:

My Thoughts+

This is just fantastic if you’re into positive thinking and affirmations. It comes with over 1,000 affirmations covering various areas of life; and we have the option to add our own affirmations. so, naturally many of my custom ones centre around voiceover life and career goals.

It’s just brilliant for keeping one on a positive path in a pleasant, inspiring way. You can play the music that comes built in the app, or play your own.

Cheers for now all…

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Philadelphia and Boston played this year at fabulous Fenway Park.
Buffalo hosts Philly tonight in the NHL but on January 1, 2008 the Sabres hosted the other Pennsylvania team (Pittsburgh) in a “Winter Classic.”

“The Making of a Classic” DVD went on sale in September of 2008 with
a portion of the proceeds from it’s sale going to the Buffalo Sabres Foundation. A 2 1/2 minute clip with narration from yours truly is below.
The Buffalo Sabres Foundation has a great event coming up on
St. Patrick’s Day: Ronan Tynan (who is featured on “The Making of a Classic” DVD) along with special guest Méav. Click here for all the details.

If you would like a copy of “The Making of a Classic” DVD, email me at drhass@shaw.ca and I will pass your information along so you can make a contribution to the Buffalo Sabres Foundation.

There creativity, artistry, music and a true sense of achievement in this video.

But it’s also just a blast to watch.

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This one gave me a chuckle.

The Buffalo Niagara Sales and Marketing Executives hosted their yearly awards gala and they asked if I would do the live announce again. I said sure, we worked out a trade deal and all was good. I did warn them that sometimes travel comes up and then I might have to pass; they were cool with that.

Travel came up and off I was to be on a plane instead of behind the mic for them. I said the only option I had for them was that I could pre-record it the show for them into individual sound files and they audio-visual technician would play them back for the proper intros. They loved that idea, I recorded it, they loved how it sounded, it was done well in advance and sent over to the av company to get them comfortable with pacing and technical stuff, etc.

So the night of the show comes and goes and the next day I email to see how it went. Here’s the answer I got:

Well….funny you should ask. Hi Peter – the rehearsals went really well but we did have a glitch during the actual intros. I sat with the av guy to make sure he knew when to cue the next person’s intro. He would hit the button with your recording and then play music in between. However, he hit the button too quick after announcing the Key Bank winner and we heard “from Business First” too soon so he stopped it right away. Unfortunately, by stopping it the way he did, it was miscued and then it went back to the very beginning of the recording again. Luckily he wrote down the exact time of each recording so it was a matter of getting back to the right time on the recording but he kept missing it so we had about 2 full minutes of waiting and wondering what was up. My face was on fire J

Your voice was loud and clear and it sounded like you were right there so that was very cool. I think considering what the av guys had to do, they did an awesome job. And other than that, the night was fabulous. We are getting rave reviews.

Yikes.

So tonight on Facebook, I see my friend Nancy Knight posted something so I threw a kudo towards her as she was one of the award winners —who happened to be the NEXT intro when the AV had the hand-eye coordination melt down on his computer mouse. Nancy wrote:

Peter — thanks for the kind words — yeah, the audio left me and my prom date stuck at the top of the stairs for QUITE some time… before I figured it was all automated, I thought you were mad at me or something…

Oy! Usually I only annoy people when I am present but thanks to one tech, I annoyed hundreds of people while in Texas. Sorry Nancy.

Of course, I never make mistakes. Like the time as a PA announcer I had a stadium full of people stand for the national anthem during a college football game…only it was time for the band to play the school song. Yeah….

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I was sitting in the studio editing an eLearning project when the email arrived, so I quickly pulled up the previous audio to make sure I had the tone and pace of that narration in mind and did a couple of quick takes of the paragraph. Save. Upload to my server. Email a reply. The entire process takes less than 5 minutes and I needed a short break from my editing job anyway. I mention in my email “no charge” just because it seemed like the right thing to do this morning.

Here’s his reply to that email:

I can’t really think of why I like working with you… Oh well, I’m sure it will come to me.

Sometimes you make more than money in this business. You make friends.

Oh, and my answer back?

Maybe it’s because I love working with you? Because I do. And you’re entirely welcome.

I do love my job, mostly I suppose because I love working with my clients.

(Updated to add Chris’ name is web link.)