This week’s topic comes from Allison, she says:

I would love to hear a follow up podcast about the tools you mentioned… Quick books self-employed and the voice over something or other you mentioned in the most recent episode. Thanks!

Thank you for submitting this topic, Allison. There are so many tools out there it can be hard to know where to start and what to use!

In the business toolkit checklist, which you can access in our free content library (I’ll link to it in the show notes), I go over the basic tools you must have in your business to be successful, but today I’m going over the specific tools I use in my business, why I use them, and how much they cost. 

Before we begin, know that there are no “true and right” tools when it comes to your biz. It really is about experimentation and finding out what works best for you and how you work.

If you, like Allison, have a question or something else you’d like me to talk about on the show, remember you can always fill out the podcast request form in the show notes.

Tools are essential for running our businesses.

They help us stay organized, remind us what we need to do each day, and can even help us work smarter not harder.

Over the past two years, I’ve tried out many different tools and have learned that I can change the tools I use at any time if I find some that work better for me than others. 

These are the specific tools I currently use in my business based on the essential toolkit checklist: 

Tech/Equipment + Software: 

Adobe Audition 

What I would call the most robust audio production software and the very best for Voice Actors who are looking to be more advanced in the end products they offer clients. 

I used Audacity for two years for podcasting and voice acting. While I still use Audacity for editing my podcast, I only use Audition for my voiceover work, my demos, and mixing and mastering the podcast episodes. 

Adobe is about $20/month on its own but we pay $30/month for the entire Adobe Creative Suite.

Check out my affiliate link in the show notes to see any specials they’re running right now.

Mic + interface

I currently use a Neumann TLM 103 for all my voiceover work and my AT2020 XLR for the podcast. For voiceover, I use a Focusrite interface and for the podcast I use my older Behringer Uphoria UM2.

Why do I use these? The Neumann TLM 103 is one of the standard mics for professional VO peeps. That is what was most important to me going forward – the quality of each audition, demo, and client project. And the interfaces have actually been less important to me, though I’ve noticed a big difference in quality with the Focusrite interface vs the Behringer interface. 

Demos

As I’ve mentioned before, I produce all my own demos. I got certified as an audio producer two years ago and have produced multiple demos for myself, mostly commercial, and tend to do this every 6 months or so. 

Why do I produce my own demos? I realized at the beginning of 2020 that I owed it to myself to be more than talent – if I were really going to run a professional VO biz, I wanted to be able to produce the very best for my clients. Demo production is great practice for audio production in general, auditions and client work. The quality of my work has skyrocketed since allowing myself to learn this awesome new skill. 

Somewhere to Audition

Voices.com

My auditioning platform of choice after lots of research, experience, and success is Voices.com. 

Why do I use this tool? There are many different P2P sites and I encourage you to research what other people are saying and what kind of opportunities are on each one, but Voices has worked great for me and my business so I’ve continued to use it. The interface is user friendly, you can set parameters for your specific voice and talents, new auditions populate daily, and I’ve had some great client connections on the site including many clients who turn into recurring clients who hire me directly, so not on the site but reach out to me via email. 

A Place to Get paid

I have used multiple online payment systems in the past but I currently use:

Quickbooks Self-employed

A simpler version of Quickbooks online for solopreneurs.

And PayPal – some for client work but mostly because that’s the payment system Voices uses. PayPal for business is free and Quickbooks Self-Employed is $120/year.

Why do I use this tool (these tools)?

This is the only system I’ve been able to find that not only allows me to connect my accounts and send invoices directly, but I can also see how much I owe for quarterly taxes, which is a huge time saver for me. I’ve hired a CPA in the past and found this to be way more expensive and annoying than I’d like it to be for my small business. I’ve been mostly happy with it – I will say it takes a bit to get used to but it’s currently working well for my needs. 

An online presence

I have a business website and I utilize LinkedIn. I’ve always enjoyed working on websites so this hasn’t been a big-time or money investment for me because I see it as essential when you get to a certain point in your VO biz. As far as the platforms I use, I use WordPress for my VO biz site and have recently switched to Kajabi for the WFHVA site, podcast, email marketing, and our new free community. 

Why do I use these platforms? 

I’ve used WordPress for five years now for various businesses and sites, and have continued using it for my VO biz because it’s easy for me to use and allows me enough customization so I can have my demos and past work displayed how I want to use the plug-in Elementor Pro. 

Between WordPress, Siteground hosting, and Elementor Pro, I probably spend about $200/year on my website services for the VO biz. Kajabi is a new tool we’re using for the WFHVA side of the business and that tool is about $2000/year – but it hosts the entire business in one place which is a huge perk for us. 

Now, the last couple of tools we’ll talk about are not essential, but they have been handy for me in my business. 

Additional Tools

Voiceoverview

Also referred to as VOV is a business management tool specifically designed for Voice Actors. It allows me to see my monthly and annual revenue in one place and I also have the ability to look at past years and see the growth in my business which is really cool. It also allows me to house client contact info, though this isn’t the feature I utilize the most. 

The main reason I spend $96/year for this platform is because I can use it to compare to what my accounting software, Quickbooks Self-employed, is saying. For someone who likes data and wants to be sure I’m up to date on the input and output of my business, I find this super helpful. So, I have all my individual jobs posted in Voiceoverview and when I get paid, I check the dates the money dropped in my account in Quickbooks and then go over to VOV and make sure the data matches. I spend some time each Friday doing this and then at the end of each month I do one final check to be sure the numbers match up. 

A few months back, I couldn’t get my PayPal site to update my business bank account information, so I deleted that PayPal account and made a new one which solved the first part of that problem but ended up deleting all my PayPal transactions since 2019… yea, it was awesome. 

Buuuuut I realized I had been keeping everything logged in VOV and so I referred to VOV for all of the transactions since 2019 and a couple hours later everything was up to date again. This totally saved my butt so I’m now a firm believer in utilizing some sort of business management tool. Especially if you’re a solopreneur like I am.

VoiceZam

Another additional tool I use is called VoiceZam. This is a media player that allows you to upload and customize a voiceover demo player on your website. I pay for an additional service with them where I can see how many people listen to the demos, which demos they listen to, for how long, and where the person is located – though this hasn’t really done anything for my business it’s just cool information (again, I like data) so I’ll probably remove this tool from my business at some point in the future. I pay $16/month for the VoiceZam player and statistics.

Google Drive

The third and final additional tool I use in my business is Google Drive. File storage really should be an essential tool for any VO biz but you can do your work without it so it’s not on the list of essential tools. Instead, I’ll talk about it here.

We now have our own cloud storage at the house where I store all present and past client work but for larger projects with direct clients, I usually make them a folder in Google Drive and share the file with them via a hyperlink. But I use Google Drive for everything – my VO biz, WFHVA, and the podcast, blog posts, images, etc. plus so much more.

However, Dropbox and other similar platforms can do the same thing. Google Drive – podcast scripts, blog posts, course content, images, etc. And the basic level of Drive is free but I pay a few dollars a month for 100 GB.

To Wrap

Tools help us run our businesses effectively. If we didn’t utilize tools, we’d feel like a fish flopping on the deck of a boat. Remember, not all tools are made equally and not all tools are actually helpful for the way you work. And it’s totally ok to change up the tools you use as you evolve as well. This is your business and you make the rules. 

Thanks for listening. Until next time.